Once they reached Bekla, however, he had at once felt all the fascination and excitement of earlier days. At the first, distant sight of the slender, balconied towers, the Peacock Wall extending above the lower city and the Palace of the Barons crowning the Leopard Hill beyond, his spirits had soared. Coming in through the Blue Gate, he had been delighted by the tumult and crowds all about him. Forgoing a jekzha-for he fancied the idea of stopping as he pleased to look around him-he had hired a lad with a barrow for his baggage-roll and strolled beside him along the streets, noting not so much the buildings, or even the Tamarrik Gate and the temple, as the goods displayed for sale and the trafficking at the shops and stalls. Merely to see brisk business going on and things being bought and sold gave pleasure to Selperron, and by the time he reached N'Kasit's house, near the western clock tower, he was in even better humor and more than ready to reciprocate his friend's greetings and polite inquiries after his family and old acquaintances in Kabin. The first evening they had dined at home, after which Selperron had slept long and comfortably, undisturbed by any night-sounds of the city.
And now here they were together, idling on a midsummer day, taking their leisure and seeing the sights, the sun pleasantly warm on their backs and the city babble and savors and throngs all around them as they sauntered up the Kharjiz towards Storks Hill and Masons Street. On the bridge over the Monju Brook N'Kasit stopped and they leaned side by side over the parapet, looking upstream to where the water ran glittering round the curve at the base of the Tower of the Orphans. Further down in their direction was a little garden, and here a weeping willow overhung the stream, its branches forming a kind of watery arbor as they trailed in the slack current.
"Did you do well this last Melekril?" asked Selperron after a time. He spoke with appropriately off-hand diffidence-a blend between the natural interest of a business associate and a friend wishing to seem politely but not unduly inquisitive.
"That's-well-quite a difficult question to answer, even two or three months after," replied N'Kasit. "As things have turned out, I'm still overstocked. It's a damned nui-
sance having money tied up in stuff that's been on my hands as long as this."
"Well," answered Selperron, "one beauty of our line of business is that at least stock doesn't go bad on you. That market-girl over there's got to sell her fruit quick, but you and I can always hang on to hides and wait for our return."
"Normally, yes," said N'Kasit, "and as a rule, if a proportion of Melekril stock's not been taken off my hands before the spring festival I'm not much troubled; but this time I was fully expecting to be robbed and possibly murdered into the bargain."
Selperron stared and shook his head, looking suitably concerned. "We heard all kinds of rumors in Kabin, but thank Cran everything stayed quiet enough down there."
"You should just have been up here, then," replied N'Kasit. "After the murder of the High Counselor that night, no one knew what to expect. People were burying their valuables and even sending their wives and children away-those who could afford to. A lot of them were expecting another revolution, like the time when Senda-na-Say was killed."
"But of course it didn't come to that," replied Selperron.
"No: but there was a fair amount of robbery and looting, you see, and some people were saying it must have been organized. And then not long after the murder Santil-ke-Erketlis came out against Bekla, and young Elleroth joined him from Sarkid. So we didn't know but what there mightn't be some sort of heldro bunch organizing trouble here in the city-just as Fornis's supporters did before she came up from Dari getting on for eight years ago. I don't mind telling you, I was scared. There simply weren't enough soldiers here, you see; most of them had just left for the Valderra. I asked for an armed guard for the warehouse, but I never got a man. Think of it-forty or fifty thousand melds' worth of portable stock and only me and a night-watchman! I slept there myself for three or four nights- me and my man Malendik. We had one sword and a knife between us, that's all. But nothing came of it, thank the gods; and as I was saying, about half the stock's still there now, waiting to be sold. Well, it's no good worrying."
Wandering on down the Kharjiz, they came to the foot of Storks Hill and then to the edge of the temple precinct and the Tamarrik Gate beyond. Here they stopped to watch Fleitil and his men on their scaffolding, putting the finishing
