The black girls looked at one another. "She was only a pot girl," said one of them.

"A silver tarsk," I said; repeating my offer, "to he who can find me that slave."

"Look at his eyes," said the paga attendant, backing away another step.

She could not have been gone long. I must hunt her in the streets.

Suddenly the dancer on the sand threw her hands before her face, and screamed. Then she pointed at me.

"It is the plague!" she cried. "It is the plague!"

The paga attendant, stumbling, turned and ran. "Plague!" he cried. Men fled from the tavern. I stood alone by the wall. Tables had been overturned. Paga was spilled upon the floor.

The tavern seemed, suddenly, eerily quiet. Even the paga girls had fled.

I could hear shouting outside, in the streets, and screaming.

"Call guardsmen!" I heard.

"Kill him," I heard. "Kill him!"

I walked over to a mirror. I ran my tongue over my lips. They seemed dry. The whites of my eyes, clearly, were yellow. I rolled up the sleeve of my tunic and saw there, on the flesh of the forearm, like black blisters, broken open, erupted, a scattering of pustules.

9

I Decide To Change My Lodgings

"Master?" cried Sasi.

"Do not fear," I said to her. "I am not ill. But we must leave this place quickly.

"Your face," she said. "It is marked!"

"It will pass," I said. I unlocked her bracelets and slipped them into my pouch.

"I fear I may be traced here," I said. "We must change lodgings."

I had left the paga tavern by a rear door and then swung myself up to a low roof, and then climbed to a higher one. I had made my way over several roofs until I had found a convenient and lonely place to descend. I had then, wrapped in the discarded aba of Kunguni, made my way through the streets to the Cove of Schendi. Outside, from the wharves and from the interior of the city, I could hear the ringing of alarm bars. "Plague!" men were crying in the streets.

"Are you not ill, Master?" asked Sasi.

"I do not think so," I said.

I knew that I had not been in a plague area. Too, the Bazi plague had burned itself out years ago. No cases to my knowledge had been reported for months. Most importantly, perhaps, I simply did not feel ill. I was slightly drunk and heated from the paga, but I did not believe myself fevered. My pulse and heartbeat, and respiration, seemed normal. I did not have difficulty catching my breath. I was neither dizzy nor nauseous, and my vision was clear. My worst physical symptoms were the irritation about my eyes and the genuinely nasty itchiness of my skin. I felt like tearing it off with my own fingernails.

"Are you of the metal workers or the leather workers?" she asked.

"Let us not bother about that now," I said, knotting the cords on the sea bag. I looked about the room. Aside from Sasi what I owned there was either on my person or in the sea bag.

"A girl likes to know the caste of her master," she said.

"Let us be on our way," I said.

"Perhaps it is the merchants," she said.

"How would you like to be whipped?" I asked her.

"I would not like that," she said.

"Let us hurry," I said.

"You do not have time to whip me now, do you?" she asked.

"No," I said, "I do not."

"I thought not," she said. "I do not think it is the peasants."

"I could always whip you later," I said.

"That is true," she agreed. "Perhaps I should best he quiet."

"That is an excellent insight on your part," 1 said.

"Thank you, Master," she said.

"If I am caught, and it is thought that I have the plague," I said, "you will doubtless be exterminated before I am."

"Let us not dally," she said. We left the room.

"You have strong hands," she said. "Is it the potters?"

"No," I said.

"I thought it might be," she said.

"Be silent," I said.

"Yes, Master," she said.

10

I Make Inquiries Of Kipofu, Who Is Ubar Of The Beggars Of Schendi

The blind man lifted his white, sightless eyes to me. His thin, black hand, clawlike, extended itself.

I placed a tarsk bit in his hand.

"You are Kipofu?" I asked.

I placed another tarsk bit in his hand. He put these two tiny coins in a small, shallow copper bowl before him. He was sitting, cross-legged, on a flat, rectangular stone, broad and heavy, about a foot high, at the western edge of the large Utukufu, or Glory, square. The stone was his etem, or sitting place. He was Ubar of the beggars of Schendi.

"I am Kipofu," he said.

"It is said," I said, "that though you are blind there is little which you do not see in Schendi."

He smiled. He rubbed his nose with his thumb.

"I would obtain information," I said to him.

"I am only a poor blind man," he said. He spread his hands, apologetically.

"There is little that transpires in Schendi which can escape your notice," I told him.

"Information can be expensive," he said.

"I can pay," I told him.

"I am only a poor and ignorant man," he said.

"I can pay well," I told him.

"What do you wish to know?" he asked.

He sat on his etem in brown rags, a brown cloth wound about his head, to protect him from the sun. There were sores upon his body. Dirt was crusted upon his legs and arms. The peel of a larma lay by one knee. He was blind, and half naked and filthy, but I knew him to be the Ubar of the beggars of Schendi. He had been chosen by them to rule over them. Some said that he had been chosen to rule over them because only he was blind and thus could not see how repulsive they were. Before him the deformed and maimed, the disfigured and crippled, might stand as men, as subject before sovereign, to be heard with objectivity and obtain a dispassionate and honest justice, neither to be dismissed with contempt or demeaningly gratified by the indulgence of one who holds himself above them. But if there were truth in this I think there was, too, a higher truth involved. Kipofu, though avaricious and petty in many respects, had in him something of the sovereign. He was a highly intelligent man, and one who could, upon occasion, be wise as well as shrewd. He was a man of determination, and of iron will, and vision. It was he who had first effectively organized the beggars of Schendi, stabilizing their numbers and distributing and allotting their territories. None might now beg in Schendi without his permission and none might transgress the territory of another. And each, each week, paid his tax to Kipofu, the inevitable price of government. These taxes, though doubtless much went to the shrewd Kipofu, for monarchs expect to be well paid for bearing the burdens and tribulations of office, served to obtain benefits and insurances for the governed. No beggar now in Schendi was truly without shelter, or medical care or needed go hungry. Each tended to look out for the others, through the functioning of the system. It was said that even members of the merchant council occasionally took Kipofu into their confidence. One consequence of the organization of the beggars, incidentally, was that Schendi did not have many beggars. Obviously the fewer beggars there are the more alms there are for each one. Unwanted beggars had the choice of having their passage paid from Schendi or concluding their simple careers in the harbor.

"I seek information," I said, "on one who seemed a beggar, who was called Kunguni."

"Pay," said Kipofu.

I put another tarsk bit into his hand.

"Pay," said Kipofu.

I put yet another tarsk bit into his hand.

"None in Schendi who begs is known as Kunguni," he said.

"Permit me to describe the man to you," I said.