I.
A Fine Romance

	It was bright, as it always was in that place. A dull yellow brightness, an uneasy unsettling greensick light just insistent enough to intrude. Along with that faint hum that got under your nerves and began fraying you one fiber at a time.
	“And how’s the patient?”
	I was strapped to a table under that buzzing yellow light. His masked head, with those rusty red curls visible over the top edge of the plaster death cast, bent over me ringed by a curdled halo. I opened my mouth but I had no voice. 
	“You’ll be on your feet in a day or two.”
	I wrenched my head to the side. The point of a needle jabbed into my arm. Dark blood escaped into the tube in his chapped red hand.
	“G--get--get off--”
	My voice came out thick, but it came out. Now I was on my bare feet on a cold tiled floor watching multicolored nasty liquid swirl down the drain in the center. I looked down; the skirt of my shift was stuck to my bloodied thighs. 
	“Have you got it or haven’t you?”
	It was Lythril’s voice, but Lythril wasn’t there. Instead there was Istria, holding a pail too big for her to carry, full of that same nasty liquid.
	“Well, go on,” he said, nodding at the sliding glass door. “She’s waiting for it.” And, as Istria hesitated, looking at me, “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of her. This kind of postpartum infection is very easily treated.”
	“Don’t listen to him!” I shouted. “They die of it, they die, they always die!”
	“You’re exaggerating, Theamh,” said my mother, walking forward into the yellow light as she pulled on a pair of those skinlike translucent gloves. “One survived, you said so yourself. Anyway, modern medicine has made great strides since you saw that happen.”
	“Don’t touch me,” I said.
	I backed away into a wall--soft, padded, but hard beneath it, the high wall of a narrow cell whose ceiling disappeared into that bilious light. And my mother was still coming toward me.
	“How will you ever get better if you continue to refuse treatment?” she said, holding out a cluster of wires attached to small metal discs.
	A door slid open behind me. I ducked through it, and Istria’s hand tightened around my wrist. “Come on. There’s not much time.”
	I ran after her down the narrow corridor. “Why are you wearing gloves, Istri?”
	“So I don’t catch it,” she said. “It’s contagious, transmitted by hands. It says so in the textbooks.”
	I thought she had turned the corner, but when I turned it afterward there was nobody there, just a wide dark room with aquarium tanks in which electric eels swam back and forth, lighting up the viscous water with phosphorescent sparks.
	“Istri?”
	“Dhiaoc!” 
	It was Aine, calling to me from one of the tanks. She was very small, but it was definitely her, even though the water was murky.
	“Hold still, I’ll get you out.”
	I stuck my hand into the tank, but it wasn’t the right one; there was nothing in there but a handful of eels, sending a shock up my arm that threw me back onto the floor. And up against the pair of black leather boots in which Lythril was standing.
	“You’re a quick healer,” she said, taking the whip in her hand.
	“Leave me alone,” I whimpered, unable to move as I watched her take up her position, one boot on either side of my hips, arm raised above her head. “It’s been who knows how many years will you just leave me alone--”
	The arm came down, and my cry ended in a scream as the whip tore my chest.
	Theamh.
	“Kill me!” I shouted up at her. “Will you just kill me and get it over with!”
	THEAMH.
	“What?” I snapped, as Istria appeared behind her. 
	“Theamh, wake up,” she said.
	“Well for Idair’s sake are you going to do something or just stand there and watch?” I shouted back.
	“Forgive me,” she said, and reached for my shoulder.
	I recoiled from the touch into a pile of mounded-up bedclothes. It was dark now, except for the bright green dashes of the digital alarm clock and that vague dim haze that always leaked through windows from the bleeding and light-violated Cretid nighttime.
	Istria was sitting on my bed, hands raised toward me in an interrupted gesture, hanging awkward and disappointed near my huddled form. “It’s all right, you’re not there, it was a dream.”
	I saw her face in the soft undarkness and I knew that it was a mirror of the face I had worn that night so many lifetimes ago when I went over to her bedside up in the scoil dormitory and shook her out of her father’s grip.
	“Istri,” I said, letting my pent-up breath out in a shudder that wasn’t quite a sob.
	“You’re safe,” she said.
	Even without the link so much went back and forth between us that talking was very strange. She knew that I said ‘Istri’ because I wanted more than anything to hang on her neck and weep like an infant, but couldn’t because I knew how much it would hurt both of us; just as I knew when she said ‘You’re safe,’ that what she meant was that she had been sitting there for hours, watching me, ready to chase the nightmare off as soon as she knew it had me. It’s a lot to get out of two syllables. Language had always been a different thing, between us; but we were out of practice, and both of us found it unsettling, even if both of us also found in it the only comfort we could have.
	“Four fifteen,” I said, looking at the clock and sitting up against the fabric-covered headboard. I had dropped my voice because I could now make out Aine’s head in the other bed, her brown hair rumpled on the pillow and the sheets and blankets pulled tight around her huddled form. “And we got here at...what, midnight?” Istria nodded. “Strange, it seems like I’ve been asleep more than four hours.”
	“Try twenty-eight,” she said.
	I looked at her, but I didn’t ask for confirmation. She went on anyhow, answering the question on its way to my mind.
	“You went right for the bed as soon as we got in here,” she said. “You were out like a candle the minute you lay down. Aine got you under the covers...”
	“I’m sorry, Istri,” I said, as her eyes dropped. Because I felt how sad it had made her, watching Aine do what she wanted to do because Aine could and she couldn’t. Sad, but not angry; that was something. I knew that Aine had a lot for Istria to be envious of; youth, innocence, and her intensifying intimacy with me. And I knew that Aine, now that she had started applying that protective instinct nurtured by her four younger siblings to me, would have a lot to be angry with Istria for. But I still wanted them to be friends--wanted it a lot, which surprised me since the reason for wanting it wasn’t obvious to me.
	“For the first eighteen hours you slept like the dead,” she said. “Aine was worried about you--she says you never sleep quiet, at home.”
	I waved a hand at her, wanting to dismiss it, but remembered too late who I was dealing with.
	“You’re still having nightmares,” she said, daring me to evade the question.
	“Yes,” I admitted.
	“Worse than before?”
	Than before she left, she meant. “Yes.”
	“About her?”
	“About her, about mathi, about you--about everything.”
	How did Ulnach get into it? She didn’t say it, but it was there--as if it made sense to her, somehow, that my nightmares should pair her with Lythril but she was surprised that my mother was part of the picture.
	“Istri...”
	She let go of her question and turned her eyes on me, open and waiting to receive what I wanted to tell her. It brought the sting to my eyes.
	“It’s just...with everything...it’s still amazing,” I said, swallowing the ache in my throat. “Just to see you there.”
	Her eyes dropped and she didn’t speak. Her hand skimmed over the crumpled corners of the bedsheet, and trying to avoid answering she answered anyway.
	“You were going to ask something,” she finally said, her voice low and roughened with the strain of holding back.
	“Right before you came for me,” I said. “Lythril was in my cell and she told me a story about my mother.” Istria sighed, bringing her hands together on the flat surface of the mattress. “She said she helped my mother marry my father, and that in return my mother promised her her firstborn child.” Istria’s hands pressed in, raising little mounds of mattress between the valleys her fingers dug. “Do you know if it’s true?”
	“I don’t know if it’s true or not, Theamh,” she said, finally, lifting her eyes to me with a kind of heartsick courage. “All I know is, she told me the same story.”
	“Before you turned,” I said.
	She nodded. And she didn’t want to send it, but it came to me anyhow.
	“She offered to trade me for you,” I said.
	“Theamh, I don’t want you making excuses for me--” she began, her hands flying into the air as if to ward my words off.
	“I don’t want to make them,” I shot back. “But we both deserve the truth about this. She told you she’d take you in my place.”
	Her face darkened with the pain of memory. 
	“That much was a lie,” I said.
	“I knew it was,” Istria answered. “She made me the offer knowing I’d see through it. She did it so I could persuade myself--knowing as I did that I was lying too.”
	There was a long silence.
	“Istri,” I said, with the long breath that signalled the beginning of a prepared speech. I had been mulling it over in the car, and now was as good a time as any to deliver it. “You know...I haven’t asked how it happened, or what it was like, those years.”
	“I know,” she said.
	“I don’t want you to think it’s because I don’t care,” I went on, “or because I think it’s something so terrible I can’t bear to know it. I want you to know that nothing you could possibly tell me about what was done to you or what you did would make me stop loving you.” She turned her head away with a quick furtive movement, as if trying to hide from the word. “I do love you and I will keep saying it, Istri, whether you like hearing it or not. But I want you to know, too, why I’m not asking.”
	“Why is it, then?” she said, her face drained suddenly with fatigue and dread.
	“Because...there’s a war on,” I answered. “I’m bound to help fight it, and what you know from all that time with her could turn out to be really useful. I’m aware of that, I know you are. I don’t want to be pumping you for intelligence, I don’t want to be interviewing an informant. When we talk I don’t want it to be about shri or about dark magic or the Order. I don’t want it to be about anything but us.” 
	She nodded, as if she understood, as if it meant something to her to understand. “I thank you for wanting that, Theamh,” she said, formal now the way my speech had been. “But I just--I don’t see how it can be that way. Shri is part of us. It always has been.”
	I knew she was right, but I felt like I was right too.
	“So I think--I mean--the only way is for you to tell me, what and when and how you want to tell me, without my asking. I just know that if you think I don’t want to ask, you won’t tell me. I want to know, Istri, I really want to know how it was for you, as much as I can understand. But I know--I know--I know I’ll have to...to learn patience.”
	In spite of everything, we both smiled. She said it first.
	“And they said it couldn’t be done.”
	“Well, we don’t know, yet, that it can,” I said, craning my neck toward the clock. “When does the sun rise in this spiritforsaken place? My body is all off time now.”
	“Not for another two hours,” she said. “Go back to sleep. I’ll set the alarm.”
	I lay down and pulled the covers over me. Istria shifted off the mattress and onto an upholstered chair that she had pulled over by my bedside. It was strange, but it hadn’t occurred to me before, until that very minute.
	“I went right for the bed,” I said, looking up at her as my eyes blinked slowly. “Instead of the floor. Because you’re back.”
	She let me see it made her happy to hear it, even though she wouldn’t answer.
	“Rest,” she said. “The world owes you a lot of sleep.”
	Something else suddenly occurred to me. “But where are you sleeping, Istri? Aine’s got the other bed...”
	She shook her head. “I don’t sleep much any more.”
	I looked up at her, and I knew that it wasn’t because she wasn’t tired.
	“You did say you wouldn’t ask,” she finally said.
	“I did.” I closed my eyes.
	“Good rest to you,” she said, and I heard the echo even though she didn’t voice it. Take care in there.

	The bleat of the alarm clock startled me out of nothing into the graying interior of what I now realized, in my more alert and less dream-ridden state, was a Cretid hotel room. Aine was moving in the bed across from mine, hauling herself up and rubbing her eyes. Istria was coming out of the doorway to the privy.
	“I’m going for food,” she said, opening the door to the outside. “The ash is out by the sink. I’ll be back.”
	I walked into the small, white-tiled room and closed the door. My little tin of ashes was indeed sitting on the sink countertop, next to a flat square bar of soap in a stiff paper wrapper and a clear plastic glass wrapped in a filmy shroud. The seven brooches were piled up on the other side of the sink. In the mirror, I could see that the white tub behind me had been filled with water, and that the vaguely floral smell I had noticed walking in must be proceeding from the mounds of lather that were floating on top of it. My hreapa was hanging from a hook on the back of the bathroom door.
	I got out of my shift and lowered myself gratefully into the warm soapy water.
	Much as I appreciated, at the moment, the Cretid gift for plumbing, it was disorienting not having a window. I washed myself maybe more hurriedly than I had to, afraid that I wouldn’t be done before the dawn broke. When I stepped out of the bathroom, with my hreapa on and the marks in place, the sun was just starting to come in strong enough to make ladders on the floor through the chinks of the blinds. Idair adjusting the timing for me, maybe, knowing how much I didn’t ever want to live another day out of hreapa.
	Aine was sitting at the little table, emptying a bunch of small, spongy bready things in paper wrappers out of a bag. Istria was pulling more things out of a larger bag, arranging them on the table, her back to me as she talked to Aine.
	“Free continental breakfast,” she explained. “Of course they don’t expect you to take thirty of these things back to the room, but it’s early, and nobody was watching.”
	“How are we paying for all this, anyway?” I asked, stepping up to the table.
	“We’ve got--” Istria began, but stopped when she turned and saw me.
	“Are you--” Aine read enough not to finish the question. Istria blinked hard.
	“I’m all right,” Istria said, in a troubled almost-whisper. She pulled out a chair and sat down, slowly, her eyes still on me. “Come eat.”
	Knowing Istria didn’t want her to notice, Aine started peeling the paper carefully off one of the small spongy things. I knew Istria didn’t want me to notice it either, but we both knew the futility of wishes like that. And anyhow, I thought part of her did want me to know that seeing me there, clean finally, in hreapa, with my hair up and looking for the first time in a long time like myself, had brought her to the same kind of heart-stopped halt that I’d had the day I saw her down in that laboratory.
	“What on earth,” I began, as I picked one of the spongy things up and started pulling at the ridiculous tiny paper cup the thing was wearing.
	“They’re called mini-muffins,” Istria said. “I’ve stopped trying to understand why the Cretids invent what they do.”
	I went through about fifteen of them without slowing down or pausing for conversation. I was ravenously hungry, for the first time in what seemed like forever. Aine, remembering I’d asked a question, felt it her duty to answer, once she had blunted the edge of her own hunger.
	“It’s all right about the money,” Aine said. “Istria only paid for a single room; they don’t know the two of us are here, so actually for us the room is free.”
	Another one of those things she had done, silently and without wanting me to know, to keep me safe. “Yes, but...did you take Lythril’s stash with you, or what?”
	Istria washed down her sponge bread with a draught from a small glass bottle of orange-colored juice. “Gold is no use here, really,” she said, wiping her mouth with a paper napkin. “The Cretids won’t take gold for anything. It’s the crazy thing about this country--ninety-nine percent of the Cretid population has never even seen money. What we’d call money, anyway. The place runs entirely on plastic, paper, and some kind of mass mindforcing.” She watched me pulling another pile of sponge things over, allowing her pleasure to break into a half-smile. “Fortunately, we’ve got something better than gold.” She held up between two fingers a small rectangular piece of stiff shiny plastic. “We’ve got Maerin’s charge card.”
	“What’s a--” I began, but Aine was already into it.
	“Chandra explained about them,” she said, uncapping one of those glass bottles. “There’s a company out there who issues these things. You take it to a store, and they give you stuff, and the store sends the bill to the company. Then at the end of the month the company bills you--the price, plus the interest on the money they loaned you for it.”
	“Oh,” I said. “So it’s just usury, but with plastic.”
	Istria nodded. “Lythril doesn’t trust any of this Cretid foolishness. She put all her money into gold, which meant she never had what they consider cash. So she got the card under Maerin’s false name, and when we paid for things we used it. Then when the bill came she’d have her broker sell some of the gold and transfer the cash to the company. It’s true I had to tell the desk clerk I’m married to the bastard to get him to accept the card, but I can put up with being Mrs. Wyll Sinclare for a day.”
	The extent to which I was able to follow that said something about how long I’d spent in the Cretid Nation. “Too bad we never thought about this plastic thing,” I said to Aine. “They must have computers tracking the stuff--if we’d known, I bet Chandra could have gotten one of her ex-girlfriends to break into the company’s records and find out where he was charging and what the billing address was...”
	It hit all three of us at the same time.
	“But her network’s been crashed, and her computers are all burnt up,” Aine said. “There’s no way--she couldn’t--”
	“I bet the police would do it for her, if she promised them more special forces,” I said.
	“Or anyhow she’s got mindstrength and no scruples, she can find a way to make someone look it up,” Istria said, her face ashen. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”
	“You’re not a moron,” I said, automatically responding to what she hadn’t said. “Idair knows you had enough to think about. And anyhow we have to buy liquid fire for that traveling machine and food and the rest of it--I don’t see any other way to do that, besides mindforcing, and I haven’t actually told you this yet but I’m sure you--”
	“--it’s clear enough,” Istria said. “Like it should be clear enough to you, that I--”
	“--I know, that’s what I mean--”
	“You know,” Aine said, edgily, “You may understand each other but I sure don’t.”
	“Oh, she just means she’s decided not to go around mindforcing people any more because if I let her do it for my benefit that will eventually corrupt me and she doesn’t want to put me in danger and besides she knows it bothers me to see her do it because I don’t think it’s good for her and even though she doesn’t think she’ll ever be reclaimed to Idair she knows I’m still hoping for it and she’s humoring me because she doesn’t want to see me hurt any more,” I said. “So it has to be the plastic, or nothing.”
	Aine stared at me, then at Istria, then decided not to say what she was thinking.
	“So we’re leaving a trail,” Aine said.
	“Best we can do is make sure the trail stops here,” Istria answered. “I’ll get as big a cash advance as I can and we’ll make that last. The interest on cash advances is murderous but then Maerin’s never going to pay this bill anyway, being dead.”
	“Speaking of the border,” I said, “how are we going to get back through on our side? We can’t cross at a checkpoint.”
	“No,” Istria answered. “But if this whole Open Window foolishness has taken off like Twil hoped it would, the border should be a sieve now. In any case, she’s got that hole she made up near Mypril.”
	The weakness that Notya had noticed, probably. “So we could use that, if it came to it,” I said.
	“No,” Aine answered. “She’d have to be waiting for us there, if she knows you know about it.”
	“And anyhow Amst is a nest of traitors,” I said. “When we come through the border we want to come among friends.”
	“We should enter in Dairc then,” Aine said. “They think the sun shines because of you, there.”
	I looked down at the table, embarrassed.
	“It’s true,” Aine pursued, responding more to Istria than to me. “They call her the savior of Dairc and it’s the truth. That’s what she was doing when she wasn’t coming for you. I guess Lythril wouldn’t have told you that, since you weren’t friends yet--”
	“All right, Aine, point taken,” I said, because Istria was starting to get her back up. “Let’s get cash, and let’s get a map, and let’s get the hell out of Wheatlea.”
	“I’ll be ready in a minute,” Aine said, heading for the privy.
	“I want you to be friends,” I said, as Istria turned her exasperated stare on me.
	“You want a lot of impossible things,” Istria answered.
	Aine came back through the door much more quickly than she should have.
	“Aine?”
	“Never mind, I’ll go on the road,” she said, gathering up her things.
	She went out the door toward Chandra’s car. Istria looked at me for explanation.
	“I suppose someone committed suicide in there, or something,” I said.
	“Slit his wrists over the sink,” Istria answered. “Last week. But how did you know?”
	“Aine has aftersight,” I said, looking back at her.
	Istria looked out through the doorway at Aine shoving her bag into the back seat.
	“I’ve been trying to help her with it, but I’m no damn good at it,” I answered. “She’s seen enough on this trip to ruin five lifetimes. What she saw at Dunta alone would have driven most people mad.”
	She looked at me, knowing now why I wanted them to be friends.
	“I will try,” she said. “For your sake.”
	We made our way across the cracked asphalt of the parking lot.

	A Cretid map doesn’t have anything on it that makes sense to steer by--no landmarks, nothing about the skyline. A road will tell you it’s going east when it’s really going south-southeast, or even sometimes when it’s heading north; everything is numbered instead of named. But we satisfied ourselves, after a lot of wrangling, that we were taking an interregional route from Wheatlea east to the Dairc border. It was narrower than the one leading from Cretid City, with harder turns and more stopping and going, leading at the moment through what passed, in the Cretid Nation, for farmland.
	“There’s one of those cow factories,” Aine said, pointing through the open window of the back seat. She had discovered that she felt better with the wind on her face.
	“It can’t be good for them,” I said, as the car passed rank after rank of brown and white cows, which were massed in unbelievably huge crowds on a piece of ground that looked like it had never seen a blade of grass. They were pulling hay from steel racks ranged in straight lines along the field, underneath a cheap tin roof. It took much longer to pass them, and their smell, than we could have thought possible.
	“Cretids eat a lot of beef,” Istria said, covering her mouth with the back of her hand as the sentence ended in a yawn. “It’s got to come from somewhere.”
	“I’m surprised they survive,” I said. “They have so little in the way of minds, but even that much must atrophy under these conditions.”
	I looked to Istria for a response, but she didn’t give one. Her head nodded, then sank on her chest as her eyes closed.
	“Istria?”
	Her body slumped toward me, and the wheel turned.
	By the time I got the car stopped, Aine was already pale and sweating, although she hadn’t actually vomited. I couldn’t quite remember exactly how I had done it; I knew there had been a lot of violent swerving and panicked shouting from Aine and from me, and I knew that it was pure luck that when I took my eyes off the road to bring my mindstrength down on that brake pedal we hadn’t hit the lightning pole that we were presently stopped about three feet in front of. I was also realizing that Istria, while not exactly asleep at this juncture, was also not exactly awake. Her eyes seemed like they were trying to open, but as soon as she got the lids raised a little bit they would fall again, and when she tried to speak all that came out was a slurred murmur.
	“Help me get her into the air,” I said.
	Aine struggled against her nausea around to the passenger door and together we lifted her out onto the grass by the side of the road. She lay on her back, eyes moving back and forth under their half-closed lids, twitching now and then like a bad dreamer.
	“What’s the matter with her?” Aine asked, frightened.
	“I don’t know,” I said, moving my hands over her head. “There doesn’t seem to be anything much wrong with her mind. If she were asleep, I’d say she read as perfectly normal. But she’s not asleep.”
	Aine didn’t disagree with me. Whatever this was, it wasn’t sleep; there was no rest in it, certainly. But she didn’t seem to be coming out of it, and I didn’t know enough to go in there and try to break whatever it was that had her.
	“Well, we can’t spread ourselves out in the open like feeding rabbits,” I said. “We’ll put her in the back, and one of us will have to drive.”
	Aine and I looked at each other. I could tell she was calculating the odds.
	“I’ll drive,” she finally said.
	“I was hoping you’d volunteer,” I answered. “I think it’ll be safer for all of us.”
	She nodded, before she realized that agreeing with me was incourteous.
	“It’s all right,” I said, with a laugh. “You’re a lot handier with machines than I am, it’s only the truth and no reason to take offense.”
	Taking care not to touch her skin, I gathered Istria up and managed to bundle both of us into the back seat. As Aine pulled the seat up and turned the key, I laid Istria out with her head in my lap, hoping it would make her feel safer, wherever she was.
	And wherever that was, it wasn’t any better than here. It was as if she were on a bed of needles, something that constantly pricked her out of sleep and into this fitful, half-aware combination of paralysis and spasm. I was afraid to interfere--since there was no damage being done to her mind, and I had no way of knowing my intervention wouldn’t make it worse--so all I could do was hope that part of her could tell I was there.
	I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but there did come a moment where her eyes closed, and stayed closed, and her breathing almost became regular. Aine glanced in the mirror, aware of the change, meeting my eyes. And then, just as I was starting to hope she had fallen asleep for real, her eyes snapped wide open and her head lifted in panic.
	“What--” she began, but cut it off when she realized where she was. Her head fell back against the skirt of my hreapa, as she looked up at me, fully awake now but also scared and looking lost.
	What happened?
	You were driving, and then all of a sudden you collapsed. 
	From what she sent it was clear that this had never happened to her before. Which was unfortunate, since it probably meant she didn’t know what to do about this either.
	I...did I faint?
	No, this is definitely something else. You weren’t fully unconscious.
	Part of her wanted to sit up and pretend nothing had happened, but part of her wanted to stay where she was, looking up at me and hoping I could tell her why the gulf of oblivion had snapped its jaws on her. That part won.
	Istri, you said you hadn’t been sleeping much.
	She didn’t answer.
	Those endurance potions...
	Istria turned her head away from me, wanting not to make the admission.
	I can’t say it for certain, but it’s my only guess, I answered. We know Lythril doesn’t sleep. And if you’ve been taking them regularly, over three, four years--
	Two years, eight months, four weeks and three days. I didn’t cave that easy.
	So she’d held out for about a year. Longer, probably, than I would have lasted.
	Two years, then, I answered. They must have built up. And so you can’t sleep now.
	But this has never happened to me, she answered, looking back at me without trying to mask that child’s fear. 
	It’s been a couple days, I answered. Maybe going off them, after all that time, is having its effect.
	I felt her mind deciding--that was it, that was the answer. And now that she had the answer, she was embarrassed to be lying in my lap with her eyes wide in worry, so she sat up, keeping herself away from me on her side of the back seat.
	“Thanks for taking over, Aine,” she said, a little sheepishly. “I can drive now.”
	You can’t drive, I said. We don’t know how often this is going to happen.
	I feel fine now--
	Istria--
	“No,” Aine said, looking at both of us in the mirror. “We were lucky once, we don’t want to tempt Idair. I’ll drive.”
	“Well, if you’re going to drive,” Istria said, “you should learn how to read a speedometer. You’re way above the posted limit.”
	“Limit?” Aine asked.
	A siren began wailing toward us. I looked out the rear windshield. Sure enough. 
	“Well,” I said. “This is a revolting development.”
	“Pull over,” Istria said, as one of those mud-green cars started looming closer. “We’ll brazen our way through it if we can, and if we can’t, we can always wrap them.”
	Aine wasn’t at all sure about this, but she brought the car to a halt on the grass verge. The snout of the mud-green car came to rest in the grass behind us and the driver’s door opened. One of those black-booted, black-gloved, mud-shirted thugs started clomping up the road.
	His face, wearing those reflecting eyeshades and crowned with a helmet, appeared in the window, and seemed to be waiting for Aine to say something. She read him, and said it.
	“Is there a problem, Enforcer?” 
	Aine was trying to be offhand and nonchalant, but it wasn’t working. Just the sight of him had her rattled, and when he started talking it only got worse.
	“Do you know how fast you were going?” he said.
	“No,” Aine answered, truthfully.
	He laughed, his mouth opening in an unpleasant red slit. The other Enforcer, apparently bored with waiting, got out of the car and began strolling around near ours.
	“Hey Rount!” he called. “Lookit this!”
	The other man looked annoyed when he first turned his head, but he took quick steps up toward the hood. We remembered, at about the same time, that Chandra had spraypainted “TTCP” in large, legible letters on the hood.
	The two of them came back to Aine’s window. When their faces appeared in it I could see her hands start to shake on the wheel.
	“Take your hands off the wheel and step out of the car, please,” said the first one.
	Aine turned the key and slammed her foot down on the gas.
	“Aine, what in Idair’s mercy--” I shouted, as the car surged back onto the road and hit speeds I would not have thought the machine could reach.
	“Come on, Aine,” Istria said, as the two men leapt cursing into their car and come after us. “You aren’t going to outrun them. If you make them chase you they’ll call for backup and then they’ll have the numbers advantage.”
	She kept her foot on the pedal and her eyes fixed on the road. Her jaw set.
	“Aine, for everything’s sake--” Istria shouted, as the car seemed to be trying to fly off the road.
	Aine shook her head.
	“Aine,” I said, as gently as I could do it what with my fear of impending death. “Please. This is only making more danger for us.”
	She shook her head and her chin quivered.
	“They’re not going to beat you,” I said, finally reading what should have occurred to me on the instant. “There’s three of us now. They won’t touch you. I promise.”
	Our speed flagged a bit.
	“I promise, Aine. We’re here, we can protect you now.”
	Istria leaned over, her anger gone and a strange, distant kind of compassion in her voice. “She’s right. There’s only two of them. We’ll see to it. Just pull over.”
	With the tears already starting in her eyes, she brought the car to a clanking stop and waited, her head falling forward into her hands.
	This time they didn’t come up to the window; they stood behind the car, one on either side, with their guns aimed at us.
	“Get out of the car!” the first one shouted. “And keep your hands in the air!”
	Three of the car’s four doors opened, and we stepped out, obediently raising our hands, for all the world as if we were about to call scrainnte on them.
	“Turn around and put your hands on the car!”
	We did. Istria and I looked at each other across the roof of the car, calculating.
	On three, I said.
	It was a moment before my enforcer noticed that his gun had sailed out of his hands and into the middle of the road. The other squeezed his fingers, but by that time there was no trigger beneath them; Istria had pulled the gun out of his hands and into hers. One hand grabbed him by the back of his neck and slammed his head into the roof of the car while the other laid the barrel of the gun against his temple.
	“Step away from her and put your hands in the air,” Istria said, shooting the Enforcer behind me a piercing glare.
	He put his hands up and stepped away slowly. “Now just take it easy,” he said.
	“Cuff him,” she said.
	I pulled the metal bracelets off his belt. I wrapped his arms and brought them behind his back, crossed at the wrists, and clicked them in place.
	Aine, meanwhile, had recovered from her panic and had darted into the road to collect the gun, which she bore gingerly back to the car. Istria stepped back from her Enforcer, keeping the gun pointed at his head. His arms flew stiffly behind him. Keeping the gun trained on him with one hand, she snapped the metal restraints on him. 
	“Watch these two for me,” she said, lowering the gun. “I’ll be right back.”
	She walked out to the mud-green car, pulling a knife out of her pocket and flicking the blade out. She stuck the blade methodically into each of the four wheels, tearing long slits through which the cushion of air sighed out as the car sank on its wheelrims. She ducked into the driver’s seat, removing the keys and ripping the talk box out of the front. 
	“Here,” she said, handing Aine the keys. “Put them somewhere safe.”
	Aine tucked them into the breast pocket of her shirt.
	Following the directions she sent me, I marched my Enforcer around to the back of the car, where we forced them to their knees, side by side. Istria leaned against the back fins of Chandra’s car, looking at them.
	They were both big men, one with a rough brown beard and the other with a cleanshaven strong jaw that reminded me of Maerin. But they were both afraid of what we would do next. All because Istria was holding that piece of metal in her hands.
	“I want you to remember this,” she said, staring down both of them. “I’m not going to kill you. But I could, if I chose. Right now.” 
	There was a very long pause, and then she turned to me.
	“Let’s go,” she said.
	We got into the car and drove, leaving them kneeling on the grass behind us.
	“You see,” I said, as Aine ground the pedal to the floor. “It’s all right.”
	She nodded. 
	“But you better slow down,” I said, “and get off this road. There’ll be others.”
	The car slowed down, and she burst into tears.
	“I’m sorry, dhiaoc--I shouldn’t have broken like that--”
	“It’s all right, Aine,” I said, patting her awkwardly on the shoulder. “It’s--that’s not happened to you before, you weren’t expecting the aftermath.”
	“No,” she said, turning up a winding gray lane and heading us into the cornfields. She took a difficult breath. “Will I always--will it always--come back to me--like that?”
	“Not always,” Istria said.
	Aine looked at her hard eyes in the mirror, and nodded, once.
	“All right then,” she said, and kept driving.
	
