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Avenestra put her gaunt-faced head on one side. "You trying to get me drunk?"

"No. You had your limit?"

"You rich?"

He shook his head. "Are you an orphan, Avenestra?"

Her eyes clouded. "How'd you know? Oh, Ahdio told you!"

"No. If I'd known I wouldn't have asked, believe me."

"Why should I believe you?"

"Because you know you can and because I don't want a damned thing from you."

"Huh! That's a first."

He said nothing and neither did she. She drank and let him see that her cup was empty. He looked at the empty mug, looked at her, and signed for another. Again she put her head on one side and gave him that dark, dark suspicious look.

"You're hardly drinkin' anyth' but you keep or'erin' f'me. You sure you not tryina get me drunk?"

"Do you need help?"

Avenestra put her head down and wept for the next ten minutes.

Strick sat silently. He did not touch her. Ahdio's wife came, but Strick raised a finger to his lips. He gave her money. "Tell Ahdio to tell Cusharlain." She did not understand, but gave him his difference and went away. Good woman, spell or no, Strick thought, while Avenestra kept weeping. After another five or eight minutes she raised her head, looking horrible and pitiful. She watched him thrust a big hand down into the outsize neck of his tunic and come out with a white cloth. He handed it to her.

"Wha'm I sposed to do wi' this?"

"Wipe your eyes and face, and blow."

She sat staring, blinking, oozing kohl from her eyes. Then she wiped her face and eyes, and blew. She looked at the kerchief and shook her head.

"Avenestra: let's go."

"Wan' 'nother cup first."

"If you have another qualis you won't be able to go."

"So?" She made a feisty face and used a matching voice: "You said you didn't want anything from me."

"So you'll be here, drunk and unable to wock, and then what?"

She didn't have to translate his "wock" to "walk." She wept for ten more minutes. After that, they left. Ahdio watched. His fingers were crossed.

The Golden Lizard was hardly golden and hardly comparable to the Golden Oasis, but it was not a hole and aye, a room was available. No eyebrow was raised when Strick laid down coins for two days and three candles, and took a candle and a silent Avenestra, her legs almost functioning, upstairs. He was careful to secure the door and inspect the window. He turned to the girl slouching unprettily on the edge of the bed.

"Avenestra, I want you to give me something."

"Uh-huh. How you wan' it?"

"No, I mean an object. Something of yours. A coin. Anything."

"Huh! Think you're that good? You give me someth'."

He handed her a silver coin. "That's yours. I want nothing fork."

She stared at it, held it up closer, stared, and slid off the bed. Sitting on the floor, she wept for the next ten or so minutes. When at last she looked up, he bade her use his kerchief. She did. He repeated his request. She stared, head on one side. At last, wriggling loosely, she gave him her broad black belt.

"Thank you." He squatted and put his hands on her narrow and meatless shoulders. "You think fondly of Ahdio as an uncle. Since you have no reason to drink, you just stopped."

"You," she advised, "are so full of shit your blue eyes are turning brown."

Grinning helplessly, he whipped back the tired old spread and inspected the bed. He found nothing alive. He picked up the slumping girl with preposterous ease, and stretched her on the bed. He took off his weapons belt, thinking about the new armband he'd been forced to buy. He sat on the floor with his back against the wall. The candle he set to one side.

When Avenestra awoke five or so hours later, headachy as always, he was not in the room. The silver coin was. She was certain that she had done nothing for it. And she remembered what he had told her. Crazy, she thought, and was thinking fondly of that nice fatherly Ahdio when she slipped back into sleep.

Cusharlain arrived in the common room of the Golden Oasis shortly after noon and Esaria shortly after that. She was bright and summery and pretty in a long sky blue dress cut dazzlingly low. She was also babbly, and her cousin put a hand over her mouth.

"I have two good prospects as places of business and lodgings, Strick, and Ahdio suggested four names. A fifth he is not totally certain about. Said he had seven, but you specified decent and honest. You can interview them where and when you wish. Unh! Stop licking my palm, brat!"

"Let's go look," Strick said. "Stop giggling, Esaria, and you may come along with the big boys."

They went. Along the way Esaria told them how miserable her mother was because of the new bosom-displaying style.

"Beard of Us!" Cusharlain said. "With those melons? She should be pleased and proud to display all that bounty of the gods, much less half!"

"You don't understand. Second Cousin. Never tell her I told you, but mother has a large hairy mole rather high up on her left, uh, bounty. Right on top. That's why she has stayed covered to the collarbones, always. Now-either she reveals it, or everyone whose opinion she cherishes will sneer at her for being so ridiculously out of style."

Cusharlain laughed. Strick did not, and Esaria noticed. She took his arm and snugged it to her. Her bodyguard ambled along behind, aware that he was smaller than Strick.

By midaftemoon that quiet man with the accent had leased three rooms, two upstairs over the ground-floor one, and had optioned another. His shop and dwelling were on the street called Straight, between Chokeway and the Processional and thus not at all far from the Golden Oasis. By the following afternoon, with the help of Cusharlain and an eager Esaria, he had acquired most of the furnishings he needed.

He paid Cusharlain and returned Esaria's hug.

"I will visit Sly's tonight and observe the men Ahdio recommends," he told her cousin. "But as to Harmocohclass="underline" no, in advance."

"Surely I can be trusted by now, Strick. You have a carpet, drapes, some chairs and a desk, and beds. What sort of shop is this to be? What do you plan to do here?"

"Help people," Strick told him, and after a while Cusharlain went his way, having learned no more. Strick turned to Esaria.

"Esaria: you must get your mother here as soon as you can. I don't care how many bodyguards she brings. You've just got to get her here."

She looked at him. "It isn't going to do me any good to ask why, is it?"

"Not yet. Try."

"Try! I'll do it! Are you going to take me to that dreadful dive back in the Maze?"