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A being like Phow Ji.

Den slipped into the shade of an outbuilding, happy for the relative coolness there, and watched his quarry. He focused a tiny recording cam upon the scene and triggered it. A little more background material never hurt. Better to have too much and have to cut it than too little and have to stretch it. This device wasn’t nearly as sophisticated as the moon moth, but it would get the job done.

Phow Ji had assembled a class of combat students, maybe a dozen or so, mostly humans, and they were limbering up their bodies on a patch of pink shortgrass behind the cantina.

Broad-leaved trees offered the mar-tial arts trainees partial shade, but their exertions still had those who shed heat by perspiring sweating pro-fusely, while those who used other means of cooling themselves were panting, waving their limbs, or ex-panding rills and bulbae-whatever it took to bleed off excess warmth.

"What is the First Rule?" Ji said. His voice was oddly soft, but carried well enough in the damp morning air.

"Always be ready!" the class chorused in unison.

"Exactly. You don’t hang your fighting mind-set on the hat hook when you enter your cube.

You don’t leave it on the counter when you shower, you don’t set it on the bedside table when you sleep. If it is not part of you, it is useless and-"

Without a hint of what he was going to do, Ji took a quick step to his left, swung his fist in a short arc, and punched a tall, thin human amidships.

The human went "Oof!" and staggered back a step, hands coming up in a belated defensive posture.

"Too late!" Ji roared, loud enough to put a cold finger on Den’s spine, thirty meters away and hidden.

The human had sagged to one knee, his face con-gested in pain. When he saw Phow Ji watching him, he hastily rose to his feet.

"Duels are fun," Ji said. "Duels come when you and your opponent both know what’s about to happen, at least in general terms. Duels are neat, clean, and have rules. A match in the ring might kill you, but you are prepared for it. You know who your enemy is, you know where he is, and you aren’t surprised when he comes at you.

"In real life, you don’t have those luxuries. You could be sitting in the ’fresher when someone comes for you. Showering, sleeping, or taking a class like this one. Now. What is the First Rule?"

"Always be ready!" they shouted in unison.

Ji took a step toward the group. The group, as one, took a step backward. Some of them raised their hands. One of them pulled a knife partway from a sheath.

Ji grinned. "Better. Now. First Posture!"

The students took a stance, one foot forward, one hand high, one low. Ji walked around them, touching an arm or leg here and there, correcting the poses. Every-body in the group watched him with what Den could see, even from his hiding place, was a tense wariness.

Den shook his head. This Phow Ji was a bad man, no doubt about that. He already had enough to file a story, but he allowed the cam to continue running. He knew what his slant was going to be: Phow Ji, a murderous thug who, in peacetime, would likely be locked away to protect the citizenry, instead was indulging his violent tendencies on the field of battle, allowed to kill and be thought a hero and not a villain. How did the public feel about that? Knowing that someone who was mentally deranged and violent, an assassin, a monster, was out there, and ostensibly on their side?

Den knew he could twirl it so that they would be hor-rified. A few more sequences showing the human’s cru-elty and violence, and civilized beings would turn away in disgust and revulsion.

He smiled. This was what he did, and he was good at it. Of course, one could never be sure what the public would do, but he knew a good story when he saw one, and whatever else he might lack in, he could tell that story well.

32

Tolk, Jos decided, was deliberately torturing him.

She knew how she affected him-it was in her nature and training, both as a species and as a female-and she was doing everything but giving him a handwritten