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intrude on his thoughts or his consciousness unless he wanted companionship.
    Regis Hastur thought, I'm too sensitive , and tried to tune out the footsteps. They probably had nothing to do with him; if he sensed their impact on his consciousness it was only perhaps that the owner of feet and steps was startled to see a young Hastur of Comyn Council abroad and afoot at this early hour. He moved along steadily, a slender man in his middle twenties, with the great personal beauty which marked all the Hasturs and Elhalyns of the Comyn; a striking face made more noteworthy in that the page-trimmed hair above the narrow face was not flame red, as with all the Comyn, but snow white.
    If Dani had his way I'd never go out without armed escort. What kind of life is that?
    Yet he knew remotely and with grief that it was true. The old days of Darkover, when the Comyn walked unhurt through war, armed insurrection, and street riots, were gone forever. He walked now to pay his last respects to another of his caste, dead at an assassin's hand in his thirty-seventh year; Edric Ridenow of Serrais. I never liked Edric. But must we all die, when so many of us are dead or in exile? The houses of the Seven Domains are laid waste. All the Altons gone; Valdir dying a hundred years past; Kennard dead on a distant world; Marius dead in psychic battle with the forces of Sharra; Lew and his last child, Marja, in exile on a distant world. The Hasturs, the Ridenows, the Ardais—decimated, gone. I should go too . But my people need me here, a Hastur of Hasturs, so they will not feel wholly abandoned to the Terran Empire.
    Blast fire is silent. Regis did not hear it but felt the heat, whirled, heard another cry, then silence of a shocking kind; then someone called his name and he saw Danilo come running up to him, drawn weapon in hand. The younger man stopped a little way off, lowering his weapon.
    He said, stubbornly and with concealed anger, "Now maybe you'll listen, Lord Regis. If you go out again without a proper escort I swear by all of Zandru's hells that I will not be responsible; I will ask my oath back and return to Syrtis. If the Council doesn't have me flayed alive first for letting you be killed under my very eyes!"
    Regis felt weak and sick; the dead man lying in the street had no ordinary weapon but a nervegun which would have made him—no, not a corpse but a vegetable, all his neural circuits paralyzed; he might live, spoon-fed and incommunicado, forty years. He said through suddenly trembling lips, "They're getting rougher. That's the seventh assassin in eleven moons. Must I become a prisoner in the Hidden City, Dani?"
    "At least they don't send dagger men against you any more."
    "I wish they did," Regis said. "I can hold my own with any dagger man on this world; so can you." He looked at Dani sharply; "You're not hurt?"
    "A graze. My arms feel dipped in molten lead, but the nerves will heal." He brushed off Regis' concerned queries, his offers of help. "The only help I need, Lord Regis, is your promise not to walk alone in the city again."
    Regis said, "I promise." But his eyes were hard. "Where did you get the weapon, Dani? A Compact-forbidden weapon? Give it to me."
    The younger man surrendered the blaster. He said, "It isn't illegal, vai dom . I went into the Terran Trade City and applied for a permit to carry it here. And when they knew whose body I guarded they gave it to me with a good will—and so they should."
    Regis looked troubled. He said, "Call a guardsman to bury that," he pointed to the charred corpse of the assassin. "No point in examining the body, I'm afraid; it will be like all the others, a nameless man, no trace of his whereabouts known. But he needn't lie in the street, either."
    He stood by, distressed and aloof, while Danilo summoned a green-and-black uniformed City Guard, and gave orders. Then he turned to Danilo and his eyes were hard.
    "You know the Compact." For generations on Darkover war and combat had been