should be connected with my disappearance. A dozen craft leave the harbor every day. Besides, for all she'll know, I've gone the opposite way, over the hills and to the ocean. Or to the hills themselves, where many runaway slaves are."

"Yes, but I have to return to Tropat. And my clansmen, though notoriously tight-lipped when sober, are also, I must confess, notorious drunkards. Someone'd be sure to babble in the taverns."

"I'll dye my hair black, cut it short, like a Tzatlam tribesman, and sign on."

"You forget that you have to belong to my clan in order to be a crew member."

"Hmmm. Well, what about this adoption-by-blood routine?"

"What about it? I can't propose that unless you've done something spectacular and for the profit of the clan. Wait! Can you play any musical instrument?"

Promptly, Green lied. "Oh, I am a wonderful harpist. When I play I can soothe a hungry grass cat into lying down at my feet and licking my toes with pure affection."

"Excellent! Though it would not be an affection so pure, since it is well known that the grass cat considers a man's toes a great delicacy and always eats them first, even before the eyes. Listen well. Here is what you must do in four weeks' time, for if all goes well, or all goes ill, we set sail on the Week of the Oak, the Day of the Sky, the Hour of the Lark, a most propitious time."

To Green, the next three weeks seemed to have shifted to low gear, they crept by so slowly. Yet they should have raced by quickly enough, so full of schemes and plots were they. He had to advise Miran on the many technical details involved in building tanks for the fish. He had to keep the Duchess happy, an increasingly difficult job because it was impossible to pretend a one-hundred-per-cent absorption in her while his mind desperately looked for flaws in his plans, found oh, so many, and then as anxiously sought ways of repairing them. Nevertheless he knew it was vital that he not displease or bore her. Prison would forever ruin his chances.

Worst of all, Amra was getting suspicious. "You're trying to conceal something from me," she told Green. "You ought to know better. I can tell when a man is deceiving me. There's something about the voice, the eyes, the way he makes love, though you've been doing very little of that. What are you plotting?"

"I 

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