“Neighbors!” Kta shouted to the house of Rachik. “We are not here to harm you. Gods, lady shu-t’Rachik, get those children back into the alley! Keep close to the wall.”

There were a few grins, for the first lady t’Rachik with her brood was very like a frightened cachinwith a half dozen of her children about her; other Rachiken were there too, both women and men, and the old father too. They were glad enough to escape the area, and the old man gave a sketchy bow to Kta t’Elas, gratitude. Though his house was burning, his children were safe.

“Shelter near Elas,” said Kta. “No Indras will harm you. Put the Pamcheni there too, Gyan t’Rachik.”

A cry rang out overhead and a body toppled from the roof to bounce off a porch and onto the stones of the street. The dead Sufaki archer lay with arrows scattered like straws about his corpse.

A girl of Dleve screamed, belatedly, hysterically.

“Throw a defense around this whole section,” Kta directed his men. “Ian! Camit!—take the wall-street by Irain and set a guard there.—You Sufaki citizens! get these fires under control: buckets and pikes, quickly! You, t’Hsnet, join t’Ranek, you and all your cousins!”

Men scattered in all directions at his orders, and pushed their way through smoke and frightened Sufaki; but the Sufaki who remained on the street, elders and children, huddled together in pitiful confusion, afraid to move in any direction.

Then from the houses up the street came others of the Indras-descended, and the chani,much as had stayed behind to guard the houses when the fleet sailed. Sufaki women screamed at the sight of them, men armed with the deadly ypai.

Kta stood free of the wall, taking a chance, for t’Ranek’s men were not yet in position to defend the street from archers. He lifted his sword arm aloft in signal to the Indras who were running up, weapons in hand.

“Hold off!” he shouted. “We have things under control. These poor citizens are not to blame. Help us secure the area and put out the fires.”

“The Sufaki set them, in Sufak houses,” shouted the old chanof Irain. “Let the Sufaki put them out!”

“No matter who started them,” Kta returned furiously, his face purpling at being fronted by a chanof a friendly house. “Help put them out. The fires are burning and they will take our houses too. They must be stopped.”

That chanseemed suddenly to realize who it was he had challenged, for he came to a sudden halt; and another man shouted:

“Kta t’Elas! Ei,t’Elas, t’Elas!”

“Aye,” shouted Kta, “still alive, t’Kales! Well met! Give us help here.”

“These people,” panted t’Kales, reaching him and giving the indication of a bow, “these people deserve no pity. We tried to defend them. They shield t’Tefur’s men, even when the fires strike their own houses.”

“All Nephane has lost its mind,” said Kta, “and there is no time to argue blame. Help us or stand aside. The Indras fleet is a day out of Nephane and we either collect ourselves a people or see Nephane burn.”

“Gods,” breathed t’KaIes. “Then the fleet—”

“Defeated. We must organize the city.”

“We cannot do it, Kta. None of these people will listen to reason. We have been beseiged in our own houses.”

“Kta!” Kurt exclaimed, for another man was running down the street.

It was Bel t’Osanef. One of the Indras-descended barred his way with drawn ypanand nearly ran him through, but t’Osanef avoided it with desperate agility.

“Light of heaven!” Kta cried. “Hold, t’Idur! Let him pass!”

The seaman dropped his point and Bel began running again, reached the place where they stood.

“Kta,—ye gods, Kta!” Bel was close to collapse with his race to get through, and the words choked from him. “I had no hope—”

“You are mad to be on the street,” said Kta. “Where is Aimu?”

“Safe. We shelter in Irain. Kta—”

“I have heard, I have heard, my poor friend.”

“Then please,—Kta,—these people—these people of mine, they are innocent of the fires. Whatever—whatever your people say,—they try to make us out responsible—but it is a lie, a—”

“Calm yourself, Bel. Cast no words to the winds. I beg you, take charge of these people and get them to help or get them out of this area. The Indras fleet is coming down on Nephane and we have only a little time to restore order here and prepare ourselves.”

“I will try,” said Bel, and cast a despairing look at the frightened people milling about, at the dead men in the street. He went to the archer who lay in the center of the cobbled street, knelt down and touched him, then looked up with a negative gesture and a sympathetic expression for someone in the crowd.

There came a young woman—the one who had screamed; she crept forward and knelt down in the street beside the dead man, sobbing and rocking in her misery. Bel spoke to her in words no one else could hear, though there was but for the fire’s crackling a strange silence on the street and among the crowd. Then he picked up the dead youth’s body himself, and stuggled with it toward the Sufaki side.

“Let us take our dead decently inside,” he said. “You men who can,—put the fires out.”

“The Indras set them,” one of the young women said.

“Udafi Kafurtin,” said Bel in a trembling voice, “in the chaos we have made of Nephane, there is really no knowing who started anything. Our only identifiable enemy is whoever will not put them out.—Kta—Kta! Have these men of yours put up their weapons. We have had enough of weapons and threats in this city. My people are not armed, and yours do not need to be.”

“Yours shoot from ambush!” shouted one of the Indras.

“Do as he asks!” Kta shouted, and glared about him with such fury that men began to obey him.

Then Kta went and bowed very low before t’Nechis, who had a cousin to mourn, and quietly offered his help, though Kurt winced inwardly and expected temper and hatred from the grieving t’Nechis.

But in extremity t’Nechis was Indras and a gentleman. He bowed in turn, in proper grace. “See to business, Kta t’Elas. The t’Nechisen will take him home. We will be with you as soon as we can send my cousin to his rest.”

By noon the fires were out, and the Sufaki who had aided in fighting the blaze scattered to their homes to bar the doors and wait in silence.

Peace returned to the Street of the Families, with armed men of the fleet standing at either end of the street and on rooftops where they commanded a view of all that moved. The scars were visible now, hollow shells of buildings, pavement littered with rubble.

Kurt left Lhe t’Nethim sheltered in the hall of Elas, the Indras grim-faced and subdued to have set foot in a hostile house.

He found Kta standing out on the curb—Kta, like himself, was masked with soot and sweat and the dim red marks of burns from fire fighting.

“They have buried t’Nechis,” Kta said hollowly, without looking around. They had been so much together it was possible to feel the other’s presence without looking. He knew Kta’s face without seeing it, that it was tired and shadow-eyed and drawn with pain.

“Get off the street,” Kurt said. “You are a target.”

“T’Ranek is on the roof. I do not think there is danger. Fully half of Nephane is in our hands now, thank the gods.”

“You have done enough. Go over to Irain. Aimu will be anxious to see you.”

“I do not wish to go to Irain,” Kta said wearily. “Bel will be there and I do not wish to see him.”

“You have to, sooner or later.”

“What do I tell him? What do I say to him when he asks me what will happen now?—Forgive me, brother, but I have made a compact with the lndras, and I swore once that was impossible; forgive me, brother, but I have surrendered your home to my foreign cousins;—I am sorry, my brother, but I have sold you into slavery for your own preservation.”