“They want me to marry that fat Root man, so we can get his shop and looms in Silk Street,” she said. “I will not. I am going to live at the Great Temple.” She looked around at them all, her mother, her sister-in-law, Mal, Modh, the other slave women. “I'll send here what I'm given there,” she said. “This House isn't as poor as Alo says it is. But I told Bela that if he gives one finger's width of land for that woman he wants now, I'll send nothing from the Temple. He can go slave-catching again to feed her. And you.” She looked again at Mal and Modh. “Keep an eye on him,” she said. “It is time he married."

Bela had recently traded his concubine and the Dirt son she had borne him, making a good bargain in cropland, and promptly offered nearly the whole amount for another woman he had taken a fancy to. It was not a question of marriage, for a Dirt woman, to marry, must be a virgin, and the woman he wanted had been owned by several men. Alo and Tudju had prevented the bargain, which he could not make without their consent. It was, as Tudju said, time for Bela to consider his sacred obligation to marry and beget children of the sky on a woman of the dirt.

So Tudju left the hanan and the house to serve in the Great Temple, only returning sometimes on formal visits. She was replaced, evenings, by her brother Bela. Dour and restless, like a dog on a chain, he would stalk in after Alo, and watch the little boys run about and the slaves’ games and dances.

He was a tall man, handsome, lithe and well-muscled. From the day she first saw him in the horror and carnage of the foray, to Modh he had been the golden man. She had seen many other golden men in the City since then, but he was the first, the model.