blood-feud with Rakhal had begun with an
overelaborate practical joke--which had lost the Service, incidentally,
several thousand credits worth of spaceship.

And so I could not trust Dallisa for an instant. Yet it was wonderful to
lie here with my head resting against the perfumed softness of her body.

Then suddenly her arms were gripping me, frantic and hungry; the subdued
thing in her voice, her eyes, flamed out hot and wild. She was pressing
the whole length of her body to mine, breasts and thighs and long legs,
and her voice was hoarse.

"Is this torture too?"

Beneath the fur robe she was soft and white, and the subtle scent of her
hair seemed a deeper entrapment than any. Frail as she seemed, her arms
had the strength of steel, and pain blazed down my wrenched shoulders,
seared through the twisted wrists. Then I forgot the pain.

Over her shoulder the last dropping redness of the sun vanished and
plunged the room into orchid twilight.

I caught her wrists in my hands, prizing them backward, twisting them
upward over her head. I said thickly, "The sun's down." And then I
stopped her wild mouth with mine.

And I knew that the battle between us had reached climax and victory
simultaneously, and any question about who had won it was purely
academic.

* * * * *

During the night sometime, while her dark head lay motionless on my
shoulder, I found myself staring into the darkness, wakeful. The
throbbing of my bruises had little to do with my sleeplessness; I was
remembering other chained girls from the old days in the Dry-towns, and
the honey and poison of them distilled into Dallisa's kisses. Her head
was very light on my shoulders, and she felt curiously insubstantial,
like a woman of feathers.

One of the tiny moons was visible through the slitted windows. I thought
of my rooms in the Terran Trade City, clean and bright and warm, and all
the nights when I had paced the floor, hating, filled to the teeth with
bitterness, longing for the windswept stars of the Dry-towns, the salt
smell of the winds and the musical clashing of the walk of the chained
women.

With a sting of guilt, I realized that I had half forgotten Juli and my
pledge to her and her misfortune which had freed me again, for this.

Yet I had won, and what they knew had narrowed my planet-wide search to
a pinpoint. Rakhal was in Charin.

I wasn't altogether surprised. Charin is the only city on Wolf, except