own yesterday."

Ewyo snorted, "Dawvys can give him a bed for now in the servants' huts.
Dawvys!"

It was on her tongue to say that Dawvys wouldn't be likely to answer his
bawl, but the man appeared in the doorway, spruce and clean, with only a
few scratches to tell of his activities. "Yes, Lord Ewyo?"

"Take this rucker and find a bed for him. Jump!"

"Yessir." Dawvys, a plump fellow with no hint of his enormous endurance
in his look, motioned Rack out of the library.

Ewyo said, "Well! How are you, Nirea? Your sister Jann and I have been
worrying."

"I'm all right."

"Did you suffer indignities at the hands of that crazy miner?"

He looked like a damned red-faced bear, she thought, and surprised
herself by saying, "Revel treated me with--with much consideration."

"Huh! Wouldn't have thought it. You want to sleep?"

"Don't bother about me," she said, turning. "Get on with your pressing
business, father." She went to her room and lay down on the
satin-sheeted bed without even removing the tattered rucker's clothes.
For a long while she lay there, thinking. Then she did a thing that no
one could ever have convinced her she'd do till that day. She changed
into a sheer black gown, after bathing of course, and slipped downstairs
to her father's private room.

She had never been in it, no one but Ewyo had; she had no clear notion
of what she was looking for. But an army of questions warred in her
mind, and it seemed to her that there were secrets she must discover:
answers which she had never looked for, explanations for things she had
always taken for granted.

For instance, she thought, turning the handle slowly and without noise,
why were the gentry the gentry? Why did the gods allow almost anything
to her kind, when the ruck had no rights? She shook her head. All her
breeding said she was mad, yet she opened the door of the private room
and walked in.

Dawvys whirled from where he had been bending over a huge leather-bound
book on a table. His face was white, but it cleared of panic when he saw
her.

"The Lady Nirea moves silently."

"What are you doing here?" she asked sharply.

"The same thing you mean to do, Lady. I'm seeking the answers to certain
problems."

"Can a rucker read minds like a globe?"

He laughed. "It was an obvious guess, Lady."

"And have you found answers, Dawvys?"

He sighed. "I cannot read, as the Lady knows. No rucker reads."

She watched his face a moment. "Stay here,