No one appeared to see me except the dusty children, with pale
fleecy hair, who played their patient games on the windswept curbing of
the square. They surveyed my scarred face with neither curiosity or
fear, and it occurred to me that Rindy might be such another as these.
If I had still been thinking like an Earthman, I might have tried to
question one of the children, or win their confidence. But I had a
deeper game in hand.
On the fifth day I was so much a fixture that my pacing went unnoticed
even by the children. On the gray moss of the square, a few
dried-looking old men, their faces as faded as their shirtcloaks and
bearing the knife scars of a hundred forgotten flights, drowsed on the
stone benches. And along the flagged walk at the edge of the square, as
suddenly as an autumn storm in the salt flats, a woman came walking.
She was tall, with a proud swinging walk, and a metallic clashing kept
rhythm to her swift steps. Her arms were fettered, each wrist bound with
a jeweled bracelet and the bracelets linked together by a long,
silver-gilt chain passed through a silken loop at her waist.
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