	Once we got off the main road, though, it became hopeless. Driving was slow, roads were bad, and we got turned around so that we had to look at the sun to be sure we were heading east. We had the consolation of knowing that since we were not following any sort of sane route, they probably wouldn’t be able to predict our movements. But that didn’t much make up for not knowing where the hell we were or where we were headed or whether it would be Lythril or the Cretid Police that got to us first.
	“The apples are starting,” Aine observed.
	It was true--we were now driving through an orchard, which at least provided us with some cover even if the trees all looked so much alike for so far and wide that we had the sense of not going anywhere. But we were coming up to the harvest season, and so the apples were approaching ripeness. Except that they were all the wrong color--yellow-green, instead of reddish-green.
	“They have different varieties up here,” Istria said. “These things are called Golden Globes. They’re big, but the taste is too mild.”
	“Speaking of gold,” I began.
	Istria didn’t wait for me to finish. “She won’t be able to get to it.”
	“What do you mean, ‘get to it’?”
	She smiled, with satisfaction. “This is the Cretid Nation. One doesn’t just put one’s gold in a safe and bury it in the backyard. For gold to be worth anything it has to be sold. To be sold it has to go through a registered commodities broker. So all of Lythril’s stash is in the vaults of Daloyt & Daloyt, one of the Cretid Nation’s premiere trading firms.”
	“So she can just have them convert it into cash,” I said.
	“But ask yourself this, Theamh,” Istria said, holding up a finger didactically. “How exactly is she going to give them the order?”
	“She could...”
	“But we’ve destroyed her computer network. And she can’t use another one, because it wouldn’t have the special encryption software she had installed. Daloyt & Daloyt won’t process electronic orders unless they come through a secure connection.”
	“But she could still call them up--”
	“Yes, but that’s where it gets complicated. See, the gold is actually under Maerin’s name--or rather the name of Wyll Sinclare.”
	“Why in the name of--”
	“You know how she is,” Istria said. “She hates to be known to anyone. I don’t think you could find a single Cretid, outside of her minions, who knows her by sight or has heard her voice. And of course she doesn’t have any kind of photo identification. You can’t just call up a broker and say, ‘Hello there. I operate under an alias, will never meet you, have no form of legal identification, will not give you a phone number and have no fixed address. Let’s do business.’ She set Maerin up as Sinclare and fronted everything through him--including the currency transactions.”
	“But with her mindstrength--” Aine put in, now interested.
	“It only works in person,” Istria said. “Not even Lythril can mindforce someone via Ethermail. Once he set the account up, she could manipulate it from home; of course she made him turn over the passwords. But she can’t do that now. If she wants her gold she’s going to have to go in person and mindforce them. And she may do it, eventually, but I think it would take a long time before she could bring herself. Secrecy is her shield.”
	“So that was why she kept him alive,” I said.
	Istria looked out the window, thoughtful. “That was a lot of it, certainly.” 
	The car continued to snake through the ranks of the apple trees for a few moments, before she kept talking.
	“I know it seems insane. But he had something she needed. I have no idea what. Knowing he was crazy, sloppy, indiscreet, weak--she still wanted him there. I think she really believed that there were things she needed done that only he could do.”
	“The eel babies in the tanks,” I said.
	“Cloning. That was his project. She set us against each other--him working with flesh and me with spirit matter. She thought the mutual hatred would spur us faster.”
	“And of course there was that termination practice he had,” Aine said. “She needed him to collect all of those undone notborns.”
	“Aine,” I said, reading how that stung Istria.
	But Aine wasn’t to be put off. “What was she using them for, or didn’t she share the recipe?”
	Istria’s eyes hardened.
	“I’m not your diaoc,” she said. “I’m not bound to answer, and I’m not going to.”
	Whatever Aine was going to say, she didn’t say it, because the car had suddenly started coughing--stuttering forward in awkward, interrupted spurts. Istria leaned into the front seat as Aine tried to get it running again.
	“Look at the needle,” Istria said. “We’re out of fuel.”
	The car finally shuddered itself to a full stop. The three of us sat there for a moment, each cursing in her own mind and her own regional dialect.
	“These things have what they call combustion engines, don’t they?” I said.
	“Forget it,” Istria said. “If there were a way to run this on shri fire Lythril would have figured it out. She’s so extravagant in some ways and so damn cheap in others.”
	“Well,” I said, getting out of the car, “I’m going to have a look, anyhow.”
	When I finally admitted it was hopeless, Istria and Aine were both pretty charitable, considering the amount of time I’d wasted. The sunlight was weakening as the day wore itself out and the wind sighed restively in the branches around and above us.
	“All we can do now is walk, I guess,” I said.
	But before we had even started up the road, we heard the sound of another engine--louder, if not any healthier, than ours was. A battered truck appeared far down at the other end of the road. We waited for it to get closer.
	“You think it’s the police?” Aine asked, nervously.
	“No,” Istria said. “They can afford new vehicles.”
	The thing approaching us was, indeed, a rattletrap, with blotches of rust and flaking paint that gave it a mangy look. But there was something familiar about it. It stopped in front of us, leaving Aine to stare at its begrimed windshield and wonder where she’d seen it before as the driver peered at us with much the same question on his mind.
	I couldn’t believe it.
	“Abiard?” I called.
	The door of the cab opened and he stepped out of it.
	“It is,” he said, walking toward us. “It is you. I thought it was, but I didn’t see how it could be.” From his face it seemed that he was glad enough to see us, but it was a gladness deficient in enthusiasm, dampened by some other sorrow. 
	“But...this can’t be the same farm,” I said.
	“Of course not,” he answered. “Their season is coming soon, so we’re out here with the apples now. Why do you think they call us migrants?” He finally noticed Istria. 
	“Oh--Istria, this is Abiard. His family were very kind to us when we first came over the border. Abiard, this is...”
	And I stopped, both because I didn’t really know how to introduce her and because he had finally recognized the chain on her neck.
	His eyes flicked back to me, and they narrowed.
	“No, damn it!” I shouted, angry. “No, I am not one of those turncoat bitches back home you may have heard about, I’m still true and she’s not going to hurt you.”
	He backed up, slowly.
	“Oh, for Idair’s sake,” Istria said. “She’s telling the truth, I’ll show you.” She touched my shoulder.
	“However often it happens,” I groaned when I could talk again, “it still hurts like a bitch.”
	Abiard watched us get up. “Shriia,” he finally said. “Are you all right?”
	“The pain will pass,” I said. “And Idair knows my threshold’s about as high as it’s ever been.” Istria looked away. “Whether I’m all right...”
	“Of course you’re not,” he said, with sudden comprehension. It took me a minute, and then I realized. He’d recognized the signs of hunger. “You’ll come home with us, shriia. You, and your scoilin, and...and...”
	“And the dark user,” Istria said, bitterly.
	Abiard looked back at her, and now suddenly he was not afraid at all.
	“And your friend here,” he said, holding Istria’s gaze with his. “But you might want to button up. Not everyone trusts their own judgment the way I do.”
	We pushed the car to the side of the road and got into the truck. Aine and Istria wedged into the back seat, while I took the seat beside him. As we drove past Chandra’s abandoned and forlorn car, Istria finally started buttoning her collar, so that the chain was invisible underneath it. Aine prudently said nothing.
	She could have taken it off when we left, if she had wanted to, or worn it on somewhere else, where it could be concealed. But so far I had never seen her without it. It was like her. Having turned, she wasn’t going to pretend otherwise. Which was why Lythril was smart to agree to let her stay in the lab. 
	But now, as we were approaching another of those makeshift towns, different but markedly similar to the first one, she had agreed to hide it. To make things easier for me, maybe; she knew how much it bothered me to be questioned like that. Or perhaps, also, because now that she would be among her own people, she wanted to avoid the shame. 
	Abiard helped me down from the cab. Aine and Istria struggled out of the back seat. People were streaming into the camp, walking slowly, dusty from work. Most of them were strangers to me--men and women Ilean’s age or younger. And there were a lot of children, watching us, whispering to each other that there were strangers here.
	“Where’s Ilean?” I asked.
	His face lengthened. “She’s here. Mahial is with us; she can’t pick, of course, but she picks up mending work from the others.”
	“And the child, she must have birthed her by now?”
	He sighed, pausing before the entrance to one of the plywood-and-tarpaper shacks.
	“Oh don’t tell me she lost it,” Aine blurted, suddenly alarmed.
	“Not yet she hasn’t,” he said, grimly.
	He pulled back the sheet of plastic that hung in the doorway, and looked at me. 
	“She’ll be glad to see you,” he said. “She’s in there.”
	“Aren’t you coming?” I asked.
	He shook his head. “I will in a while. I have to wash; the stuff they put on the apples is dangerous to the baby.”
	Abiard bowed and walked away. I ducked into the shack.
	There wasn’t much light; just what they got out of a very small lamp burning with a very small amount of oil on an upended crate near the cot at one end. Ilean was sitting on the cot, head bent over the bundle in her arms. 
	“Ilean?” I said, tentatively.
	I work with shriias and I’ve seen fatigue. But the eyes she lifted toward us were as tired as the world, and as sad.
	“It’s Theamh,” I said. “You met us a long time ago--you were still expecting--”
	“Of course!” she said, her voice sounding even more tired now that there was a wisp of enthusiasm in it. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you in a strange place and...”
	“And in hreapa,” I said. “I guess you’ve never seen a hreapa.”
	“Only on the VB,” she said.
	Istria knew I was bristling, but I didn’t let Ilean see. “You remember Aine...”
	“I’m glad to see you well,” Aine said, returning her nod.
	“And this is--”
	“I’m called Istria,” she said, bowing to Ilean. “I used to be a shriia.”
	Getting as much of it out as she thought she could. Ilean looked a little puzzled, but figuring out what Istria’s deal was seemed to be the last thing on her mind. “I’m glad to know you, and to see you again,” she said. “I’m...I’m happy you’ll have the chance to meet her, even if she doesn’t plan to stay.”
	She said it as if she would like to be crying, but had run out of the strength to do it. I looked down at the bundle, which moved gently as the baby inside it stirred weakly.
	“What’s the matter with her?” Aine asked, hushed.
	Ilean shook her head. “I don’t know. She’s just--she’s not thriving.”
	“Not thriving” is how new mothers will describe children suffering from any number of things, from colic to underfeeding. It was spooky to hear her using the phrase, knowing she had been born here in the Cretid Nation. She must have picked it up from Mahial and the other people who had been born at home. Language migrating with the people, making her an Ideiren mother in a Cretid world.
	“Can...can I...?” I began, gesturing timidly at the bundle.
	“Please,” she said, handing her carefully toward me as I sat on the bed. “I know it’s too late, but maybe she’ll have peace with you holding her.”
	I looked up at her, surprised. She hadn’t said, the last time we saw her, that she wasn’t a believer, but she hadn’t given much indication that she was, either. Grief brings people around to belief, sometimes. Although sometimes it pushes them further away.
	The baby was unimaginably tiny. She couldn’t have been more than two months old, but I had the feeling that she had not gained as much weight as she should have. I would have suspected underfeeding, but she was still young enough to be nursing, and Ilean didn’t look starved. She wasn’t hungry; she was sick. 
	“Has she not been holding food well?” I asked.
	Ilean nodded. “It all seems to run out of her. And now she hasn’t even got much of an appetite any more--I have to offer it to her, or she wouldn’t cry for it. She just wails--not the good hungry cry, just this...little...”
	Come look, you two, I said. Remember, I had no siblings.
	Istria squatted on the floor, looking closely at the baby. Aine knelt next to her. 
	I have no idea what this is, Istria finally said, voicing what seemed to be Aine’s assessment as well. If it were fever or infection she’d be hot; if it were beagi, she’d be in more pain than this, from the cramps.
	“Your milk is coming all right, is it?” I asked.
	She nodded. “More than I want, really.”
	“Because her appetite has fallen,” I said, sadly. I looked into her little eyes, which were round and vacant the way the eyes of the very young are. 
	The link was easy to make, her being so young. She wasn’t possessed; her mind was all right, aside from having been worried and worried by this chronic unease. 
	<Child.>
	<Who are you?>
	<I’m called Theamh.>
	<You’re not my mother.>
	<I’m not. I’m only trying to help you.>
	<What is wrong with the world?>
	<Too many things to tell you now. Do you not like it here?>
	<It’s not right,> she said. <I’m not right in here. It’s not a right place.>
	Talking about her body. <You feel like it’s not yours?>
	<It’s mine. But it’s not right. It’s not well.>
	<Has it never been well?>
	<It was...once. Now, it’s not right. I can’t stay here.>
	<But your mother...>
	She didn’t need me to tell her her mother loved her, or to point out that she would miss her if she left. She felt it well enough.
	<I would stay, I would, but I can’t. It’s not a right place.>
	<If we can make it right, will you stay?>
	<I would stay even if it were half right. Even if it were only a little bit right.>
	<Do nothing yet,> I said. <We will try to make it right. Wait a little while, to give us a chance.>
	<I will,> she said, strained. <The little while I can.>
	I backed out and looked down at her, as sorely puzzled as before. All I knew now was that this was not something she had been born with, and that it was getting worse.
	I handed her to Ilean. “She says she’ll stay a little while,” I said. “To give us time.”
	The flap moved and Mahial came through, carrying a pot from which steam rose.
	“It’s time for--great Idair’s mercy, how did you find us?” she cried, recognizing me and Aine. “So often and so long we’ve been wishing for help...”
	“Abiard happened on us by accident,” I said. “As for helping, I’m still not sure I can.” I was looking at the baby, and I was starting to get that sense. The same sense I’d had looking at Weadiw in the Zone, or at those strawberries glistening with their protective poisons.
	“Ilean, have you been taking the child into the orchard with you?” I asked.
	She shook her head. “Oh no, shriia. That would kill her. The stuff they put on the apples, it’s worse than what they use for the berries.”
	“And she washes every day before she comes home,” Mahial said, accepting not only our presence but Istria’s without asking further. “Abiard too. We’ve all been careful.”
	She put the pot down on the floor and dunked a glass bottle into it.
	“We sterilize the bottles, just like it says...we’ve done everything we could think of, but she still isn’t thriving.”
	I looked at the bottle, while I felt Aine and Istria being as puzzled as I was.
	“What bottles?” I asked. “I thought you said your milk was coming still?”
	“I can’t nurse her during the day, I work,” Ilean said. “Mahial feeds her.”
	“Feeds her what?” I asked. “You...you’re not nursing, at your age, surely?”
	Mahial laughed, ins spite of her anxiety about the child. “Bless you for even considering the possibility, shriia. No, we use the stuff in the boxes.” She took one out of the upended crate and handed it to me. “It’s all balanced and fortified and everything to be just like mother’s milk, and then they dry it out and put it in these boxes.”
	The box was blue and white, with a baby’s smiling face on it. In a small box were the directions. It did indeed stress sterilizing the bottle, and boiling the water first...
	“Mahial,” I said, quietly. “Where do you get your water, here?”
	“We’ve got a hose out back, same as in our summer cottage,” she said, with that easygoing irony. 
	“Would you...would you go and get me a cup of the same water you use to make up this...formula?”
	She nodded and left. Istria was watching me. Aine was just looking at the baby, and getting sadder and sadder.
	If she’s boiling it, it would kill the beagi, Istria said.
	I know. That’s not what I think this is.
	Then what is it?
	Mahial brought the cup back. I looked into it and made the adjustment.
	“What is it, shriia?” Ilean asked, anxious.
	I looked up at her, and I burst into tears. 
	“Theamh?” Istria said, worried.
	“It’s my fault,” I said. “I should have told you. It just--I never thought of your giving it to the baby. I didn’t know she would be drinking it so young, I thought--”
	“Told me what?” Ilean said, her anxiety sharpening into alarm.
	“The water,” I said, while Aine nodded. “That stuff they put on the crops...it gets into the water.”
	“But we sterilize the water,” Mahial said.
	“That only kills things that live,” I said, my voice high with the strain. “This isn’t beagi, it’s--it’s--look.”
	I brought the fire out of the water. The four of them watched it glowing sickly in my hand. Aine had seen it before, but none of them had--especially not Istria, who was nevertheless understanding the seriousness of this a lot faster than they were.
	“The stuff gets into the water, the water is on fire, the water goes into you and the fire goes with it,” I said, still crying so much I was afraid they wouldn’t understand me. “And you’re big enough it doesn’t bother you, but she....she’s so small...”
	“You mean...” Ilean broke off; Mahial finished. 
	“We’ve been poisoning her,” she said, her voice flat and dry.
	“I should have told you when I saw it, only I was trying to stay hidden,” I said. “And I never thought of you giving it to the baby. Of course I should have warned you.”
	“But how did you see it at all?”
	That was from Istria, who was now very interested in all this. Aine took it for granted that I could see what she couldn’t. But Istria, even though she was dark, still had fire affinity; and she should still, at least as far as she knew, be able to see any fire I saw.
	“It’s...you have to learn the way of looking at it,” I said. “I learned it out in Dairc, when the Ubh was fouled. This is a different kind of poison...but it still burns.”
	“But I was born here,” Ilean interrupted, starting to realize the horror of it all. “I lived all right--”
	“They didn’t have this stuff then,” Mahial said, looking at the bottle in its pan. “I nursed you in the usual way. Back then, there were still a few kinds of crop they didn’t put poisons on.”
	“And the other children--”
	“Didn’t Grainne lose her baby last year,” Mahial answered, her voice rising with the anger of it. “And hasn’t Thiela grown up puny and blasted after she had that poorly spell in her first year, so that Yevra almost lost her?”
	“But...” Ilean’s voice cracked as she turned back to me. “If you know the poison, is there no way to cure her?”
	I waited until I could stop crying and say this calmly.
	“There is a way to do it,” I said. “I know you’re upset. But I want you to listen carefully so you understand what I’m asking you, and we had better get Abiard in here to hear it too.”
	Mahial left the room. Ilean just nodded, looking down at her child’s red wrinkled face.
	“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry, little apple. I didn’t know.”
	Istria swallowed. Not looking at her, I said to Ilean, “Of course you didn’t. Nobody would have thought of it. This is not your fault. It’s mine, for not telling you.”
	“Not telling us what?”
	It was Abiard, and he looked dangerous--at bay, desperate. Mahial must have told him some of what had happened.
	“She says our water is poisoned,” Ilean burst out, crying now for real. “She says it’s the mixed milk that’s killing her.”
	Abiard crouched on the floorboards with us and stared searchingly up at me. “Why do you say that?”
	“When...a long time ago, when I worked in Dairc during the long slow burning, I learned how to see some kinds of poison. It’s a kind of fire, it’s just not the kind we’re used to looking for because it’s not a kind we can make. This stuff they put on the crops--I saw it burning across those strawberry leaves, I saw it in your water when I first came among you--I can see it even now, on the collar of your shirt.”
	Abiard looked down, and drew back away from the baby.
	“But I washed,” he said.
	“And I’m sure you got most of it,” I answered. “But it gets into the water--somehow--and the water gets into you. You’re adults, you live with it although I’m sure it doesn’t do you good. But she’s too small. If we don’t settle the fire in her she won’t survive.”
	“What do you mean, settle the fire?” Abiard demanded.
	I swallowed. “There is only one way I know to fix this. You have to settle the fire. You can either put it back into place--turn it back into blood and bone and what a person should be--or if there’s too much because she’s been burned too long you have to draw it out. For her, we’d have to do both--settle as much as we can, and then draw the rest.”
	Abiard nodded, but he wasn’t understanding. It’s hard for people to grasp this. “Which means what?”
	“Which means...settling is painless, the results are immediate. But to draw, you have to bring the fire out of the body. You can’t obviously do it in flame, it would kill the victim. So it has to be converted into heat and brought out that way.” 
	I had lost them all, except for Istria and Aine.
	“Look, what I’m saying is...in order to rid her of the poison, I’m going to have to give her a fever. If it were an adult I wouldn’t worry, but she’s so small and she’s so weak that I’m afraid that even if I can get all the fire out of her she might not survive the fever.” Abiard nodded; Ilean just looked dazed. “I worked with pregnant women out in Dairc when it hit and none of their notborns survived the treatment. And I have never successfully cured a baby this young.”
	All three were looking at me as if they finally understood what I was asking. 
	“I will try if you ask me to do it. But you must understand, when you make the decision, what the risks are. This is a situation in which it might make more sense for you to go to the medicals.”
	Mahial laughed bitterly. Abiard spat.
	“The only kind of treatment we can afford is the kind that’s worse than the disease,” he said. “We’ve been to the clinics. They give us medicine for the currfnaa and send us home.” Ilean nodded. “They’re no bloody use. You might be.”
	While Istria and Aine both got offended on my behalf, he hurried to qualify it. “I mean--I mean, I think you should try. She’s not long for our world anyhow.”
	Ilean nodded. “Better a small chance than no chance at all.”
	I took a deep breath.
	“Bring in whatever you’ll need for the night,” I said. “It’ll be a long vigil.”
	“And--”
	Mahial, on the way out, stopped to look at Istria, who had gotten to her feet.
	“I’ll go with you,” she said. “To get what we’ll need for the fever.”
	Mahial looked at me.
	“She says she used to be a shriia,” Ilean put in.
	“Used to be?”
	“What’s happened to me doesn’t matter,” Istria snapped. “What matters is I grew up in Amst after the plague. I know a thing or two about fever.”
	“Then I’m glad you’re with us,” Mahial said.
	The two of them went out together. I turned back to Aine.
	“We may as well reset the link,” I said. “It’s bound to come in handy.”
	Aine nodded. “I’m ready, dhiaoc.”
	They watched us for the minute or so it took for me to find the old place and build the old bridge. <Do you have me?>
	<I have you, dhiaoc.> She smiled, briefly. <It’s good to have you back.>
	<Likewise.> I had been lonely without it, I realized. And lonely without the rest of them. I would have to reestablish them all, when I got home. Well, except for the one with Barant. And the one with Slythe.
	“Is there...how should I hold her?” Ilean asked as she and Abiard settled on the cot.
	“You’ll have to undress her, first,” I said. “After I’ve done the settling and started the draw, you can bundle her up again. But I need to be able to see where the fire is.”
	Ilean began unwrapping her, carefully, until she lay across her lap, her tiny fists and feet moving pinkly as her head turned. I put my hands on her. I was shocked at how much of her they covered.
	“It’s all right, little apple,” Ilean cooed to her. “It’s all right, it’s all right.”
	I opened my link to the child. <Your mathi is here.>
	<I know.>
	<And your athi with her.>
	<I can tell.>
	<We’re going to try to make this a right place.>
	<How?>
	<There will be some fire. You’ll be very hot. After the heat goes, if it hasn’t been burnt too badly, it will be right.>
	<I will try to stay.>
	<I’ll be here. If you feel it getting too much--like you’ll have to leave--tell me.>
	<I will.>
	Istria and Mahial came back--along with a group of women. There were about six of them, all in their twenties or thirties, crowding into the one room of the shack.
	“Word’s out,” Mahial said. “They want to see you, shriia.”
	I looked back to them, closing the child’s link. “I’m Theamh ni hUlnach,” I said. “What do you need?”
	“We just...” one of them said.
	“We’ve all lost children,” another one answered.
	Aine looked at them, standing with drawn and serious faces, and at Istria moving around near the cot, setting things out.
	“And we all used the powdered stuff,” a third said. “Now you’re saying we killed them.”
	“I’m not saying you killed them,” I said. “I’m saying the water is poisoned. Nobody knew that. Nobody could have. I can only tell because I’m a shriia.”
	“But they’re dead all the same,” said the second one. “Because we used that stuff.”
	“Women,” I said, “I wasn’t here, I didn’t know your children, I can’t tell you for sure what they died of. I can only tell you that I believe that this child, here, has been poisoned by the water, and that if we don’t act soon she will die. Right now it doesn’t matter whose fault this is or how it could have been prevented. It only matters that we try to save Ilean’s daughter.”
	“Do you want help?” the second one asked Ilean.
	“I...we’ve got mathi, and the three of them,” Ilean said. “I think we’ll be all right, but I thank you for asking.”
	She nodded. “If you need, ask.” Her sharp glance turned on me. “Are you really a shriia?”
	“Yes,” I said.
	“I hope you can do her some good,” she said. “It’s about thurking time.”
	They left. Istria began folding up some damp cloths, and meditating dire revenge upon the departing spokeswoman.
	“She didn’t mean anything by it, shriia,” Mahial said.
	“She certainly did,” I said, turning back to the baby. “You all have been up here for who knows how many generations and there’s never been a shriia among you.” And, as I saw the depth of the damage, “And Idair knows if anyone needs one, you do.”
	I looked up. Aine was next to me, crouched by Abiard’s feet. Istria knelt at the head of the bed, surrounded by the things she had gathered against the coming fever. Ilean’s anxious face hovered over my shoulder, and Abiard sat clutching her hand.
	“If you think you can do it freely,” I said, looking up at them, “I’d feel better knowing someone was keeping Idair’s attention.”
	“I’ll do it, dhiaoc,” Aine said. <I don’t think they know the words.>
	<All right then.> I looked over at Istria. Ready?
	Ready.
	I moved my hands over her little body, starting the work. Aine began the song.

	with us when the story opens
	with us as we reach its end
	with us when we ever need you
	mother, sister, helper, friend

	though so many of your children
	in their need now beg your aid
	think of us here as we struggle
	think of us, we are afraid

	though the wind of death is blowing
	Idair keep the story going
	make this one storm she can weather
	Idair keep this life together

Her eyes were less vacant now, and I felt her mind moving a little more vigorously. Settling what I could settle had softened that sense of strain and unease, and now she was taking more of an interest in what was around her. Her head turned up toward Ilean.
	“She looks better,” Ilean whispered, afraid to spoil it.
	“She is, a little,” I answered. “I’ve done the safe part. This is the risky part.” Abiard nodded. “She is better. But she’s about to start looking worse.”
	Ilean set her jaw. “I’m ready, shriia.”
	No you’re not, I thought.

II.
Are You My Mother?
	
	“Come on,” Istria muttered, hanging over the baby’s sweat-drenched head. “Come on, little apple, stay with us.”
	She had been saying much the same thing for a long time in her mind, but many hours of worry had worn her out. When you’re tired it’s easier just to go ahead and say it. Anyway, the baby was screaming so loudly nobody but me could hear her. Ilean was crying, as she had been for some time.
	“I’m sorry,” Abiard said, standing up. 
	He walked out, letting the flap swing shut behind him. I wasn’t surprised; I don’t think Ilean was either. Not that she was paying attention to him anyway, with the baby hot in her hands, bawling its lungs out and looking sicker than ever.
	“It’s too much,” I said, wiping a hand across my hot forehead. “Bring her down.”
	Istria got the cup out. I had projected into the baby; I asserted control when I needed it, in order to get down the stuff Istria had made up. I didn’t know what was in it, but it did seem to do a pretty good job of bringing her temperature down. Which I appreciated, since at this point her temperature was my temperature.
	“More?” Istria readied the cup.
	I shook my head. “We’re almost there. She’s got to burn it off.”
	<Hot.>
	<I know child, I know it’s hot. Hang in there.>
	She kept up her squalling, while my innards roasted along with hers. I had deliberately not differentiated so I could monitor her temperature. Which meant I was reliving my bout with the plague rather vividly.
	And it was then that it changed. Having done much the same thing with some of Dairc’s victims, I recognized the signs--she was done burning it off.
	“The fire’s out,” I said, in answer to Aine’s unasked question. “Now it’s just about when the fever breaks.” I looked over at Istria. “Do what you can to bring it down.”
	She got the cold compresses ready. I sat back a little bit, waiting to see what would happen.
	“What was it you gave her?” I asked, now that I had a spare moment to think.
	“It’s something mathi used to put together when we were sick,” she said. “Of course I couldn’t find all the ingredients, but the fielhu’s what’s important, and...”
	The memory rose in her and she stopped. I looked over her shoulder at the dish and the crushed remnants of the dried leaves she had pounded.
	Aine looked past me at the baby, who had suddenly let loose a loud and aggrieved cry. She put the flat of her wrist against the baby’s forehead.
	<I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up,> she sent me, <but I think she’s a little less hot than she was.>
	The same thought had occurred to Ilean, who tested her with one hand.
	“I think it’s breaking,” she whispered.
	A few minutes later there was no doubt about it. She was cooling down, and she was still alive. And she was hungry.
	“Go ahead and give it to her,” I said. “She’ll hold it now.”
	I backed out and shut the link. It was a relief, although I was still hungry.
	Ilean opened the front of her dress and laid the baby against her breast. She found the nipple and began nursing.
	Without the baby screaming, it was suddenly very quiet. Mahial jumped off the cot to go for Abiard, but she met him coming in.
	“Is she--” he began, but stopped when he saw Ilean’s face.
	“Look,” Ilean said.
	He put a hand around the back of the baby’s head, stroking the slight soft down.
	“Will she thrive now?” he asked.
	I went to the child. <How are you?>
	<I am well,> she sent back.
	<Are things right?>
	There was a pause. <Yes. Right enough.>
	I closed the link with a sigh.
	“She ought to,” I said. “Just make sure she doesn’t get any more of that water. And if Ilean can avoid drinking it, that would probably help too.”
	Water was coming from Ilean’s eyes, as the baby kept drinking and she began to have hope.
	Istria rubbed her eyes with one hand and sat back against the wall of the shack. 
	Are you all right?
	I’m fine.
	That was a stretch, but as she had pointed out, she wasn’t bound to a lot of things any more, truth being one of them.
	You worked hard for her, I said.
	You worked harder.
	Abiard was trying to hold onto Ilean and the baby and Mahial at the same time, and crying. Aine sat cross-legged on the floor, looking at them, happy for them and happy to have done a good night’s work.
	I thought...
	She almost stopped, but she saw me and something made her finish the thought.
	I thought I would never get to work with you again.
	I smiled.
	We never know what the future holds, I said, and then stopped smiling.
	What is it?
	I closed my eyes, resting against the wall, near her but not too near. Idair is good to me, giving me a chance to repair a blunder like that. I can’t understand why I didn’t think of the baby.
	You can’t think of everything, Istria answered. And would they have believed you?
	Maybe not. I was in an awful hurry, anyhow.
	Istria handed me a nearby rag; I toweled the sweat off my head and neck. My hair was plastered with it and I felt like my stink must be pretty redolent. But Lythril’s dungeon had gotten me past most of the smaller embarrassments.
	The flap opened and a woman came in--the same one who had seemed to be the spokesperson for the committee that had visited a few hours ago.
	“She looks better,” she said, a little unwillingly.
	“She is,” Ilean answered, looking up at her. “So I hope, anyhow.”
	“You can’t expect too much right away,” I said. “It’ll take her a little while to put on flesh. But as long as she gets enough milk she should do it.”
	Abiard was looking at me, and nodding absently as if his mind were somewhere else, which it probably was. Then, suddenly, his eyes sprang open. “Great Idair’s boots, shriia, we never offered you anything. And you starved as it is.”
	“My grief, is it that obvious?” I said, conscious now that I was an object of pity.
	Mahial had taken the hint and opened the doors of the little cupboard they had brought with them from their ‘summer cottage.’ “Yes,” she said, as she started setting things out on the floor. “It’s that obvious.”
	Aine and Istria moved in around the food; they were as hungry as I was, even if they didn’t have a month of fasting to eat down. 
	“None of it’s meat, shriia,” Mahial said. “And all of it’s yours. Please.”
	I’ll assume she means to include both of you in the invitation, I said.
	We tore into it. Used by now to Cretid food, I didn’t stop to pay much attention to what I was eating. And I’m afraid I didn’t pay much attention to manners, either. The other woman watched with a mixture of amazement and distaste as we ate with the urgency of people who don’t remember their last meal and aren’t sure where the next will be coming from.
	“I’ve got money,” Istria said, pausing for breath. “We’ll pay you back for it.”
	“No you won’t,” said Ilean. “Mathi taught me better than that.”
	Istria didn’t press; habit still on her, perhaps. Like me, she had gotten used to accepting food; it was one way to make the allowance last, and there was a whole unspoken code about offering and accepting that I was still learning the tricks of even after five years. 
	“She does look better,” the other woman repeated, as if each time she saw the baby it was a surprise.
	“Thank you for coming to ask after her, Samh,” Ilean said. “I’m sorry; I know the crying must have kept you up.”
	“It’s worth it if she thrives,” Samh said. “Good rest to all here.”
	Istria watched her exit, but sensing my thoughts she refrained from comment.
	“Samh is all right, really,” Ilean said, embarrassed on her behalf. “It’s just--like me, she lost children before birth. It makes it all the more bitter when you lose one after.”
	“Thank you all,” Mahial said, cleaning up. “Stay as long as you like and make use of anything we have. Whatever we give it will never repay you.” Her eyes watered, and she turned away so we wouldn’t see. 
	Now that the drama was over, we finally started bedding down. Mahial, evidently, had her own shelter; probably to give the new family privacy. They wouldn’t have any, with us there, but then they were too tired at this point to need much. Aine and I started making camp the way we always did. Istria watched us, saying nothing.
	“You did well with the prayer,” I said, as Aine shook out the bedroll. “Sometimes the most tedious jobs are the most important.”
	“If I helped, I’m glad,” she said. “I didn’t mind. It took my mind off things.”
	She lay down, without looking at Istria. 
	Abiard stood. “There’s a privy out back, for when you need it,” he said. “It’s hard to find in the dark, but if you come with me I can show you how to go.”
	I was about to remind him that I make my own light, but it became clear that really he wanted the chance to talk to me alone. So I got up to follow.
	It was indeed hard to find, but we weren’t halfway there before Abiard broached what was on his mind. “Your friend, the one with the chain,” he said.
	I sighed. “And what about her?”
	“She seems like she might be a hard woman to talk to,” he went on. “Though it seems, too, like you talk to her easy enough.”
	“You’re not far wrong, I suppose, either way.”
	“Look,” he finally said, as we reached the rickety, narrow hut that apparently enclosed the privy. “I don’t know any way to do this besides just get it straight out. I came here from the Zone. I know what makes the difference between evil once and evil forever. Your friend has the look of a woman who doesn’t want to be the way she is.”
	“I’m glad to hear you say it,” I said. “I have my own opinions, but I couldn’t blame anyone for not trusting them.”
	“I’ve taken life,” he said, faltering just a little as he made the admission. “Whatever she’s done it can’t be worse than that. And--” He dropped his eyes, but the fatigue, the lateness of the hour, or the fact that conducting me to the privy had broken down whatever barriers were left up after this long exhausting night made him keep going. “Believe me, I would be the last to make little of the love of a good woman. But--even so--there are some things that only the fallen know.” I looked at him. “I just--I--”
	“You think you can help her,” I finished.
	He nodded.
	“And you want me to let her know you’re willing.”
	“That’s it, shriia.”
	“Abiard,” I said, “if you can help, it will more than repay me for anything I may have done for your child. And you’re right, if you approach her she’ll retreat. Wait till she comes to you.”
	“You think she will, shriia?”
	I smiled. I didn’t know whether he could see it in the dark.
	“I think so,” I said. I pulled out a light globe and hung it up near the privy, pale in the darkness like the tail of a lightning bug.
	“No reason that should make trouble, is there?” I asked. “I mean, nobody comes this way much at night, do they? It won’t attract predators, or anything?”
	“Far from it, shriia,” Abiard said, slightly amused even if it was still unnerving for him to see shri fire. “It’ll be a great service for us. I’ve stopped fooling around with electricity, you’ll be glad to hear.”
	“I am glad to hear it,” I said, starting forward. “Because I’m way too wrecked to be saving you from that fnaa.”

