"Yes sir." The voice was deep, metallic of timbre. "A lone woman is unusual on these avenues, as you of course know." Women were second class citizens in Athens, remaining in their homes except on rare intervals and never venturing out alone unless they were so old and so ugly no men would care to look at them. "Further," the slave went on, "this girl carried a strange black box which she pointed at me. I heard a clicking sound and wondered what kind of magic might dwell within it." "You have nothing to fear," Tedor assured him. So Laniq Hadrien was taking pictures. "Which way did the woman go?" "She asked the direction of the Agora. Again, most peculiar, as who does not know the location of the marketplace in Athens?" * * * * * Tedor thanked him and set off at a fast pace down one of the mean streets radiating from the gate. He reached the Agora merely by following the crowds and wended his way through the crowded marketplace with the shouts of the fish, bread, wine and honey-mongers on all sides of him. The tradesmen jockeyed their pushcarts around for more advantageous positions; the slaves ran nimbly about the Agora on nameless errands; the gentlemen of leisure, garbed in embroidered tunics and mantles of white, red, purple and black, sauntered without hurry under the shade of the adjacent _stoas_, servants following behind them or preceding them like schools of pilot fish. It was a hot day, the bright sun scorching everything and engendering an odor in the fish-carts which made the fish-mongers decidedly unpopular. Twice Tedor spotted Laniq ahead of him in tunic and mantle but with her hair free, snapping pictures with her camera, but each time the crowds swirled in ahead of him and he lost her. The third time he shouted her name and she ran. He took off after her and tripped over something, stumbling against a fish-cart and overturning it. The vendor was an ugly old man with warts all over his face and a raspy voice. He threw a steady torrent of invective at Tedor, and in all these generations the meanings hadn't changed even if the sounds had. Tedor kept running, for he lacked Athenian money to pay the fish vendor. But by then he had lost Laniq Hadrien once more. Her trail led him through all the stalls of the Agora but he did not see her again. He began to realize it would be foolish to remain in Athens any longer for fear he might lose her entirely when he became aware someone was following him. The man maintained two dozen paces distance between them. The man hurried when he hurried, slowed when he did. Tedor stopped, then turned swiftly and sprinted toward the mantled figure. "All right," he said, gathering up a fistful of the mantle and holding the man. "Why were you following me?" "I don't know what you're talking about. It's a free city."