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“The young one,” she rasps She stands looking down at me as one of the Obsidians pulls me to my knees by my hair Her cruel eyes are the color of bitter sulfur, set in a face calloused and riven with age Lips like thispers of shed snakeskin pull back froahja Why?”

“We’re traders,” I nity, but I ree of respect from her for my obvious mettle

“Why?”

“Ascomanni came…”

“Why were you in the Gulf?”

I fight back the quick answer The frightened answer And I follow a memory back to a room in the Citadel where I listened to my father whisper to hio I smell the bitter aroma of his tea, recall the crisp fibers of the cellulose pulp between es of my own book

“We…seek sanctuary,” I say, back now in the room with the Gold woman

“Sanctuary?” The Gold masticates the word

“Under article 13, clause c of the Compact: ‘Any full Aureate Citizen of the Society ht of teovernment, private, and al elements’?” The words are verbatim those in my small copy of the Co co my own “The Corethat the Rim still obeyed the laws of our Ancestors Am I mistaken?”

Her face is a desert No emotion No life in the creases and

crags Only a barren foreboding Without blinking or narled thuht eyeball I lurch backward, more struck and horrified by the casualness of the violence than by the pain it brings Then she pushes harder, gripping my head with her other hand I thrash The capillaries pop, the tissue stretches inward, the nail cuts in

“You are spies”

I gasp “We are not…”

“Who paid you to cross the Gulf, gahja? Do you have sensor equipment in your ship? What is your nas you will answer”

“Venator!” a Gray calls from the ramp “It’s her”