	I woke up wiping at my face, on which there was moisture. I thought for a minute it had started raining, then remembered I was inside. The mystery resolved itself when I finally made out Istria, crouched next to me in the dark with a cup of water in one hand. Since she couldn’t shake me, she had found a more creative way to interrupt my sleep.
	“Istri, what the--” I began.
	“Show me how you do it,” she said, with that desperation I remembered.
	I rolled over and sat up, shivering in my shift. “It’s complicated,” I said. 
	“I know you’re tired, but--”
	She didn’t have to say it. She knew I knew. Dark or bright, she was Istria, and if there was something she could learn she couldn’t stand not to learn it.
	“Are you sure you still--”
	She brought fire out of one hand, hiding it again immediately. “To my sorrow.”
	I rubbed my eyes. He’s a lenient bastard, the Dark One, I said. How many babies is he going to let you save before he takes you off the payroll? 
	An instant later I was fully conscious of how much that had been the wrong thing to say.
	Theamh. It was dark, but that didn’t make the stare she was turning on me any less frightening. For my sanity, for your health, do not EVER joke about that.
	I’m sorry, I answered. You know how it is with me.
	I know. She held out the cup. So show me. Please.
	We better go outside, it’ll be easier if we can run the hose and use that. 
	As I stood something caught my attention and I began investigating.
	What is it? she said, as she heard me cursing.
	Damn it, I answered, sure she could read the fear. My blood’s come.
	Before Istria could answer, Aine rolled over and her eyes opened. I must have been radiating something pretty powerful. 
	“Dhiaoc?” she murmured. 
	“It’s all right,” I whispered. <Istria and I are going outside. Go on back to sleep.>
	She looked at me, but she must have decided that there was nothing she could do about it so it was as well to keep quiet. <All right, dhiaoc.> She rolled over.
	<It’s not what you think,> I answered a little snappishly.
	<Since you say it,> she answered.
	I was too worried about other matters to get into it with her, and after a year of encouraging informality it was too late to start lecturing her about respect for her elders. 
	Come with me?
	Her answer came almost before the question. I’ll come with you.
	The two of us set off out the doorway and away from the camp, toward the trees. Does it even grow up here?
	I’m not sure, she answered. I suppose if not, ordinary moss will do.
	It was a few minutes before she asked. It’s--still as it was, then.
	Yes.
	Once we reached the trees, Istria crouched lower and began looking over the ground, by the light of my globe. I knew without her telling me that she didn’t like making her own fire, any more. After a while she found it.
	So it does grow here, she said. You better check, though; if it’s been sprayed...
	I looked. No, it’s all right. The stuff must not reach this low.
	She started gathering it up. I squatted near her, pulling the sepam moss up in handfuls. Sepam moss is absorbent, and it has a herbal scent that does something to cover the odor. Of course, in the City, people buy it already gathered, so I had never really learned where to look for it. In the scoil, I was too embarrassed to ask; that is, too embarrassed to ask anyone but Istria.
	We piled the stuff onto my hreapa, which I had laid out on the ground nearby. Istria worked in silence for a while, judging the moment.
	It’ll be all right, she said. Nothing bad’s wrong with you. I’d know.
	I know, Istri, I just--
	She didn’t try to talk me out of it. It’s too strange, it coming on you now of all times. 
	I nodded. And having had that dream--I don’t like it, I just don’t like it.
	Istria deposed another pile, looking at me but saying nothing. There are all kinds of ways of saying nothing, and Istria knew them all. And saying nothing, now, when any other woman on earth would have been moved to open scorn at the sight of a grown woman taking fright at her own blood, said more than anything.
	I think this is enough, she said. We can get more tomorrow for the road.
	I nodded. Thanks, Istri. 
	She turned her back on me and moved off, far enough for privacy but close enough to call. I got down to the unpleasant, unfamiliar, and uncomfortable business at hand.
	I was so preoccupied that I didn’t see anything until I stood up. And the first thing I saw was a bolt of red light streaking between the trunks, heading straight at me.
	“Teir abhaile ghilliadh!”
	The speed of my reflex surprised me; I was sure it would be on me before I could get it out. But the thing pulled up short with a frustrated shriek, its red wings trailing into wisps behind it, that red hair stirred over the red features by the motion of an unearthly wind.  Another one of these creatures, and me without my uisce.
	“Teir abhaile!” I shouted again. “Go home, go home, leave me alone!”
	That half-comprehending look of recognition appeared in her eyes. Dread mixed with the fear and weighted me down.
	“Who are you?” she demanded, voice as raw as her red vibrant body.
	“I’m Theamh ni hUlnach,” I said, and waited.
	“Are you my mother?”
	“No,” I answered. “But I think I know where she is.”
	This seemed not to have been the answer she was expecting. It hadn’t been the answer I was expecting to give, either; it just seemed to be the right thing to say.
	“Where is she?” it roared.
	“Right behind you,” came the answer.
	It whirled around, fixing its red eyes on Istria, who had somehow managed to sneak up on the thing.
	“Leave us,” Istria said, while the red creature stared at her dumbfounded.
	“Istria, are you crazy?” I shouted. “If you think I’m leaving you alone with that--”
	Go back to the camp and get the uisce, she said. She won’t go for me until I’ve answered her questions.
	I moved away, but not very far. <Aine.> No answer. <AINE.>
	<Dhiaoc? Where are you?>
	The red woman’s wings had melted back into her, and now she and Istria were staring at each other, each looking like she was at bay.
	<I’m in the orchard east of the camp. Bring the uisce and get out here.>
	<But how will I find you?>
	<Look for the glowing red naked woman. I’ll be near her.>
	<I’m on my way.>
	They were talking now, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Now that I was out of earshot and downwind, the red creature seemed calmer, which made sense considering what she was. I didn’t move. Without the uisce there was no real way for me to help, and my being near would only create more trouble, things being as they were.
	I jumped when the red thing’s arms began moving, but it wasn’t a threat--just gestures, that looked sometimes like pleading and sometimes like demands. Istria answered, keeping her own hands by her sides, but not without effort.
	It seemed like a very long time before I saw Aine running up behind me with the bottle. She stopped near me, looking through the apple branches at this apparition with just a little bit of a tremor. She’d learned to get over a lot, but these things still had the power to unnerve her. They were certainly doing that to me.
	<Should we-->
	<Slowly. And I better keep downwind.>
	Aine accepted this without asking why, the same way she noticed but didn’t remark on the fact that my hreapa was spread out many feet away from us near where the two of them stood in their shrinking circle, going over and over the same patch of ground.
	“...support this,” the thing was saying. “It is my right and your duty. You don’t deny it.”
	“I am asking you to look at it differently,” Istria said, repeating the words with a weariness I recognized. “Of course you have a claim. But if you would just see possibility, instead of none--”
	“I see what I know,” it gave back, the roar of flame edging its words. “You see what you want. If this were your existence you would not stand it a day. You cannot ask me to stand it forever.”
	<Fnaa.>
	<What?> Aine asked, but it was clear by then. The wind had shifted. The red woman’s nostrils flared, and her head swiveled toward me. She hung there for a long moment, quivering, fixed.
	<Give me the bottle,> I said.
	Aine handed it to me. Istria took a step forward.
	“You will not touch her,” she said, to the apparition.
	“And if I did?” the thing said, sending its breath back to Istria scorching with hatred. “You’d kill me then, wouldn’t you?”
	She bared her teeth and launched herself into the reeking air.
	“Teir abhaile ghilliadh!”
	I flung the water at her. She hovered above me in an agony of frustration, then took her red roaring way through the trunks of the distant trees.
	Istria wouldn’t look at me. Aine would, though. Her eyes were on me as I stoppered the bottle, and they were pretty wide open.
	“Did neither of you,” I began, my voice low as the measure of the danger averted became clearer to me, “have better sense than to meddle with the thurking blood-eaters?”
	Now she brought her head up, forcing herself to speech with that desperate pride of hers. “We know they can take in human blood, it was a natural place to start--”
	“Iandar, Sincil, Anron, Idair and all the other things and people Lythril doesn’t swear by!” I shouted, advancing on her with each name. “Will you listen to yourself?”
	There were a lot of things she would do for me that she wouldn’t do for anyone, but backing down in a fight like this wasn’t one of them. “There’s no point to doing a job if you’re not going to do it right!”
	“Istri, there is no right way to do this job!”
	For a moment it seemed she had choked on rage, but she found her voice again.
	“How you can stand there and talk about what’s right when you abandoned me in that hole for four years--”
	“Idair’s teeth, is it this again?” I shouted, forgetting in my transport that Aine was still there and still watching us in great distress. “I cannot change what I’ve done or haven’t! How long are you going to hate me for that?”
	She swallowed whatever retort she had ready, stunned into tears she resented.
	“I don’t hate you,” she said, in a lost and half-voiced whisper.
	Something snapped inside me and it all deflated. “I’m sorry, it’s not fair, I know, I just...I did come for you,” I said, miserably. “I did come for you, after all.”
	She nodded, but I knew what she was really thinking--and so, evidently, did Aine.
	“She did,” Aine snapped. “She had to use Lythril to get the authorization. But we were really going up there after you, and not after Lythril. I knew that from before the beginning. You know it too. Don’t deny it just because it suits your self-pity.”
	“Who asked you, anyway?” Istria snapped.
	“Forget it,” Aine muttered, turning away and raising her hands. “I’m going back to...”
	She trailed off because now she could see what was piled on the top of my hreapa. There’s only one reason to gather sepam moss; it’s completely inedible and no use medicinally. I was expecting her to turn and walk off after getting over the embarrassment, but instead she swung back on me in a state of great agitation.
	“So that’s why it went for you,” she said, her voice shaking. “Because your blood’s come.”
	“That’s right,” I said, still not understanding her anxiety. “I attracted the thing. I knew it was a danger, going out in the woods at night, but--”
	Aine laughed--a bitter, cynical laugh unlike her. There was really only one possible meaning behind it.
	“Aine, I’ll tell you this now for the last time, we did not come out here for that.”
	She laughed again and started walking away, looking over her shoulder at me. “You don’t have to start lying just because you’re shrimarbh now.”
	I was momentarily paralyzed, but I recovered.
	“AINE!”
	I’d never seen her freeze in her tracks quite like that.
	“Get back here!”
	Quickly, but extremely unwillingly, she obeyed, stopping a few feet in front of me and beginning to regret her words intensely.
	“I’m sorry, dhiaoc--”
	“You listen to me,” I said, aware that my voice was shaking. “We have been through enough fnaa together that you should damn well know better than this. There is a war on, we are in the middle of Cretid territory, and I am responsible for your survival, your safety, and your entry into shri. You are not my chaperone and I am not some thirteen-year-old waiting for the chance to sneak off for a roll in the haymow with the boy from two farms over. Do you understand me?”
	“Yes, dhiaoc,” she whispered, terrified.
	“You can trust me, or we can part company. It’s that simple.” She shook her head in panic. “If--something--happens, I will tell you. But unless or until you hear it from me, you will not make assumptions, and you will NEVER doubt my word.”
	She was trying to apologize, but she was crying too hard--a hysterical, stricken sobbing that brought her right back to the beginning of her apprenticeship, before she’d learned how to take my temper and before she knew that what she was capable of.
	I dropped to the ground and sat there, exhausted, wishing to heaven that we had all just slept through the night.
	“It’s--I’m sorry--I just--”
	She was still trying to get it out. I was too tired to help her. 
	Istria suddenly spoke, from the distance she had kept. “It’s the blood, isn’t it?”
	Aine turned her wracked face to Istria and nodded, miserably.
	It came so clear so fast I was angry with myself for not having seen it immediately.
	“Aine,” I said, trying to show her I was done with my rage. “Look at me.”
	She did, although she was still ready to flinch.
	“It’s not shri,” I said, fighting my embarassment to try to reassure her. “It’s me.”
	Now she was calm enough to talk, even though she was still terribly upset--both to have provoked that kind of anger, and to be discussing this with me. “I just--I thought--”
	“It’s not one of those things we don’t tell you,” I said. She sighed. “I don’t not bleed because I’m a shriia. I don’t bleed because...because I just don’t.”
	She nodded, but I felt like it would help her to hear it again. “I guess none of the others would ever think to mention it, and I’m the only one you’ve ever lived with, so of course you noticed I don’t. I should have explained before this. It just never occurred to me that you would make that assumption...and you can see, I don’t like talking about it.”
	“I had...I had wanted to ask you...at freagair...”
	“Idair’s mercy,” I sighed. “Aine, that would take more nerve than even you have.”
	Istria laughed, once, and kept her silence. Aine snuffled.
	“Well, now you know. Shriias bleed just like ordinary women. Except for me.”
	Aine nodded. Then something came to her, and she found the courage to ask it.
	“So you...you think I’ve got the nerve, now?”
	Istria really wanted to laugh, but she didn’t--in deference to me, but also, it seemed, in deference to her. A change, a little bit.
	“Aine,” I said, “if you didn’t, I’d still be in that padded cell.” She nodded. “It’s happened. You’re there. You’ve learned the nerve.”
	“But...I’m still scared of everything.”
	“That’s irrelevant. The point is, you face it now.”
	She nodded, starting to feel a little proud of herself.
	“Now leave me and my moss in peace and go on back. I’ll be there in a minute.”
	“Of course, dhiaoc.”
	She went off through the trees, half-running. I stood up, slowly and with a growing sense of self-loathing.
	“She pressed the bruise,” Istria said.
	“It’s still no excuse.” 
	I folded my hreapa up into a bundle with the moss inside it. 
	“Talking to that poor child about courage,” I said, lifting it gingerly into my arms. “And I can’t even face my own blood.”
	“It hasn’t come, the whole time she’s been with you?”
	I shook my head.
	“You’re not like other women, Theamh,” Istria said. “This is just one more thing that you do the way you do it and nobody else does.”
	I nodded, but she knew I wasn’t really consoled.
	“You know I would never wish you different,” she finally said.
	It was about the only thing she could have said that would have made a difference. She knew that, as she knew so many things. As she knew, for instance, that there was no way around this fear, that she had never been able to make me believe that I was all right.
	“I’m sorry I didn’t come for you right away,” I said.
	Istria’s head turned sharply to one side, and she took a difficult breath.
	“Forget it, Theamh,” she said. “I nursed that hurt as long as I could, but in the end even I had to admit it couldn’t justify much.”
	She stooped down, swept up a handful of moss that had leaked out of my bundle, and tucked it into my hreapa.
	“If I hold grudges where does it leave me,” she said. “You could start now and work at it for years and you still wouldn’t be done betraying me like I’ve betrayed you.”
	“Idair doesn’t ask for perfection,” I said. “I’d certainly be a fool to try.”
	She almost laughed, but there was too much behind us that night.
	“She’s still out there,” I said. “Finding some kind of blood to keep her together.”
	Istria shook her head.
	“You brought them into the world, Istri,” I said. “You’re the only one who can take care of them. Whatever way that is.”
	She looked at me, but she had no answer. I knew none was coming.
	“We should go,” I said. “Abiard’s got to get up early for work, I don’t want him worrying about us.”
	“Where is it, again, that you know him from?”
	She fell into step beside me. “He and Ilean took us in when we turned up on a strawberry farm he was working,” I said. “They took care of Kitth...Kitth.” I blinked. “I forgot about her. I must find out what happened with that child.”
	“Kitth?”
	“She’s one of my people, but I found her in the Zone because she’d killed her husband, and she had the child with her--”
	“Wait,” Istria said. “Killed her husband?”
	I nodded. “The Zone is full of lifetakers,” I said. “Abiard’s one too.”
	“I wouldn’t have thought,” she said, looking pensively ahead at the shack as it appeared through the tree-shaped shadows.
	“He’s come back from it,” I said. “I don’t know how. I don’t guess it’s something you can learn, except by doing it.”
	We pushed the flap gently aside. Aine was already asleep on her part of the floor. Abiard was up, holding the baby while Ilean slept on the cot, one arm around his hips.
	“She’s sleeping,” he whispered, nodding at the baby. “That’s half a night now. It’s a record, for her.” He looked over at Istria, who was still standing; I had dropped to the floor and was hoping for a quick exit from consciousness. “Thank you.”
	“Thank you,” she said, seriously.
	I heard her walk over, and heard the springs of the cot creak as Abiard moved over to let her sit leaning against it.
	“Aren’t you going to sleep?” he asked her.
	“I don’t sleep much,” she said.
	“Neither did I, for a while.”
	I closed my eyes and her answer drifted out of my world. 

III.
Avenging Angels

	“...my advice, don’t ever act on it. I did, once, and it was a huge mistake. It did me no good, and her even less.”
	I was still only half-awake, which was probably why Istria answered him without noticing me eavesdropping. “But...if you had been able to really leave, I mean go to some other town far away and stay there forever--”
	“It would still have been a stupid, useless, cruel thing to do,” he said, his voice hardening. “Look, what damage there is to be done has been done. Leaving won’t undo it. It’ll just put a knife in her heart.”
	Now I was awake. And now Istria knew it. But Abiard kept going.
	“It’s the hardest thing, maybe,” he said. “The hardest, last thing you learn. That you can get that close without doing harm. And that what’s good for you...is good for her, too. When your mind is right.”
	I sat up. The gray was about the right shade. Time to go put on my hreapa and forget that Istria had been discussing this particular topic.
	I went to the privy and took back the light globe, then returned to the shack and began. When I started, the place was quiet; but it woke. Flaps rustled, doors banged, smoke rose up from makeshift cookstoves. By the time I was pinning my brooches on, they were already pouring out of their houses, up the path past me and into the orchards. 
	Even after I was done I stood there, watching them go. At least a hundred, maybe more. All Ideirens, all wearing variations on the same drab costume--denim trousers or a cheap print skirt swinging above the tops of battered boots, hands roughened and red, faces drawn in the early light with fatigue. Fatigue, and something else.
	At home, in a hreapa, you attract attention, but it’s a different kind. Readjusting to a world where nobody knew what a shriia was or that I was one had been difficult. But this was a different thing. They knew who I was, because they’d heard talk. And their minds were on me as they passed, curious, a little frightened, unsure. 
	They knew what a shriia was--but not from experience. They’d heard stories, which they had discounted as folk tales, the nostalgia of parents who wished to be elsewhere. Maybe some of them had doubted whether the Order existed at all, whether we were just a legend. And now here I was, sprung to life out of a past that was only partly theirs. And they weren’t sure what to make of me.
	But there was one thing they weren’t unsure of. In a place like this my word could never carry the weight that it would have at home--at home before Barant, anyhow--but the story about the water had passed from mind to mind or mouth to mouth, and they were crediting it. Maybe because they had their own suspicions, maybe because it seemed natural to them that Cretids would poison anything they didn’t have to use. 
	Istria came up behind me, watching Abiard swing up the path in the truck. “They get up for sunrise too, apparently.”
	“Apparently.” I looked back at her, and became as usual transparent.
	“He didn’t need to tell me,” she said. “I think about it. I think about it a lot. But that’s not because it’ll happen.”
	“Why not?” I asked, curiously detached.
	“I just couldn’t,” she said, finding it a hard thing to have to admit but admitting it all the same. “No matter how much harm I thought I was doing, I don’t think I could ever just walk away from you.”
	“You did it once,” I said.
	“That was different,” she retorted.
	“It’s history now, anyhow,” I said, looking out at the tree branches in the distance.
	“I was young then, in my strength,” she said, hard. “I don’t have that kind of strength now.”
	Five different things that were wrong with that statement struggled in my head to get out. Finally I said, “You think you’re weak because you broke. That means nothing. I would have broken too.”
	“You didn’t,” she said.
	“I had you there,” I answered. 
	Her eyebrows lowered in confusion, as if I had said something that should make sense but didn’t.
	“You were dark. But you were there. Whether you meant to or not, you kept me together.”
	“I don’t see how,” she finally said, her voice low and caught.
	“Do you not feel,” I said, trying to send her something that would help her understand, “like the world changed, that day I showed up--even with everything? That after that everything had to be different?”
	Her brow was furrowed but there was a light in her blue eyes--distant, cold, but still bright. I waited for whatever it was that she surely was going to tell me.
	“Everything,” she finally agreed, with the slightest possible nod. “The instant I saw you. Only I didn’t know that, right away.”
	“The world is different, when we’re together,” I said. “Even if it’s still not everything we’d want.”
	For a minute I was hanging there on the promise of an answer, but at the last second she changed tack.
	“You promised you would show me how you see the fire.”
	I decided not to show my disappointment. “Come out to the trees, I’ll show you.”
	
	“I still don’t see it.”
	The workers had passed us by long ago, and the tree was stripped of its fruit. But Istria and I were still bending our sight on its lonely leaves, looking for invisible flame.
	“You’re letting yourself be distracted,” I said. “It’s a fine-hone thing. Too coarse, and you can’t see it. Too fine, and you see fire everywhere. You want to get adjusted so that you only see the fire that’s wrong--out of place. Disturbed.”
	She fixed her eyes on the leaves and gave it another stare. “It’s not working.”
	“Here--close your eyes for a bit.” It seemed like a ludicrous suggestion, to her, but she humored me. “Think of nothing, except for what you can feel.”
	Hard as it was for me to do that, it was harder for her. But she had learned, like I had, to quiet the voices in her mind and clear the space when she needed it. When I felt that she was where she had to be, I said quietly, “Is it all right?”
	She shook her head, eyes still closed, mouth drawn into a slight frown.
	“There’s...something...” She opened her eyes, which flew immediately back to the leaves of the denuded apple tree ahead of us. The dark lashes drew back just a hair’s breadth, and in those steel-flecked irises I saw the reflection of terrible knowledge.
	“You see it,” I said.
	“I see it,” she whispered, as her eyes flicked from treetop to treetop to treetop.
	“And in under two hours,” I said, with a sigh. “A record, I think. In Dairc, on the average, it took about three and a half before I could get another shriia to see...”
	She was too horrified by the rending of the veil to wonder why I had suddenly lost the heart to finish that sentence. So she didn’t see the fire I was looking at, the one that had enveloped Daire that dark night in the Back Three. But she had enough to deal with.
	“Why in the name of heaven or hell do they do it?”
	“As I understand it,” I said, “it somehow helps the fruit get bigger, and more perfect. It kills beagi, and somehow you don’t get the blemishes.”
	Aine would have given me that wide-eyed stare, that open amazement at the lunacy of the Cretid world. But Istria just met my glance, and shook her head. 
	“Bigger, and more perfect,” she repeated, looking back at them. “Beautiful skin. That’s what they’re all about up here. Beautiful skin.”
	Beautiful skin on a rotten apple; beautiful skin, no matter what it burns. She felt me seeing the truth of it. Something she wasn’t used to, any more--to be saying the truth and being heard.
	“As if the electricity weren’t enough,” she said, with a brief little shiver. 
	We had been looking into the trees for so long that at first we didn’t even see the people coming through them. But the workers were coming back toward us--and it wasn’t because we were on their route. They weren’t pausing to pick fruit, or check roots, or do anything to the trees at all. And they were walking close together, as close as the serried lines of tree trunks would let them, toward the two of us.
	I was worried at first, but when they got closer I saw Abiard and Ilean at the head of them. I wasn’t sure what to make of it when they stopped, and Abiard stepped formally forward, clasping his hands in front of him.
	“Shriia,” he said. “You’re not at home, and we know we’re not your own people. Still, we remember it was said somewhere that a daughter of Idair is a servant to all her children. And we are still her children. So we have come to ask something of you.”
	“I will give it if I can,” I said, as the men and women behind him shuffled in the awkward silence. “What is it that you need?”
	“We are going up to the big house, to talk about the water,” he said. “We want you to come with us.”
	Abiard knew we were hiding from the police; he knew the risk he was asking me to take. He must have explained it to the others. But his child had almost died, and he was angry, and so were so many of them, as they thought of what the water had done to them.
	“As I said, I will give you what you ask if you really want it,” I said. “But can I ask you why you think it will help?”
	“You’re the only one who can explain how it works,” he said. “You’re the only one who can see it. They have no reason to believe us--they never do anyway.”
	“But they have no reason to believe me either,” I answered. “I can’t make them see it. I can tell them I see it, and I can trace the trail back to the source for them, but they’re Cretids. They don’t know about shri and they won’t take my word for it.”
	“I know, shriia, but--what else can we do?”
	The formality had broken and we were now into the real stuff. They wanted to do something, and whether it was rational or practical wasn’t the first question. I was no use to them as a credible witness, but I was some use as a rallying point--someone to march behind. And if that was all they could have, then I would have to agree, and go with them.
	“You know what you need,” Istria suddenly put in. “You need a laboratory to test that water for chemical residue. That’s the only kind of evidence they’ll accept.”
	Bitter laughter went barking among them. “Where are we going to find a laboratory, that’s not owned by these bastards? And if we did, where would we get the money?” shouted one of the men.
	I had a sudden flash of inspiration. 
	“I may be able to answer both questions,” I said, “if you can get me to a phone.”
	
	There was, of course, not a single phone in the camp. Which was how it came about that Abiard, Ilean, Aine, Istria, and I ended up crowded around a metal box in something they called a booth but looked to me a lot more like a strange transparent closet, while the rest of them stood around on the sidewalk trying not to look conspicuous. We had driven all the way into town from the farm, all of us bouncing in the bed of Abiard’s truck. And now I was standing there with that plastic U-shape next to my ear and the scrap of paper that Aine had somehow managed to keep track of in one hand, punching the greasy square keys with the numbers on them.
	I listened, but instead of ringing there was an unpleasant, jerky, tinned voice.
	“They want five and thirty,” I said, apologetically.
	As the delegates began searching pockets for coins, Abiard moved among them and took up a collection. I shrank back into the corner of the ‘booth’ as Istria fed the coins slowly into the slot.
	The tin voice thanked me, and the ring began.
	“Hello,” said another tinned voice. “You have reached the castle of Chandra Delpan. The Queen is not at home right now, but if you leave your name and number, one of her ladies in waiting will let her know you’ve called.”
	“Hello, Chandra, this is Theamh. I’m down here in...where the hell am I?” I whispered at the others.
	“Seppleton Farms,” Abiard answered.
	“Is that the name of the farm or the town?” I asked.
	“Both.”
	“I’m in Seppleton Farms, and I’ve met some people who really need your help. I...there’s no way for you to call me back, actually--”
	“Wait!” There was a screech, and the sound on the other end changed slightly. “Holy mother, is that you?”
	“If by ‘you’ you mean--”
	“What are you doing calling me, you know they’re tapping my phone!”
	“I...what?”
	“Hang up right now and go to a pay phone!”
	I looked at the sign affixed to the box. “I am at a pay phone.”
	“Oh.” This seemed to calm her down, although I had no idea why. “Well all right then. I didn’t think you’d know to do that.”
	“Listen,” I said, because I could hear the greedy gods of the pay phone getting ready to ask for more cash. “I don’t have much time. I’m down here--”
	“Don’t say where you are!”
	“Chandra, I have to do this whether it’s dangerous to me or not. Are you going to listen to me or just go on frothing?”
	“I’m sorry. Go on.”
	“I’m at a place called Seppleton Farms and I’ve discovered that the water supply the migrant...migrant?” I looked to the others for confirmation; they nodded. “Migrant workers have to use is poisoned. They want to take it up with the big house, and they need someone who can confirm it for them...you know...scientifically.”
	“How do you mean, poisoned?”
	“I mean the stuff they put on the apples to kill the beagi is getting into their water, and it’s killing their children. It’s probably not doing the adults any good either, but--”
	“Theamh,” she said, wearily. “I hate to break it to you, but this is not news.”
	“What do you mean?”
	“PlanetWatch broke the story about water table pollution in the bread basket two years ago. Since then thurk-all has been done about it, despite a lobbying campaign that used up most of PW’s resources for the better part of a year. People just started buying bottled water and they moved on with their lives. I know it sucks, but--”
	I couldn’t believe it. “You’re telling me people know about this?”
	If my anger was palpable, that was nothing compared to the answering wave that hit me from the delegates. “Yes, they know. The Cretid mind can only focus for so long, and environmental issues require--”
	“Environmental my gleacha!” I shouted. “This is murder, plain and simple. If they know, why does no one warn the people?”
	“Because that would interfere with denial, Theamh. You still don’t understand--”
	“Please deposit another thirty-five.”
	“Damn it,” I said. “Chandra, I’m running out of time--”
	“Look, just call me back collect. I’ll accept the charges.”
	When Abiard had finally explained to me what that meant, and I had figured out how to do it, Chandra picked up again. “Hi. Listen, Theamh, I can do a story on it, but frankly I don’t think that’ll make a pin’s worth of difference. People have just decided they’d rather have their Golden Globes. This is how the world works, Theamh. I’m finally starting to accept it. Someday you will too.”
	I was still angry, but I was also worried. This wasn’t like her. At least it wasn’t like the Chandra I had met up in the City, who would never have accepted futility as an argument against a course of action.
	“Chandra, are you all right? Have they been after you?”
	There was a strained pause. “I’m all right, Theamh.”
	“Will you at least tell me what’s happened with the rebellion?”
	Another pause.
	“It wasn’t a rebellion, it was a riot. It’s been put down, like riots always are.”
	She said it so bitterly it almost seemed like she meant it. I was somewhat at a loss now as to how to deal with what seemed like a totally different woman.
	“Theamh,” she finally said. “You still wearing that thing you wore out to Greenhaven?”
	“Yes,” I said, bemused because I knew she knew what it was called.
	“That’s good,” she said. “Listen, I have to go, but it was good talking to you--”
	“Wait!”
	“Goodbye, Theamh.”
	There was a click, and that long buzzing tone.
	I hung up the plastic thing, sadness and bewilderment vying in me for the right to first expression.
	“I’m sorry,” I said, stepping out of the booth. “Help won’t be coming from that quarter after all. I regret that you wasted your money.”
	“What happened, dhiaoc?” Aine asked.
	“Something’s wrong up there,” I said. “What does it mean, ‘tapping a phone’?”
	Istria suddenly became much more alert. “Did she say they were doing that?”
	“Yes she did, and who’s ‘they’?”
	“Then they probably traced the call,” she said. “We have to get out of here.”
	The delegation got underway with surprising speed. “It means that the police are listening in,” Istria explained as we piled into the truck. “Or the Bureau, or whoever. Because they think she’s dangerous.”
	Abiard started her up. “So now what?”
	“Now, I guess, we go up to the big house,” I said. 

