Each head inclined, the fix of their eyes now on her. Two hundred men. In the group were many who were duplicates, twin, triplet, quadruplet sets, alike even to age. There were two more Maxes and another Merry. They could accept. They would accept her and the majat as they would accept anything which held their contracts. It was their psych-set. Like Max and Merry, they fought only when they were directed, only when their contract-holder identified an enemy. But for their own lives, they would scarcely put up resistance. Did not. Until things were clear to them, they were docile. Warrior exercised curiosity about them, stalked down near them. They bore this: their contract-holder was present to instruct them if instructions were to be given.

Guard-function.

Specificity, Itavvy had called it.

“Warrior,” she said, “come.” And when it had joined her, with Jim shadowing it, she soothed it with a touch and kept it by her, an act of mercy.

The process continued. But by one man both Max and Merry delayed, looked closely at the mark, disputed. “Sera,” Max called.

The man bolted. Warrior moved. “No!” Raen yelled, but Warrior was deaf to that, auditory palps laid back, a blur of motion. Azi scattered.

But it was Max and Merry who had the fugitive; Raen raced through the chaotic midst, calmed the anxious Warrior. Jim stayed with her. Other azi stayed about, sober-faced, stunned, perhaps, that one of their number had done violence.

The azi in Max’s grip stopped fighting, gazed past Raen’s shoulder and surely understood what he had narrowly escaped. He was a man like the others, shave-headed, grey clad, a number stencilled on his coverall; but Merry pulled back the cloth from his shoulder and showed the tattoo as if there were something amiss.

“It’s too dark, sera,” Merry said. “Papers say twenty-nine, but the mark’s bright.”

The man’s eyes shifted back to Raen, a face rigid with terror.

Such things had been done…a beta highly bribed, Promised protection. “I’d believe a fluke of the dye,” Raen said softly. “But not an azi who’d break and run. Who sent you?”

He gave no answer, but wrenched to free himself.

“Not an assassin,” Raen said, though the hate in that face gave her pause to think so. “Betas don’t go for that. Or—” she added, for the expression was nigh to madness, “maybe not beta at all. Are you?”

“He’s little,” Merry said, “for guard-type.”

That was so too.

A smile took her, sudden surety. “Outsider. One of Tallen’s folk.”

It hit to the mark. The pale eyes shifted from hers.

“O man,” she said softly. “To go to that extent…or did you know what you were getting into when you set that mark on yourself?”

There was no more resistance, none. In that moment she felt a touch of pity, seeing the young Outsider’s desperation. Twenty-nine. He did not look that.

“What’s your name?” she asked him.

“Tom Mundy.”

“You areTallen’s. Easier with him, Max. I doubt he’s here to do murder. I rather well think he realises he’s made a mistake. And I wonder if we haven’t swept up something utterly by chance. Haven’t we, Tom Mundy?”

“Let me go.”

“Let him go, Max. But,” she added at once as the young Outsider braced himself for escape, “you’ll not make it across the City like that, Tom Mundy.”

He looked as if he were on the brink of madness. Some shred of sense held him to listen.

“I’ll sendyou to Tallen,” she said, “without asking you a thing. But if you’d like a drink and a place to sit down, while my people finish checking things out, it would be more convenient for us.”

“Outsider-human,” Warrior murmured in mingled tones.

The Outsider began to weep, tears running down his face; and would have sat down where he was, but that Jim and Merry took him in hand and led him up to the porch, to the door.

iv

There was at least for the time, quiet in the house—stirrings in the back, noises in the basement, but nothing visible in the main room.

And the azi who had been Tom Mundy sat on the couch clutching a drink in his hands and staring at the floor.

“I would like,” Raen said softly, “one simple question answered, if you would.” Jim was by her, and she indicated a place by her; Jim sat down, settled back with a disapproving look.

Mundy slowly lifted his head, apprehension on his face.

“How,” Raen asked, “did you find yourself in such circumstances? Did you come to spy on me? Or did someone put you there?”

He said nothing.

“All right,” she said. “I won’t insist. But I’m guessing it looked like a means for information. And you made a mistake. A real azi number, real papers, guard-status: a spy could pick up a great deal of information that way, and no one would shut an azi away from communications equipment. I’d guess you make regular reports to Tallen, because no one would suspect you’d do such a thing. But it went wrong, I’m guessing.”

He swallowed heavily. “You said that I could go.”

“The car’s being brought. Max and one of the others will deliver you to Tallen’s doorstep—a surprise to him, perhaps. How long were you in those pits?”

“I don’t know,” he said hoarsely. “I don’t know.”

“You didn’t plan coming here, then.” She read the man’s apprehensions and leaned back, shrugged off the question. “You’ll get to Tallen alive, don’t fear that. You’ll come to no harm. How long have you been working on this world?”

Again an avoidance of her eyes.

“There are more of you,” she said. “Aren’t there?”

She obtained a distraught stare.

“Probably,” she said, “I’ve bought more than one of you and haven’t detected it. I own every guard-azi contract available on this continent. I’d sort you out if I could. You’ve been standing guard in ITAK establishments, gathering information, passing it along to Tallen. Of no possible concern to me. Actually I favor the enterprise. That’s why I’m making a present of you to him. I’d advise you, though, if you know of others in that group, you tell me. There are others, aren’t there?”

He took a drink, said nothing.

“Did you know what you were getting into?”

He wiped at his face and leaned his head on his hand, answer enough.

“Tell Tallen,” she said, “I’ll pull his men out if he’ll give me the necessary numbers. I doubt you know them.”

“I don’t,” he said.

“How did you end up in the Registry?”

“Took—took the place of an azi the majat killed. Tattoo…papers…a transport guard. Then the depots shut down. Company stopped operating. Been there—been there—”

“A long time.”

He nodded.

A born-man, subjected to tapes and isolation. She regarded him pityingly. “And of course Tallen couldn’t buy you out. An Outsider couldn’t. Even knowing the numbers, he couldn’t retrieve you. Did anyone think of that, before you let that number be tattooed on?”

“It was thought of.”

“Do you fear us that much?” she asked softly. He avoided her eyes. “You do well to,” she said, answering her own question. “And you know us. You’ve seen. You’ve been there. Bear your report, Tom Mundy. You’ll do well never to appear again in the Reach. If not for the strict quotas of export, you might have been—”

Her heart skipped a beat. She laughed aloud, and Tom Mundy looked at her in terror.

“Azi,” she laughed. “Istra’s primary export. Shipped everywhere.” And then with apprehension, she looked on Jim.

“I am azi,” Jim said, his own calm slightly ruffled. “Sera, I amazi.”

She laid a hand on his arm. “There’s no doubt. There’s no doubt, Jim.” There was the sound of a motor at the door. “That will be the car. Come along, ser Mundy.”

Tom Mundy put the drink aside, preceded her to the door in evident anxiety. She followed out under the portico, where Max had the car waiting, Max standing by it.