She was tough and bloodyminded, this Gradwohl. She meant to fertilize the entire northern half of the Reugge province with nomad corpses. And if she could manage it, she would add several hundred troublesome rogue males to the slaughter.

The cloister was ahum with an anticipation Marika hardly noticed. She did not expect to become involved in Gradwohl's campaign.

How long before Dorteka allowed her to explore Maksche? She was eager to be away from the cloister, to break for a few hours from this relentless business of becoming silth.

Maksche was odd, a city of marked contrasts. Here sat the cloister, all but its ceremonial heart electrically lighted and heated. One could get water simply by lifting a lever. Wastes were carried away in a system of sewage pipes. But outside the cloister's walls few lights existed, and those only candles or tallow lamps. Meth out there drew their water from wells or the river. Their sewers consisted of channels in the alleyways, washed clean when it rained.

It had not rained all winter.

Meth out there walked, unless they were the rare, rich, favored few who could rent dray beasts, a driver, and a carriage from the tradermales of the Brown Paw Bond. Silth sisters going abroad in the town usually rode in elegant steam coaches faster than any carriage. If Dorteka allowed her out, would she be permitted the use of such a vehicle? Not likely. They were guarded jealously, for they were very expensive. They were handcrafted by one of the tradermale underbrotherhoods not part of the local Brown Paw Bond, and imported. They were not silth property.

The traders sold no vehicle outright, but leased them instead. Lease contracts demanded huge penalty payments for damages done. Marika suspected that was motivated by a desire to keep lessees from dismantling the machines to see how they worked.

A tradermale operator came with every vehicle. Outsiders were not allowed to learn how to drive. Those males obligated to the vehicles of the cloister lived in a small barracks across the street from the cloister's main gate, whence they could be summoned on a moment's notice.

When her hour was up, Marika went to Dorteka and asked, "How many more points do I have to accumulate before I can go into the city?"

"It is not a point system, Marika. You can go whenever I decide you deserve the reward."

"Well? Do I?" She had held back nothing. Having been used as a counter in a contest she did not understand, for reasons she could not comprehend, she had gone all out to arm herself for her own survival. Dorteka could not have demanded more. There was no more she could give.

"Perhaps. Perhaps. But why go out into that fester at all?"

"To explore it. To see what is out there. To get out of this oppressive prison for a while."

"Oppressive? Prison? The cloister?"

"It is unbearable. But you grew up here. Maybe you cannot imagine freedom of movement."

"No. I cannot. At least not out there. My duties have taken me into the city, Marika. It is disgusting. I would rather not traipse around after you while you crawl through the muck."

"Why should you, mistress?"

"What?"

"There is no reason for you to go."

"If you go, I have to go."

"Why, mistress?"

"To keep you out of trouble."

"I can take care of myself, mistress."

"Maksche is not the Ponath, pup."

"I doubt that the city has dangers to compare with the nomad."

"It is not danger to your flesh I fear, Marika. It is your mind that concerns me."

"Mistress?"

"You do not fool me. You are not yet silth. And you are no harmless, eager student. A shadow lives behind your eyes."

Marika did not respond till she carefully stifled her anger. "I do not understand you, mistress. Others have said the same of me. Some have called me doomstalker. Yet I do not feel unusual. How could the city harm my mind? By exposing me to dangerous ideas? I have enough of those myself. I will create my own beliefs here or there, regardless of what you would have me believe. Or could it harm me by showing me how cruelly Reugge bonds live so we silth can be comfortable here? That much I have seen from the wall."

Dorteka did not reply. She, too, was fighting anger.

"If I must have company and protection, send my packmates, Grauel and Barlog. I am certain they would be happy to accept your instructions." Her sarcasm was lost on Dorteka.

She and Grauel and Barlog had been at odds almost since the confrontation with the most senior. The two huntresses had been making every effort to appear to be perfect subjects of the Community. Marika did not want them to surrender quite so fast.

"I will consider that. If you insist on going out there."

"I want to, mistress."

The great ground-level gate rolled back. Grauel and Barlog stepped out warily. Marika followed, surprised at their reluctance. Behind her, Dorteka said, "Be back before dark, Marika. Or no more passes."

"Yes, mistress. Come on!" She ran, exulting in her freedom. Grauel and Barlog struggled to keep pace. "Isn't it wonderful?"

"It stinks," Grauel said. "They live in their own ordure, Marika."

And Barlog; "Where are you going?" Already it was evident that Marika had a definite destination in mind.

"To the tradermale enclosure. To see their flying machines."

"I might have guessed," Barlog grumbled. "Slow down. We're not as young as you are. Marika, all this obsession with flying is not healthy. Meth were not meant for it. Marika! Will you slow down?"

Marika glanced back. The two huntresses were struggling with the cumbersome long rifles they carried. "Why did you bring those?" She knew Grauel preferred the weapon she had gotten from Bagnel.

"Orders, Marika. Pure and simple and malicious orders. There are some silth who hope you'll get killed out here. The only reason you get a pretense of a bodyguard is because you have the most senior's favor."

"Pretense?"

"Any other silth would have at least six guards. If she was insane enough to come out on foot. And they would not be so shoddily armed. They would not have let us come except that we are two they won't miss if something happens."

"That's silly. Nobody has been attacked since we've been here. I think all that is just scare talk. Good old grauken in the bushes."

"No one has been foolish enough to walk these streets either, Marika."

Marika did not want to argue. She wanted to see airships. She pressed ahead. The tradermales built machines that flew. She had seen them in her education tapes and from her tower in the nether distance, but it was hard to connect vision screen images and remote specks with anything real. The airfield lay too far from the cloister for examination from her tower.

An aircraft was circling as Marika approached the fence surrounding the tradermale enclave. It swooped, touched down, rolled along a long concrete strip, and came to a halt with one final metallic belch. Marika checked Grauel and Barlog for their reactions. They had seen nothing like it before. Servants of the silth saw very little of the world, and tradermale aircraft were not permitted to fly near the cloister.

They might have been watching carrion birds land upon a corpse.

"Let's get closer," Marika said. She trotted along the fence, toward a group of buildings. Grauel and Barlog hurried after her, glancing over their shoulders at the aircraft and at two big transport dirigibles resting in cradles on the far side of the concrete strip.

The advantage of being silth, Marika believed, was that you could do any All-bedamned thing you wanted. Ordinary meth would grind their teeth and endure. She breezed into an open doorway, past a desk where a sleepy tradermale watched a vision screen, dashed down a long hallway and out onto the field proper, ignoring the startled shout that pursued her. She headed for the freighters.