	It was early evening before we got there. There was the walk back, the gathering in the camp, the talk, and the final march. Ilean was carrying the baby; Abiard was carrying a torch, as were many of the others. Aine, Istria and I were in the middle of the crowd. But once we got to the house, they parted without saying anything, expecting me to come to the front. And I did, with Aine one step behind me, and Istria one step to the side, looking up with me at the orange torchlight reflecting in the windows.
	It wasn’t a house like I was used to. Over the main entrance there was a huge sign, in that machine-made writing, reading “SEPPLETON FARMS--Taste the Country.” And what I could see on the inside didn’t look like a parlor, a kitchen, or anything a family would use. Instead it was all desks, chairs, computer consoles, the accoutrements of an office. The lights on the first floor were off, and there was nobody down there; in the second story windows were lit, with dark silhouettes looking out at us.
	“Come on out here, Bolna Teff!” Abiard shouted. “We know you’re up there!”
	A window sash flew up and one of the heads leaned out toward us. “I’ve told you for the last time, I can’t change the rates, I don’t own the company. I submitted my recommendation to the Cretid City office and I’ll let you know when I get their answer.”
	“You’ve submitted nothing to no one, but that’s not the question,” Abiard shouted. “This is about the water!”
	There was a shout behind him and fists were raised. Abiard went on, emboldened.
	“Either you come out here and talk to us, or we’re coming in there to find out what it is that you drink, up here in the big house.”
	The sash slammed shut and the silhouette disappeared. I waited, wondering at what point I would have to start talking. So far Abiard seemed to be doing just fine. Until, at any rate, the man who I assumed was the maligned Bolna Teff stepped out of the doorway, flanked by two men holding long staves with triangular butts.
	“The thugs aren’t necessary,” Abiard spat. 
	“I don’t know what you’ve heard, but the water is safe. These environmentalist nuts are always shooting their mouths off, and there’s never anything to it.”
	“So,” I said. “You do admit that you’ve been told.”
	He looked at me, realized I was a stranger, and seemed suddenly to be much more at ease--and much more aggressive.
	“You people come in here from God knows where knowing nothing about farming or soil or making a living and you start filling their heads with idiocies about parts per billion and trace elements. You can just get back in your van and go back where you came from. We’re a nice quiet outfit and we treat our workers fair and we don’t need bleeding-hearts like you coming in and making trouble where there’s none.”
	I stepped forward. He paused a bit when he realized that whatever I was wearing, it wasn’t something you normally see on a Cretid.
	“I’m not a trade union organizer,” I said. “I’m not a member of PlanetWatch. I’m not even a lawyer. I’m a shriia, and these people are my people. It’s bad enough they should have been drinking water all this time that was poisoning them and their children. It’s a thousand times worse to think you’ve known it was poisoned and you told no one!”
	“There is nothing wrong with the water!” he shouted, having decided evidently that it wasn’t worth trying to figure out who I was or what I was doing there. “It’s perfectly safe. I drink it myself.”
	“What do you think, Aine?” I called, without taking my eyes off him. “Truth, or tarbhfnaa?”
	“Tarbhfnaa,” came her prompt and clear answer.
	Istria almost laughed. Bolna didn’t. 
	“Clear off here and go back to your homes,” he said, with menace. The men on either side of him raised their sticks. The movement caught Istria’s attention. She gasped.
	Theamh, those are shotguns. Not staves.
	Keep your eye on the left one, I’ll take the right.
	Just be careful.
	“We’re not going,” Abiard said, swallowing his anxiety. “When is it going to be enough? You work us from dawn to sunset, you pay us next to nothing, you pay us nothing at all when you can work out an excuse to do it, you give us the trash you can’t use any more to build our homes with, and you turn off or turn in anyone who speaks against it. The law is against us, the land is against us, your money is against us. But if nothing in the world is for us but us, we’re still not going to sit by while our children die!”
	“Very well, Abiard Creagon,” said the man. “You can be the first. I want you off the property by sunrise.”
	Abiard seemed to have expected this. The others drew together in a block behind him, shoulder to shoulder, ten wide and at least ten deep. Ilean came up to stand with him, taking his hand with the one that wasn’t holding the baby.
	“If he goes we all go,” Ilean said. “Your fruit will rot on the trees.”
	“You will go,” he shouted. “Back to the Zone. Because if you’re not off this lawn in five minutes, I’m calling Border Control.”
	“You can’t deport all of us!” a woman shouted. 
	“Try me!” he bellowed, swinging forward. He was a powerfully built man, with a ragged stubble along his jaw and unevenly cut hair. The people behind me saw the shotguns, but they were more afraid of this unarmed man who had been wielding power over them for as long as they’d worked there. As the silence of fear met him, he seemed to draw himself up. “You go back home quietly and maybe some of you will still have work in the morning. Stay here and you’ll be in the Zone by sunrise. It’s your choice.”
	He withdrew through the door. The two men with the shotguns remained, pointing the barrels into the crowd. I wasn’t looking at them any more. I was looking through the windows at that office space. And the huge plastic containers of water that sat on little wooden stands, one in each room, each with its spigot and paper cup dispenser.
	“Well, shriia,” said Abiard, loud enough for them all to hear. “What does shri say about a situation like this?”
	With their eyes on me, I stepped across the grass curve separating us from the building. The barrels of the shotguns moved with me.
	“Bolna Teff!” I shouted. 
	There was no answer.
	“You have been accused of allowing your workers to use water that you knew to be poisoned. If you have anything to say for yourself, come out here and say it!”
	Still nothing.
	“People cannot live without water,” I shouted.
	And still, the only answer was in the tilt of those silent gun barrels.
	“Well, Abiard,” I said. “I think you had the right idea after all.”
	“What idea was that, shriia?”
	I nodded at the building. “I think we should go see what they’re drinking.”
	On three.	
	Istria nodded. And, at a certain point in time, the two shotguns broke free from their owners and went flying across the grass to land at Abiard’s feet.
	Pick them up, I sent him.
	He hoisted one; Istria hoisted the other. I was dismayed to see that she appeared to know how to hold it. There was a sudden change in the air--the men at the door were afraid now, while the crowd had lost its tense silence and was starting to become excited.
	“All right now,” I said, turning to face the crowd. “I’m a shriia. That means if any of you offer to do violence to any other person, I will stop you. And I can do it.” I strode across the grass to the door, on which I had started working even before I got there. “So leave Bolna Teff and his lackeys to the vengeance of the earth. Otherwise this party will be no fun for any of us.” The deadbolt snapped, and I turned to face the two startled gunless thugs as I gave the door a push. It swung gently inward.
	“Come on in,” I said. “The water’s fine.”
	They followed me in. While I was still staring at the first bottle, wondering how to detach it, the others got to work. Before I really knew what was going on they had formed a chain and were passing the liberated water-bottles from hands to hands out the door and onto the lawn. I had lost track of Aine, but that problem was solved when she came running into the corridor brandishing two smaller jugs in each hand.
	“I found the pantry!” she shouted. 
	The jugs were passed down the chain as others ran to investigate further. Aine joined me in the corridor, a little flushed from the excitement.
	“Where’s--”
	“Right here.” Istria was still carrying the shotgun. “It’s for their sake, Theamh. If I wasn’t holding it someone else would be.”
	More bottles had been produced from the kitchen, and were on their way outside. The two gunless thugs, meanwhile, had retreated to the second story, no doubt in order to reconnoiter with Bolna and the other denizens of the dormitory. 
	“Water-veined bastards,” I muttered, looking up the steps after them. “To let people anguish like this, to know why they were losing their notborns and justborns and not say anything...why are you laughing?”
	She was looking around at the people--who were, now that the water had all been evacuated to the lawn outside, branching out into plain old vandalism. 
	“I just...” Another Ideiren ran by, the long tail of a torn-down curtain streaming from his raised fist. “You left the City in flames, now you’ve started an agrarian revolt...I just can’t take you anywhere.”
	“All right!” Abiard was standing in the corridor, shouting for attention. “We got what we came for, and they know we’re not to be put off. Let’s get the water back home before they send in the Border Control.”
	The place emptied with surprising rapidity. Abiard must already have started taking this role before this happened--getting to be one of those people who’s listened to. I was glad it was him, since he seemed to have a sense for what was a worthwhile risk and what was reckless stupidity. 
	Water jugs of all sizes were hoisted by people of all sizes, and the party trooped back down the path toward the camp, moving faster than we had before. Still, by the time we got back to the camp, someone had already made a song about what was now called the Battle of Seppleton Farms. Abiard stopped in the middle courtyard, and the others piled their water around him, waiting to see what he would say.
	“This is just the beginning,” was his first sally.
	While the crowd cheered him on, I found Aine and Istria, who had gotten separated from me during the walk back.
	What did you do with the shotguns? I asked, as Abiard continued.
	“...obviously infants, pregnant women and nursing mothers should have first priority. If we can apportion it so they would have clean water for the next month, that might tide us until we can get a more permanent solution...”
	I gave them to Abiard, she said. I think he’s keeping them in the shack.
	Come with me, I said. I want to try something.
	Aine and Istria followed me back to the shack, which was empty now. The guns were resting in one of the corners, their barrels thrusting up at the tarpaper roof. 
	“He’s unloaded them,” Istria said, indicating the long, narrow metal casings that lay on the floor nearby. “Good idea--people have accidents with these things.”
	“I can see how.” I knelt over the rounds of metal--much larger than the ones we’d found in the grass by the border, streamlined, tapered, lethal.
	“You’re right,” Istria said, kneeling near me. “The fire’s in the bullets. Here, at this end--the trigger strikes the cap, and then the explosion sends the bullet out the barrel.”
	“So my question is...”
	I put a hand over the shells. Slowly, a little yellow flame curled up out of one of them, melting the metal on its way up to my palm.
	“I guess the answer is yes,” Istria said.
	“Drawing the fire,” Aine put in.
	I nodded. “It would be much more dangerous to do this on a loaded gun. I don’t know if it would really work, as a defense tactic. Certainly it would need to be refined.”
	“I’m not sure you could use it in battle,” Istria agreed. “But maybe preemptively--”
	The flap rustled. We looked up, expecting Mahial, or Abiard--but instead it was a stranger, a woman between my age and Aine’s, with brown hair cut close in short curls and lenses straddling the bridge of her nose in small oval-shaped metal frames. A Cretid, moving quickly, darting her eyes from one to the other of us, fastening them on me.
	“Chandra sent me,” she said. 
	“I’m Theamh,” I said, beginning to understand.
	“She couldn’t talk on the phone,” the woman said, her voice still low. “She’s under surveillance now since the massacre.”
	“What massacre?” I asked.
	The woman’s brown eyes looked at me sadly.
	“Two nights ago the Cretid National Army was called down to the South Corner to restore order. They’re estimating that sixty residents were killed. Some say it’s closer to a hundred. Last night the South Corner was on fire. Now martial law has been declared.”
	“What...what does that mean, martial law?” Aine asked.
	Istria answered for her, suddenly sharply concerned. “It means the ordinary rule of law is suspended and the army can do whatever it wants.”
	“Basically,” the other woman answered.
	“Is it general, or just in Cretid City?”
	“General,” the woman answered. “There have been riots in Millton and in Haven.”
	“Theamh,” Istria said, trying to shake me out of my shock. “This changes everything.”
	“What?” I asked, a little vacantly.
	“Oh, pay attention!” she said, sounding desperate rather than angry. “I know you’re worried about your friends, but this is serious. What we just did up there--that’s not just a protest any more. They’ll treat it like an insurrection.”
	“Oh no,” said the other woman, beginning to get worried.
	“It’s not going to be the Border Control,” Istria went on, making sure I got the benefit of that blue determined stare. “And it’s not going to be deportation.”
	“We have to tell Abiard,” I said, when I finally understood.
	The four of us burst out of the shack, Aine explaining to the other woman what had happened up on the hill. “We just meant to get them some clean water,” she was panting as we reached the courtyard where the crowd was sharing the water and singing the song of the Battle of Seppleton Farms, which was now up to about its fiftieth verse.
	“Abiard!” I took him aside and drew him back to where Istria and Aine were talking to the stranger woman. “Abiard, I don’t know who this is but she can be trusted. She tells me they declared martial law.”
	Abiard suddenly looked grim. “I hadn’t heard,” he said to the woman.
	“It was on the VB, but of course they wouldn’t want you to know that the revolt had been that successful,” the woman said. “You’ll have to get your people into hiding. If you’re still here when the army comes--”
	She stopped, because the singing had stopped, because the dusty frayed edge of a light beam had come raking through the trees at us. 
	“Fnaa,” Abiard said.
	We spun around looking for somewhere to run, but the bright lights were on all sides of us, mounted on vehicles that were crushing trees, shrubs, even the privy in their paths. Those who had run to their homes soon came running back as heavy, dark, lurching machines on ribbed metal feet rolled right over those rickety walls. Wood rent, glass shattered, and these monsters crunched toward us, eating everything they passed.
	And then, on some signal we couldn’t see, the movement stopped. The only sound now was the idling of huge heavy engines, and the whimpering of the children and those who had never imagined or expected a scene like this. Batteries of even brighter lights switched on overhead, pinning us in their beams. From the darkness behind them somebody shouted through one of those amplifying machines.
	“Nobody move!” Nobody did. “This is Commander Levkan of the Wheatlea Regional Defense Forces. We are here to restore order. If you comply with our directives it should be possible to do so without further loss of life.”
	A man stepped out from behind the line of darkness, carrying something that was smaller than a shotgun, bigger than a pistol, and meaner-looking than both of them. As soon as he took his stance in front of the terrified crowd he was flanked by five others. 
	“Our commanding officer has ordered the detention of the criminals who led the attack on Seppleton House,” the first man barked. “Surrender these two individuals and no harm will come to any of you.”
	Nobody in the crowd moved.
	The man nodded to one of his subordinates, who seized a young man of about twenty, dragging him away from the crowd and back toward the leader.
	“Which one of these people is Abiard Creagon?”
	The boy didn’t answer.
	The subordinate lashed out with the back end of his gun and caught the boy in the stomach. As he doubled over, the gun came down on the back of his head. For a few minutes, the crowd watched, mesmerized, paralyzed perhaps by the sudden comprehension of their own vulnerability as the boy thrashed under the blows of the man with the gun. Then, before the growl in their minds could rise to their throats, Abiard broke out of Ilean’s restraining grip and rushed toward that bloody ground.
	“I am Abiard Creagon,” he said. 
	Two of the subordinates trained their guns on him while a third manacled his hands behind his back. Another lifted the boy by his bloodied shirt toward the leader’s face.
	“Where is the woman you call the shriia?” he shouted.
	The boy shook his head, feebly.
	Theamh, don’t you dare--
	“I am the shriia,” I shouted, walking forward. “Now you have who you want. Leave these people alone. They were only asking for what is their right.”
	I saw the first blow coming, and was able to dodge it, but while I was ducking one gun butt another was sailing in the countervailing direction.
	“Hands off her, you bitch’s bastard!”
	That was Istria. Aine knew by now that the best course was to keep quiet and act later, but this was the first time Istria had seen Cretid thugs work me over. I would have been able to get to my feet, except that when I looked up the snout of that gun was pressed against my forehead, and what I was reading off the mind behind it didn’t encourage further resistance. Perhaps, I thought, he watches “Idair: Priestess of Power,” and that’s where he learned to go for the head. Or perhaps that’s standard procedure.
	I head a click from the gun, and everyone suddenly went deathly quiet.
	“Keep moving if you want him to fire,” said the leader.
	He must have been talking to Istria. She was too far away to read, but I could only imagine the depth of her frustration. There was no way to get me out of it; any attempt to disarm him would only result in my head being blown off. 
	“Bring her in,” said the leader.
	I couldn’t turn to look, but from the noise, it seemed like they were hauling Istria forward. She came quietly.
	<Aine, stay put and say nothing.>
	<But dhiaoc-->
	<Stick with Chandra’s friend. You can help no one by getting yourself arrested.>
	Istria was standing near me, her hands bound like Abiard’s. When my captors hauled me to my feet I saw that there was a gun barrel at the back of her head too, just as I felt the cold muzzle of my soldier’s gun at the base of my skull. Another one brought my hands back and snapped the familiar metal circlets around my wrists.
	“March,” said the leader.
	We were walked past the hulking vehicles, past the light batteries, past the debris of the destroyed houses, into the relative darkness of the orchard around us. Behind us the man on the loud-making machine was still haranguing the crowd, but since we were behind him the words were muffled. 
	<Dhiaoc, what’s happening?>
	<They’re marching us into the orchard.>
	<I can’t leave now, they’re still surrounding us.>
	<Don’t try until you know it’s safe.>
	Istria was on the other side of me from Abiard, but she could still reach me with effort. Are you all right?
	I’m not dead yet, I answered.
	Watch for an opportunity, Abiard said, evidently to both of us. They’re too close now, but maybe when they’re putting us into the wagon there’ll be room.
	But Abiard, I pointed out. We’re headed away from the road. I don’t think there’s a car waiting for us up here among the Golden Globes.
	This finally impressed itself on his consciousness as something worth thinking about. Then why take us all the way out here?
	Istria didn’t answer and neither did I. If our suspicions were true there was not much point.
	“Halt!”
	The men behind us stopped; we stopped with them. The leader, and two other men who were apparently just along for the ride, walked out to the flat patch of land between two rows of apple trees. The two underlings were carrying spades.
	“Dig,” said the leader.
	The underlings started breaking ground.
	Are they going to plant nurselings, or what? Abiard demanded, his astonishment at Cretid stupidity overpowering his natural anxiety.
	You forget, I answered. Up here, they bury their dead.
	Abiard’s mind crumbled into chaos. It was hard to hear Istria over it.
	Of all the ends I had imagined for us...
	I know, I answered. You’d have lived longer if I hadn’t come for you after all.
	Don’t say that, she shot back. It doesn’t matter. She looked at me, and I could feel it even though she was afraid to turn her head much. No regrets, Theamh.
	No regrets.
	Ilean.
	That was from Abiard. His answer, I suppose, to the same question we had answered for each other.
	“Prisoners will step forward,” barked the leader.
	It’s shallow, for a grave, Istria said, her mind cold now as we took our step forward, which brought us to the edge of this wide, shallow trench.
	“Under Article 4.2 of the Emergency Measures Act, I as a representative of the powers vested in the Cretid national government am empowered to determine your guilt or innocence of the charges brought against you.”
	The mark of the Cretid, Istria said. Before they murder you, they have to explain why it’s legal.
	“Abiard Creagon, on the charge of conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism against the state, how do you plead?”
	Abiard turned on him a pair of eyes in which sorrow for the loss he saw Ilean bearing was almost hidden behind his amazement at the endlessness of Cretid absurdity.
	“How do you plead?” he demanded.
	“I’m just trying to guess,” he said, “which answer will make you shoot me faster.”
	I braced myself as the man behind Abiard raised his rifle. And then the shot.
	With the shot there was a scream, but it wasn’t Abiard’s. It was from the man behind him. Because even though Abiard was crumpled on the ground, he was moving, and he appeared to be whole. Which could not be said for the man behind him, whose gun arm--still clutching its gun--lay severed and bleeding in the ditch ahead of us.
	Shots went off all around us. Istria and I had the presence of mind to dive for the ground before that happened, but at any rate they weren’t shooting at us. They were shooting at the yellow, red and blue forms that were whirling through the air above and around them. Manacled and face down in the dirt it was hard to follow what was happening. I did see the one-armed soldier slam into the dirt next to me, his mouth still screaming. And I saw a pair of mud-green knees sink into the trough in front of me as a strangling wail rose out of the leader’s throat. This helped me reach the decision that the soldiers weren’t paying much attention to us any more, so I slithered over to Istria.
	Can you get these off me?
	I’ll try. I wrenched myself around so she had a good view. Eventually the link between the manacles snapped. 
	I’ll do you now. I leaned on my hands and bore down on her manacles, snapping the link. We crouched by Abiard, who was shaking all over but who seemed to be unhurt, and tried to assess the situation.
	The battle was already over. There were four bodies--the two gravediggers seemed to have fled unhurt. But the man who had almost shot Abiard was lying prone behind us, with the red woman on all fours next to him, gulping down the blood flowing from his broken arteries. In the ditch, the leader was now stiffening on his back as the Blue Angel, with one knee in his gut and both hands stuffed into his chest, sucked the life out of his heart. And the soldier who would have shot me was hanging by his broken neck from the fork of an apple tree, while the yellow woman finished tearing off his one remaining arm. The one who would have shot Istria was already in pieces.
	“Abiard,” I said, after we had stared at each other, and at the three of them, for a few stunned moments. “Are you hurt?”
	He pushed himself up to a kneeling position, his breath still coming hard and labored. “I don’t think so,” he said, as his eyes took in the carnage around him.
	“You...” Istria began, with a half-completed gesture toward the red woman.
	And she trailed off. Because what could she say, having profited from all these deaths, and at the same time abhorring every one of them, all the more because they had been committed by her children out of whatever kind of love or loyalty they had for her.
	The red woman stood up, wiping a trail of liquid off her mouth with the back of a red glowing hand. It was horrifying to me, if not perhaps to Istria, to see her glowing brighter after her meal.
	“I told you that as I am, I can only be evil,” she said. “You said I could just as well use what you made to do good.” Istria’s face went whiter. The blue and yellow women left their victims to stand with their sister. “This is the only kind of good we can do.”
	Istria blinked, not wanting them to see tears from her.
	“If you want this in the world, forever, you can have it. If not, then honor my request and release us.”
	Unable to answer, Istria looked in appeal at the blue woman.
	“She speaks for all of us,” said the blue woman. “We all of us live off death. We none of us like it. This is the only compromise we can make.”
	“Then stop feeding, if it bothers you so much!” Istria shouted. 
	“Istri...”
	She looked at me, and the ironies hit her in the throat.
	“I will come to you again in twenty-four hours, with all the host,” the red woman said. “You will give us your decision then. Now that you know the terms.”
	Those wings spread, and they lifted up over the trees.
	And through the trees, as we turned to look back from where we’d come, we saw other bright things lifting up into the air after them--red, yellow, blue, green, orange, by the dozen, by the score, flying to wherever it was that they hid during the day.
	“Idair’s mercy,” I said. “The camp.”
	Forgetting our own worries for a moment, we ran back toward the settlement, from which the sounds of trauma proceeded. But this was different from Dunta. For one thing, all the bodies, strewn or drained or withered or butchered by the others according to their different hungers, were dressed in that mud-green uniform. And they were scattered around the perimeter, at the feet or sticking out of the hatches of their giant machines, twisted and pallid and extremely dead. And for another, all the horror of Dunta was there in those cries, but none of the grief. The people huddling in the glare that had survived along with the lights were stunned by terror, but not paralyzed by loss. If it hadn’t been for what they’d seen, it would easily have turned into joy.
	“Dhiaoc!” Aine ran toward me as soon as she saw my hreapa in the distance. “They said--they said--they all said you’d be shot--”
	“Well, we weren’t,” I said. “But it’s not because they didn’t try. Abiard, here, let me get those off you.”
	Because Ilean was hanging onto him and crying, and he would have liked to hang onto her, for his own comfort as well as hers, but his manacles were still intact. I snapped them for him and turned back to Istria, who was staring around her at the dead and counting them.
	“Idair, Cailte, Anron and Sincil,” she whispered, as she started counting again.
	The woman Chandra had sent approached, swallowing something that had risen to her dry throat, her hands shaking. “Do you...know...what that was?” she asked me.
	“I’m assuming that this was a larger-scale version of what happened where we were,” I said. “If that’s true, then...well, you’re a Cretid, it’s kind of pointless.”
	“Try me,” she said, hoarsely.
	“They’re a new kind of creature,” I said. “Created at Lythril’s direction, for the purpose of...listen, you don’t need to know that, the point is they’re invulnerable to weapons and they’re lethal and they’re apparently loyal to Istria.”
	“You call this loyal?” Istria shouted.
	Her voice was shaking. Stranded between grief, remorse and horror, she took refuge in her anger. “To deal out this kind of death when they know--when they know--”
	She turned away from the uncomprehending stare of Chandra’s friend. Abiard was sitting on one of the upended water bottles with the baby in his arms. Samh stood up.
	“Friends,” she shouted. “Please, give me a hearing.”
	The others quieted down and turned their eyes on her. 
	“News of this will travel throughout the Nation,” she said. “Our names will be known. The story will be told. Songs will be sung about the battles we fought here, and the strange help that came to us when we needed it.”
	There were murmurs of agreement.
	“The names of those who took a hand will resound like those of the tales,” she said. “And I speak not only of Abiard Creagon--”
	“Abiard abu!” the crowd shouted. Abiard, too shaken to appreciate this, acknowledged them with an unhappy wave. Samh went on after the noise had died down.
	“--but of all those who went with us to the hill and took what we needed. The others who were not here, because they are strung along through this exile from the strawberry fields to the mills of the north, will hear the story of Seppleton Farms, and know that if we live here in bondage, we remember still who we are and what we’re worth, and that we made it known, once and for all, that they cannot treat us this way and escape Idair’s vengeance!”
	The crowd’s yell of assent turned my blood cold. And Istria’s blood, already cold enough, seemed to have stopped altogether.
	“This is the beginning!” Samh shouted. “This is the first victory--but it is only the first. Because we will fight again!”
	I don’t need twenty-four hours, Istria said, watching the crowd cheer as the bodies around them stiffened. I don’t even need one.
	“We have been weak, we’ve been terrified, we’ve let them push us around,” Samh shouted. “But we know what we didn’t before, because we forgot and they let us forget. We are the children of Idair. And Idair has shown us how she deals with our enemies!”
	“Daughter of a mother of a bitch,” Istria muttered, tearing through the enthusiastic crowd to get to the crate Samh was standing on.
	“Istria--”
	I followed her, but I was too late to stop her from bursting into the cleared area the others had made around Samh, and cutting her next rhetorical flourish in half.
	“That’s enough,” Istria shouted. “Talk if you must, but leave Idair out of it. Death is not done in her name. Not now, not ever.”
	“What do you know about it, stranger from the south?” Samh shouted back. “It wasn’t the Cretid God whose living flame delivered us from the mouths of their guns!”
	“It wasn’t Idair either!” Istria shouted back at her. “Idair helps where she can but she does not take life. And to thank her for doing what she most hated to see done is not only blasphemous, it’s obscene.”
	She was only getting herself into more trouble. In her distress she was leaning on that authority she remembered having had, forgetting that she wasn’t at home, she wasn’t in hreapa, and she wasn’t among people who really knew Idair. She would have realized that if she were thinking. But cut to the heart to know that this was work she had wrought, all she could think of was making them stop, the only way she knew how. 
	“Shut up and sit down!” shouted someone from the crowd.
	“Get off before Idair’s angels come after you too!” cried a second voice, as a wave of unfriendly laughter crested after it.
	“Those things are not Idair’s angels!” Istria shouted, the power of her conviction miraculously quelling them enough to make her heard. “They do not come from her and she does not command them!”
	“Tarbhfnaa!” shouted the first voice, echoed by Samh and the others. 
	“If she doesn’t then who does?” cackled one of the old women.
	Istria’s hands went to her collar.
	“I do,” she said, showing the chain.
	Not all of them recognized it, but the shock from those who did was enough to quiet the others. For a second, there was dead silence. And she took advantage of it, fixing them with that blood-stopping stare, her hands going to her hips in unconscious imitation. Or maybe conscious imitation. Because she was trying to terrify them the way Lythril would have--and it was working. For the rest of them, anyhow, who didn’t know enough to watch not the face but the silver chain on her throat, rising and falling with the motion of a struggling spirit and a straining heart.
	“They belong to me, and to the Dark One,” she said, keeping her voice steady and her eyes like steel. Samh, who had gone a little green, backed away from her. “They are the bastard offspring of one woman’s greed and another’s ambition. They serve their own hunger first, and me second. Their loyalty to you is incidental.” The others could do little at this point but stare in fear--except for Abiard, who wore a much different expression.
	“They have destroyed your enemies,” she said. “And they would be happy, I’m sure, to continue destroying them. They don’t care who they feed off. So if you want to join forces with them, I’m sure they’ll negotiate. But know that if you fight with them, you’re fighting with the Dark One. And that means you’re fighting for the Dark One.”
	 “And then aren’t you,” shouted Samh, now that she had finally recovered from the shock, “fighting for the Dark One too?”
	Istria didn’t answer, aside from squaring her shoulders, and turning toward the murmuring crowd. The white triangle of her bared neck shone in the artificial glare, slashed by the bright metallic glints off the links in her chain. I understood for the first time what it meant to have your heart in your mouth. It was her, up there, the way I remembered, that same fragile strength, that same despairing courage. Offering her breast to the archers, wearing danger like a badge. Tossing it back at them, ready and afraid to die. Go ahead. Here I am. Take your shot.
	“Leave her alone.”
	That was Aine, not me. And it was Aine who walked past the spot where I stood rooted to the ground into that dangerous semicircle and turned on Samh.
	“If anyone’s done the Dark One’s work today it’s you,” she said. “They taught your people better among the rocks of Glas Inis but evidently all they were able to pass on to you was the accent.” It was at that point that I realized what was familiar about Samh. She was Jiprani too. “You’re not going to become the second Paigin by preaching wrath and vengeance out of the Cretid God’s book. So why don’t you do something useful if you want to be thought much of, like planning for when those bastards in the army come out to raze the place flat and shoot every creature they find here?”
	In the disturbed pause that followed Aine’s harangue, the brown-haired woman with the spectacles spoke up.
	“You know,” she said, “those tanks are sitting there empty, with the engines running. And there’s two personnel trucks with dead drivers and empty payloads. I don’t even know how many guns or how much ammo they brought with them.”
	“We can’t fend off the whole Cretid Army,” Samh snapped.
	“No,” the woman answered. “But you are now in possession of the sole thing on earth that will induce a Cretid commander to negotiate.”
	Abiard stood up.
	“The stranger is talking sense,” he said. “Shriia, we thank you for what you’ve done. As the last thing we ask, will you take this daughter of the Dark One out of here, and leave us to defend ourselves as we can?”
	“Yes,” I said. 
	I walked up to where Istria was still standing, the chain still rising and falling on her unquiet breast.
	“Come on,” I said, as rough as I could make it sound. “You’re my business, not theirs.”
	“I will then,” she said, defiant. “To settle it elsewhere, one way or the other.”
	The three of us rushed off to the shack to gather our things. We had everything finally stuffed into the bags when Mahial hurried in with a bundle.
	“You’re a funny kind of dark user,” she said. “I’ve seen a lot up here that puzzles me but you take the cake.” She shoved the bundle at Istria. “For the march. I’m sorry we can’t spare the truck.”
	“You’ve been more generous than we have a right to expect,” I said. “I am sorry for the trouble I’ve caused.”
	“Listen,” she said, fixing me with formidable, if watery, eyes. “This is not trouble. This is the first right thing that’s happened since I’ve been up here. The battle’s joined, for once, and good will come of it one way or another. Humor me and say that’s possible.”
	“Idair told us anything is possible,” I said.
	“Good girl. Now get the hell out before they send in the spinning birds.”
	We didn’t wait to hear about the spinning birds. We ran out and through the orchard, stumbling through the darkness on our way east.

IV.
Stripping

	“That was some thurking plan, Theamh.”
	Since we were running flat-out across an open, scarred plain on which there was no cover aside from the hulking, rusted, sky-assaulting metal contraptions that someone had built here a long time ago for some cryptic and forgotten purpose, I saved my breath. It was different coming over--there were no live guards.
	Martial law hadn’t been declared then, she retorted. It’s common sense the border is going to be crawling with soldiers.
	Well if it was common sense, why didn’t you stop us?
	Aine looked up, gasping, as we passed under the perforated shadow of one of the larger monuments. I had given up trying to understand what purpose these vast conglomerations of wheels, girders, chains and platforms had ever served, but it had been a long time since they had been disturbed by human operation. 
	I thought you had a plan for how to deal with them.
	I told you all the plan I had. If you thought it was asinine you should have said something.
	They hadn’t tracked us here yet. They were all mounted on vehicles, and there was no way for them to follow us through this valley of metallic death, whose concrete pathways had been shattered into tilted and jutting stumbling blocks by the growth of roots and the patient work of rainwater. 
	So now your plan is my fault too?
	We followed the course of this artificial valley in hard-breathing silence, hoping it would lead us somewhere. It didn’t, except to a vast, empty square lot with grass growing up through the cracks in the asphalt and holes rusted into the links of the fence enclosing it. Aine scrambled over the top of the low fence rather than fool with the padlock; I followed; Istria followed me, dragging herself over it with some difficulty. We hared off toward the other entrance, which faced onto a small, narrow, building-bordered street.
	“Theamh...”
	I looked back. She was still moving, but her voice was mottled, and her steps stuttered on the pavement.
	“I think it’s...coming on me...”
	“Oh for thurk’s sake, Istri, not now!”
	The hurt in her eyes as her mouth struggled and the lids began dropping brought remorse on me suddenly.
	“Ican...I can’t hhel...”
	 Aine was already propping her up on one side, draping Istria’s arm around her shoulders as Istria’s weight sagged toward the ground. Her legs jerked spasmodically, but to no purpose.
	I snapped on a pair of the skinlike gloves I had stashed in my bag. As I put her other arm around my shoulders and we began walking her forward, Aine’s eyes met mine, and I saw the exasperation in them. In her too, compassion had been overtaken by her sense of exactly how inconvenient it was for Istria to be lapsing at this particular moment.
	<I know, but there’s nothing she or we can do about it.>
	<Well we can’t go far like this, dhiaoc,> Aine answered. <And we can’t just stay out here in the open like rabbits waiting for the hawk.>
	I had been searching the vicinity for signs of hope, and saw only one. It was a building on that street, low and long, with a chained-up back door and a run-down look.
	<It’s got no windows,> I said, as she followed my sight line. <And it’s probably abandoned. If we can get in there without disturbing too much they might overlook us.>
	Together we hauled Istria, still twitching and muttering with her restless eyelids trying to open, across that lot to the back entrance to whatever this was, or had been. Snapping the chain was a minute’s work; arranging it so that after we closed the door it would like it was still chained took longer. We deposited Istria on the floor of the darkened room it opened onto and shut the steel portal behind us.
	I sat with her head in my lap, watching her toss in that unquiet unsleep. With the door closed it was almost perfectly dark, the gloom broken only by the light coming in under the imperfectly hung door. The floor was an ordinary dull kind of gray plastic sheeting; the wall near the door was made of concrete blocks that had been painted with something slick.
	<How long will she be like that?>
	<I have no idea.>
	It seemed this one was different. She was restless, and trying to bring herself out of it with whatever will was left. But her eyes stayed closed, and the shuddering was more like the fits of a nightmare. Maybe eventually these collapses wouldn’t happen any more, and she would go back to sleeping at night and staying awake when she tried to. Or maybe it would just keep getting worse, until we found a way to solve it or until her waking life and this nightmare unwaking state became one and the same.
	Aine’s face was only very faintly visible as she sat across from me.
	<Say it,> I finally said. <Since you’re in the habit still.>
	<Truthfully, it wasn’t a very good plan,> she brought out, timidly.
	<No, I guess it wasn’t.> I leaned my head against the cold glazed blocks. <It’s just, you know, it never occurred to me that with a rebellion going on, they would waste time trying to keep people in. Out, I can understand.>
	<It’s because at home, we exile the ones we don’t want,> Aine answered, trying to make me feel better. <Up here I guess they prefer to kill them.>
	<And as is obvious,> I said with a sigh, <we’re not at home any more.>
	There was a shuffling step outside, and light suddenly leapt out of a fixture above us. Whoever had flipped the switch shrieked in fear and surprise.
	“Oh my God!”
	“Fnaa on a hot shingle,” was what occurred to me to say.
	It was a woman, toward the end of her twenties, wearing a long tan overcoat and a pair of oddly incongruous high-heeled black pumps. Her black hair was standing out around her face because of the spray they used, not out of fright, but it still gave her a surprised and astounded look. Which I suppose she might well have had anyway.
	“Who are you? What are you doing here? This is private property!”
	“Isn’t everything,” I muttered.
	“What’s the matter, Vira?” called another female voice, as another pair of feet approached the opposite entrance.
	“There’s three street crazies squatting in here,” the first woman called back.
	The second head--this one with blonde hair dangling long and lank around it, and red pursed lips--appeared over her shoulder. “Come on, ladies, back outside. It’s still pretty warm out nights.”
	 “We are not street people,” I said, my voice rising a little with indignation. “Although even if we were, I would think we might be entitled to expect a little more courtesy, if not more charity.”
	The first one walked forward, emboldened by the presence of number two, and piqued to curiosity by a moan from Istria. “Is she doped up, or having a seizure, or what?”
	“I don’t know,” I answered.
	The second one had advanced and was looking us over. She nodded truculently at me. “What’s this? You new talent, or something?”
	“He didn’t say anything to me about new talent,” the other said, sharply.
	“Well that doesn’t mean anything,” the other sent back. “Who said anything about this other one he up and hired?”
	“Women,” I said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about and I don’t care much. We came in here because we thought the place was abandoned. Since it isn’t--”
	I stopped because a third woman had appeared in the doorway. And even though her hair was now just as blonde as number two’s, and curled into loose and negligent ringlets, I still recognized the firm line of that jaw and those quietly obstinate eyes.
	“Kitth?” I cried, incredulous.
	The other two looked at her.
	“Hey, Tawna,” the first one said. “We found these three stowaways--”
	“They aren’t stowaways,” said number two. “That’s only on a ship. This isn’t a ship, thank God.”
	“Shriia, what are you doing here?” Kitth hissed, pulling the collar of her coat tighter at her neck.
	“It’s a long story,” I said. “Short version is, there are a lot of people looking for us and I don’t want them to find us.”
	“You know this chick?” Vira demanded.
	“I...yes, from home,” Kitth said, ducking into the room with dropped eyes, keeping her hand at her throat.
	“Don’t be embarrassed, honey,” said Vira, who had suddenly become a lot more relaxed now that I was, at least by extension, no longer a stranger. “She’s in a jam too, or she wouldn’t be out here.” Before I could try to read the shame Kitth was radiating any more precisely, Vira turned back to me. “So you didn’t come here looking for work, did you? Cause there is none. Me, Dibi and Tawna here have the fort held.”
	“I have a job,” I said. “Whatever yours is, I don’t want it.”
	It was something to do with the theater, it looked like, because there were mirrors and dressing tables at one end of the room with paints and costume jewelry scattered across their cheap peeling plastic surfaces. And racks ranged along the wall from which dangled clothes made of flashy flimsy stuff, hanging too limp for the beads sewn onto it to sparkle properly. Maybe the Cretid Nation was like Kengda, and theater was still seen as a profession beneath anyone who could do better.
	“What are you doing here, really?” asked the aforenamed Dibi.
	“Hiding,” I said. “Do the police, or the army, come this way often?”
	Vira shot into a high-pitched cackle which lasted a pretty long time and sent Istria into a shuddering, mumbling tremor.
	“Not while they’re in uniform,” Vira gasped, and now Dibi was chortling away with her while I stroked Istria’s hair with my gloved and sweating hand and hoped that she was not too conscious of all this.
	“Oh God, too funny,” Dibi said, wiping her eyes. “You’re quite the card.” She undid the buttons on her coat and slipped out of it, walking toward one of the racks. She was wearing an ordinary-looking brown dress, with half sleeves and a mid-length skirt. Her hose were a little odd--bright red, with a scrolling lace pattern that clashed with the plainness of the dress. But I still couldn’t see why Kitth was so mortified to observe me observing her, or why she was still refusing to take off her coat.
	“My question was,” I repeated patiently, “is it safe here? Because if it isn’t, we need to be gone.”
	Vira, who had been watching Kitth through all this, made up her mind suddenly. “Honey, it’s all right, we’ve all been on someone’s bad list at some point. Nobody comes back here, the management doesn’t allow it. You just sit tight and stay out of the way and there isn’t anyone going to bother you, is there, Dibi?”
	“Nope,” Dibi answered. Vira nodded, undoing the back of her dress and shrugging it awkwardly off.
	Idair’s mercy and wisdom.
	Aine at least was polite enough not to give voice to her shock. I was familiar with corsets thanks to Mathi’s affinity for northern fads and thanks to Idair, Priestess of Power, but neither one of us had ever seen anything like this contraption. It was mostly black leather, although it was pierced and studded and otherwise ornamented with steel in various interesting ways, and was held up by a spiderweb of steel chains that criscrossed her shoulders and breast. The hose were attached by elastic straps depending from the leg openings in the corset, which left the bare and hairless skin of her thighs exposed. Dibi didn’t react to this revelation as an event requiring comment, a nonchalance I understood better when she took off that brown dress and started raking through the garments hanging on the racks, evidently looking for something that would go with the red lace undergarment to which her hose were attached.
	<So...so is this a brothel, dhiaoc? Is that it?>
	It might be, but there was something about the suggestion that seemed wrong to me. I didn’t see why it would require costumes, or those spiky heeled shoes that Dibi was squeezing her reluctant feet into.
	“We’re...” Kitth stopped after the others looked at her, but she kept going when I turned. “We’re not public whores.”
	Since you say it.
	“We’re not!” Kitth shouted, swinging viciously around on Aine, who had tried unsuccessfully to mask the thought. 
	“It’s true,” Vira said, sitting down by the mirror and arranging her paints. “That’s another thing management doesn’t allow. Says he can’t afford to pay the protection.”
	Vira didn’t seem as offended as Kitth had been, and indeed still was. “Look,” I said, wearily. “Whether you are or not matters to you, it’s none of our business...”
	“This is what they call a gentleman’s club,” Kitth said, lifting her chin. 
	“And that means what, exactly?” Aine asked.
	“Do they not have strippers in Ideire?” Dibi put in.
	“No, remember, like Tawna was telling us,” Vira said, pausing in the application of her lipstick. “She said they don’t have places like this down there, didn’t you, honey?”
	Kitth nodded.
	“See, and that’s why they have her waiting tables instead of doing the show. What we do,” she said, turning back to the mirror and talking to me through it, “it’s like a little play. You put on a costume, you go out there and do your act. And while you do that, you try to turn them on, anyway you can do it. Mostly by taking it off.”
	“The management--I mean Leno, he’s the guy who owns the place--he likes to do theme nights,” Dibi picked up. “Cause he can’t afford to bring in outside talent much, it helps with variety so the regulars don’t get bored. Tomorrow’s church day, so tonight we’re doing kind of a religious theme.”
	Vira exploded in another one of those high-pitched laughs. “Oh God, stop it, you’re killing me!’
	Dibi smirked. “Yeah, I’m the She-Devil and she’s...who are you again, Vira?”
	“I’m Helvira, Priestess of the Dark One,” she said.
	<All right, Aine, I’m not sure I can stand it here for another thurking second.>
	<We’ve nowhere to go and the border guards are out there, dhiaoc. And Istria’s still out.>
	“And who are you then?” I said, turning a sour eye on Kitth.
	“I’m no one,” she answered, a little fiercely. “I just serve the drinks.”
	Figuring, I suppose, that she would look pretty tame in comparison, she finally took her coat off. Things weren’t too bad for her, until she put on the headband with the stuffed stripy cat ears and attached the stuffed stripy tail to her gleacha.
	“The place is called ‘The Pussycat’,” Vira explained. “Not a bad name but it’s too bad about the uniform.”
	Kitth, having apparently adjusted her appearance to her satisfaction, finally came to sit near us. “But really, shriia, what are you doing here?” she whispered, as the other two became absorbed in painting their faces. “I thought you were going to the City?”
	“We did,” I answered. “We’re done with our mission. We’re just trying to get the hell out of here. Who knew it would take so long.”
	“And who’s...”
	“This is Istria ni Vharen,” I said. “You might have known her when she was shriia for Vinha, Streel, and Peheot.”
	Kitth shook her head. “I didn’t go far abroad, before...”
	She drifted into gloom contemplating it, so I changed the subject. “Where’s the boy, is he all right now?”
	“He’s home with the sitter,” Kitth said. “It’s much better this way--no pesticides, we’re indoors, and I work nights when he’s asleep. The money’s good and I don’t have to...to...”
	“I’m glad he’s well,” Aine said, trying to make up for her past affronts. “It will be better for him here, surely.”
	Kitth looked at Istria. I had buttoned her shirt up while Kitth was putting on her costume, so she didn’t see the chain. But she could see enough to wonder what our story was. If she was embarrassed to have her shriia see her in a getup like this, I was getting a taste of how much embarrassment I would have to support once we got over the border.
	“Gooooooooooooood morning!” called a male voice from behind the curtain, in the tenor range and irritatingly chipper. “Or evening, as the case may be. How we doing, ladies?” A round head fringed in thinning, close-cut hair appeared in the doorway. “Sorry I wasn’t here to open, I got behind and then the roadblocks held me up so...what in tarnation?”
	Kitth spoke up immediately. “They’re friends of mine,” she said. “They need somewhere to lie low and I thought why not here, it’s low enough.”
	Aine looked concerned on Kitth’s behalf, but the man didn’t seem to mind; in fact he laughed. “Normally I’d agree, honey, but tonight’s special. I got stopped five times on my way down here and searched twice.” His eyebrows lifted lasciviously. “And when the local police are willing to pat me down, it’s serious. Are you what they’re looking for? Because I don’t think anywhere’s gonna be low enough for you to lie.”
	Istria chose this moment to regain consciousness, which made things a little disorienting for everyone.
	Theamh? 
	We are, apparently, in a ‘gentleman’s club.’  Her eyes moved to Vira and Dibi. Istri...I’m sorry I snapped at you, I know you can’t help it.
	I’m sorry I insulted your plan, she said. Idair knows I’ve been no help and a huge burden.
	“Good morning, sunshine,” the man said, as Istria blinked at him. “I was just telling your friend, I think they’re going house to house, and I’m sure they’re gonna come here. If you just hide in the corner that’s not going to help you much.”
	“Well, where else is there to hide?” Aine demanded.
	He looked at her, and something happened in his mind.
	“How about in the open,” he said.
	“What?” Istria demanded, a little sourly.
	“Dipsarl isn’t coming in today,” he answered, looking at Kitth as if she was the one who would understand why this mattered. “Says she’s coming down with something. Whatever. Point is, you can’t handle the tables on your own.” He looked at us. “Any of you ever waited tables?”
	Aine shook her head, not understanding the relevance of the question. Istria and I glared at him, thinking just about the same thing.
	“It’s not a bad idea,” Kitth said. “Once you put this on, no one looks at your face.”
	“But I can’t handle money,” I said. “Don’t ask me why, I’m tired and it’s a hard thing to explain to a Cretid.”
	The man looked at Istria. 
	“Take my advice,” she said. “Don’t ask her why.”
	After glancing at Aine, who looked equally unforthcoming, he shrugged.
	“So I’ll keep you behind the bar,” he said. “Or can you not handle liquor, either?”
	“Whether I can is not necessarily the point here, friend.”
	It is a not totally insane idea, Istria said reluctantly. It’ll be dark, and they won’t be expecting to find us among the regular staff. The  sun’s setting, you’d have to undo at some point anyway, and you’ll be a lot less conspicuous out of hreapa.
	<Aine?>
	<Any port in a storm, dhiaoc.>
	I sighed.
	“Why not,” I finally said. “It would be a great pity to go home knowing there was one form of humiliation to which the Cretids had not yet subjected us.”
	“That’s the spirit,” said the man, with a laugh. “I’m Leno, Leno Lychus. I run the place. It used to be a queer bar, but the protection got too steep. Place like this, you don’t have to pay out, the great straight community will make sure it stays in business. There are extra leotards in the drawer in the vanity, and the ears and tails are in the basket over there. Hurry up, the regulars get upset if we don’t open on the dot.”
	He disappeared. Kitth pulled a handful of limp black things out of a drawer and held them toward us.
	“I do not thurking believe this,” I muttered.
	Istria shook her head, with one short chuckle.
	“If this place has a security camera,” she said, taking one of the garments from Kitth’s embarrassed hand, “I’m burning the tape before we go.”
	
