"If at all desirable, yes. But now I must get some sleep."
"Thank you," said Fani. "I am troubled by the Lord Ghek."
She watched him move away. Thal, moaning softly, went with him down another monstrosity of a stone stairway.
"Oh, what folly!" mourned Thal. "I tried to warn you! You would not pay attention! When the Lady Fani asked if you would fight for her, you should have said if her father permitted you that honor. But you said yes! The spearmen heard you! Now you must either fight the Lord Ghek within a night and day or be disgraced!"
"I doubt," said Hoddan tiredly, "that the obligations of Darthian gentility apply to the grandson of a pirate or an escap.... To me."
He'd been about to say an escaped criminal from Walden, but caught himself in time.
"But they do apply!" said Thal, shocked. "A man who has been disgraced has no rights! Any man may plunder him, any man may kill him at will. But if he resists plundering or kills anybody else in self-defense, he is hanged!"
Hoddan stopped short in his descent of the uneven stone steps.
"That's me from now on?" he said sardonically. "Of course the Lady Fani didn't mean to put me on such a spot!"
"You were not polite," explained Thal. "She'd persuaded her father out of putting us in a dungeon until he thought of us again. You should at least have shown good manners! You should have said that you came here across deserts and flaming oceans because of the fame of her beauty. You might have said you heard songs of her sweetness beside campfires half a world away. She might not have believed you, but—"