WEEK IN AZRAS. MAYOR CAPPARIS HAS OFFERED YOU THE USE OF HIS GUEST HOME WHILE

YOU WAIT FOR MANGUS TO BEGIN ITS HIRING.

BE CAREFUL, MY SON, AND DO NOT TRUST JASMINE MOREAU MORE THAN YOU MUST.

KRUIN SAMMON

Daulo looked from the paper to his father. "Why?" he asked, dimly aware that his heart was thudding in his ears.

"Because it was necessary," Kruin said simply. But the look in his eyes belied the confidence of the words.

"You had no right, my father." Daulo could hear a tremor in his voice; could feel his face growing hot with shame. The Sammon family is a family of honor-he'd said those words to Jin not half an hour ago. We've sworn protection to you... "We had a bargain with Jasmine Moreau. One which she has not broken."

"And which I've not broken, either, Daulo Sammon. You've known you'll need to go to Azras eventually. Now it'll simply be sooner than we'd expected."

"You swore not to betray her-"

"And I have not!" Kruin snapped. "I could have told Mayor Capparis everything about her; but I didn't. I could have kept from you both the knowledge that the

Shahni were sending investigators; but I didn't."

"Fancy words do not hide truth," Daulo bit out. "And the truth is that you swore to her the protection of our house. Now you drive her from both our house and our protection."

"Take care, Daulo Sammon," his father warned. "Your words are dangerously lacking in respect."

"My words echo my thoughts," Daulo shot back. "I'm ashamed for my family, my father."

For a long moment the two men stared at each other in silence; and it was almost a shock for Daulo to hear Jin's voice come from close beside him. "May I see the paper?" she asked calmly.

Wordlessly, he handed it to her. And now the world ends, the thought came distantly to him. The vengeance of a demon warrior betrayed. The memory of the headless corpse of the razorarm she'd killed brought bile into his throat...

It seemed a long time before she lowered the note and looked Kruin in the face.

"Tell me," she said quietly, "would the Yithtra family have kept the pod secret for long?"

"I doubt it," the elder Sammon said. His voice was even... but Daulo could see a trace of his own fears in his father's eyes. "As soon as they've gained all the secrets they can from the pod, they'll alert the Shahni themselves."

"Within the week, you think?"

"Probably sooner," Kruin said.

She looked at Daulo. "You agree?"

He worked moisture back into his mouth. "Yes. Doing that would still gain them favor in the eyes of the Shahni and yet let them have first look at anything of value."

She turned back to Kruin. "I understand," she said. "In other words, as you said, it was inevitable that I would eventually be chased out of Milika anyway."

Daulo suddenly realized he was holding his breath. "You... I don't understand.

You're not angry?"

She turned back to him... and he shrank within himself from the smoldering fire in her eyes. "I said it was inevitable," she ground out, "and that I understood.

I didn't say I wasn't angry. Your father had no right to do such a thing without consulting me first. We could have left this afternoon and been safely hidden away in Azras by now. As it is, if we wait until dawn we stand a fair chance of being trapped in Milika. By then they'll not only be swarming around Milika, but they'll also have aircraft flying around looking for the wrecked shuttle. And they'll have roadblocks set up." She looked at Daulo. "Which means we leave tonight. Now." She seemed to study him. "Or at least I have to leave. You can stay if you want to."

Daulo gritted his teeth. Under normal conditions, a supreme insult to suggest he would go back on his word. Under these conditions, it was no more than he deserved. "I said I would go with you, Jasmine Moreau, and I will." He looked at his father. "Have the supplies you mentioned been assembled yet?"

"They're already in the car." Kruin pursed his lips. "Daulo-"

"I'll try and send word when the work party is formed," Daulo interrupted him, not especially in the mood to be polite. "I hope you'll at least be able to stall any investigations into Jasmine Moreau's identity until then."

The elder Sammon sighed. "I will," he promised.

Daulo nodded, feeling a bitterness in his soul. His father's promise... a word that had always seemed to him as immutable as the laws of nature. To see that word deliberately broken was to lose a part of himself.

And all of it because of the woman at his side. A woman who was not only not a

Sammon, but was in fact an enemy of his world. It made him want to cry... or to hate.

Clenching his teeth, he took a deep breath. We've sworn protection to you, they'd said to her, and we'll stand by that bargain. No matter what. "Come,

Jin," he said aloud. "Let's get out of here."

Chapter 28

In the daytime, Jin knew, it took about an hour to drive from Milika to Azras.

At night, with Daulo taking it a little easier, it took half again that long, with the result that it was just about midnight when they crossed the Somilarai

River and drove on into the city.

"So now what?" Jin asked, peering with some nervousness down the largely deserted streets. The last thing she wanted was for them to be conspicuous.

"We go to the apartment Mayor Capparis is lending us, of course," Daulo said.

"Did he send you the key, or are we going to have to wake up someone?"

"He sent the combination," Daulo told her. "Most temporary homes in Azras use keypad locks. That way all you have to do is change the combination when the occupants leave."

Which was basically the same system the Cobra Worlds used. "Oh," Jin said, feeling a little silly.

They passed the center of town and continued into the eastern part of the city, pulling up at last in front of a large building very reminiscent of the Sammon family house in Milika. Unlike that structure, though, this one had been carved up into apartments which-judging from the size of theirs-weren't appreciably bigger than the two-room suite the Sammon family had given her. In that space were squeezed a tiny foodprep area, a living room, and a bedroom.

A single bedroom.

"Small wonder the city people resent us," Daulo commented, dropping his cases in a corner of the living room and taking a few steps to peer around the corners into each of the rooms. "The average worker in my family's service has a larger home than this."

"Must be lower-class housing," Jin murmured. A hundred ways to approach the issue occurred to her; but there was no point in cat-footing around it. "I see there's just one bed here."

For a long moment he just looked at her-not at her body, she noted, but into her face. "Yes," he said at last. "I really shouldn't have to ask."

"Qasaman women are that pliant?" Jin asked bluntly.

He pursed his lips. "Sometimes I forget how different you are.... No, Qasaman women aren't overly pliant; just realistic. They know that women don't function well without men... and as the heir to a powerful family, I'm not exactly someone they want to refuse."

A shiver of disgust ran up Jin's back. For just a second the polite veneer around Daulo had cracked, giving her a glimpse of something far less attractive beneath it. Rich, powerful, probably pampered, as well-he'd likely had life pretty much his own way since the day he was born. On Aventine that type almost always grew up into selfish, immature adults. On Qasama, with the pervasive male contempt for women, it would be far worse.

She shook the train of thought away. It's a different culture, she reminded herself firmly. Assumptions and extrapolations may not be valid. She'd seen his discipline in regards to the family business, after all; some of that must have seeped into his personal life, as well.