	“Leno?”
	“Yes, my sweet?”
	“Stand closer.”
	I finished pouring the measure from the clear bottle with the purple spout, spun the little plastic stick in the tall, narrow glass, and handed the green glowing concoction to the bejowled, gray-faced man who had asked for it. 
	“Keep the change, doll,” he said, laying a few crumpled notes on the laminated surface of the bar and swiveling around on his stool.
	“Yeah, that’s what my prom date kept telling me,” Leno said, moving down the bar after pushing the concoction he’d been making into the waiting paw of another man. “Everyone from my mother to the Enforcers will tell you you’re wasting your time, hon.”
	“Leno,” I said, holding up a hand to stop the young man who was about to give me his order. “Get this straight. I’m not flirting with you.”
	“Sure you’re not,” he said.
	“I no more care about men than you care about women. I just need you to stay near me.”
	I couldn’t explain that the only reason I was able to mix these concoctions was that when the man placed his order, Leno overheard it and unconsciously ran through the recipe in his mind, which I then read off him. Sometimes the customer himself would have a vague idea, but Leno’s mind was much more specific and reliable. By this point in the evening I had memorized most of the basic varieties, but on the odd occasion when someone demanded a Blue Screw or some similarly obscenely-but-undescriptively-titled thing I had to consult the file in Leno’s mind.
	Leno laughed and wandered back up to the other end of the bar. I sighed and took advantage of the brief lull to glance out at the stage area. Dibi was up there, in her corset and hose and those feet-killing shoes, gyrating to the strains of something pretty awful. At the moment, she was unlacing the front of her corset, slowly, while the throng of men of all ages that had mobbed the tables near the stage shouted, thumped their glasses and mugs on the tables, and waved folded-up banknotes in the air. Obscenities flew thick around her; she ignored some and played to others, depending on whether their utterers were also waving money.
	I was distracted, thankfully, by the opening of the door to the street, through which a man in uniform entered. This uniform had brown and green blotches all over it, and the man was wearing a soft cap with a rounded bill; army, not police. He marched with purpose over to the bar, leaned one elbow on it and looked straight at me.
	“Hi there, toots. Will you tell your boss I want to speak with him?”
	I was glad enough to have an excuse to move away from him. “Leno? This man here wants to speak to you.”
	Leno glanced down at him. “Be right there. You take care of the table orders.”
	He glided down to the other end of the bar, where he flashed the man from the army a white-toothed smile. “Good evening, Commander! Will you and your men be joining us this evening? We offer a very reasonable group rate.”
	While the army man laughed, Istria came up to the bar. “I need three Alien Probes and there’s one fool wants something called a Wet Pussy.” I turned around to grab the necessary bottles. I suppose he’s leading the search team?
	I suppose. He’s already seen me, but I don’t seem to have registered.
	Like she said, Istria answered, as I put the drinks on the counter. Nobody looks at your face.
	“No, I don’t reckon that’s a good idea,” the army man was saying, looking at Dibi’s undulating backside. She had unlaced the corset, and was taking an unbelievably long time to get the thing off. “If I get the boys in here it’ll take forever to get ‘em out. Is there a back entrance with access to the parts that are off-limits to patrons?”
	“Sure,” Leno said. “I’ll show you where it is. I’m glad you’re here, actually, I found the chain cut when I showed up for work this morning. I figured it was burglars, but now you mention fugitives...”
	Istria wasn’t watching them, overtly, but she was relieved when the door closed behind them. Unbelievable, she said. And us standing here.
	It makes sense to me, I said. My own mother wouldn’t know me in this getup.
	Ulnach doesn’t know you, period, Istria answered, picking up the tray and moving back into the crowd.
	A minute later Aine came rushing up to the bar, her fuzzy ears accentuating her expression of alarm. Unlike us, she hadn’t drawn the cat nose and whiskers on her cheeks; Istria had gotten her out of it with some story about allergies. But after some discussion we had decided that under no stretch of the imagination could you count the ears and tail as jewelry, and so there she was, looking probably only half as ridiculous as I did.
	“Leno!” she shouted, over the noise of the music and the audience participation. <Dhiaoc, will you get him?>
	<He’s out back with the search team. What is it?>
	<I--I’m supposed to work table twelve while Kitth’s on break, but I can’t.>
	<Why not?>
	<Look,> Aine said.
	Table twelve was one of the ‘good’ ones--near the stage, which was why I hadn’t been watching it or anything in its vicinity. Being near the stage meant that you got special perks, if you had the money. For instance, Dibi, now dressed in nothing but hose, shoes, and a triangular swath of red lace that failed to cover much of her hips or gleacha, was standing on the table’s surface, somehow managing to keep her footing among the empty and full glasses while still writhing to whatever this ‘music’ was. The men were all craning their necks to watch, and shouting suggestions to both Dibi and the man who sat at the table, who was at that moment tucking a folded bill into the top of her stocking.
	Istria, who had come up with another drink order, followed our gaze. The man at table twelve leaned back, lifting enraptured eyes up to Dibi as she planted one knee on either side of his half-consumed Alien Probe and shook her endowments in his face.
	Rytehouse? Istria said, almost as startled as we were. What’s he doing out here so far from the City?
	You know him? I asked.
	Of course I know him, Lythril sponsored Family Forever, Istria answered. But how do you know him?
	He’s NightQueen’s father, Aine answered. We met her on the road, and...it’s a long story.
	Istria’s eyes flashed back to me, clearly expecting an elaboration, and clearly shading into suspicion when she realized I was masking.
	So what’s he done to her, Theamh? 
	Istri...there are not many things I won’t tell you, but right here and right now this is one of them. Ask me again after we’re out of here.
	“Don’t you worry about it,” Istria said. “I’ll go take his order.”
	She didn’t stop for my silent cry of alarm, even though I knew she felt it. Aine looked back at me. <What’s the matter, dhiaoc?>
	Istria had stopped at the table, holding her empty drink tray demurely before her with both hands, and was successful in distracting him long enough to get his order. Even though he had Dibi’s near-naked pelvis grinding away at him, he still paused to run his eyes over Istria, for longer than would be necessary. 
	<You can’t be jealous,> Aine protested. <She must know what he is.>
	<That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,> I answered, grimly.
	“Hey!” shouted someone down at the end of the bar. “Shake your tail up there, Kitty, this man needs lubrication!”
	<Duty calls,> I sighed, and wandered back down to the end of the bar.
	“What can I get you?” I said, trying for the sake of the disguise to smile at this young, bleary-eyed, sweat-streaked face. 
	“You got anything with Erysin in it?” shouted another young man, slapping him on the back. “‘Cause he’s gonna need it!”
	A group of other young men who had just claimed one of the tables by the bar laughed, as if this were witty. Meanwhile the young man who seemed to be the center of all this attention stuck out a hand toward me and made what was obviously a very great effort to concentrate long enough to introduce himself.
	“I’m...Ralf...I’m getting married tomorrow. Whoareyou?”
	“Congratulations, Ralf,” I said, letting go of his sweaty hand. “I am someone who is not getting married tomorrow. I would take your order, but I think if you drink any more of this fnaa you might lose consciousness altogether.”
	Ralf’s comrade pounded him on the back. “This is the fourth club we’ve been to,” he said, as if I should care. “Too damn far out in the boonies, but we made it anyway.” Ralf nodded, laughing foolishly. “Hey, is it true you’ve got Ideiren girls working here?”
	“Where did you hear that?” I demanded.
	He seemed a little taken aback by my sudden concern. “We got it off the flyer,” he said, shoving a crumpled sheet of paper at me.
	I smoothed it out. There was a picture on it of Dibi and Vira, dressed in the traditional garb of Dairc farm girls, with their hair sprouting from the ribbons they’d tied it up in like two symmetrical horsetails. Except that instead of homemade rawhide boots they were wearing more of those pointy-toed death-heeled contraptions, and those sheer, lacy hose--absolute absurdities in the context of those green-trimmed white blouses and rough wool skirts. They were standing on tiptoe, leaning awkwardly together with their gleachas in the air and their lips barely touching. Above them it said “IDEIRE ON TEN CRETINIAS A DAY.” Below them were directions on how to get to the place.
	I handed it back to them. “If they’re Ideirens, then so are you,” I answered. 
	The man laughed. “I’ll have an Alien Probe, and Ralf will have--”
	“Ralf will have nothing,” I said, having spent the past minute evaluating what I was reading off his mind. “If his bride wants him alive to wed her tomorrow--and who knows why she would, but I suppose she probably does--then he better not poison that mind any further, it’s already clinging to life by a thread.”
	“I wanna talk to the manager,” slurred Ralf, finally starting to understand in some fogged way that I was interfering with his evening’s pleasure.
	Fortunately, at that very moment, Leno came through that door to the street, alone. “Well, our friends in the force have moved on,” he said cheerfully, stepping behind the bar. “I don’t reckon they’ll be back. How are things at the store?”
	“Are you the manager?” demanded Ralf’s acquaintance.
	“I’m the owner,” he said. “What seems to be the problem?”
	“She’s refusing to serve my friend,” said the aggrieved Cretid, glaring at me.
	Leno looked at Ralf, then back at me. “Why don’t you go on break,” he said. “Kitth’s back from hers. I’ll take care of this.”
	“Are you going to serve him?” I demanded.
	Leno looked at me, and I decided it was safe to leave it to him. “Never mind,” I answered, opening the hinge in the counter. “I’m going.”
	And I was glad to be going, because Dibi was gone, and Vira was now on stage in her black leather and steel, and every man in the place was gaping at her except for NightQueen’s father, who was talking to Istria.
	She was standing at his table with one hand on her hip, the other absently stroking that stuffed tail. He beckoned for her to lean in closer, and whispered something to her. She laughed, bringing one hand to the low point of the V in that neck and tossing back her head. Then, with one challenging glance over her shoulder, she walked away from him and through the door that led into the dressing room.
	NightQueen’s father threw a huge wad of bills on the table and left through the door to the street, in a big hurry.
	<Dhiaoc?> Aine was over attending to another table, but she had seen this little drama play out too, and she was considerably more puzzled than I was.
	<Stay here,> I said. <It’ll look suspicious if we all leave.>
	<But what on the green earth or under it is she doing?>
	<Nothing, if I have anything to do with it.>
	I got to the door as unobtrusively as I could. When I opened it she had already gone through the dressing room and out the back door. I stopped to pull up the tile under which we’d hid our stuff and pulled out my bag. 
	I could see them out in that cracked asphalt field, her unbuttoning his white shirt and pulling it off him. Even though I had a pretty good idea of what she was really after, the mere sight of her running her hands down his chest was enough to turn my stomach. But when she undid the buckle at his waist, I started running.
	Not fast enough. His belt hissed through the loops on his trousers into the air, and it seemed like not even a second before it sliced across his chest. He stumbled backward with a shriek of pain, then forward into the fist that crashed into the side of his head. 
	“Istri, NO!”
	She paid no attention. She was in the grip of something stronger than anything at my command. His arms moved as if he were trying to fight her off, but he had no chance--he was probably mind-poisoned, but even if he hadn’t been, Istria was a strong woman, and she’d been trained to fight. But they didn’t train us to strike first, or to keep hitting after it became clear that your opponent was beaten.
	“Istri, STOP IT!”
	Her knuckles collided with his nose. Blood began running down into his mouth. He would have fallen over, but she wasn’t letting him--when he tottered in one direction, a blow from her sent him tottering in the other.
	“Do you like it now, you son of a bitch?” she shouted, driving a fist into his split and swollen mouth. 
	When he staggered backwards I caught him. I threw him down into the asphalt, for his own protection, away from the right hand that almost caught me instead.
	“Stop it!” I shouted, too upset to approach this with the calm that would have been more helpful. “He’s not worth it!”
	Istria picked up the belt again and dealt a whistling, vicious blow across his back. It was the belt, even more than the look in her eyes, that put me over the edge.
	“ISTRIA!” I shouted, as she drew back her arm. “Look at your hands!”
	Still not really seeing me, she shouted back, “What?”
	“Look at your hands!” I repeated.
	She looked at them. The skin over and around the knuckles was bruised, split and swollen from the work she’d done on his head, oozing her own blood and printed with his.
	“Whose hands are those?” I demanded, still unsteady but not shouting as loud.
	The belt dropped out of her hands as they started to shake.
	“Ah no,” she said, her voice shaking too now. “No, no no.”
	“Istri...”
	She looked at me, finally, as her face broke up and that mad, unreasoning light in her eyes melted into water.
	“Theamh,” she cried, holding up her hands as if they didn’t belong to her. 
	A groan from below reminded me that NightQueen’s father was still lying there on the asphalt. I pulled him to his feet, on which he could still stand, if unsteadily. He peered at me from puffed eyes above his bloodied nose and battered mouth.
	“You’ve saved me,” he said. “You’re an angel.”
	“Get out of here,” I spat. “Crawl home and then get on your knees to that thing you pray to and beg him to give you the strength to make something other than evil of what life is left to you.” He stared at me, trying to figure out where he had seen me before, and why I was wearing striped ears and a stuffed tail. “Go. Don’t make me say it twice.”
	He picked up his belt, staggered off to collect his shirt, and then went weaving toward one of the cars parked across the street from the club.
	I turned back to Istria, who was still standing there with her hands in midair.
	What am I?
	I reached into the bag and found the gloves. After I’d snapped them on, I took one of Istria’s bleeding hands in each of mine.
	You’re Istria, I said, looking as far into her as I could. And that’s enough for me.
	She sat abruptly down on the ground, keeping hold of my slick-coated hands so that I had to sit with her. For what seemed like a long time, all she did was cry and look at me across our joined-but-not-touching hands.
	“It was always in you to do this,” I finally said. “You got to him through the village. You never had it out, just him and you, after you’d come to power.”
	Her head dropped. “I would have killed him.”
	“You wouldn’t have killed him.”
	“How do you know?” Now her head was up again, and anger kept her eyes on a level with mine. And I had that sense of danger that I always had when we talked about this, the feeling that I was hiking across a thin crust of snow over a gap-toothed and crevassed mountain range whose contours I could only guess at.
	“Because that’s not what you wanted,” I said. “It’s not what you want, even now.”
	“What do I want then?” she demanded.
	“You tell me,” I answered, trying to sound gentle.
	She didn’t answer, except with more tears. I let go of one hand, gently, and took out the bottle of uisce and one of those rags that had come in so handy on this trip.
	When I began dabbing the uisce onto the back of her wounded hand, her throat opened in a shuddering, constrictive gasp. “I just wanted to be left alone!”
	I nodded, even though I knew that wasn’t the whole story, and kept the damp rag on her cut while I waited.
	“I made him know how much I hated him,” was the next thing she got out. And, after I had finished with the back of her hand and turned it over, “That was all I could make him know.”
	“And you wanted him to know...”
	I deliberately let it dangle. She took her hand, clean now if not completely healed, out of my palm and it went to the chain on her neck, unconsciously I thought. I started on the other hand while the breath shivered in her chest and she fought the words out of her.
	“How...how...how much,” she stammered, fingers twisting the links so it tightened around her neck.
	“How much you bled,” I said, looking at the indents where the silver ovals pressed into her skin.
	“How dark it was,” she answered, hands relaxing as the eyes fixed on mine widened slightly.
	“How the wound poisoned,” I said, my hands moving now without my thinking of them, as all of me came up to my eyes and my voice, now, here, it’s coming, it’s happening, you found the end of the thread, now pull, carefully, ravel it out...
	How quick I shattered
	How far you fell
	How deep the fissures
	How cracked the glass
	How lost the mirror
	How you lived broken
	How dark it was
	How much you bled
	How sharp the silence
	How much not spoken
	How dark it was
	How you learned sight back
	How dark it was
	How light found fragments
	How dark it was
	How much you bled
	How deep fear stained me
	How dark it was
	How light broke on me
	How deep the fissures
	How I lived broken
	How deep the fissures
	How voice broke through them
	How far you fell
	How far I fought him
	How cracked the glass
	How bright the fragments
	How much you bled
	How blood beat blood back
	How much you bled
	How your red heart beat
	How your heart answered
	How much I bled
	How great the terror
	How I live broken
	but how you live
	how dark it is
	but how you shine
	how dark he made me
	but what you made you
	how dark I am
	how bright your darkness
	
My hands lay inert in their sausage casings, hers resting limp across them. For a long time neither of us moved, except when a blink stuttered briefly across the path linking our eyes like a butterfly blundering out of its way. And it would have looked mighty strange, the two of us in those ridiculous costumes and with tear-dissolved whiskers dripping down our cheeks, sitting in an abandoned lot, staring at each other. But no one was looking, and if someone had been we wouldn’t have cared. Because nothing mattered, except that she was there now too, in her eyes and in the words, her words mine and mine hers, that here on this dark night under the chewed-out shadow of a dead steel machine we were learning the spell, we were making the magic, we had struck unexpectedly the living vein.
	And maybe we would never have moved, if a strange wind hadn’t stirred the ends of her hair, and I hadn’t felt, before I saw, that dreaded advent.
	“Istri,” I rasped from a throat that felt long unused and rusty. “What time is it?”
	She knew why I was asking. “Time,” she said.
	“Do you want me with you?”
	The wind rose as she paused for a long time, then swallowed and nodded.
	I tucked everything into the bag and we walked, hand in glove in hand, toward the abandoned hulk around which all the colors of the otherworld were beginning to twine.

	“I can’t tell you how she did it, Aine.”
	“Why not?”
	Istria had gone to help Leno and Kitth close up--her way of thanking me, I suppose, for having gone through what she’d put me through. Which left Aine and me in the dressing room putting the memory of those costumes as far out of mind as we could.
	“I gave her my promise not to and before you say it, let me tell you why.” She swiveled on the stool, still a little petulant but willing to be talked back into good humor. “She wants the power to make these things to die with her. Which I think any sane person would want, would you agree?” Aine nodded emphatically. “And she knows...well, ambition is a powerful solvent, especially of good intentions. She’s afraid that if the Order knew how to do this, someone would be bound to break down and try it.”
	Aine appeared to appreciate the wisdom of this, but she was still not sold. “Then why did she show you?”
	I sighed. “Well, that’s long to explain.”
	“I’m asking anyway.”
	“All right,” I said, stretching my arms up against the cinderblock wall and shifting my back. “First, there is this unreasonable idea she has that I can’t be corrupted.”
	“I don’t think it’s so unreasonable,” Aine said.
	“Aine, everyone can be broken. Me too. I know this.”
	The way I said it made her decide not to argue. “And second...?”
	“Second, she wanted me there with her when she dissolved them.”
	“Why?”
	“Partly as a witness, I think,” I said, running a hand across the back of my head. “So you, and anyone who asked, would trust that they were really gone.”
	Aine nodded. “But partly...”
	“But partly because she just wanted me there, like I wanted her there any time something hard happened to me.”
	“And partly...” Aine prompted.
	“So how did you know there was a third partly?”
	“I guess I’m getting better at reading,” she said, backing into that old diffidence.
	“Well, partly...”
	are you my mother?
	no, but she should have been
	“Dhiaoc?”
	It was a prompt, but she was also genuinely concerned about where I had gone to, and whether it was a good place.
	“Partly because, in her mind...when she made them...” Aine waited, giving me time with the difficult part. “Because in her mind they were ours, not just hers.”
	“Why?” Aine asked, more at a loss than I’d ever seen her.
	“I think because...well, you know that story about where babies come from, when mothers tell it it always starts with ‘when a man and a woman love each other...’”
	“I don’t understand,” she said.
	they should have been ours, not just mine
	“You understand, or you should understand, enough to know that after a year or so in Lythril’s hellhole her thinking must have gotten pretty strange,” I said.
	that’s what’s wrong with them
	“That I do understand,” she said, suppressing a shudder.
	“For Lythril it was a way to that immortal body she wanted,” I said. “For Istria it was a way to have what she never thought she could have had, what I guess neither of us really knew, until very recently, she’d wanted.”
	Aine waited, not apparently reading me well enough to guess the answer.
	“Children,” I said. “The one thing we could never have, whether we were dark, bright, or whatever.”
	“But how could they have been yours?” Aine demanded. “You weren’t there, and you would never have helped her do such a thing--”
	“No, of course not, but this is what I’m saying, you only spent an afternoon in there, you don’t know what it’s like. Of course it was a profound, black, ghastly mistake. So was her turning, but there comes a point where you start making mistakes even knowing that they’re mistakes just because it’s no longer possible to do anything else.”
	Aine looked at me thoughtfully, but without anger.
	“All of those things recognized me, Aine, and it’s because I was in her mind when she made them.”
	“So that thing outside Kwenu’s...it wasn’t Kitth’s child after all?”
	“No, it was. But all that meant was that it had a better idea of why she recognized me than the others did.”
	I closed my eyes, trying not to remember.
	“It must have been hard for her to destroy them,” Aine said, in a small voice.
	I opened my eyes. Aine was looking down into her lap, playing with a thread coming loose in the seam of her trouser leg.
	“It was,” I answered, waiting to see where this new emotion would take her.
	“I’m sorry for what I said,” she finally went on. “In the orchard.”
	“I’d forgotten,” I answered. “It’s all right, I know you didn’t mean it.”
	She shook her head. “Whether I meant it or not I should never have doubted you. I--” Finally she met my eyes. “I have no right, I know, but...”
	“You’re jealous.”
	She nodded, ashamed to admit it but feeling bound to it.
	“I’ve been worried about her being jealous of you, I hadn’t thought to put it to myself the other way around. But of course, for a year now it’s just been you and me, and to suddenly have her in the picture, it would naturally upset things.”
	“I should be above it, dhiaoc,” she said quickly, eyes full of self-reproach.
	“We should all be above a lot of things,” I answered. “Maybe this will help, Aine...” I took a minute to think how to frame things. “Even after everything, Istria’s closer to me than any other person was or will be, that’s how it is--and that’s how it always was, Aine, it’s just that until now we didn’t have to notice it all the time.” Aine nodded. “But you’re my scoilin, Aine. No matter what Istria is to me she can’t be that. And after her, you’re the best friend I have.” She didn’t know what to answer. “You are something different than what she is to me. But I still...” It was hard to say, but it was time to do it. “I couldn’t do without either of you. You’re necessary, in a different way.”
	She was a little overwhelmed, but proud too, and I thought in the end it would be good to have laid it out for her like that. “Once you come to trust that,” I said, “maybe you’ll see her different, and maybe you’ll forgive her for more.”
	I happened to look up, and now Istria was standing in the doorway, undoing the knot into which she’d tied back her hair for work.
	“Don’t forgive me,” Istria said, as Aine turned to look at her. “I don’t deserve it, and it’s not good for me anyway. Theamh forgives too much as it is.”
	She came in to sit with us, still in that little black costume although the ears and the tail had long disappeared. Aine looked at her; Istria looked at the floor.
	“I’m sorry for your loss,” Aine said.
	Istria hadn’t been around Aine as long as I had. But Istria was a quick learner and a good reader, and she knew that it had cost Aine something to say it, and she knew that she only made the effort because she was starting to understand, because she was coming around to the idea that Istria might turn out, after all, to be her friend and not just mine.
	“It’s very strange,” Istria said, looking at her. “A hard thing to know how to feel.”
	Aine nodded as if this were something she understood.
	“Theamh says you were good to...NightQueen,” Istria said.
	Aine colored a little. “I worried about her a lot,” was the way she put her answer.
	“Theamh hasn’t told you, has she, about my father?”
	“I thought I--” I stopped, as Aine turned a puzzled face in my direction. “Oh, that’s right. That wasn’t you, it was her.”
	Aine returned gravely to Istria. “No, she hasn’t.”
	“But you’ve guessed,” Istria suggested.
	Aine paused in confusion, but kept going, with her eyes fixed on the floor. “I was the first to see what NightQueen’s father did,” she said. “I know what a horror it was. But even so that wouldn’t explain some of the things...some of what she said to him.” She glanced up at Istria but then dropped her eyes again, intimidated to be venturing on this dangerous, foreign territory. “It seemed like...she wasn’t just defending NightQueen.”
	“You guessed right,” Istria said, shortly.
	Aine nodded, still not looking up.
	“I tell you so you’ll know,” she said. “You’ve got a head on your shoulders and you’ll be able to see maybe when it’s going to run us into trouble, this story I live with. Because Theamh, Idair keep her safe, has a habit of giving me too much credit.”
	It was still tense, still awkward, still unwilling. But she said “us,” and Aine heard it, without irony or detachment. 
	“And you with aftersight,” Aine said, suddenly.
	Istria didn’t answer, except with the slight inclination of her head.
	“It must have been nothing but hell,” Aine said. “All the time.”
	Istria drew her knees up under her chin and wrapped her arms around them.
	“Not all the time,” she said. “But mostly.”	
	“Speaking of running into trouble,” I said, when I had decided it was time to change direction. “We need to think of another plan.”
	“True enough,” Istria said. “But first, we need to sleep. Leno says he’ll let us squat here for the night.”
	“He’s a nice man, for a pimp,” I said, spreading out the bedroll.
	Istria began piling up some of the costumes into a sleeping mound, with a soft chuckle. “If he were a pimp, this would make more sense to me,” she said, finally lying down next to me. “Straightforward whoring I understand, even if it’s weird how up here they’re all women. But the point of all this I do not get.”
	Aine spread herself out on the other side of Istria, looking up at the ceiling. I flicked the switch and the dark came in, diluted a little by the light leaking in.
	“Maybe it’s so they can say they’re still faithful,” Aine said. “You know, I can see that Rytehouse going home and saying, ‘Ustine, I have never touched another woman.’”
	Istria closed her eyes, but her mind wasn’t quiet. And maybe a woman wouldn’t have touched him, only...
	Only what? I asked.
	He told me I reminded him of his daughter, she went on.
	“Seems like up here,” I said, “they grow their bastards meaner, and more twisted.”
	“Sort of like their apple trees,” Aine agreed.
	I looked over at Istria. Close enough to touch, and a whole universe away.
	The first decent night’s sleep I ever had was in your house, Istria said.
	Maybe, I thought, but tried not to say, it will turn out not to have been the last.

