His poor pit of a dwelling, indeed! I wish you could see the palace he lived in—the roof-opening is plated with solid nagh!
I was just about bursting with indignation, but I should have known you can trust a Thinker to deflate a fellow like that.
"Thank you, brother," he said mildly, "but I'm here doing some research and I'll have to fly back right after the game."
Sephar opened his mouth to argue, but by that time I had him by the wing and I pulled him back—he said rudely, I say firmly. "Do you want to give us a bad name for presumption, brother?" I whispered. "Don't interfere with a Thinker when he's Thinking!"
Some of the rest of us nodded agreement, so Sephar shut up. But he had a nasty gleam in his eye and I braced myself for trouble later. We bowed and returned to our places. Thanks to Sephar and his performance, I missed the last throw Gral made, which lost him the contest. But I heard the moan from the spectators who weren't watching the Thinker instead, so I knew he'd lobbed a too-high one. It must have been a humdinger—one of the throws into space. I glanced back as I was flying away, and the Thinker was standing up and gazing intently after it. Well, I thought to myself, imagine a Thinker getting worked up over a phph throw!
The game was over soon after that, and Hodnuth went around collecting his pledges while Gral was being consoled by his backers. When I got a chance to look again where the Thinker had been sitting, he had disappeared.
The one who hadn't disappeared was Sephar. He was waiting for me, just as I'd expected.
"Not here!" I snarled at him. "Do you want the Ground Dwellers to see Real People in a brawl?"
So we adjourned to Marnag's courtyard, which was the nearest dueling place, and it was a nice little fight, and I won. Quite a group gathered around, and I was pleased to see that several of my friends were making bets on me. Some of Sephar's sycophants lugged him off to the hospital to have a fractured wing-tip treated. The rest came home with me and we spent our winnings on a good dinner with plenty of mastonyi to wash it down.