Her green eyes flashed like demon fire.

"What happened?" asked Feltheryn, by habit and nature as good an audience as he was an actor.

"I cut, but his damned fat saved him! He yowled, blood spurted, but my dagger didn't reach the vein. At that his men rushed in and seized me. I think one of them is missing a finger, at least, but there were too many and they got me down. Then things got worse.

"He wrapped a linen round his throat and his eyes bulged all the more, and his servants brought in my bodyguards, all stripped and bound. My men were held and forced to watch as he ..."

Once more Sashana's voice broke, and rage and desperation and horror all warred for supremacy on her face. One of her servants wept.

"He ... He quoted more of the play," she said at last. "How I do love to break the tigress of her fight ..."

There was a cold, horrible, quiet moment. Then:

"He raped you," Myrtis said quietly.

It was the cue Sashana needed.

"Yes, the bastard raped me!" she cried, and in a swift moment she was on her feet, her dagger in her hand and somehow the delicate cup from which she had been drinking smashed against the opposite wall. "And I will kill him!"

Myrtis alone of the company was able to move, able to act against the icy tide of horror and anger which engulfed them all. She moved to Sashana and took her in her arms, where Sashana finally was able to let her tears come, her sobs break.

After a while Sashana quieted, then whispered again, against Myrtis's breast: "I will kill him."

"No, child," Myrtis said. "You will not kill him. If you kill him then it will be over for him, and you will be left with this pain and no place to put it."

"What do you mean?" Sashana asked-

"I mean that justice is a matter of balance," the madam said. "He did not take your life, so taking his life is an inappropriate punishment. We must seek instead to take exactly the things he took from you. We must seek to relieve your pain by putting it upon him."

"Are you talking magic?" Feltheryn asked. "Or ..."

"Myrtis," Glisselrand said, "I don't think we will find anyone who will want to rape Vomistritus."

Myrtis snorted in a very uncourtesanly way.

"This is Sanctuary, Glisselrand," she said. "That would be the least of our difficulties. It is not the sexual part of the crime with which I am concerned, but the violence and the humiliation. And more than that, a means by which we may mete out this villain's punishment without bringing down the town around us."

Sashana drew away a little.

"Oh, he is very aware of that!" she said. "When he was finished he said that I was powerless to gain revenge because if he was harmed the Emperor would tear down Sanctuary and decimate the population. He was very proud of knowing what decimate meant. He joked about it, asking me which friend out of each ten I would like to see murdered before my eyes!"

"My lady!" cried the servant who had wept, "let me deal with him, and after I am done I will give myself up to the prince for execution! That will save Sanctuary and revenge us a!! as well!"

"Nobly offered, Miles," Sashana said. "But I cannot sacrifice you in exchange for a creature so far beneath you in worth."

"Lady Sashana," R-ounsnouf said, and for once his comic's voice was pitched in dead seriousness. "If I might offer a plan?"

Sashana turned to him. She still trembled, but the prospect of some action, any action, seemed to calm her. "Yes?"

The comic addressed the madam: "Myrtis, how well do you know the proprietor of the House of Whips?"

"Well enough," Myrtis answered.

"There is a small courtyard in that house, with stocks," said Rounsnouf. "It was a popular place when the Stepsons were here, or so I am told, but now its fortunes have declined; especially since that goat farmer ..."

"Yes, yes!" Feltheryn interrupted, beginning to see the drift of what the comic was saying. "About the stocks?"

"They seem a gentle torture to anyone who has not endured them," Rounsnouf said, "but in fact being forced to stand bent over at the waist, one's head and wrists through the board and one's rear end exposed, can be an agony. The back hurts first, then the muscles of the shoulders, the legs, and so on. They ache, they cramp, and by the end of the first day one is willing to do anything to escape. And that even without the assistance of the patrons of that particular house, many of whose chief pleasure lies in the infliction of various other tortures upon a bound victim."

"A good beginning," said Lady Sashana, now regaining some of her composure. "But we are not discussing some attractive slave, we are discussing Vomistritus."

"My lady," said Rounsnouf, his little eyes beginning to glitter with creativity, "the courtyard is there for that special taste of public humiliation. There are windows round it from which one may watch what transpires without being seen. That too is a taste to which the house caters. One could stand thus concealed and drop a soldat or two to anyone who gave an especially fine performance. And I am sure there are many in the Downwind who have never been able to afford a night in the Street of Red Lanterns, many whose tastes might be beyond our darkest imagination. Word could be dropped with the Beggar King, Morruth, and who knows what might transpire? Though you might not guess it, there are those in Sanctuary who are even less attractive than Vomistritus!"

Sashana took one long breath and her shuddering stopped. Her proud chin lifted, but still she looked to Myrtis for some council.

The smile, and the nod, that Myrtis gave might have frozen even mighty Tempus with fear.

"It were best," said Glisselrand, her rich voice suddenly an emblem for reason, "that none involved be recognized- Moreover, what is to stop Vomistritus from announcing himself to his tormentors and offering more money than any of us possess for his freedom?"

Rounsnouf giggled.

"That very glue by which Lempchin and I were bound shall be brushed across his lips," the comic said. "Before we deliver him to his particular purgatory he shall be prevented from praying his way out!"

"Better!" said Sashana.

"And Master Feltheryn," Rounsnouf continued, "we have not performed The Fat Gladiator for some years; can we perhaps use the demon costumes from the last scene? We shall wait, and we shall lure him to the woods with some sort of tryst, just as in the play, and there he shall be set upon by horrors, bound up, his mouth glued shut, and he will not be able to swear who it was who delivered him! Then we can bum the costumes, eliminating the evidence."

They all looked to Feltheryn, but Feltheryn did not answer at once. That they were asking to destroy some old costumes was nothing. Neither did he mind the risk. Of course Vomistritus would recognize the plot of The Fat Gladiator at some point in the proceedings and understand that it was the theater troupe taking revenge upon him; that didn't matter, for the critic could not have them all killed. Emperor Theron would not tolerate that, not even from his cousin. And the criminal in such a case would be obvious to all.

No, Feltheryn hesitated for Sashana's sake. If he approved the plan he would be putting her into a position wherein she inflicted such cruelties as she felt she had endured. Wherein she could achieve a catharsis, but at what cost to her? She was a fine-bom lady; but she had also survived the murder of her parents and the rigors of the desert. How might this chance wind twist the very finest sapling?

But then, how had it already been bent?

Feltheryn nodded.

"But still," the master player added, "there is an untied string. We may prevent Vomistritus gaining any evidence against us, but he will know, and he will try to take a counter revenge if I am any judge of him. We need some sharp and terrible sword to hold over his head, that he may never come back against us again."