V.
Trust Me
	
	“How did they like the peanuts?”
	Aine was off packing; Istria was behind the bar, wiping out the glasses we had used. I had scraped together enough bar snacks to feed the vigils. “Phredi seemed to take to them,” I said. “The others are getting a little tired of eating on the run.”
	Aine returned, hauling the bag. “Ready to ride, dhiaoc.”
	“If only,” I said. Istria returned the glasses to the shelf under the bar. “I hope Cinhe is all right with Taric.” I hadn’t asked what had happened to Zeppa; I had the sense it was bad. That would have been the first way Lythril would have tried to get to her; Istria had probably had to watch her die.
	Istria wasn’t thinking about that, though; she was fiddling with the VB mounted in a corner above the bar. The place looked different empty and clean; almost like a tavern you could spend time in, except for that platform at the end and all the sound equipment. On the screen, at the moment, were a man and a woman, dressed like all those people on the VB were, but instead of behind a desk they were in comfortable chairs on a platform that looked like it was trying to be the floor of someone’s living area.
	“Today on ‘Wake Up The Nation,’ we look at what martial law will mean to you,” chirped the woman, that painted smile never altering.
	“And we talk to anthropologist Brendan Alston about that wild wacky world south of the border,” replied her friend, smiling under his salt and pepper pouf.
	“But first, please welcome Zoltan Kielit back to the show. You all know her as Zoltan the Magnificent, psychic to the stars,” said the woman.
	“But, did you also know that she’s written a best-selling book?” The screen suddenly filled with just his hands holding up the front cover. “It’s called ‘Mind Over Matter: Discover The Psychic Within,’ and here to tell us more about it is Zoltan herself.”
	“Please,” Istria snorted, laughing at the woman who had just walked onto the screen. “Take a look, Theamh, does she remind you of anyone?”
	The blue shiny turban with its silver stars distracted me at first, but it came to me.
	“I’ll be buttered,” I said. “So this is what happened to Ginia.”
	“Amazing, isn’t it? She fails Introductory Mindstrength three years in a row, then comes up here and gets rich telling Cretids what’s in their own heads. They’re damned lucky we can’t sell shri, there would be no money left in this country.” 
	The ‘we’ had hardly passed her lips before her face darkened as she remembered that it was the wrong pronoun. Aine noticed her pain, and let it go by. To break the tension, I glanced back up at the screen, where Zoltan had her hands on the man’s graying temples and was chanting something that sounded like it might have been Old Tongue if only she were halfway competent.
	“Why would anyone pay to be read?”
	“Because they can’t read themselves,” Istria answered. “It’s truly pitiful to watch them try. They have no idea how to start.” 
	“It’s a matter of concentration,” Zoltan was saying. “With a half hour of practice every day, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be reading minds at the end of the month.”
	“Is that really true?” Aine asked. “That the Cretids can learn, if they try?”
	Istria shrugged. “It’s hard to say that a thing is definitely not possible. But we worked hard on some of the brightest women in this rotten place, and none of them even got to the level of a well-trained child. It looked for a while like Hedina might make some progress, but I think any change Lythril noticed was more or less wishful thinking.”
	“So she really was trying to train,” I said. “I have to say, Lythril never struck me as someone who would make a good teacher.”
	Istria almost smiled, looking back up at Ginia’s turban. “It’s true she lacks patience; that’s why I did most of the training. And in the mood I was in, I wasn’t too patient either. But it’s also true there’s not much in them to work on,” she went on. “Their minds are in sad condition. It’s no wonder they all do so much damage--I think sometimes it’s just because they’re not smart enough to figure out how not to.”
	“I’ll buy that for a copper,” Aine said.
	Istria’s eyes laughed although she didn’t. “It used to drive Lythril crazy. She’d sit there watching three VBs at a time all tuned to different channels and all chock full of Cretid idiocy, and fume at the injustice of it. I remember one time she was sitting there, with Maerin right in the room, and she just blurted it out-- ‘If I could only get five good people up here, we could be ruling like kings inside of a week.’”
	“So how come she never did?” I asked.
	Istria got quiet for a minute, but she answered the question.
	“The thing about dark users is, they don’t trust each other,” Istria said. “I think she made some attempts at recruiting, before she was exiled, but nobody wanted to join forces--and you can’t blame them. When she decides to dissolve a partnership she doesn’t do it with lawyers.” I nodded. “I don’t think it would have worked out. Lythril likes being the most powerful woman in her world. Which is of course at odds with her desire for colleagues. She’s scared of people who are her equals, but she hates people who are less.” Istria sighed. “Sick as it is, Theamh, she meant it when she said she was trying to build something at Greenhaven. Something evil, for sure. But she really did have this vision...”
	Zoltan and the others went nattering away; Aine and I weren’t following any more. We were watching Istria on her way back to those memories, with I’m sure much different emotions.
	“That’s why she’s working with Barant,” Istria finally said, voice quiet and eyes dark. “She wants to be head of an Order too. She learned up there that she was never going to be able to build one herself. But if she can take over one that already exists...”
	We knew that there was a world of evil hanging on to the end of that dangling sentence. Neither of us prompted her to complete it. Aine finally broke into the VB-overwritten silence with a question that took some nerve to ask.
	“You say she didn’t want to work with equals,” Aine said. “Because dark users don’t trust each other. But...she trusted you, didn’t she?”
	Istria said nothing for a while, and then decided to answer the question. “She let me have a lot of responsibility,” she said. “And she listened to me when I gave her my opinion, even if she didn’t always take it. And she watched me like a hawk every chance she got and made sure that I couldn’t escape until she made sure I didn’t want to.”
	“Both and neither,” I said. “You want my theory on that? Because I have one.”
	Istria laughed; Aine smiled cautiously. “Fire away,” she said.
	“Most dark users want to be dark,” I said. “She knew at the bottom you didn’t. Which meant on the one hand that she couldn’t trust you, because you would always be looking for a way to break free of her. But which meant on the other hand that she could, because even dark you were still honest and still averse to harm, deceit and betrayal.”
	“Theamh,” she said, after a minute, “you can’t save me from this. I turned. It wasn’t a trick. The Dark One doesn’t take you on unless it’s sure of you.”
	“That’s not what I meant,” I said. “I meant--well, look. There are ways and ways to be on our side, there are ways and ways to be on hers. There’s a big difference between Aine there and someone like Kelah. And there’s a big difference between you and Lythril.”
	“I’m still dark,” she said.
	“We’re all dark, somewhere in us,” I answered. 
	As she saw Istria gearing up for a pretty long and involved rebuttal, Aine broke in. “We have to leave soon, before too much of the day is gone.”
	“Before we go anywhere,” I said, “we need a better plan than mine was.”
	Aine climbed onto a stool next to me. “Well, we can’t cross the border in the normal way, there is just too much army in the way.”
	“So what way is there, besides the ‘normal way’?” Istria asked.
	“I was thinking,” Aine said. “The Ubh crosses the border, and nobody stops it.”
	“And?” I asked.
	“And if we could somehow...get the Ubh to take us along with it...” I began looking highly skeptical. Aine rushed to defend her idea. “It’s always harder to patrol a border over water. If you want to smuggle, you do it on water when you can. So if we get some kind of boat, and we can get to the source of the Ubh, I bet we could get past their border guards--even if it means we have to do part of the trip under water.”
	Istria nodded. “It makes sense,” she said.
	“Wait a minute,” I snapped. “You’re suggesting we swim the Ubh?”
	“Not swim exactly,” Aine said. “Not the whole way, anyhow. But that we get or make some kind of craft, and take it to the border, and then if we have to to hide from the guards, we can go underwater. It’s true I can’t swim, but you could...tow me...I guess...”
	She could tell I was not excited about this plan, but she wasn’t sure why. “I think it’s a good idea,” Istria put in. “The only problem would be getting a boat, but--”
	“No,” I said. “That’s not the only problem. I guess you wouldn’t know this, but Aine ought to.”
	“But you cleansed the Ubh,” Aine said. “It’s all right now, surely?”
	I shook my head. “I cleansed the part that runs through Dairc. The part on this side of the border--what they call Murky River--it’s still polluted. The only reason the Ubh stays clean is the filter we set up at the border.”
	Istria was looking lost, so I backed up. “Four years ago, just after you were taken, there was a sudden outbreak of strange and horrible sickness along the banks of the Ubh. Long story short, we found out that the river was carrying the long slow burning from over the border into Dairc.”
	“You found out,” Aine interrupted.
	“It was a group effort,” I said. “I made the adjustment, but I had a lot of help setting up the barriers that kept the thing clean. Without that my knowledge would have been worth nothing.”
	“How does it work?” Istria asked.
	“Oh, that’s a long story,” I said. “Basically we put a series of shields in that screen for fire out of place. The only hard part was creating one that could actually settle and draw. It’s the only charm of its kind in the world,” I said, feeling in spite of myself a little bit proud. “It wouldn’t work at all if we didn’t have the genius cooperating, but as long as Ubh works with us, we’re safe.”
	“What kind of pollution are we talking about?” Istria asked.
	“The Cretids call it nuclear radiation,” I said. “We call it the long slow burning.”
	Istria’s eyes flicked briefly over my face, then turned back to Aine.
	“All right then,” she said. “So that plan’s no good. Got any others?”
	“Why no good?” Aine demanded. “She knows how to cure the sickness--when we get over the border she can fix whatever’s been put wrong.”
	“I am going to have enough to deal with when we get back,” Istria said. “I don’t need to go home with a dark user’s chain and a third eyeball.”
	“That’s just stories,” I said, trying to keep Aine from sparring back at her. “People in Dairc didn’t grow extra noses or start glowing in the dark. They lost their hair first, and then the burns started appearing, and in bad cases they would slough some of their skin--”
	“Regardless!” Istria interrupted with a shudder. “That nuclear tarbhfnaa is the unholiest stuff there is and I want no truck with it.”
	“But it is true,” I said musingly, “that if we did swim through those barriers, it would settle whatever had been put wrong in us. Unless we had been burned too far, in which case it would bounce us back.”
	“Theamh,” said Istria, as if I were talking nonsense.
	“I’m not saying it’s something I’d relish doing,” I answered. “But it is possible that we could do this and come out none the worse.”
	“Possible, but not likely,” Istria said, looking at me.
	“There were people in Dairc I couldn’t save,” I said. “It would all depend on how long we were exposed, and how soon either I or the Ubh went about putting us right.”
	Istria shook her head violently. “I cannot believe you are seriously considering this,” she said. “You want to go and deliberately expose yourself to radiation poisoning?”
	“I don’t want to,” I said. “Only a lunatic would. But if it’s the only way to get across the border--”
	“It’s not a way at all,” Istria said flatly. “I’ve lived up here, I know where this stuff comes from. If it comes to that we can wait until maybe the border guard eases up, or--”
	“Oh, and when will that be?” Aine demanded, a little hotly. “Not till they’ve killed everyone who ever looked at the Cretid Police crossways, and that could take years--”
	I held up a hand, because I had seen something change on the screen. And sure enough, I wasn’t looking at that room any more. I was looking at a different room--a large hall, with a sweeping double staircase at one end, and a wide floor filled with couples who were twirling to music that came out of the VB as if coming through water.
	“What is it?” Aine asked.
	“I don’t see how it could be,” I said, “but it looks like--”
	“Idair’s hair and eyebrows!”
	Istria had just seen what I’d just seen--me, in that ancient blue dress with my hair up in that net of golden wire, taking the floor with Twil mac Derin na nOg. The room was the great hall of my parents’ house, although it was strange to see it in this flattened image on the VB, with the light all strange and everything not what I was used to.
	I had assumed that Istria was reacting to the sight of me dancing with the new ambassador to the Cretid Nation, but that particular bit of alarm didn’t last long, because only a few seconds later the image of me on that screen broke away from Twil, looking angry, and went running toward the stairs. And then Geraine went running across the floor, passing across the screen and out of view.
	“...and it was just after that that things began to get interesting,” said a voice, as the image froze for a moment, then returned to that brightly colored not-room.
	It was the same two people, but Zoltan was gone, and instead, smiling his fool’s smile atop that jacket and noose as he lounged in his chair, was Brendan mac Alston.
	“That son of a bitch,” I said. “So that’s why his epaulets were so huge--he had a camera in there.”
	“How did he get it through the border?” Aine demanded, horrified.
	“That’s a very good question,” I said.
	“Shh.” Istria was very interested in what Brendan had to say.
	“...of course if you want to see what Brendan means by ‘interesting,’ you’ll have to go see the new documentary just released by the Institute for Anthroplogical Study. It’s called ‘In Search of Idair,’ and it’s directed and produced by Brendan Alston, who’s with us here this morning. Brendan, tell us a little bit about what we just saw.”
	“Well, Wrick, this part of the film starts out as just a typical slice of Ideiren life. I was invited to a party hosted by one of the City’s leading families, the na Craoibhs. They’re a particularly interesting family group because they’re caught between traditional Ideiren culture and the emerging modern consciousness that you see in so much of Ideire today. And there is a beautiful illustration of that just after the clip that you saw, where one of the guests at this sophisticated party attended by urbane, modern people tries to use an ancient form of ritual humiliation to punish another guest who she thinks has raped her daughter. It’s a terribly poignant moment, and it was quite something to witness it.”
	“Uh huh,” said the man, nodding and smiling but clearly not having followed most of what Brendan had said. “I have to say, Brendan, your timing couldn’t have been better--it’s like the whole country has caught Ideiren Fever!”
	Brendan laughed. “The response has been overwhelming--it’s on its way to being possibly the only documentary in the Institute’s history to make a profit. I have to thank Twil mac Derin na nOg, who has done a phenomenal job of opening up the lines of communication between our two countries. Even before he took up his post, he worked tirelessly to improve relations. Without his help I really couldn’t have made this film.”
	“Aha,” Aine said.
	“Lythril never said anything to me about this,” Istria muttered.
	“And it’s nice, too, that it was all shot before all that unrest started down there,” said the woman. “So people can see what it looked like before. It’s just tragic, some of the images we’ve seen from Amst.”
	Brendan nodded his head sagely, while Istria’s stare got more and more concentrated. “It’s a terrible thing, what’s happening down there. All primitive societies have growing pains when they enter the modern age--it’s analogous to Dubhinis, where progress has a way of reviving those old tribal conflicts. Amst has a distinctive culture, and it’s always been somewhat at odds with the other provinces in Ideire, so it makes perfect sense that the conflict is taking place there--but it’s still terribly, terribly tragic.”
	“Of course it makes sense,” Istria said, softly but bitterly. “Isn’t Amst where everything evil happens...”
	“What do you think’s going to happen with all that?” said the man, looking at Brendan as if he was being very serious.
	Brendan took a considering breath. “It’s hard to say, exactly,” he answered, nodding sagely. “You have to understand that under normal circumstances Ideire does not maintain what we would consider a standing army. Each province maintains its own volunteer militia, but it’s been hundreds of years since any of those little state armies have seen active duty. The Amstian Army is legendary throughout Ideire, and they’re doing their best, but Amranth is an easy place to defend and a hard place to take, especially when your weapons technology is four hundred years out of date.”
	Istria let out a startled sound and slammed an open palm on the surface of the bar.
	I wasn’t sure I’d heard right either, but Brendan was really warming to the subject. “Between the Amstian Army and the special envoys the Order has sent up there to negotiate a settlement, it seems like the standoff shouldn’t last too long, but you know, down there they have a saying that anything is possible. In a couple years the Amstian Army may give up, and Amranth may become the world’s smallest independent nation.”
	“So wait,” Aine said. “He’s saying the Amstian Army is besieging Amranth?”
	“I took my daughter down to Amranth two years ago,” the other man was saying, chattily. “I remember seeing those big gates and thinking, ‘boy, I don’t want to get caught on the wrong side of this thing.’ You know they were made out of sixty-four tons of--”
	Istria grabbed the zapping box and began blitzing through the channels, looking for something that would confirm what we’d just heard.
	“--and among the things the Open Window Policy has brought to Ideire is the institution of the press conference,” said a voice.
	Istria let the image sit. It was a room in the Seat, crammed with repeaters. At one end, on a bench, sat the Leader of Leaders, next to a woman in her forties with a strong jaw and what looked like a strong pair of arms under that close-fitting brown tunic, and of course, Barant. Two of those disembodied voices were discussing the scene on the screen.
	“You know, Toaki, I was talking to one of their reporters earlier this morning, and she was saying that actually there has always been something much like this down there--it’s just unusual for the Order to have a representative at an event like this.”
	“The woman on the left is, I believe, Alepha ni hIlenium, who was just recently appointed as head of the new Ideiren National Defense Force, and the man next to her is Nuet mac Riach, the head of their legislative body...”
	The voice died away as the Leader of Leaders began talking. 
	“...will brief you on the ongoing action in Amst, and the shriia is here to answer any questions you may have about the peace negotiations.”
	“Thank you,” said Alepha. “As you know, the INDF is a very recently constituted force, and it will be several weeks before we are combat-ready. Until then, the Amstian Army is holding the line around Amranth. We want to take this opportunity to extend our gratitude to the brave men of Amst who are fighting so hard for the cause of Ideiren unity and freedom, and our sympathy to the families who have lost loved ones in this struggle.”
	“I do not believe it,” Istria whispered. “I just do not believe it.”
	Alepha was taking a question from the floor now. “Aiv, I’m Giol mac Klunt for Ceard an Sceal. I’m curious to know what kind of opposition the Amstian Army is encountering from the dark users of Amranth, and how your force is planning to combat this kind of dark magic?”
	“I think Barant can speak to that better than I can,” said Alepha.
	Barant leaned forward. “Giol, our representatives are up there as a safeguard against exactly that kind of action. We can’t engage in the actual physical combat, but so far we have been very successful in limiting the amount of force these women are able to use. For instance, the shield they had erected around the city was breached two weeks ago, and since then has not been reestablished.” Alepha nodded. “That side of things has to be left up to us; the army can’t be expected to cope with it. We do our job, you do yours, and between the two of us we’ll bring them back to the light, isn’t that it, Alepha?”
	Alepha nodded. “The Order’s cooperation has been invaluable. Without them I doubt we’d be progressing as well as we are.”
	“That’s it then,” Istria said. “They’re thralled, all of them.”
	“You can’t thrall a whole army,” Aine said, although she was just as shaken.
	“How else could they get the Amstian Army to fight against Amranth?” Istria demanded.
	“It’s actually not impossible, Aine,” I said. “It would depend on how many people were working and what kind of spirit help they had. With ten arani, someone was able to thrall most of Cacht and stay far enough away from it all that we never caught her. I had always figured it was some local dark user who had never made much of a name for herself. We should have spent some time investigating the local shriias.”
	“What were they up to, the thralled?” Istria said, but before I could get into it another repeater stood up in that room on the screen.
	“Kleark mac Caille, True Stories,” said the man.
	“It’s that man from Two Flocks,” Aine said, waiting to see what he would do.
	“Two Flocks?” Istria asked, but I waved her silent. 
	“My question is for the shriia,” said Kleark. “In the past, as I’m sure everyone in this room is aware, the Order has always restricted its role in wartime to purely humanitarian and/or nonagressive defensive actions--smuggling food into Amranth, for instance, or sealing off Daircri after the massacre.” Barant nodded. “It seems to me that the Order is participating much more actively in this conflict, and I just wondered if you worry at all about the effect this may have on shri.”
	“You’re a brave man, Kleark mac Caille,” Aine said, quietly.
	“Who would have known,” I said. “He seemed like such a pain in the gleacha--”
	“Shhh!”
	“Of course I worry about it,” Barant said, with a smile and all the appearance of frankness. “It’s my job to worry about things like that. But you must understand that this is different because of the involvement of dark users. It’s always been part of our mission to fight dark users when and where we can do it. Those other wars had nothing to do with magic. Sadly, this one does. We are bound to prevent loss of life where we can, and that means we need to be there, to prevent a tragedy like Dunta from recurring.”
	Kleark nodded and sat down. I was sad to see him not follow up; it sounded as if he had almost begun to understand what was going on, but Barant’s answer seemed to have satisfied him. It hadn’t satisfied Istria, however, who finally took her eyes off the screen and asked me the question again.
	“What happened at Dunta, Theamh?”
	While I was thinking about how to start answering that question, one of the other repeaters stood up and called out, “Can you comment on the Order’s response the statement released by Ambassador na nOg earlier today?”
	“Certainly,” said Barant. “It’s a painful subject for me, because as you know Theamh ni hUlnach was my apprentice.” With that almost-real grief on her face it was hard to remember how much I had been growing to hate her, or what reasons I had for it. “We deplore the taking of life under any circumstances, and especially in the name of justice. But unless we want a renewal of hostilities with the Cretid Nation--something we can’t afford, given our domestic troubles--we must allow Cretid justice to take its course.”
	“Oh, wait a minute,” Istria said.
	“But you are no longer pursuing extradition?” the reporter pressed.
	“First,” Barant said with a patient smile, “the Order has never been pursuing extradition. That initiative originated in the Courts. Second, once the Cretid Nation has charged a defendant with capital crimes they don’t extradite her anywhere for anybody, and Ambassador na nOg has had this explained to him in very forceful terms by the Cretid government. If the Cretid authorities are successful in apprehending Theamh and her confederate Lythril, they will in all probability execute them. And while the Order naturally abhors the taking of life, we must also recognize that the Cretid Nation is a sovereign state and that it has the right to dispense justice within its borders as it sees fit, just as we do. If we want them to respect our sovereignty, we must respect theirs.”
	“Yes, but the ambassador spoke of collaboration,” pursued the reporter.
	Barant looked at her. “I believe the word was ‘cooperation,’” she said. “You won’t mind if I use that one, in our business words matter.” There was some respectful laughter, and Barant went on, while we stood struck and silent. “Again, the Order is a separate institution, and we are not responsible for the actions of the Seated Leaders or their representatives. Twil mac Derin believes, and he is supported in this by the majority of the Seated Leaders, that cooperating with the Cretid law enforcement authorities is an important gesture of goodwill and will benefit the country. While we take the position that death benefits no one, we understand that not everyone will always share this view, and we recognize that the Order cannot dictate to our institutions of secular government.”
	“She is out of her mind,” Istria breathed. “She is stone cold crazy.”
	Aine and I were both not sure exactly how this response was relevant to what had just gone forward. Istria shook her head, keeping her eyes fixed on that screen.
	“She and that ambassador have managed to get the Cretid police on their side,” Istria said. “She must have convinced them that Lythril had something to do with this uprising. They’re hunting her down as well as you.” She shook her head.
	“So,” Aine said. “We softened Lythril up and now Barant’s going to take her out.”
	“I guess she figured,” I said, “that as long as she’s sold herself to the Dark One, she should be the one who gets to rule us all with an iron fist.”
	“All right,” Istria said suddenly. “I’ve seen enough.”		
	Aine pressed the button on the zapping box. The screen went dark.
	I waited to see what she would do. What she did was turn to me and search my face for what seemed like a long time.
	“You say you can cure radiation poisoning?”
	“I can and I have.” 
	She was still looking skeptical.
	“But the Cretids have never been able to cure it,” she said.
	“You’ve been up here too long, Istri,” I said.
	“Not by choice,” she answered, bitterly.
	“All right,” I said, “that was stupid and I should have thought before I said it. I am sorry. What I meant was--I can do a lot of things the Cretids can’t do.”
	She blinked once, considering.
	“Trust me,” I said. 
	“All right,” Istria finally sighed.
	Aine brightened up, but glanced back to me for approval.
	“There it is, then,” I said. “Let’s go find Murky River.”
	Istria went cold thinking about it.
	“I don’t blame you for being wary of it,” I said, because she was starting to be ashamed of her fear. “It is a very terrible way to die. But I am telling you that based on what I know about it and how long I think we are liable to be exposed that there is a good chance we will all three come out of this whole and healthy in the end.”
	“A good chance,” she said.
	“I am still a shriia.”
	She nodded briefly. “I do trust you,” she said. “But you say yourself it’s a risk...I just wasn’t sure until now it was a risk we had to take.”
	“So what decided you?”
	“Barant. We have to get home before she wrecks the place.” I nodded. “I hate to say it about your diaoc, Theamh,” Istria said, shaking her head as her eyes wandered back to that empty screen, “but I think we’ve just seen the future of dark magic.” 
	“So,” Aine said in the silence. “This is why dark users don’t work together.”
	“Pretty much,” Istria said, appreciating the irony even as her stomach curdled along with mine. “Once evil gets into your veins, nothing will stop you from pursuing your own power--not even self-interest.”
	“Something must have stopped you,” Aine said.
	Istria picked up one of the bundles. “Come on, daylight’s burning.”
	Aine and I watched her head for the back door. 
	“Are you coming?”
	“Yes,” Aine finally said, lifting another one. <You trust her, dhiaoc?>
	<I do.>
	<Why?>
	<Because I do.>
	<That’s not an answer.>
	<You trust her too, Aine.>
	<What do you mean?>
	<If you didn’t, you would never have let her into your body.>
	Aine paused to consider this.
	<So the real question is why in the name of anything you trust her.>
	We were outside now, shouldering our burdens as we shut the back door and squinted off into the east and the climbing sun.
	<Right before you touched her,> Aine said, as we started walking away from the empty streets and into the waste scrub on the side of the road. <You were closing the link, but in that last second I saw her face.> 
	<And?> I said, resisting a reflex glance over at Istria.
	<I saw that face waking and sleeping for days after,> she said. Istria was now starting to realize we were talking, although she forbore to ask what about. <Lythril lost the battle right there. The rest was just...logistics.>
	I closed the link. “So,” Istria said. “How do we find Murky River?”
	“Shouldn’t be hard,” I said. “We head east, and then we follow what’s on fire.”

	Istria stood between us, leaning on the iron fence and looking off into the haze-wreathed distance at the darkened face of a broad and still lake. The stunted trees on the opposite shore were visible, but only barely. 
	“Are words failing you, too?” Istria finally asked.
	I nodded.
	It wasn’t that the place looked burnt out and blackened the way a place does after a real fire. It had been abandoned for years; we were the first people in a long time to put our hands on this rusting iron railing and read the sign chained to the links of the fence. “MURKY RIVER ELECTRIC PLANT. DANGER: RADIATION. NO TRESPASSING.”
	Inside the fence was the lake. And far out to the east, almost too far to be seen through the haze, there sprouted near the shore of the lake the top of some giant structure made of that smooth beige material they built all their sidewalks out of. Only this thing was windowless, a cylinder tapering a little toward where it met the surface. That was all we could see, aside from a vicious and consuming fire that raged at the heart and on the surface of the lake.
	“Why do they call it a river when it’s a lake?” I asked.
	“It isn’t,” Aine said. “You can see it moving--barely. It sort of pools here; probably it gets narrow down at the mouth of this valley. Then it will look like a river again, once it starts going down through the canyon toward Dairc.”
	Istria nodded as if this meant something. I decided they probably knew what they were talking about.
	“Where is this plant?” I asked.
	Istria pointed at the concrete thing. “That looks like part of it,” she said. “Maybe they unbuilt it, you know, after it stopped working.”
	I shrugged. We do that, with buildings that we can’t use any more. I supposed it wasn’t too much to believe that Cretids might do one sensible thing. 
	“I know I can’t see the fire,” Aine said. “But I still have a bad feeling about this place.”
	“It’s the lake,” I said.
	Istria and I were looking at the fire twinkling between the ripples on its dark green surface. But what Aine was feeling had to do with something else.
	“What does it feel like?” I asked, while we cut through the metal in the fence.
	She furrowed her brow. “It just...it just feels...silent.” We twisted the piece we’d broken off away from the rest of the fence and filed in. “I know, silent isn’t a feeling.”
	“Still,” I said, as we made our way toward the collapsing, abandoned buildings that dotted the nearer shore. “You’re right anyway. The place is dead, that’s why it’s silent.”
	“Dead?” Aine asked.
	“The genius is gone,” Istria answered, disturbed by the knowledge. 
	“Gone where?”
	“Withdrawn to the other side of the border,” I said. “It’s unnatural, very. But the genius of the Ubh stays south of the border. We almost lost her altogether; the only way she stays is by keeping out of this part of the river.”
	“Because of the poison,” Aine said.
	I nodded. The grass had kept growing, anyhow; long and brushing our legs, each blade laden with its share of the fire. Istria saw it, but said nothing. Aine couldn’t see it, but she knew we were watching, that I was tallying up in my head the amount of fire and the extent of danger, that Istria was reading my mounting anxiety.
	“It isn’t right,” I said. “A genius should be everywhere, all the time. To have bottled her up on our side of the Zone is just wrong. She doesn’t like it, but it’s the only way she can stay, and she is attached to the place.”
	Things got worse when it became clear that whatever that concrete pier had been used for in the past, it was not now harboring small craft. We all surveyed the dearth of boats mournfully, wondering what was next.
	Aine, after staring for a moment at one of the shacks that clustered along the pier, stepped up to one and seized the end of the tin roof, tearing it loose with a wrench and dropping it clattering onto the surface of the pier.
	“Aine, what are you doing?” I inquired as she ripped the supporting beam off its rotten foundation.
	“Building  a raft,” she said matter-of-factly, as she began pulling at another wooden beam..
	Istria and I looked at each other.
	“Uh...there are three of us,” I ventured, not wanting to take on that Jiprani pride.
	Aine went right on bringing back materials--a length of coiled wire she’d found, more old wood, tin.
	“And all of our stuff,” I added.
	“It’ll hold us, don’t worry.”
	“Because you see it’s the water that’s the most dangerous, right now,” I said. “And of course you can’t swim. We really don’t want to sink, if we can avoid it.”
	“I know,” Aine said, rending away. Finally, as she knelt among the beams with her wire, she looked up in exasperation. “Dhiaoc, you know a lot about a lot of things but you know nothing about seafaring. This raft will be perfectly safe on a lake this calm.” And, as our dubiousness came through to her, she finally said, “Trust me.”
	“All right,” I said. “Last time we trusted you, it worked out pretty well, so why don’t I just stay out of it.”
	Aine returned to work. Istria walked moodily away to look out over the water, scaring a frog that had been hiding under a leaf. It tried to hop away, but it couldn’t get far. Both of us bent to examine it. 
	Everything about the frog was fine, except that it was missing the last joint on both hind flippers. And it hadn’t been torn off, either. He had been born with stumps instead of feet, and learned to adjust. After a fashion, clumsily, his hops a slow thing and survival a matter of luck.
	Istria kicked a piece of loose concrete into the water.
	Family Forever, she said. They whine about women returning their notborns, and here’s their own government doing its best to turn the entire world into one big abortion.
	The word evoked intensely unpleasant images for me, and I think she probably saw them. Not just the eel babies of Maerin’s realm but the notborns who died in Dairc, expelled from their sick mothers onto the poisoned earth, some without limbs, some grotesquely disproportioned, some properly formed but simply and inexplicably dead. From Lilea I knew that it was hard enough to watch that happen when the mother and the notborn had agreed on it. It was brutal knowing that neither had chosen this untimely death, any more than either had chosen the strange, unprofitable shapes into which these bodies had grown.
	It was a thing that haunted me, I said. That I couldn’t save the notborns.
	It wasn’t your fault, she answered. And, later, I’m glad you were there to try.
	It was a big thing for her to say, knowing as she did that if I hadn’t been there, I might have been in Lythril’s lair rescuing her.
	Uncomfortable perhaps with acknowledging the weight of that moment, she said, How are we doing?
	We’re well within the safety zone. Speed is still of the essence, however.
	I didn’t think Aine could have heard us, but she was working quickly anyhow, laying the bits of wood out and lashing them together, using her mind as a second set of hands. I watched the wire snaking in and out of the space between the spars with a kind of vicarious pride. She was making progress. Mindwork like that was beginning to become unconscious, second nature. Mindstrength was taking its back seat now, leaving room for the fire that would come.
	We watched the lake that was really a river burn for a while, until Aine was ready. I would have offered to help, but it was clear that she didn’t want us helping; after all, we were land-dwellers, and what could we know. Except that the assemblage of old boards, beams, and wire that she had cobbled together sure was funny looking.
	“It will float,” she said, flinging it onto the surface of the lake.
	It did; and when she hauled it in on the attached length of rope, and Istria carefully climbed aboard, it kept floating. With me and Aine and the bags on it it was still floating, incredibly. Although water did seep up through the cracks between the wooden spars, to soak us with its long slow fire. And on our makeshift, leaky raft, we set off southeast.
	Aine had fashioned a rudder out of some of the tin, and had found a couple of spades that could be used as paddles. So Istria and I started stroking through the dead, dark waters of this vacated place.
	“I don’t know much about geography up here,” I said. “What happens once we get to the mouth of the river?”
	“Well,” Aine answered, “I don’t know much about it either, but we’re in the mountains now, and what goes up must come down.”
	“You mean...there’s going to be a waterfall?”
	“Rapids, certainly,” Aine said.
	“But...won’t this thing capsize?” I asked.
	“Of course it will capsize. That’s why I lashed the bags to the spars.”
	I kept stroking, although my mind was far from quiet.
	“So when we capsize,” I finally ventured.
	“Stop being such a fussbudget, Theamh,” Istria said. “Just hold onto the raft, it’ll always float whether it’s right-side-up or upside-down.”
	I stowed my ‘paddle’ and began undoing one of the bags.
	“What are you doing, dhiaoc?”
	I tucked the bag with the vigils in it into my hreapa, looping the drawstring around my neck.
	Aine sighed, but resigned herself to putting up with my nerves. Istria was looking at me with a kind of affectionate exasperation, until she saw me pulling out her hreapa.
	“Look, Theamh, it’s no good to me now. I’m never going to wear it again.”
	“Maybe,” I said. “But it’s waterproof, weaponproof and fireproof, and bound to come in handy.”
	She didn’t argue with me, although I knew it bothered her to see it. I remembered how it hung from the ceiling in that trophy room, probably brooding over many a meeting she’d had with Lythril.
	“So they still do all that, even after you turn?” Aine observed.
	I nodded. “Remember Dunta?”
	“Oh, that’s right.”
	“Listen to me,” Istria said, as we paddled along with the very slight current. “I am not fooling around about this. You have to tell me what happened at Dunta.”
	I sighed, opened my mouth, and discovered an intense reluctance to speak.
	“I’m sorry, Istri,” I said. “I don’t have a voice yet to tell that story with.”
	Istria’s concern deepened until it was almost as intense as her irritated and disappointed curiosity.
	“Dhiaoc,” Aine said, with a little of her old diffidence.
	“Yes, Aine?”
	“I...I made a song about it.”
	This was a surprise to both of us. “You did?”
	She nodded. “It isn’t probably a good song, I just...”
	“Well, maybe and maybe not,” I said. “But why a song, Aine?”
	Her eyes were already darker with the memory of what she had seen. “It was...I had to get it out of my head, somehow, and...making the song made it sort of...it isn’t out of my head, but at least it’s kind of...confined.”
	Knowing she needed encouragement I tried to look pleased, even though with this memory in mind I couldn’t smile. “So sing it for us, then.”
	“No, I shouldn’t...”
	“Come on,” I said. “Istria wants to know, and I haven’t the heart to get started. This is what songs are for.”
	She nodded, but remained reticent.
	I rummaged in the bag until I found the flute. “Here, you start, I’ll pick you up.”
	Emboldened finally, she fixed her eyes on the horizon, and began.
	“Time and space will drift,
	And to you without the gift,
	Someday this will only be a vacant lot.
	But I’m cursed with memory,
	And I know just what I’ll see,
	If my bad luck brings me back here to this spot.”
	The tune was slow and simple enough, it was easy to get under it with the flute. I couldn’t paddle, but the current was moving a little faster now anyway. Istria stowed hers and sat with her legs crossed and her hands folded, eyes moving from me back to Aine.
	“And the whirling lurers came
	In their murdering yellow flame
	And they left no thing alive here whole or sound.
	Fifteen people perished here
	In the shriek and stink of fear,
	Where their bodies now lie scattered on the ground...”
	Istria was finally starting to understand. It wasn’t showing in her face, but I didn’t have to read things there now. I wanted to try to answer her, but Aine was shifting into the chorus, and I had to follow to catch this new part of the tune.
	“And the sun will rise tomorrow,
	Like it sets tonight,
	But fifteen dead in Dunta won’t know if it’s dark or light.
	Have things just gone so wrong there’s no way to set them right?”
	She held it for a long time, while I drew my breath out slow through the wood and Istria’s caught in her throat.
	“Fifteen of Idair’s children
	Are going home tonight...”
	That seemed to be the end of the chorus, so I brought the tune forward, elaborating it, drawing the long, high, hollow notes of loss out over those dead waters as our pace quickened slowly, dragging us toward the rapids.
	Aine was ready to start the next verse, so I brought the tune back to the beginning.
	“It was later that we learned
	Of a shriia who had turned
	And had lured the victims out there to their death.
	There’ll be curses heaped upon
	The name Gwilna ni Bhatan
	As long as there’s a Duntan to draw breath...”
	Pup whelped from a stinking bitch, Istria said, finally getting her answer. Fifteen?
	Fifteen, I said.
	“...They tell tales now of my dhiaoc,
	How she stood there on the dock,
	And with words alone beat back the murder cry.
	But if that’s a fight we won,
	Sure the war’s still going on,
	And there’s better far than Gwilna who will die.”
	I knew the chorus now, so I could keep half my mind on Istria. She was looking over the dark water toward the mouth of the river, but her mouth was tight, and the tears that weren’t in her eyes just made them all the sadder.
	“...when things have gone this wrong, how can shri set them right?
	Fifteen of Idair’s children
	Are going home tonight...”
	And Aine was going through her own change singing it, keeping her head lifted and her throat open, her voice much higher than mine but still not as high as the flute, strong and without the tremor that the professionals get into theirs. A good voice. One the spirits would answer to, in time.
	“Death is death and loss is loss,
	And with all this awful cost,
	We do nothing, though we’re doing all shri could.
	And if evil is this strong,
	To those suffering hard and long,
	Does it really even matter that we’re good?”
	The flute stuttered briefly as my mind went to her, alarmed for the first time. Of course to see a thing like that shakes you; it would shake anyone. But I hadn’t thought, I guess, about what it would mean to her, so young, and about to commit her life to what might very well look to her at this moment like a lost cause.
	Istria was with her too now, anxious to hear this song go in another direction. Wanting, as I wanted, to hear an affirmative answer--for our sake, surely, but for hers too. She was starting to care for Aine, almost like I did.
	Aine lifted her head and the breeze brought the hair away from her face, which had changed now, the pride underneath it bringing her chin forward toward the winds.
	“And my diaoc now walks among
	All those limbs and trunks unstrung
	Forging through the thickening smoke and hungry flames.
	And each body takes the flash
	And the air lifts up its ash
	As it echoes to the last use of those names.

