I think we ought to give him two weeks to build up his wind and legs.
Otherwise it would hardly be sporting, you know."

The Duchess frowned. "No. I'm getting bored; I can't stand this
inaction any longer."

She shot a glance at Green. He felt his stomach muscles contracting.
Evidently she'd noticed his lukewarm interest in her. This hunt was
partly to suggest to him that he'd be meeting a like fate unless he
perked up and began to be more entertaining.

It wasn't that thought that made his heart sink. It was that next
weekend was when Miran's windroller raised sail and when he planned to
be aboard it. Now, he'd be gone conducting the hunting party up in the
hills.

Green looked appealingly at Miran, but the merchant's shoulders rose
beneath the yellow robe as if to say, "What can I do?"

He was right. Miran couldn't suggest that he too go along on the hunt,
and thus give Green a chance to slip aboard afterward. The day on
which the _Bird of Fortune_ was scheduled to leave the windbreak was
absolutely the last date on which it could set sail. He couldn't afford
to take the chance of being caught in the rains in the middle of the
vast plains.

All the next day Green was too busy setting up the schedule of the
hunting party to have time to be gloomy. But when night came he seemed
to fold up inside himself. Could he pretend to be sick, too, and be
left behind when the party set out?

No, for they would at once assume that he had been possessed by a
demon and would pack him off to the Temple of Apoquoz, God of Healing.
There he'd be under lock and key until he proved himself healthy. The
terrible part about going to the Temple of Apoquoz was that it made
death almost inevitable. If you didn't die of your own disease you
caught somebody else's.

Green wasn't worried about catching any of the many diseases he'd be
exposed to in the Temple. Like all men of terrestrial descent, he

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