Books In English "City Of Illusions" Ursula K. Le Guin | Page 61

then asked, "What moved you to save me?"
She shrugged, still with the faint, reluctant smile. "Fellow
prisoners…They always say Wanderers are clever at ruses and disguises.
Did you not hear them call me Fox Woman? Let me look at those hurts of
yours. I brought my bag of tricks."
"Are Wanderers all good healers, too?"
"We have certain skills."
"And you know the Old Tongue; you have not forgotten man's old
way, like the Basnasska."
"Yes, we all know Galaktika. Look there, the rim of your ear was
frostbitten yesterday. Because you took the tie from your hood for me to
hold."
"I can't look at it," Falk said amiably, submitting to her doctoring. "I
don't need to, usually."
As she dressed the still unhealed cut on his left temple she glanced
once or twice sidelong at his face, and at last she ventured: "There are
many Foresters with such eyes as yours, no doubt."
"None."
Evidently the code prevailed. She asked nothing, and he, having
resolved to confide in no one, volunteered nothing. But his own curiosity
got the better of him and he said, "They don't frighten you, then, these
cat-eyes?"
"No," she answered in her quiet way. "You frightened me only once.
When you shot—so fast—"
"He would have raised the whole camp."
"I know, I know. But we carry no guns. You shot so quick, I was
frightened—it was like a terrible thing I saw once, when I was a child. A
man who killed another with a gun, quicker than thought, like that. He was
one of the Razes."
"Razes?"
"Oh, one meets with them in the Mountains sometimes."
"I know very little of the Mountains."
She explained, though as if unwillingly. "You know the Law of the
Lords. They do not kill—you know. When there is a murderer in their city,
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