	“And around me in relief
	Frozen hearts now melt in grief
	As they clutch each other, keen, and wail, and sob.
	And she’s tired, smirched and wet,
	Streaked with ash and blood and sweat,
	But I know now that I want to do this job.”
	It came out to both of us, clear as the notes in the tune, steadier than the wavering of my own flute, the conviction, that faith, like glass struck and ringing or the gleam along a blade’s clean edge.
	“And the sun will rise tomorrow,
	Like it sets tonight,
	And someday I’ll be helping drag the world into the light.
	There’s nothing goes so wrong that Idair can’t set it right...
	So send her fifteen children
	Home to her tonight...”
	I thought she would start another verse, maybe, but she went to the chorus again.
	“And the sun will rise tomorrow,
	Like it sets tonight,
	But if we’re strong and if we stand together in the fight,
	Idair will come among us to make the darkness bright
	And take her fifteen children
	Home to her tonight.”
	That was all the lyric there was going to be. I kept the tune going for a while, reluctant to let it drop, trailing the notes over those empty depths and the quickening rush of the dead water.
	But eventually I had to stop, and to put the flute back in the bag. And look over at Istria, whose eyes were still turned toward our destination but were seeing nothing at all.
	“It’s a good song, Aine,” I said. “The meter is a little uneven, and rhyme is still in your way sometimes. But it’s an honest thing, and that’s what really matters.”
	She nodded, glad that I had said so.
	“You never talked to me about any of that.”
	Her throat constricted as she swallowed. “You hate so much to hear yourself praised, dhiaoc,” she said. “If I had just said that watching you do those departures had shown me what the truth of all this is, you would just have been upset.”
	“You’re right,” Istria said, speaking with a rusty voice. “She does hate that.”
	I didn’t know what to say to that. Istria’s trouble came to me, but clouded, too dark maybe for me to read with any certainty. She was as disturbed by this story as I had thought she would be--because it was from Amst, because of so much death, because it had been committed by women with whom, much as all of us hated to admit it, she had collaborated. But there was also a kind of grief mixed up in it that seemed distinct in some way from the crime itself, as if it had more to do with the way Aine had told the story.
	“So these up here,” I said, “these are the rapids?”
	The water had been rushing faster as we approached, carrying the raft along so well that we didn’t need to paddle. I was relieved that we were moving faster, because much as I hated the prospect of capsizing in the rapids, the relief of getting out of here would make up for it. That pinched concrete tube was worse than any hundred electrical appliances--because the fire was huge, even if it was dormant, but also because it was different fire. A sick, unstable, poisonous kind of burn that made my skin crawl and my hair rise, and that made Istria fidget on the wet spars of the raft as she tried not to look to the right.
	Aine didn’t answer right away, which worried me.
	“That bridge,” I said, as the straight lines of a poured-concrete structure spanning the river appeared in the distance. “It looks a little close to the surface, don’t you think? Will we make it under?”
	Aine stood up.
	I knew enough to know you don’t stand in a craft this small unless you have a reason for it. Her reason, evidently, was to get a better look at this gray-brown wall, which the contemplated with increasing disquiet.
	“Istria,” Aine finally ventured. “Do you know what this thing is?”
	Istria came back to the real world from her reverie and looked out toward the thing, which we were now approaching with some speed. At first, her contracted and puzzled brows echoed Aine’s frown in a way that, after our recent experiences, I found both disturbing and amusing. Then, for some reason, she started looking at the surface, trying to see into the murky depths.
	I followed her gaze. The water was very foul, but through it I could make out dark shapes--square, huge, hulking things that seemed to be just under the surface.
	Istria’s eyes flew wide open.
	“Oh FNAA!”
	“Uh oh,” I said.
	“It’s a thurking dam!”
	“Thurking damn what?” I asked.
	Istria ignored my interjection. “That’s why this part of the river is like this--what the hell is the matter with me?”
	“Istri, please make sense,” I said plaintively.
	“The plant is under the thurking lake!” she shouted. “That’s what those things are--they dammed up the river to flood the place, that’s what that wall is!”
	I was now starting to appreciate the position we were in, as the wall of concrete got larger and I could see that in fact, the water did not go under it, at least not in the ordinary way of a bridge. The water was pouring through troughs that had opened up in the wall, a hundred tiny rivulets fighting their way through the cracked wall to rejoin as a river on the other side, and how that had happened I wasn’t sure but the relevant point was that the raft and us were going to be crushed into tiny bits as soon as we hit that harrow at the mouth of the river.
	“But I thought they only built dams for hydro--hydroelectric power,” Aine said, clinging to a forlorn hope that maybe this obstacle was something other than deadly. “And this is...nuclear...isn’t it?”
	“Yes, it’s nuclear, but it’s not working any more,” Istria said, a little wildly. “They build near rivers because they need to cool the reactors in case--ah, hell, all that matters is, the thing blew up and they have no idea how to deal with that so they just dammed the river to flood the place and sink it all under water.” She shook her head. “Why did I forget this, those giant river-chokers are the seventh wonder of the Cretid world, they litter the thurking globe with them--”
	“Istri,” I said. “We have to get to shore, or something.”
	“Shore?” Aine demanded, edging toward panic. “With this current and these paddles on a craft without a keel?”
	“You said it would be safe,” I said.
	“How did I know there would be a thing like this?” she shouted. “How could any of us know except for you!” she demanded, swinging around on Istria.
	“So what are you saying, Aine?” Istria shouted back.
	“I’m saying for a smart woman you made a pretty dumb mistake,” she shouted. 
	And she was saying a lot more than that, which was obvious to both of us. Mainly, she was saying that while I was someone who might easily forget things like whether a river had been strangled by the Cretids or not, Istria seemed like she wouldn’t forget something like that unless she meant to do it.
	Istria unexpectedly burst into tears.
	“I don’t need this tarbhfnaa!” she cried, throwing an angry arm out at Aine. “I’m going to die with you, you little bitch, along with everything I--”
	“Don’t you talk to her that way!” I shouted--I suppose at both of them.
	“But she--” Both of them started at the same time, and broke off in embarrassment. The rushing of water became steadily louder as we looked up at the barrier we were heading toward.
	“Well,” I said, “if it were ‘Idair, Priestess of Power,’ we could just fly up there.”
	Aine didn’t even acknowledge this sally. But Istria suddenly leapt into excitement.
	“We can,” she said.
	“What do you mean, we can?” Aine demanded.
	“Come on, Istri,” I said, as the menace of whitewater surged around us. “That’s just a crazy pipe dream, remember?”
	“I’m serious!” she cried, enthusiasm and eagerness obliterating her earlier anxiety. “It works, it really does. You use the fire to create an updraft, and mindstrength to--”
	“People do not fly, Istri, we don’t have wings--”
	“It’s not about that! It’s all about lift and drag and air pressure--” A hurried glance up at the approaching concrete sieve prompted her to cut this short. “I’ve read all the books, Theamh, I’ve done all kinds of simulations on the computers and I know the physics of it and I’m telling you we can do it.”
	Istria had wanted to fly since she was a child. I had my theories about why she developed that particular ambition but at the moment that didn’t matter. She had accepted the diaoci’s assertion that flight was not something shri would accomplish only in the most grudging of ways, and had often annoyed her teachers by raising the question in the middle of whatever class she was taking. I had at the time believed she could do almost anything she set her mind to, but even then I was pretty sure she would never be able to do this.
	“Theamh,” she said, ignoring Aine’s skepticism and fear and playing right to me with that eager face so bright with the joy of learning a new thing that you had to trust the desire even if you had your doubts. “I can do this.” 
	“Istri...”
	“Trust me.”
	I wanted to ask her if she had tested her theories under real-world conditions, but I knew what the answer would be and I didn’t want Aine to hear it.
	“All right, how does it work?” I finally said.
	“Leave it to me,” Istria answered. She undid the rope lashing the bags to the spars. “Here, Aine, stand between us. We need to all be connected so I can lift all three of us.”
	Aine shook her head, fired off a last silent curse on her own stupidity for assenting to this, and stood in front of Istria. I stood in front of her, and Istria passed the rope around all three of us, knotting it in front of my stomach as if we were one big bundle.
	“All right, when I say jump,” Istria said, bringing fire into her hands and looking up at the approaching shadow of that wall, “you push with your minds as hard as you can down on the raft.”
	I nodded. 
	It got closer. The raft was vibrating now with the power of the water, and I was looking straight down a gap in that wall.
	“Istri,” I said, “if there’s anything at all you’ve been waiting to say to me before we die, now might be the time to--”
	“JUMP!” she shouted.
	I was focused at first on pushing on the raft, so all I saw was the spars getting suddenly farther away. I felt the rush of fire passing above me, and decided not to look up. But even looking down confirmed it. The water was far below us now. We were in the air.
	<Is it working, dhiaoc?> Aine sent. <I can’t look.>
	<Well, we’re not dead yet,> I answered.
	“We’re going to make it!” Istria shouted.
	And indeed it looked as if we were. Because although the wall was rushing toward us still, we were rising as well as rushing, and at about the time we should have smacked into the concrete like beagi on one of those windscreens we lifted suddenly up on a little gust and it was ten feet below us.
	Hanging there as it passed, I lost for an instant my terror of height, of falling, of the hard unloving ground waiting down there to crack my skull like an egg. The world was nothing but suspense, unweight, air and motion and light. I had done my share of ‘flying’ in the ether and as a specter, but this was different. In the flesh, but not weighed down by it; released but not exiled, a body moving free through the kingdom of the air.
	“Istri!” I called back. “It works, it really thurking works!”
	Aine, encouraged by us, opened her eyes. Or at least I think she must have, because she shrieked at about the same time I wanted to.
	Because the broad level surface of the dam had passed by underneath us as if carried backward on a river, and it was now clear that the other side of the wall was a steep concrete cliff, and that between us and the river that ultimately spilled frothing from the cliff base was a very great lot of nothing. And thus euphoria gave way to terror. 
	“I’m not good with heights, Istri!” I shouted.
	“You still have my hreapa?” she shouted back.
	“Yes!” Aine shouted, since I was hesitating.
	“Pass it up here!”
	Closing my eyes, I held it blindly out in one hand. Istria took it.
	“Theamh?”
	“What?”
	“We’re going to start plummeting now,” she said. “But it’ll be all right.”
	“Truth, or tarbhfnaa?” Aine shouted, evidently at me.
	Well, one part at least was true. We did start falling.
	I heard something snap above us, and then instead of prone I was upright, jerked into verticality as air filled the white sail Istria was gripping above us by its four corners, her fingers white with the effort of holding on. 
	<You all right, Aine?> I said, aware that she was now crushed between the two of us and plummeting just as fast as we were but without being able to look at the view.
	<How am I supposed to answer that question?> she shot back.
	She had a point. After all, falling never did anyone harm; it’s the hitting bottom that kills you.
	We weren’t falling as fast as we should have been, but it wasn’t the most gentle of rides. In what seemed like too short a time we were level with the tops of the stunted trees that were growing along the river’s foaming banks; and a heartbeat after that the air we were traveling through was suddenly sucked away and replaced by a solid wall through which I slammed into the strangling embrace of a mass of wet, writhing tentacles bent on ensnaring my body and filling my lungs.
	Buffeted one way by the water and the other by the two bodies strapped to my back, the most I could do was try to get vertical. Even that was difficult, and I only knew I had made progress because when I slammed sideways into a network of exposed tree roots my head seemed to be closer to the light than my feet were.
	I grabbed the roots with both hands as the current passed by us, leaving us in our eddy for now but always ready to rip us back into the center of that river.
	<Aine, get your hands on the roots and pull.>
	No answer.
	Istri, come on, help me pull us up.
	Two hands appeared from behind me and grab onto the roots.
	Crawling up the network of roots like some grotesque half-spider, we finally broke the surface. And dragged our now-soggy bundle onto a narrow spit of gravel and grass that stuck out into the river where it doglegged.
	My hands were cramped-up bundles of raw skin and seized muscle, so I used mindstrength to untie the rope. Which involved breaking it, but speed was important, because I wasn’t at all sure Aine was still conscious, or if it came to that still alive.
	When we disentangled ourselves, Aine lay sprawled on the gravel, motionless. Istria put an ear to her chest.
	“Is she all right?”
	Istria had already tilted her head back and was breathing into her opened mouth, holding her nose shut with one hand. Aine’s chest rose as Istria’s breath filled her ribcage, then collapsed under the push of her joined hands. I watched this happen once or twice over without really letting myself realize that Istria was doing this because Aine wasn’t breathing on her own, that her lungs had water in them now instead of air.
	Or not any more. She was retching onto the gravel, vomiting out a slimy mess of river water and phlegm, shuddering the air back into her raw lungs. And Istria was sitting back on her haunches, watching but not wanting to hover, hoping that Aine wouldn’t realize who it was had brought her back.
	Finally, Aine rolled over on her back, still breathing hard but breathing regularly, looking incuriously up at the tree’s leafless branches.
	<Are you all right, Aine?> I inquired.
	She closed her eyes. <I’m still alive.>
	<If we live, I can teach you to swim, in the Lifhi.>
	<That might be a good idea.>
	“You see?” Istria said, elated again by the discovery now that we knew Aine was out of danger. “It works, we can really fly!”
	“Anybody can fly downwards,” Aine rasped.
	“I’ll ignore that because you almost drowned,” Istria said, charitable now that she was cheerful. “We flew up too, you know.”
	“It is a great achievement, Istri,” I said. “However, I think you’ll agree that the technique could stand to be refined.”
	“If we worked on it, we could build some kind of wing apparatus, with flaps and things just like the Cretid planes have, and then control the things with mindstrength--”
	“What do you mean, ‘we’?” Aine demanded. Her breath was regular now, but the word was exhaled on a faint puff of fire.
	“Do you never get tired of this?” Istria snapped. “I just saved all of our lives--”
	“It’s a good question, Aine,” I broke in, “but we don’t have time to decide it right now.” The sound of my voice stopped both of them. “We’ve all just taken a bath in long slow fire, and you’ve swallowed a lot of it. We have to get to the barriers, but quick.”
	I had tied the rope that was left so that there were three different loops knotted along its length. “We’ll go with the current. You two hold onto these loops. We can’t tie ourselves together because the river will twist the rope around something and we’ll all strangle trying to get out of it. But as long as we’re floating, holding on will keep us together--”
	“Dhiaoc, I am not going back in there!”
	“Aine, I don’t blame you for balking, but you must,” I said. “You must because it’s the fastest way to the border and because if we don’t get there soon you in particular are going to be too burnt to heal. If you break loose I’ll take care of you. I practically lived in this river for a month, I know what I’m doing.” Aine closed her mouth. “Now I’ve still got the vigils’ bag--what happened to your hreapa?”
	Istria turned her head, and I saw it bobbing whitely down the river ahead of us.
	“All right, I’ll get the genius to find it for us when we get there. Don’t look at me like I’m crazy. Ubh will do a lot for me.”
	They weren’t looking at me like I was crazy, exactly. But they were both clearly coming to the conclusion that trifling with me would be a bad idea.
	“We go out to the center where it’s deep and the rapids won’t be as rapid,” I said. “Aine, just try to keep your head above water. Istri and I will do the swimming.”
	It took a long time to get away from the banks but we did it. I slipped one arm through my loop, put my head down and started stroking.
	The horrors of that long trip to the barriers really do not bear repeating. Let’s say I understood very soon why Ionn and his community had never bothered to camp near the Ubh. Nobody could use this water. Beyond being dark with silt and mud it was tainted with all manner of sluggish, viscid, slow poisonous fire, visible even to the ordinary eye in dun-colored, scummy froth collecting in pools or in trails of slimy black-brown oil curling across the surface. And the creatures I brushed against were not things that rewarded scrutiny. Fish with no eyes, fish with three eyes, fish with open sores crusting where their scales should have been, fish floating belly-up and bloated, frogs drowning in slime, huge crowds of fuzzy red dockweed that clung to us as we paddled through it...it was as if every nasty thing the Cretids had ever made had been dumped into this river and let to fester, to ride rankling down to the border for us to deal with.
	Aine kept her head up bravely, assisted by Istria, who had taken on the job of making sure Aine wasn’t swallowing any more of this than she had to. Which meant of course that Istria was swallowing some. And of course my immersion was doing me no good. By the time I saw the twin peaks framed in the distance, I was already starting to feel it--the silent, insidious birth of unfriendly fire, a tickling and queasifying sensation like the scurrying of innumerable tiny tiny fleas inside and through my own skin.
	“We’re coming up to the barriers!” I shouted. “You see the pile of fnaa?”
	Because along with the actual liquid there was actual trash floating with us--plastic jugs, sodden wads of this or that nasty thing. And the barrier, shining faint and transparent up ahead, trapped it all, so that for a hundred yards on this side there was a veritable carpet of fnaa, and piles of Cretid junk rose high on either riverbank. 
	I turned around. “We have to dive under or we’ll get stuck at the trashscreen,” I said. “And anyhow that’s the only way to get ourselves settled. Aine?”
	“Yes?” she spluttered, almost unrecognizable under her layer of crud and slime.
	“I’m going to project into you for this, all right?”
	“All right, dhiaoc.”
	I got far enough in, and made sure Istri was ready. She pulled up alongside me.
	“Now the pisser is,” I said, as we trod water, “that once you get through the barriers there’s a waterfall on the other side.”
	Aine groaned.
	“When you hit the water just hold your breath and pray.” Aine’s red, streaming eyes were too tired to even hold outrage. “Ubh will take care of us.” Istria nodded, grimly. “All right. Down we go.”
	We dove under the carpet of trash, Aine’s body moving with mine, her legs pumping like a frog’s as mine were while we pushed toward the faint tracings of light that reached us through the polluted murk of this river.
	It took longer than I wanted it to for me to reach that fire, the scrolling intricacy of light yellow flame that wove the first barrier. The part of the border that cuts the river has always been different; they couldn’t include a sentience barrier because, at the time, the genius had had to pass back and forth, and they couldn’t screen by physical size because the rivermaids had to get from one side to the other. Even though neither the genius nor the rivermaids ever went up north, tightening the net would have been a lot of trouble and time we didn’t think was worth it--since river creatures have to be able to pass through, the study that would have determined the gauge at which to set the weave would have involved a year or more’s hard work. It was always modified with the rest of the border to screen for new proscribed materials, but otherwise we left it as it was. A hole, certainly, which means it’s the one place in our country where there was a kind of border guard, under normal circumstances. What we would find now on that side was anyone’s guess.
	In any case, nobody but us, so far as I knew, had ever been insane enough to try this. The Ubh is not a gentle river, and since during its time in the Zone it runs through a steep mountain canyon it would be difficult to get to except through the unconventional means we had used. So we had put the barriers in to keep out the worst of the mutants, to settle and heal the animals that could still be healed on their passage from north to south, and of course to settle and purify the water as it passed into our country. 
	<Don’t be alarmed.> I pushed us into the heart of that trickling yellow flame.
	Most of the time, unless we’re in pain, we forget that we have insides, that skin encloses solid flesh within which is bone which we cannot see and within that bone is the marrow. We say we feel something in the bones or in the marrow but we don’t mean it literally, marrow doesn’t feel anything, not so far as we can tell. But this fire went to the marrow, it went through the flesh, it flashed with its very faint crackle through all of me, inside and out, searching for something wrong.
	And it found things, because as I approached the second net spun like a glittering web across this narrowing, deepening channel tiny spurts of flame were flying off me and spiraling toward the surface, lifting along with the muck and slime off my skin.
	The second screen was the beginning of a honeycomb, really, several feet thick, which took some time to swim through and which gradually raised my interior temperature until by the time I had finished dragging myself through the network my bones were aching and my skin burning with fever. I broke the surface, bringing Aine up with me and watching to see Istria’s head pop darkly out of the water.
	“All right?” I shouted.
	They were clean now, at least, all the scum having peeled off at the barriers. And gasping, of course, because they weren’t as used as I had had to get to swimming under water. And perhaps because, since they were facing forward, they could see that we were inexorably approaching the waterfall.
	“Pay it no mind,” I said. “It’s nowhere near the height of that thing up north.”
	And to demonstrate, the river tossed me over the falls into the air.
	I let go of the rope, sailing toward what I knew was a pool deep enough to land in safely. When I went under this time, it was feet first, and without that body-wracking slap.
	I held the air I had gulped and kept myself under water. 
	
	What runs silent through my veins
	Runs in thunder through these skeins
	Knitting tree to earth to mountain
	Ocean, teardrop, river, fountain
	You in whom through whom I drift,
	Outbirth of the mountain rift,
	Ubh, let water answer water
	Daughter, hear another daughter

	She didn’t keep me waiting. Unlike the Tsraid’s genius, she didn’t bother taking the human form; she knew I’d know who she was as soon as I saw her pooling dark-green around me and around the struggling legs of Aine and Istria, who had plopped in after me but found their way to the surface.
	You’ve come back, she said.
	I have.
	It’s not your time of year.
	This is a special case, I said. My friends and I need your help.
	I know what you need, she said, trailing along just under the surface to keep Aine and Istria comfortably afloat. Come.
	The blue current pooled around me and drew me up to the surface, following in their wake as we all bobbed gently toward a broad grassy crescent on the riverbank.
	Istria crawled gratefully onto it and hauled a bedraggled and exhausted Aine up after her. I went under one more time.
	Thanks.
	It’s good to have you back, she said. Don’t be a stranger.
	I pulled myself onto the grass, where I flopped like a landed fish.
	I glanced over the others as we lay gasping in the sun. The screens had done their job. We weren’t on fire at all. Wet through, certainly, and shivering. But everything was in place. And the grass we lay on was nothing but grass, green, broad-bladed, thick and soft.
	“Theamh,” Istria panted, raising her head slightly from where she lay prone on the grass with her arms stretched out and her legs splayed as they had fallen. “Where are we?”
	“We’re at the Mountain Gate, in northern Dairc,” I said.
	Istria closed her eyes and laid her head down, clutching the grass in both hands and opening her mouth in a shuddering sigh.
	“We’re home,” she said, stroking the ground with her cheek and wriggling up further as if trying to burrow into it. “Idair’s mercy, we’re home.”
	I sat up, looking around me at the clear sky, the blade edges of the mountain peaks gray against the blue, and the white corner of Istria’s hreapa slapping the shore gently as the waves nudged it toward me.
	I was hauling it in when Aine finally got the energy to look around, and began sniffling, then coughing, then crying, not with grief but with the sheer relief of knowing she was back on her own soil, that there were no more borders to cross, that the Cretids were behind us, that whatever else befell us there would be no long slow burning and no explosions and no Idair, Priestess of Power and no gunshots or poison canisters or dams.
	“I can’t believe it,” Istria sighed, running her palms flat along the grass. “I can’t believe it.” She had made her mind up not to weep, although it was a struggle. “Two and a half thurking years up there, Theamh, how did I survive it?”
	“By not remembering what you were missing,” I said.
	She sat up and looked at me, drawing her wet hair back from her face.
	“You brought me home,” she said, her voice wavering.
	“We all brought each other home,” I answered.
	Aine swallowed and turned to Istria, contrition on her face along with the tears.
	“I’m sorry I was mean to you,” she said. 
	“Forget about it,” Istria said. “It’s all right.”
	“You flew us very well,” Aine replied, earnestly trying to make it right.
	Istria smiled, and it stayed this time, almost long enough to turn her face back into what I remembered from those few times we’d known that were really happy.
	“I don’t blame you for scoffing,” she said. “Innovation is never appreciated at first, is it, Theamh?”
	“I’m still trying,” I said. “Soon as things get back to normal there I have a mind to revise my Idair Effect memo for general publication.”
	“You know I believe in it,” Istria answered, the smile still in her voice if not on her face. “Now more than ever.”
	“Thanks,” I said. “For that, and for getting us airborne. And thank our little friend Aine here,” I said, clapping her on the damp shoulder of her wet shirt. “Put your hands together for the woman with the plan!”
	Istria clapped; Aine blushed. “It wouldn’t have worked without you,” she said.
	“Come on, let’s get some stones together and admire each other around a decent fire,” I said. “It’s cold being wet.”
	“You should talk,” Istria said, getting up and searching the bank for stones to rest the fire on. “You’re dry on top, even if you’re wet underneath that thing.”
	“When we get home, can I start my hreapa?” Aine asked, gathering more stones from the river edge.
	“Depends,” I said, laying them in a little paved circle and dropping a fire globe onto it. We huddled around it, holding our hands and feet out toward its warmth.
	“On what?” Aine demanded, spirit coming back to her with warmth.
	“On what happens before then,” I said.
	“She won’t tell me what has to happen,” Aine said, appealing to Istria.
	“Neither will I,” Istria answered.
	“You’re like my two big sisters,” Aine replied. “Leaguing against me for everything.”
	“I hope we’re not much like your two big sisters,” Istria answered. “For your family’s sake.”
	Aine laughed once she saw I was going to. And soon enough the three of us were laughing, harder than the joke warranted, just because we could laugh, because we were home, because the place was still here and the earth still solid and we were all alive.
	“You know,” I said, after it had died down, “Sinal, Varen, Larc, Merth, Dohem--they’re all well, at least they were a few months ago.”
	Istria’s throat seemed to collapse for a moment.
	“They all think you’re dead,” I said.
	“They’ll be pleased I’m sure to know I’m dark instead,” she said bitterly.
	Memories of that scene on the dock in Dunta came between me and a ready answer. Aine, looking more robust now that she was warm and a little drier, jumped in to console her in a way that was so touching it brought a sting to my own eyes.
	“You have to tell them the whole story, they’ll understand,” she said, sincerely. “Look how I don’t hate you any more, after wishing all that time after she disappeared that you would sink to the bottom of some big deep ocean and rot there.”
	Istria had to laugh at that one, and although it wasn’t funny thinking about it we needed the laugh, so we were away at it with even Aine joining once she figured out we weren’t laughing at her or at least that if we were we were laughing with her too.
	“You were right to wish it,” Istria said, somehow taking pleasure in saying this. “You are the one woman on earth who’s never betrayed her, Aine, and just for that I would drink your health if only it wouldn’t kill both of us.” Istria suddenly flung her arms around Aine and pulled her into a hug that I don’t think Istria was really expecting any more than Aine was. “You’re a good apprentice,” she said. “You be proud of that, no matter what happens.”
	“But I did betray you,” Aine said, once Istria had released her. “I didn’t tell you--you know--about how the Council told me not to feed the vigils.”
	“Oh, that doesn’t count,” I said. “You didn’t know the consequences and--” I felt in the pouch; the cieridh was still there, with them in it. “For a minute I was afraid I’d lost them in the river. Besides anyway she’s not the only one, there’s Lilea and Morat.”
	“Lilea I will accept,” Istria said. “Morat--”
	“Really, Istria, I’m over that,” I said. “You would be too, if you’d been here.”
	“So what is this about not feeding the vigils?” Istria demanded.
	“Didn’t you know she tried to overtake me?”
	“Oh, I knew that,” she said. 
	Hearing her admit it gave me some pause. “And you let her do it.”
	“I thought what the hell, let her try,” Istria said, waving an arm. “I figured the vigils would kick her gleacha into bed for a week.”
	“Well they didn’t,” I said, “because the Council got to Aine and told her not to feed them. So when she came I was, from a spiritual protection viewpoint, buck naked.”
	She went suddenly quiet.
	“And then I got rid of her anyway, what with the amulet, but I forgot to go get scoured, which was lucky because I’m sure Barant would have overtaken me, and then--”
	“I didn’t think of it,” she said. “I just--you know, no matter how smart you think you’re being around her it’s never smart enough.”
	“And then there was that damn cat--”
	“What cat?”
	“The one Lythril sent to get into Frih’s head to find his brother and while he was at it kill that poor mouse and write your name in blood on the floor--”
	The oath Istria let fly made even me gasp, and that’s saying something.
	“She--but--well, what happened? Are you all right?”
	Angry as I was thinking of it, I still had to laugh. Partly because it was funny, her reacting automatically as if this had happened yesterday, but partly because it made me happy to see her worrying about me, even retroactively.
	“We got rid of the cat and I burned the blood out and redid the house and cured Taric’s dog and everything was all right.”
	Istria relaxed.
	“Who’s Taric?” she said.
	“Keanrih’s widow,” I answered.
	Istria shook her head.
	“Does he know...about...”
	“He knows.”
	“I had a hand in that,” she said, not happy about saying it. “Not in that kraikk business Nocc paid her for, and not in the murder. But this trade in souls...she had it going before I turned, but it...it got a lot more...efficient, afterward.”
	“You helped her with the guuns,” I said.
	She nodded.
	“That’s good,” Aine answered.
	“How is it good?” Istria said.
	“Because now you’re gone she won’t be able to do it any more,” Aine said.
	This brightened Istria up for moment, but the gloom came back and with it silence.
	“We all have things to live with,” I ventured.
	“Ain’t that the truth,” said a voice behind me.
	I scrambled up and whirled around. The sward we had climbed onto was a long strip bordering a thicket of those short, spiny trees that grew in the Dairc mountains. And out of this thicket, somehow, had stepped NightQueen.

