pily
between her hands, her hair falling in tangles. I took one of her hands
in mine and turned it over.

It was a fine hand, with birdlike bones and soft rose-tinted nails; but
the lines and hardened places around the knuckles reminded me that she,
too, came from the cold austerity of the salt Dry-towns. After a moment
she flushed and drew her hand from mine.

"What are you thinking, Cargill?" she asked, and for the first time I
heard her voice sobered, without the coquetry, which must after all have
been a very thin veneer.

I answered her simply and literally. "I am thinking of Dallisa. I
thought you were very different, and yet, I see that you are very like
her."

I thought she would question what I knew of her sister, but she let it
pass in silence. After a time she said, "Yes, we were twins." Then,
after a long silence, she added, "But she was always much the older."

And that was all I ever knew of whatever obscure pressures had shaped
Dallisa into an austere and tragic Clytemnestra, and Miellyn into a
pixie runaway.

Outside the drawn shutters, dawn was brightening. Miellyn shivered,
drawing her thin draperies around her bare throat. I glanced at the
little rim of jewels that starred her hair and said, "You'd better take
those off and hide them. They alone would be enough to have you hauled
into an alley and strangled, in this part of Charin." I hauled the bird
Toy from my pocket and slapped it on the greasy table, still wrapped in
its silk. "I don't suppose you know which of us this thing is set to
kill?"

"I know nothing about the Toys."

"You seem to know plenty about the Toymaker."

"I thought so. Until last night." I looked at the rigid, clamped mouth
and thought that if she were really as soft and delicate as she looked,
she would have wept. Then she struck her small hand on the tabletop and
burst out, "It's not a religion. It isn't even an honest movement for
freedom! Its a--a front for smuggling, and drugs, and--and every other
filthy thing!

"Believe it or not, when I left Shainsa, I thought Nebran was the answer
to the way the Terrans were strangling us! Now I know there are worse
things on Wolf than the Terran Empire! I've heard of Rakhal Sensar, and
whatever you may think of Rakhal, he's too decent to be mixed up in
anything like this!"

"Suppose you tell me what's really going on," I suggested. She couldn't
add much to what I knew already, but the last fragments of the pattern
were b