She unzipped a pocket and took out a handful of red, blue, and green stones: synthetic rubies, star sapphires, and emeralds from the ship's lab. "Our gems are very fine," she said cajolingly.

The woman's hand came out until she touched a sapphire with the tip of one finger. Then she jerked it away, as if scalded. "No matter how fair your stones, I must make do with beads and colored glass, I fear. My husband is but a candlemaker; we will never be rich."

Kawar chose a much smaller sapphire from Magda's palm and gave it to the woman. Her face was a study in confusion. "Do you seek to buy my body? This is the fee, many times over, did I wish to sell myself to you; but I do not."

"No," he assured her, smiling wryly?he was gay. "But surely you will tell many people of the foreigners who gave a jewel away. They will come to us without the wariness buyers should have, and we will make up the price of this stone many times over." His sly smile invited her to share in the scheme.

"Truly the goddess smiles on me today!" the woman exclaimed. She tucked the sapphire into a pouch that hung from her belt.

"Tell me of this goddess you people follow," Magda said. "When we use your language, we greet the folk we meet in her name, but in our far country we do not worship her ourselves."

The woman shook her head in disbelief. "How could anyone not worship the goddess? She lives forever and knows everything. I am only the poor wife of a candlemaker, and live far from her glory, but one day perhaps even I shall see her." Her face filled with awe at the thought.

"So say the priests of many goddesses," Kawar observed; the local tongue seemed to lack a masculine word for the divine. "How does anyone in this world know which goddess we shall meet in the next?"