They did get everything in, though their saddlebags bulged like a snake that had just swallowed a half-grown humpless camel. A couple of other people stood around helplessly, with full bags and gear left over. Smiling a smile he hoped was not too predatory, Radnal took them to the scales and collected a tenth of a unit of silver for every unit of excess weight.

“This is an outrage,” the dark brown Highhead man said. “Do you know who I am? I am Moblay Sopsirk’s son, aide to the Prince of Lissonland.” He drew himself up to his full height, almost a Tarteshan cubit more than Radnal’s.

“Then you can afford the four and three tenths,” Radnal answered. “I don’t keep the silver. It all goes to upkeep for the park.”

Grumbling still, Moblay paid. Then he stomped off and swung aboard his animal with more grace than Radnal had noticed him possessing. Down in Lissonland, the guide remembered, important people sometimes rode stripehorses for show. He didn’t understand that. He had no interest in getting onto a donkey when he wasn’t going down into Trench Park. As long as there were better ways of doing things, why not use them?

Also guilty of overweight baggage were a middle-aged Tarteshan couple. They were overweight themselves, too, but Radnal couldn’t do anything about that. Eltsac vez Martois protested, “The scale at home said we were all right.”

“If you read it right,” Nocso zev Martois said to her husband. “You probably didn’t.”

“Whose side are you on?” he snarled. She screeched at him. Radnal waited till they ran down, then collected the silver due the park.

When the tourists had remounted their donkeys, the guide walked over to the gate on the far side of the corral, swung it open, and replaced the key in a pouch he wore belted round his waist under his robe. As he went back to his own animal, he said, “When you ride through there, you enter the park itself, and the waivers you signed come into play.