"No, Paul. I saw the palace--changed, with new tall doors. There were soldiers at the entrance, so I did not dare go near. They wore a headdress--it was the old bark fabric, I think, but a shape I never saw. I saw the great stockade--always the biggest thing on the shore of North Lake--still in repair; there was the same sluice, to wash away the blood of the meat slaves. There is still a ferry near it, where the crossing is narrow at the lake's inlet; I could see across--streets and tree-sheltered houses. And outside the city I saw a mound, very foul. Once the city was clean. There was a boy playing near it--ran when he saw me, but I caught him and asked him about that mound. I could hardly understand his gabble. It seems that nowadays in Vestoia children have reason to be afraid of grown women. When we could talk he told me the mound was the grave of the False Empress, the Wicked One--everyone who passes is required to defile it. A law." Pakriaa laced her wrinkled hands at her throat, smiling at Christopher Wright, quoting a few of his own words: "'The laws are living things: let men guard them against crippling and disease.'" Nisana asked, "What is next to do?" "We sleep on it," Wright said. "Long journey. We're tired. We'll go there in the morning. With our weapons of course, but...." Mijok said softly, "First-light is a good time." "I think there won't be any fighting," Miniaan said, and she relaxed and leaned happily against Muson's plump knee and ate the meal Arek had ready for her in fastidious birdlike bites. "If they're troubled by the rumors I scattered they'll slip away and hide, not fight. They're weary, bewildered, disillusioned people--at least that is the temper of the city as I felt it." Nisana murmured, "With Spearman's bodyguard it could be different." "Why," said Wright, "he'd never turn them against us. Not if he's the man I used to know, or anything like that man. He came a long way with us once." But Paul had to wonder: _Was he ever with us?_