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spent the rest of the long night going where they wanted him to go.
    He had ceased to think about the ruins that he had come so far to see. He was not watching for them at all but he was not surprised when early during the second night of his captivity, he found himself approaching them. He had already decided that his captors must he heading toward them, that their people must have moved into the desert ruin as, generations before, Diut’s people had moved into an ancient mountain ruin.
    The desert people had made their city’s main entrances too visible, Diut thought as he looked down the hillside at them. The ruin itself began on the hillside—or rather, within the hill—just above where the river cut through the last of the hills to flow across flatter lands toward the sea. It seemed to Diut that the desert tribe had cut away too much of the vegetation over and around their dwelling and planted their crops too openly at the base of the hill in the wide spread of soil that the river had deposited. But perhaps desert customs were different. Perhaps this vast treeless land made the kind of camouflage that Diut was used to too difficult. Or perhaps these desert people had simply not had a war, as Diut’s people had, to make them cautious.
    As Diut and his party started down the hill, their escort became visible. Other people were also visible around the ill-concealed entrances. Several nonfighters—farmers and artisans—stood in scattered bunches watching Diut in particular. The nonfighters were shy quiet green or yellow-green people who would not have been out if they had expected trouble. Diut noted, though, that there were no children visible. The desert people were not that certain of his party’s docility then.
    Diut brought to mind the model of this dwelling that existed in vast detail back at his mountain home. Long ago, a highly skilled imperial artisan had been traded from his home in the desert city to the mountain city that Diut’s people now occupied. Nonfighters had been more harshly treated in those days, and fighters commonly regarded them as property—trade goods. But this artisan had apparently loved his city too much to face the prospect of never seeing it again. Thus he had built a model of it, the desert city in miniature. It filled an entire room and was nothing to be carried about, but Diut had used it to memorize the floor plan of the desert dwelling. Now he used that memory to decide which of the entrances to approach.
    No one stopped him or spoke to him. He was pleased to see that some of the desert people did look surprised, however. His body glowed luminescent blue. Let them wonder how he knew which public entrance led most directly to the apartment of their Hao—or of their chief judge if they were unlucky enough to be without a Hao.
    Diut stopped in front of that entrance, feeling tense with anticipation in spite of himself. He had not seen another of his own kind since war took the lives of his mother and his uncle. And the training, the discipline that these people had shown bespoke the presence of a Hao.
    Finally, the desert Hao came out. She was a woman of middle years, her coloring still deep blue, not yet touched with the flecks of yellow that foretold advanced age. Her body was straight and lean and she was the first person Diut had seen since he had attained his full growth who could match him in height. Her coloring attracted him, held his attention as though he had never seen another Hao. He realized that he had, on seeing her, automatically dimmed his own brilliance and let his coloring return to normal. To continue his blinding luminescence now that she was present seemed challenging somehow. And Diut could think of nothing he wanted from this desert town to warrant his challenging an older, more experienced Hao.
    He and the woman gazed at each other for a long moment without speaking, each appraising the other. Was she as hungry for the sight of another of her kind as he had