That thought vanished in one missed attempt, in the far too lengthy offbalance moment he had to fall as Duun took his feet from under him.

Duun often grinned at such moments. This time he stood there with a dour face, signed no attack and watched with hands on hips as Thorn recovered himself from his drop-and-rise.

"Again."

"Duun-hatani, show me that move to the side again."

Patiently Duun showed him. Thorn bent himself to it and tried a trick in the midst of it, a joke.

Duun's hands closed on him and dumped him to the ground. (He saw it.) Duun might have laughed, but Duun's face never changed. Thorn hesitated on the safety of the floor a moment, looking up at him. (Gods. He's got something in mind. Something's wrong.) Thorn shook the dazzle and the thoughts and the day from his head and brought himself to his feet again, centered in the tightest possible focus, no thought to anything, no thought, no heartbeat but the beat of the dance, the light and the dust. It was not the city, it was Sheon's noon, and the yard about them, and Duun faced him in purest simplicity.

Pass and evade, strike and recover and pass and turn.

"Better," Duun said, and that one word ran down his nerves like fingers on the dkin. "Better. Take the offensive."

No hesitation. Thorn struck and caught and Duun spun off across the sand, up again in a move that never stopped.

Counter again and attack.

Again.

Again. Thorn floated out of a kick aimed at his hip and struck.

His hands met flesh and he spun again in distress, in time to find Duun coming up again from the sand and a kick coming at him he only scantly evaded.

Time, Thorn called, lifting his hand. Thorn's breath came in great gasps. Duun straightened not quite entirely, breathing no easier, and put his hand to his left side. (Gods, I hit him, I hurt him, O gods, his ribs-)

"That was good," Duun said. "You got through my guard."

(He wasn't going to stop. If I hadn't called halt-)

(-he'd have kept coming. He'd have taken me.) Thorn found himself trembling in the knees when he understood that.

(Not another pass, please, Duun, not another-)

The darkness ebbed from Duun's eyes. Reason came back. Duun straightened, pricked his ears up and gave a left-sided smile that with the permanent quirk of the right side, held a deceptive innocence. "Hot bath," Duun said. "Both of us. You're shaking, minnow."

"I didn't pull that. I thought-"

"We'll do simple figures tomorrow. I thought you were getting to that stage. We can hurt each other. No more ungoverned practice. It's gotten too dangerous."

(I didn't win, I didn't beat him, there's no beating him without killing him-)

Duun walked away from him. Duun was limping, but not much. Thorn wiped sweat from his face and found his hand shaking.

(In everything he ever promised me-he always knew that.)

He was abysmal in his lessons. The figures floated past without meaning. He studied his history and the dates settled into his mind but the names eluded him.

"Something's bothering you," Sphitti said. "Do the sound-routines. You can do that."

It insulted him. (I'm hatani, he wished to shout at Sphitti; things don't bother me.) It was the worse because it was patently true. Cloen walked warily around him. Elanhen worked silently at his own console on something abstruse and statistical, while Betan gave Thorn looks over her shoulder and said nothing.

Can I help? the message said in the bottom of his screen.

After, he sent back, and nothing else.

(Duun had cheated him. Duun had maneuvered him all his life. But why did Duun spend his life on one student? Why did Duun have so much wealth and the countryfolk live in a tin-roofed house-but now they had Sheon; and Duun had this place, which was at the top of one of the tallest buildings in Dsonan, in the capital of the world, where power was. Why me? Why Duun? Why all this effort?)

(Why do I know so little about the things I want and so much I never wanted to know, and why do they lock the doors and guards take us where we go in this building? Guards for what? What do they guard? Us? Someone else?)

(I used to live here, Duun had said.)

(Ellud's an old friend.)

(I grew up at Sheon. So did Duun. Where did he know Ellud from?)

The numbers blurred. Thorn keyed in letter function.

Betan Betan Betan, he wrote, and again, Betan, and filled the screen with the repeat key.

The hours dragged. The clock came up noon and in silence they shut down terminals and got up off their desks. But Thorn kept his terminal alive. He had told the guard who walked with him that he would have extra work to do. "I have to catch up in my history," he said when Sphitti asked. The others passed him without a word to him, talking to each other- perhaps Betan had changed her mind, perhaps Betan would forget, it had only been a casual thing to her. He heard the door snick shut and turned about on his desk and saw Betan come back in.

Thorn stood up. Betan walked to his desk and they both sat down knee-to-knee on the side of it. She was grave and looked at him in a quiet way no one but Betan used, not even Duun. She sensed something amiss. He knew. His heart sped and his breath grew tight; but she smelled of flowers and herself, she always did, like sun and warmth. "Something's wrong," she said, but it was different the way she said it. Her face was vastly concerned, open in a way no one else was with him. "What is it?"

"I almost beat Duun yesterday." Thorn was dismayed by the way the exaggeration leapt out so easily and then he could not take it back.

"Was he angry?"

"I don't think so." His breath grew tighter. "Betan, I lived at Sheon-" (but she knows that, this is a stupid way to start) "-I don't know the city, I've never been outside, except once, when I flew in- You do, a lot, don't you?"

"Oh, yes. I go to the coast every spring."

(Conjuring ribald jokes and student humor and mystic somethings every male in the world knew but him, more marked than Duun, scent-blind and naked as something newborn.) Betan sat close, knee touching his knee. Her eyes were wide and dark. "I never learned," he said, and lost track of what he was saying, (not hatani, no: she was not; he did not need to be, for once he did not have to be complex, only simple, with Betan, who used to frighten him and now set her hand on his knee and slid it up.) He put his on hers, and felt the silkenness of her fur and felt the muscles slide, alive and taut as she leaned and stretched and came up against him with her hand on his body. "I never learned-"

He felt things happening to him all at once, felt things vastly out of his control and brought it back again. It was all very clear suddenly what he wanted and what his body was doing on its own, and he held her against him and maintained that good feeling as long as he dared, until he felt everything slipping again, and he took her belt and unfastened it quickly. She unfastened his. Her head burrowed underneath his chin and she leaned on him, all warm, and her smell had changed.

It was fear. He flinched, jerked her back by both arms and she twisted in his grip-"Betan!"

The door opened beyond her. A man walked out into the foyer. Betan jerked out of Thorn's hands and scrambled off the riser.

Duun.

Betan stopped, of a sudden crouched and backing away. Thorn got to his feet. "Dammit- Duun!"

Duun stepped marginally out of the doorway and waved Betan to it. She hesitated.

"Get out!" Thorn cried. (Gods, he'll kill her-) "Betan! Get out!"

She skittered out the foyer doorway and through the outer door like escaping prey. Duun glanced after her and looked back at Thorn.

Thorn shook. He stood with one foot on the sand and one knee on the desk and shook with reaction as he put his clothes together. Duun stood there as if he would wait forever.