VI.
Fire With Fire

	“Hey,” she said diffidently, waving a hand at us. “Are you not glad to see me?”
	“What the hell are you doing here?” I demanded, as Istria rose slowly to her feet.
	“I’ve run away,” she said. “The courts were going to give me back to my parents so I left. You’re the only friends I have left who aren’t in jail, in hiding or dead. At least I thought you were my friends,” she went on, realizing even as a Cretid that I was not happy to see her, and that even Aine, who didn’t perhaps have enough professional experience to be making the same assumption Istria and I were, was very puzzled and vaguely suspicious of her presence there.
	“How did you find us?” I asked.
	“I followed you down here,” she said.
	“All by yourself?” I said.
	“Why shouldn’t I? What is the matter with you?”
	<Dhiaoc,> Aine said. <That’s a gun inside her vest.>
	“I am your friend,” I said. “And as a friend, can I ask you a favor?”
	“What?”
	“Would you just unzip that leather vest thing you’re wearing, slowly.”
	She looked shocked, and glanced at Aine and Istria. “You--now look, even in Death Mask’s circle I never did the group stuff.”
	“NightQueen, I know you’re a Cretid but will you just try using your mind? Just once?” She scowled in great dudgeon. “All right, I’ll do it, just hold still.”
	This kind of fine maneuvering takes time. So she noticed the zipper descending, and grabbed for it to pull it up, and then her hand was in the way of the gun, and so finally as it turned out she got the thing out of her vest, into her right hand and suddenly the barrel was pressed against her right temple and the trigger half-cocked.
	Not surprisingly, sweat broke out on her forehead at about the same time.
	“Don’t treat me this way,” she cried. “I’ll do it. I have nothing left if you won’t take me in--”
	“Oh, COME ON!” Istria finally shouted, while Aine gasped. “This is nothing but an insult to both of us. How dumb do you think we are?”
	“I mean really,” I said, looking not at NightQueen but at the slight waver in the air near the tree verge. “For Idair’s sake, Lythril, this is literally the oldest trick in the book.”
	 While NightQueen kept the gun to her head, that wavering space slowly resolved itself into Lythril.
	“What can I say,” she said, sauntering slowly forward as if she owned the place. “I have a weakness for the classics.”
	“See, Aine, this is what thralling looks like,” I said. “The spirit doesn’t overtake the victim, not properly speaking. It’s a kind of infection of the will. Whatever’s riding NightQueen, it’s gotten her so worked up and thurked up that Lythril can make NightQueen pull that trigger. So essentially NightQueen’s taken herself hostage.”
	“So,” Istria said. “Sonnia’s Iandar, you’re the Dark Leader; who gets to be Idair?”
	“Are you volunteering?” she said, turning an unpleasant smile on Istria.
	“Think about the economics, Lythril,” she said. “You’re not in a position to make much of a deal.”
	 “Idair’s stacked the deck for me, inflexible bitch that she is,” she said. “All right, maybe her whole hide isn’t worth one of your hands, but that won’t matter to Idair, will it, Theamh? Since a life is a life.”
	NightQueen, who had had her eyes squeezed shut in agony while all this was going on, opened them now and fixed them on Lythril.
	“What puzzles me,” I said, “is why in the name of anything you still care. Surely you have better things to do with your valuable time than drag NightQueen all the way to Dairc just to settle old scores?”
	“Although I suppose,” Istria mused, “that now you’re retired, you’re finally getting around to finishing a lot of those old projects...”
	I had been thinking this was a mistake, but the sudden, vicious anger that leapt up in her distracted Lythril so that I could work on NightQueen. From far away it’s difficult. I didn’t have any showdust, so from this distance I could only guess what was working her. For a single thrall like this it was customary to use beldami; they seem to have a real taste for the work. But beldami aren’t the most tenacious things in the universe; they’re fickle and easily distractible, and knowing what she was up against Lythril might have brought in something more formidable--arani, or even the luoti, who sometimes can be persuaded to cooperate in schemes like this if the deal is seasoned to their liking.
	“Of course you know,” I said, “that with that trigger cocked as it is, you could well say that NightQueen’s life is in immediate danger. Which would mean I could solve the whole problem just by killing you.”
	“Solve a lot of other problems too,” Istria added.
	“Try it then,” she said. 
	“But dhiaoc--” Aine said, alarmed to think I might actually do it.
	<You know, Aine, it’s hard to play cards if you keep showing your hand.>
	<What?>
	<Never mind.> 
	“You won’t kill me,” Lythril said. “You can’t take life, Theamh, you’re just like that. Istria’s not.” Lythril turned back to her. “But you won’t kill me, because you know how much it would bother her. And you won’t kill me,” she said, to Aine, “because you know any move you make might blow off your friend’s head. So here we are.”
	Indeed we were. I found myself in the grip of a strange mixture of emotions. On the one hand, part of me greeted her arrival with nothing more than vexation and annoyance, as if I just couldn’t be bothered to go up against her one more thurking time. On the other, there were those very recent memories of my captivity, the knowledge of how exhausted I was after our ordeal in the river, and my understanding of the very real danger to NightQueen. Be all that as it was, I still didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of asking for her terms. Let her start the bargaining.
	“I’m not sure this is the story you want,” Istria said, while I moved slowly toward NightQueen. “If you recall, what happens after Idair gives herself up is that the Dark One is destroyed and his army scattered.”
	“That’s the Order’s version,” Lythril said dryly. “You know better, surely.”
	Without the showdust I still couldn’t be sure, but it felt to me like a beldaman. I could imagine it, twined around her head in its sinuous complacency, searching with that negligent accuracy for weaknesses to play on. The beldami had a particular bent for driving their victims to suicide. Some love of trouble and drama, of despair and fear. Lythril had been in a hurry, and would have had to do this on the run. She wouldn’t maybe have had the resources to interest a luotin, or the time to track down one of the arani.
	“So you know how it goes,” Lythril said. “I want one of you in exchange for her.”
	“Well it won’t be me,” Istria said. “I’m not ending up with my heart in a jar on behalf of some Cretid child I’ve never even met.”
	“Don’t flatter yourself,” Lythril replied.
	I couldn’t get any closer; even distracted by Istria, Lythril was still watching me. So there was no way to actually get in there and cleanse her. My only hope was to lure the thing off her head by offering it a more tempting target. Which was not the smartest way to do this, but I didn’t have time to work out a less risky strategy.
	“I suppose it might be me you’re after, on account of that initial investment,” I said. “Although Idair knows my mother feels like her own investment has been very ill-paid. Are you sure I’m worth the trouble?”
	Istria was on the other side of NightQueen from me, but she could still see my face, and I thought she might have figured out what I was doing. To get the beldaman on NightQueen interested in me, I was going to have to radiate the stuff it liked--despair, insecurity, vulnerability. And being a shriia, I could only do it by really feeling it. Which was why I had brought up my mother; she was an excellent place to start.
	“She isn’t, really,” Istria said. “I always told you that. Even at her peak she had no ambition and no real drive--all she’s ever wanted is to be left alone in that little hovel.”	
	“That’s not true!” Aine shouted.
	<Aine, please, stay out of it.>
	<But-->
	<She’s trying to help me. I know that’s not what it looks like.> And that wasn’t what it felt like, either, but that was the point.
	“So what if you own her,” Istria went on. “There’s nothing of her left to claim. She’s a wreck at twenty-eight, broken, washed up and emptied out. She’ll never be able to do you any harm, after the way you’ve crippled her.”
	“You seem to see something in her,” Lythril said.
	Istria took a hard, cruel look at me.
	“Unlike you, I still feel pity, and I have some sense of obligation,” she said. “That’s all there is to it, now.”
	That brought the tears out all right. And, I thought, a slight waver, maybe the beldaman’s motion toward me, checking me out. Which almost didn’t matter to me, because no matter what I knew, to hear her say out loud the very thing I had been most afraid of still put a dagger in me that went straight into my darkness. 
	“You’re lying,” Lythril said. “But that doesn’t matter, and neither will your trying to stall me. As it happens, I don’t want Theamh any more than Ulnach does.” Another twist of the dagger, which she couldn’t resist administering, even though it was causing the beldaman to falter in its devotion to its first victim. “I want the girl.”	
	“What girl?” Istria demanded, while I threw myself into the well of despair that had opened up. 
	“The apprentice,” Lythril said. “She’s what I need.”
	Before Aine could say anything, I jumped in. “Over my dead body.”
	“That would be the icing on the cake,” Lythril said. “But if you delay any longer, it will happen over Sonnia’s dead body.”
	“If I deliver Aine and you kill her that’s no better than letting NightQueen shoot herself.”
	“But I’m not planning to kill her,” Lythril smiled.
	“Oh, and your word is of course good with us,” Istria sneered.
	The damn thing was more stubborn than I thought it would be. I thought of all the death I had caused, all the unnecessary risks I had made Aine run, all the trouble and pain I had dealt out to my family, to the Order, to everyone who had ever been close to me. 
	“It’s not your decision, in any case,” Lythril said. “It’s in your hands, scoilin. Your life or hers. Make your choice.”
	Because I needed the time, I wished Aine would have hesitated longer. But I might have known she wouldn’t.
	“All right then,” she said. “Stand back from her.” Lythril backed up slightly, and Aine started walking forward. We all knew how a hostage exchange works: the ransom walks to where the victim stands midway between the opposing armies, and when she reaches that point, the victim is released. The ransom crosses the remainder of the distance at the same pace as the victim, proceeding in their opposite directions, the victim toward home and safety and the ransom toward whatever ordeal the dark army has in mind.
	I would have objected more strenuously, but I saw NightQueen’s face changing, beginning to look less determined and intense and more puzzled, as if she were awaking from a dream in a strange place.
	<Aine, the instant you see her drop the gun, you run back to us.>
	<All right, dhiaoc.>
	Aine began walking forward across that empty swath of green, toward the spot where Lythril waited with that smile of triumph. And seeing her about to be delivered over to the woman who would never have gotten her claws into Aine if it weren’t for me turned out to be the last thing we needed. Because as soon as Aine reached that dangerous middle distance where so often these exchanges go wrong, NightQueen’s eyes opened, her hand moved dazedly away from her head, and the vigils shot streaming out of the cieridh to protect me as the beldaman flew off NightQueen and after me.
	The vigils protected me so fiercely that I couldn’t see anything but that multicolored curtain of fire. I heard something sizzle through the air, and Istria’s voice. 
	“Bi utina beldaman!”
	Because Istria was a dark user now, and instead of sending the beldaman home, she was sending it to the world of the undone and the nonexistent. Once it was gone, the vigils backed off, hovering and waiting for action but no longer blocking my view of NightQueen being hauled away from danger by Istria’s non-burning hand, of Lythril boring down on Aine, and of Aine trembling as she fought the wrap Lythril was throwing.
	I fired a blocking burst at Lythril. It only held on one side of her and would be easy for her to get out of, but it broke her hold on Aine, who fled to our end of the sward.
	“Well there it is, Lythril,” Istria said, as she and I got flame into both our hands. “You against the four of us. I personally like these odds. How do you feel?”
	Lythril smiled.
	“What was it you were saying, about never being smart enough?”
	Aine, who was understandably rattled, was the first to whirl around and yelp. And it was rattling, to suddenly see a woman in hreapa appear behind us, apparently out of nowhere, and another one pop up between us and the woods. Vrila and Tifni.
	“Well, you got me,” Istria said, with some slow and ironic applause. “I’ll admit it, I’m surprised.” She turned to Vrila. “Especially since it’s you. Aren’t you Barant’s bitch now?”
	Vrila fired the first shot in anger, which bounced off the firewall Istria had ready.
	Tifni, who was the closest to me, was already firing. Zott got in her way, and it bounced off harmlessly enough, except that it set some of the grass on fire.
	A blocking burst or two did little to slow her down. With the vigils swarming around me, dancing through the tufts of flaming meadowgrass, I  wove about her, conserving my strength for the moment I hoped would arrive when she would be between me and the river instead of the other way around.
	“So it really is you,” Tifni said, firing a spurt with the taunt. “I almost didn’t recognize you. The drowned-rat look is a new one for you.”
	“Shows what you know,” I answered, ducking toward the trees. “Where were you four years ago--forging your chain?”
	“It’s not smart, this,” Tifni responded, maddeningly unperturbed. “You won’t save your apprentice; you’ll just get the three of you killed.”
	I had her where I wanted her now--with her back to the water, facing me and the trees. “Do you swim, Tifni?” I asked.
	“It’s a useless talent,” she said.
	“Since you say it,” I answered, and let loose probably the only full blast I would be able to scrape together.
	It hit right on her hreapa, so it didn’t burn her. But it did knock her two steps backwards. Before she could regain her equilibrium I pressed forward, harrying her with fire and with mindstrength until she finally toppled gleacha first into the river.
	I plunged my hands into the water up to the wrists, hoping that would be enough submergence to carry the call.
	Ubh, let water answer water
	Daughter, help another daughter
	The next time I saw Tifni, she was bobbing in the middle of the river, her head visible above its angry green surface but her arms and hands underwater, making the froth bubble in boiling streaks as frustrated fire found nothing to burn.
	“Drive her in!” I shouted to Istria, as she dodged another of Vrila’s volleys.
	She didn’t really need to hear it; she had already started maneuvering. But Vrila, having been at one point in her life Council material, was giving Istria more trouble. I glanced back at Lythril, who was still trying to wrap Aine. 
	<Phredi, Jayla, cover Aine.>
	Pink and yellow light streamed over to her, protecting her at least against mindforcing and overtaking. Now the only thing to worry about, really, was the wrap.
	<Aine, can you hold her off?>
	<A little while,> was her struggling answer.
	<Call before you break,> I said, and went to help Istria.
	“You know, don’t you,” she said, more anxious it seemed about that than about Vrila aiming for her, “that all of that was tarbhfnaa, what I said about--”
	“Oh I know,” I said. “Thanks--it did the job.”
	“It wasn’t easy for me, either,” she said, reading me as she flung more fire at Vrila. “I guess some of the habit is on me, still.”
	“Keep dreaming,” Vrila snapped. “You’re a liar like the rest of us.”
	“At least I show my chain,” Istria said, returning her fire.
	Moving in on her from converging diagonals, we cornered her near the riverbank. But she was fresh, and we weren’t. Zott and Shaineen were spread thin over me and Istria both, and heartened as I was to see them tacitly agreeing that Istria was an ally and not an enemy now, it meant that more got through to me than I could shake off. The vigils are bound to me, in the end, and by the time we had her on the edge Zott and Shaineen had abandoned Istria to her own devices and Phredi and Jayla were on their way, leaving Aine to fend for herself.
	Knowing that the two of them were now laid wide open gave me enough desperate strength for a final blast. And between us, we wedged Vrila out of her corner and into the drink, where she soon joined her colleague.
	<Dhiaoc-->
	I swung around. Lythril had gotten tired of trying the wrap, and was bringing fire into her hands. Aine backed up, released for a moment now, and crossed her arms, her hands on her shoulders, braced for the impact.
	I started forward, but Istria had turned too, and her mind sent out a sudden cry.
	Wait.
	What--
	Look.
	There is no way to explain this to someone who hasn’t seen it happen. But I took one look at her standing there with her hands on her shoulders, and I started backing up.
	Istria moved back with me. If Lythril had been watching us, it might have occurred to her to wonder why. But she was still taking her aim at Aine, and in her pride she wasn’t paying attention to the finer sensations.
	“NightQueen!” I called. “Close your eyes!”
	Lythril suddenly froze with her hand in the air, watching the change in Aine’s eyes.
	“Oh fnaa,” she said, quietly but with emphasis.
	The air around Aine exploded in a torrent of dazzling white. I knew not to look directly at her, but even peripherally it was eyeball-searing--a riot of white fire igniting the grass, the air, space itself, everything but Aine, who was barely visible as a slightly darker form moving confusedly within that blistering cloud of flame.
	The shock threw me and Istria to the ground--and it threw Lythril, who had been standing much closer to her, several feet into the air. When I judged it safe to look up again, she was just hitting the earth, her body briefly disappearing behind the flaming curtain of the carbonizing meadowgrass.
	Istria and I both ran to the spot. Her hair, still up in that silver chain, was all right, but the heat was putting streaks of burn and blister on the back of her neck and up the sides of her head. I fired a blocking burst at her before she could get up.
	It didn’t take her long to get on her feet, or start fighting my block. But even before Istria could come help me, there was a flash from the heart of the holocaust that Aine had become, and Lythril was stumbling backwards away from the impact toward the river. Inside the rippling mass of flame I saw the dark blurs of Aine’s arms, both extended, both dealing fire as she advanced on Lythril, who slipped and went down again onto the burning grass before she reached the river margin. 
	Let’s get her in, I said. Aine might fry her by accident if we let her keep going.
	Istria crouched by her head, seizing her by the arms as she lay half-stunned where she’d fallen. I took one of her boots in each hand, and we lifted her off the ground. 
	“On three,” Istria shouted.
	We swung her out over the rocky bank. “And a haon and a do and a--”
	“Tri!” 
	Lythril went sailing out over the river, flopping backwards into it with an undignified splash.
	Now that it had them all, Ubh regurgitated them on the other bank. Lythril was the first to get to her feet, glaring at us in bitter and high-strung anger.
	Lythril never gave up easy. She tried firing across the river, but a broad crackling stream from Aine deflected her ball and sent it spinning erratically through the air until Lythril withdrew it. Vrila and Tifni dragged themselves up from the mud.
	Both of us, by this point, were shrieking across the river at her, hands in the air, welcoming victory at the top of our lungs. Reluctant to leave, Lythril was hurried by a couple of blasts from both of us and another scorcher from Aine. Vrila and Tifni headed to the woods first. Lythril, true to form, had to try for the last word.
	“This isn’t over, Istria!” she shouted, throwing a hand out at her in an impotent echo of the thralling gesture. “You’re still wearing that chain!”
	“Ah, frith mo gleacha!” Istria shouted back.
	I burst out laughing. Lythril fled into the woods, somehow still managing to transmit contempt and disgust even while showing us her back and her heels.
	Behind us, Aine looked confused and bewildered inside the firestorm she had unleashed.
	“I see something coming this way,” Istria shouted.
	“It’s Aine,” I shouted back, “and she’s on fire!”
	“WOOOHOOO!” Istria started the shout, pumping her burning fists in the air, and I joined it. “Tioc an shriia! Tioc an shriia!”
	<Dhiaoc...>
	“Put her out, put her out, she’s burning!” Istria went on, halfway to a laugh.
	<Dhiaoc...help...>
	I walked up to Aine, hoping my hair wouldn’t spontaneously go up in cinders. 
	<Put your hands on your shoulders.> She crossed her arms.
	“I burn, but it does not hurt me,” I said. “This is Idair’s fire.”
	I reached through the curtain of flame and covered her hands with mine.
	<Say it with me: mo linn agam.>
	<Mo linn agam.>
	Tendrils of flame wound backward out of the air. The bubble of fire and scorch contracted around her, but she still burned.
	<Think of whatever ties you to life, Aine. Whatever keeps you here on the earth.>
	Her mind, still dazed by this sudden explosion, lumbered to respond. The sheets of flame shrank, in fits and spurts, until finally it had all disappeared into her and she was standing there just in her skin, with her hands on her bare shoulders and the fire back to sleep except for the wild light in her eyes.
	The sleeves of her shirt floated through the air as wisps of ash. Istria had for the past minute or so been quietly drawing the grass fires off into the river, so that most of it was under control, although the earth still smoked with the memory. 
	“What...” The fire had lifted Aine’s hair around her head, which lent just enough of a comic touch to keep the solemnity of the occasion from overwhelming the exhilaration I was feeling. “What was that, dhiaoc?”
	She was puzzled I think about why I was crying, thinking maybe something terrible had happened to her. I made a brief attempt at lightening it up. 
	“You’re going to have to call me Theamh now,” I said.
	Remembering how world-shattering this experience is, I didn’t wait for her to put it together for herself. 
	“That was your fire, Aine. Idair just gave it to you.”
	She gasped. 
	“I--but--what about the Ordeals?” she said, still partly transported, still not trusting her ears or any other form of perception. “I thought I had to pass them before--”
	“Aine,” I said. “What do you think all of this has been, a walk in the Pharc?”
	“You mean--you mean--this mission--that was them?” 
	I nodded. 
	“And I passed?”
	Istria and I both couldn’t help laughing, but we stopped early, respecting the gravity of this moment. “That’s right, Aine,” I said. “It’ll take you a while to learn how to control it. Assuming things eventually get back to normal, you’ll get your orders at the Burning, and you’ll become a shriia as far as the Order is concerned. But as far as Idair is concerned,” I said, “you’re a shriia now.”
	It seemed as if the news was a pleasant shock, but it was a shock nonetheless. She stood there looking pale, her eyes becoming more normal but still very wide and frightened, and whispered, “I don’t believe it.”
	“Believe it,” I said, smiling. 
	“I’m a shriia,” she said, trying it out very quietly at first.
	“That’s right,” I answered.
	That stunned shock finally dissipated. Her hands flew together into an excited clasp and she began actually jumping up and down.
	“I’m a shriia!” she said, laughing. “I made it, I made it, I’m a shriia!”
	Istria was watching her too, genuinely happy for her, her heart lifting with the old enthusiasm. I felt my throat catch looking at Aine, transfigured now and forever, at the end of her journey--or say at the end of her first journey, and the beginning of the second.
	“Can I start my hreapa now?” she suddenly asked, coming down to earth for the moment and looking at me pleadingly.
	“Yes, Aine,” I said. “As soon as things settle down and we get home.”
	This sent her into a transport of joy for which words could apparently be no adequate expression, so instead she rushed up and flung her arms around me.
	“I am so proud of you, Aine,” I said, hanging onto her. “I can’t even tell you how happy this makes me.” She released me and I drew back so she could see my face. “You’re going out there into the world to do good and do well and make magic happen. This is just the beginning of a beautiful new thing.”
	“Thank you, dhiaoc,” she said.
	“Aine.” I took her by the shoulders and shook her gently for emphasis. “Call--me--Theamh. You’re not a scoilin any more.”
	“But...you’ll be the one teaching me how to use it...won’t you?”
	“Of course I will,” I said. “But you don’t have to treat me like a diaoc any more.”
	She looked back at me with watering eyes and nodded.
	“I’m just so proud of you,” I said, feeling like an idiot. “You’re going to be a great shriia, Aine, and I’m honored to have had a hand in making you.”
	“Oh dhiaoc,” she said, choked up.
	“Theamh,” I corrected.
	She gulped. “Theamh.”
	It felt strange to hear her say it, but it made me happy. “Congratulations, Aine.”
	“Congratulations,” Istria echoed. “It’s a great gift, and you’re worthy of it.”
	“Thank you,” Aine said, troubled by the sadness on Istria’s face. “I--where’s NightQueen?”
	“Idair’s teeth, I forgot all about her,” I said, spinning around in search of her. “Oh, please tell me she had the sense to come in out of the fire...”
	“Theamh,” Istria said, pointing toward the bank.
	NightQueen’s head was now barely visible a little ways into the river, and as we watched she stood up from where she was crouched in the shallows and stepped gingerly, and apprehensively, back onto the blackened earth.
	“Are you all right?” Aine asked.
	“I’m fine,” she said, her expression a faint echo of Aine’s shock. “Are...are you...” NightQueen poked at her, as if to assure herself that Aine was still human. “Is that...normal?”
	Istria and I both laughed.
	“It’s normal for someone’s First Fire,” I said. “Under any other circumstances, it wouldn’t be.” NightQueen’s eyes were still goggling. “Look, let’s get out of here and find some cover for the night, and we can figure out what we’re going to do about you.”
	Aine took a look around her at the swath of destruction she had cut, then back up the river at the two peaks and the iridescence of the border.
	“We’re at the Mountain Gate, you said,” she said.
	“That’s right,” I nodded. “Remember the day and the place.”
	Istria looked off into the distance, doing her own remembering.
	“Where did it happen, for you?” she said.
	“We don’t know exactly,” I answered.
	“Why not?” Aine said.
	 “You remember the night you made me tell you the story about the mission to Lythril?” She nodded. “You remember the part I wouldn’t tell you?”
	Her eyes lit. “Was that when it happened?”
	“That’s when it happened,” I said. I looked over at Istria. “She made me go through the whole thing, but I had to leave out the part about our miraculous escape.”
	Istria chuckled morosely, remembering that scene with Barant and Morat, and the way they’d made us go over and over it, not quite believing us even though they knew they had to now. “You saw what happened when Aine got her fire,” Istria said, directing herself to NightQueen. “Well, if that’s what happens when one woman gets it, you can imagine what it’s like when there’s two.”
	Aine gaped.
	“You mean--both of you? At the same time?”
	I nodded. “She was coming for us, and we didn’t know which one she would take first,” I said. “I wanted to protect her, she wanted to protect me...and it happened.”
	Istria couldn’t help smiling at the memory. “She must have flown backwards, what, about half a mile,” she said. “Right out the cave mouth and onto the ravine floor.”
	“Of course, the blast knocked a lot of rock off the roof,” I said. “We had to dig our way out, and some of the rocks split apart in our hands, it was that hot. But once we got out, she must just have taken a look at this giant twin fireball and thought, ‘I’ll kill them eventually, but not today.’”
	“We did see her get up,” I said. “But we were off into the woods--still on fire, unfortunately. It was a long time before we got things under control.”
	“You’re lucky, Aine,” Istria said, suddenly grave now again. “You had your diaoc with you. We didn’t.”
	The look on her face went to my heart, and I thought to Istria’s too.
	“That wasn’t right,” she said, with the new conviction of her new fire.
	“No it wasn’t,” Istria agreed.
	We started moving. Fortunately now we had no gear to carry, it having gone to hell with the raft on the other side of the border. I had my hreapa and Istria’s, and that was all that really mattered, although the lack of uisce was worrisome.
	“What does that mean, ‘frith mo gleacha?’” NightQueen asked, in what she thought was a whisper.
	Istria laughed once, sharply.
	“I think,” Aine said, “you would translate it, basically, as ‘Bite me.’”
	“We used to joke,” I said, as we went toward the short, unthrifty mountain trees, “that Lythril should be working for Idair--since she seems to do nothing but make new shriias.” I clapped Aine on the back. “One shriia goes up to her lair, and three come back--not bad numbers.”
	“Two,” Istria said, curtly.
	I realized, with a sink of the heart, that I had forgotten for a moment--literally forgotten, lost the knowledge of all that fall and pain and separation in an oblivion which I could now not recapture.
	“Call it two and a half,” I said.
	Istria shook her head, and we entered the wood.

VII.
That Other Heart

	“How come Aine didn’t get burnt up?”
	We had discovered a real find--a clearing sheltered from the winds by two rock walls, big enough to camp on. It was true we had nothing to cook; NightQueen had some sort of nasty processed fruit things with her that we shared out, and there was plenty of water nearby, but we were all still hungry. NightQueen was apparently trying to distract herself from this by asking as many stupid questions as she could.
	“Because it’s Idair’s fire,” I said, laying rocks in the stone circle. “Idair’s fire doesn’t burn the people who wield it.”
	“Well then how come you didn’t get burnt up?”
	“Because my hreapa is fireproof, and anyhow you can use your own fire to keep you safe from someone else’s.”
	“Well then why didn’t she get burnt up?”
	“NightQueen, meet Istria,” I said. They nodded at each other. Istria was in something of a mood; she had helped build the circle, but she didn’t say much, and was now just sitting there brooding.
	“Why didn’t Istria get burnt up?”
	“Because she has the sense to stay out of harm’s way,” I said.
	“It’s the chain,” Istria cut in, still looking straight ahead at nothing.
	“Ah,” I said.
	Istria nodded, though I hadn’t voiced the question. “The chain gives you protection against ordinary and shri fire. It also makes you invulnerable to metallic weapons.”  She sighed. “Only your body, though, it doesn’t protect the head. Every charm has a flaw somewhere. The Dark One’s bargain, they call that.”
	“Why do they call it that?” Aine asked.
	“The story,” Istria said, “is that it was a pact they came to in the cave, right before the Burning. The Dark One would let Idair win that round, but on the condition that the Dark One would win in the end. Idair agreed to it, but she had her own condition, which was that until that final battle it would always look like she was winning. Which is why all dark magic has limits, and no spell is ever perfect.”
	I wasn’t ready to answer that at the moment, but Aine was. “But you could say the same about bright magic too. The hreapa doesn’t really protect the head...”
	Istria snorted. “I’m just saying it’s the story they tell,” she said. “I suppose Lythril believes it. It would explain a lot.”
	Aine didn’t ask whether Istria believed it or not; I didn’t either.
	“So...” NightQueen looked from Istria to me. “If you guys are on opposite sides, how come you work together?”
	“NightQueen!” Aine said, exasperated.
	“What?” NightQueen demanded.
	“Never mind,” Aine said, as Istria walked away from the circle. She stopped with her back to me, feeling my gaze probably even though she wouldn’t acknowledge me.
	“Dhi--” She caught herself before she finished it. “Theamh?”
	“Yes?” I said, still looking irresolutely off at Istria.
	“Will you show me how to make the fire?”
	I got up. “There are two ways you can do this,” I said. “One is to pull fire out of the air and set it down there. Except you can’t do it that way because ordinary fire needs some kind of fuel to catch on to or it burns out. The other way is to pull it out of you. That way it’s shri fire, which, you know, lasts forever, but you have to remember to take it back when you’re done.” She nodded, attending to all this with that same murderous earnestness that she had always brought to freagair. “So pull it out of you.”
	She stretched her hands out, but only to look at them in puzzlement.
	“How do I do it?”
	“Here’s how I did it, before it got to be reflex,” I said. I stood next to her, looking at the circle of flat stones, holding my hands out next to hers. “Imagine that you’re holding something--something very precious to you, something you really want to be careful with.” She looked at her hands, that frown of concentration appearing. “I used to imagine a rose, but roses aren’t all that to everyone, so--”
	“But why not,” Aine said, and set her mind to imagine one.
	She wanted to do it the way I did it, I suppose. Or maybe roses meant something to her that I didn’t know about. They matter to all of us some, because they were the first flower, but they mattered to me, and to Istria, in a sort of a different way.
	“So, you imagine that you’re trying to hold it, protect it, very carefully.” Aine’s fingers curved around an imaginary spherical space. “That brings your energy down into your hands. So you focus it all there...and then you just make the rose bloom.”
	The fire came out of my hands, slowly and more gently than usual. It had been a long time since I’d used that old method; I didn’t need it any more, and it took time I usually didn’t have. But there was something different about the way the fire came, softer somehow, that I must have been missing.
	It took Aine longer. She was straining too hard and missing it. But once I got her to relax a little bit and think about just waiting for it instead of pushing, it happened.
	She looked down in awe at the red-orange flames scrolling around her fingers, amazed that this had come from her, amazed she was able to hold it.
	“That’s good, Aine,” I said. “Now to take it back, you just think, ‘mo linn agam,’ and--” The fire shrank back into her hands abruptly. She turned them over, still not quite believing all they were capable of now.
	“Great! Now just try it a couple more times. Put your hands out...make the rose...”
	Aine stretched her hands out, and with a lot less strain brought the fire out.
	“Now...how do I get it off me?”
	“First you have to separate. There’s a command for that...” This was something NightQueen shouldn’t hear, so I passed it to her over the link. She nodded, and the fire leapt into a ball ahead of her.
	“Now you just move it with your mindstrength, same as you would anything.”
	Aine focused her stare on it, and the ball bobbed erratically through the air, then plumped abruptly onto the stones, where it flamed contentedly.
	“That’s great, Aine!” I said.
	She shook her head. “It takes forever. You do all this in about half a second.”
	“I’ve had my fire for five years and more,” I answered. “Be patient with yourself. You’ll learn how to throw and all that good stuff in time.” I put my arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “You’re doing just great, Aine. Stay proud for a little while before you start worrying about whether you’re making enough progress.”
	She nodded, eyes still fixed on the flame she couldn’t quite believe was there.
	“Ainm na Ghaist.”
	It was muttered under her breath, and it came from Istria, who had finally turned around to watch us. When I met her eyes they were wet, and she was shaking her head in refusal--of what, I didn’t know.
	“I’m sorry,” was the next thing she got out, wrought up to some pitch out of keeping with the situation. “I’m sorry, Theamh, I am, but I just--I just--I just can’t!”
	“Can’t what--” I began, but she cut me off.
	“I can’t--do this--” A sob she was fighting won, and cut off her speech. 
	“Biodh thu gia deow ag Idair, Theamh,” she said, and ran out of the clearing.
	I was pretty sure Aine didn’t speak Amstic that well. But even she knew that the expression Istria had just used meant something a lot more emphatic than just “goodbye.”
	NightQueen’s glittering eyes were fastened on me, but she was smart enough not to start asking questions. Aine was reading me well enough not to need to ask.
	“I’m going after her,” I said, anyway.
	Aine met my eyes with a resolute face and just the slightest bit of a sigh. She knew what I meant.
	“Just promise me you’ll come back,” she said.
	It hadn’t occurred to me, before, that I was asking for her permission. It would have been an awkward and uncomfortable thing to ask, outright, just as it would have probably killed her with embarrassment to give it, outright. But if she had read what I meant, it was clear as glass what she meant, and I was grateful for it.
	“That much I promise,” I said. “Although...I may be a while.”
	“I’ll wait as long as it takes,” she said. 
	Realizing this was never going to get less awkward, I turned to go.
	“Theamh?”
	I turned. Aine was standing in the light of her own fire, and even though she was a little farther off now I could tell there was a lot on her mind.
	“Yes, Aine?”
	“Call if you’re in trouble.”
	I almost smiled, but things were too heavy in me at the moment.
	“Yes, Aine.”
	“All right then.”
	She turned back to the fire. I ran off, with NightQueen’s question in my ears.
	“What’s with them?”
	Aine’s answer came faint through the thin screen of trees. “It’s not my story.”

	Istria was still running, but not very fast. She felt me on her track pretty soon, and rather than lead me on a chase that neither of us really had the strength for she stopped in the middle of one of those wide, flat spaces where the soil was too thin to support trees, and the moon and stars either glinted off facets of naked rock or disappeared in the soft patches of moss and dirt that drank light. And there she was, at bay, with the night light gleaming along the links of her chain and the tear tracks on her cheeks. She didn’t wait for me to start. 
	“I can’t do it any more, Theamh. I’ve been hoping...I don’t know what I’ve been hoping for, but it’s not going to happen. I just can’t stand to watch you with her, I don’t think I can stand watching you period, not with things as they are, so I have to...”
	I was surprised not to be able to understand, quite, what was happening in her. “I thought...well, I thought you were getting to be friends,” I said, while she shook her head in frustration at my failure to read her. “You’re not still jealous of her, surely?”
	She burst toward me in tears and anger. “You don’t get it, Theamh!” she shouted. “I’m not jealous of her, I’m not an idiot, I know you’re just being a diaoc!”
	“Then what--”
	She didn’t wait for me to finish. “Don’t you see that’s what’s--” Her tears stopped that sentence midway, and she resumed, trying to be calmer, trying to see if she could get it through to me once for all. 
	“That’s what it should have been like for us,” she said. “We didn’t have help. We had to deal with the scariest thing that was ever going to happen to us on our own. That was not right, you know it wasn’t right--”
	“I know, Istri,” I said, still puzzled.
	“You’re doing it for her because nobody did it for us,” she said, tears still coming fresh as ever. “I’ve been going along all this time thinking--I don’t know what I’ve been thinking, that someday I’ll be over it and we can just be friends, like we were before we knew, maybe even work together, somehow, and I could--you could still be in my life--”
	“Istria--”
	“But it’s not going to happen!” she shouted. I wasn’t sure she could see me now, but I don’t think it mattered to her; she was just trying to get this out. And maybe it was better she couldn’t see me, that she was too upset to feel how my heart was racing.
	“You are so good, and so good to her, and you’re--you’ve been--so good to me--” I took a step toward her, still kept distant by the fury of her emotion. “You’re the best, most beautiful woman in the world, and I’m not going to stop seeing that, I--” 
	I felt wrought up to the same pitch now, my heart tight in my chest. She finally took a real look at me, through the water in her eyes, and something broke in her.
	“I love you so much,” she finally cried. “And I’m never going to stop loving you, no matter how hopeless it is, so I have to--I just have to--”
	Istria was turning to go. But that was the one thing on earth I was not going to let happen, now, as long as I had life.
	“Istria!” I grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around, taking her head in my hands and drawing close to her. Her breath caught and her eyes lifted as her pulse beat rapid under the angles of her jaw.
	“You don’t have to leave,” I said, finding it hard to speak.
	“Theamh.” She was suddenly very frightened. “You’re touching me.”
	She was right. My hands trembled now on the warmth of her skin. And whatever either of us was feeling, it wasn’t pain.
	 “You know what this means,” I said, with difficulty. 
	Istria broke out of my grip and backed off, holding her hands out in front of her, staring at them fiercely. She shook them once, then again. Nothing happened.
	“You try,” she said, with a strange light in her eyes.
	Fire popped out of my hands easily, and just as easily back in.
	“Ainm na Ghaist,” she said, dropping her hands slowly.
	“I love you too,” I said, wondering why it had occurred to me to say at this instant instead of earlier. “Like always, and forever.”
	Istria’s hands went to her neck and her fingers hooked around the chain. With one motion she tore it off. It went clattering across the open face of the rock behind her. In another instant she had her arms around me, or maybe it was me with my arms around her, but anyhow we were holding onto each other as if there was nothing else in the world, both crying with the inexpressible relief of finally being able to touch. 
	I could feel her tears wetting the skin of her cheek as she laid it against my neck, one arm tightening around my back and the other hand running up my neck, fingers spread under my hair along the curve of my skull. Her breath, when she spoke, shuddered warm against my neck. “I thought I would never be rid of it.”
	“I knew you would be,” was all I could manage.
	“Even with--everything--” Her hands were still moving, crossing my back, trying to draw me closer than possible. “It’s worth it all--the world--to be with you here--”
	“I know, Istri.”
	“Theamh...”
	It was the best thing in the world to be there, after so much, finally holding her. And it was the most natural thing in the world for me to press my mouth against the base of her neck where it was warm and faintly sweet under the fall of her hair, to open my lips along the line toward her ear before breathing back the answer.
	“I love you, Istria.”
	Her cheek brushed past me, her mouth hovering near mine, not quite touching, her eyes large and undefined as they looked into mine from almost no distance at all.
	As if her mouth had had enough of words, as if I couldn’t stand to wait for the phrase to finish, as if that night six years ago had never ended and all that time between that day and this had been nothing more than a pause for breath, as if along with the chain and the pain the last trailing wisp of that dark northern night drew itself swiftly past us and away, we crossed the distance again.
	Her mouth clung to mine as much as mine to hers, opening into each other with the same yielding pressure, wet on wet, warmth eager for warmth, finding our way blind through a soft sliding landscape whose contours shifted from instant to instant. And I knew from the touch of her on my skin, from the way her mouth searched mine, knew among ten million other things that all my love and all this desire had its partner in her, knowing finally for once after four years of loving a memory and a phantom that here now in her mind, heart, flesh blood and pulse, I was at last and forever answered.
	Or at least until the feel of cold mountain air replaced the touch of her hands and my eyes opened in alarm as my mouth closed on nothing. She was standing a little ways off, hands held up tight at her throat, looking as unquiet as I’d ever seen her.
	“Oh, Theamh, what are we doing,” she said, her voice low and shaken.
	“Istri.” I was as impressed by the solemnity of it all as she was, but still driven toward the light word. “I sincerely hope that’s a rhetorical question.”
	“I can’t let you do this,” she said, head moving slowly in a half-shake.
	“What is this about letting me?” I flung back. “Isn’t it my decision at all?”
	The pitch of her emotion rose. “This is why I have to leave--it isn’t fair--I have nothing to lose, and you have everything--”
	“Not everything,” I said.
	“Too much then!” she shouted. “Your fire, your orders, your career--”
	“Istri--”
	“And there’s Aine too--”
	“Aine’s got her fire now,” I said. “She can start learning to take care of herself. That’s what I’ve been waiting for.”
	The light of understanding in her eyes was dangerous, rather than encouraging.
	“And how long have you been...waiting?” she said, warily.
	“Depends on how you count,” I answered. She looked away in annoyance. “Look, you’ve been gone four years. I’ve had a lot of time to think. Before I came up here,” I said, a new note in my voice, “Barant asked me if I’d thought about what I was going to do if I found you. I told her yes. Because even then I knew.”
	“But you can’t,” she said, sounding almost as if she was crying. “You can’t give this all up just for me, it’s not right!”
	“Istri,” I said, beginning now to be a little angry. “I’m giving it up for me.”
	“I don’t understand,” she whispered, as I took a step forward.
	“I’ve been working my gleacha off for Idair and shri and the thurking Order since I was sixteen years old. I’ve done good and I’ve done well and I love shri. But I’ve been a shriia for five years. I’ve never been your lover for even an hour.” Her hands dropped as her heart leapt to her throat. “Not to sing my own praise, but I’ve done more in five years than a lot of other shriias do in thirty. If I died tomorrow I could look back on my career and be satisfied. But I would break my heart with regret over what we haven’t had.” All that happened was the tears came back to her eyes. She didn’t move, or speak. “I let you go once. With all my faults I’m still too smart to make a mistake that big twice over.”
	“Theamh, you can’t stand there and tell me you don’t want to be a shriia.”
	“No I can’t, and I won’t, but--” 
	“You see--”
	“I want both,” I said, with a vehemence even she had to respect. “I really, really want both. If the world were as I would have it I wouldn’t have to choose.” The grief I was about to claim took me by the throat. “But since I do have to choose--I do.”
	Feeling my grief just made her more unwilling to accept this. “I cannot ask you to do that--”
	“Who says you’re asking--”
	“--when you lose everything and all I do is gain--it’s not right, and it’s not something to build on.”
	In the straits I was in, I hadn’t been reading her as precisely as usual. But now I thought I understood part of her problem. She had that sharp sense of justice, a mind that balanced things, trying to make the whole world fair when it couldn’t be made so. And as long as she saw this as asymmetrical, as me giving the world for love when all she had to do was let it fall into her lap, it would never be something she could live with.
	“Look, Istri, you must have done it for me, if I do it for you--”
	“What are you talking about, done it for you? I never--”
	“What was your first lie?”
	She broke off the breath she had taken. “What?”
	The whiff I got of pain and shame made me regret taking such an abrupt short cut. “The lie that sent you shrimarbh, the first one, what was it? What did you tell her?”
	She answered more because her own harsh standards drove her to than because she understood why I would bring up this horrible topic at this time. “It was--” I waited for her to be done struggling with it. “She was asking me your name.”
	It was close enough to the surface now I could read it faster than she could say it. “All that time, days weeks months however long it was, she’d been torturing you, and finally you were down to your last nerve and you knew you couldn’t stand for it to go on one more second but she wouldn’t stop until you answered.” She was still struggling with her breathing, watching me get closer. “And instead of telling her, you made up some fnaa that meant nothing, just to get her to stop.”
	She nodded, still lost in the shame of that memory.
	“You were the first to make this choice.”
	“But I did it to save my own skin,” she cried.
	“You could have saved your skin and your fire by telling her the truth,” I said. 
	Her eyes looked stunned. It was as if that option had never even occurred to her. 
	“But--I would never--”
	“No, and neither would I, but that’s why we’re different, Istri,” I said. “Lilea said to me that if it came to a choice between betraying them and going shrimarbh, I should betray them. That’s how most shriias look at it, Istri, if you had been able to ask Morat what to do that’s what she would have told you.”
	“Even Morat wouldn’t do that to--”
	“Yes she would, because she’s not in love with me.” She looked at me as if I had just uttered the most ridiculous string of nonsense ever put together. “You are, so you gave your fire to save me.” She shook her head. “To save yourself, maybe, but to save me too. I do the same. It’s my right and it’s my choice.” I tried for a laugh. “I come out ahead on the deal, really, because if I grieve the same loss at least I’ll enjoy the losing of it.”
	She wasn’t really paying attention to that last, and I suppose it wasn’t worth much. Instead she was actually starting to register the fact that I was making her an offer, and what was more, to entertain the possibility that she could actually accept it.
	“But think of the danger...with Lythril still out there...”
	“There’s Aine, and we’ve still got mindstrength. And Barant’s lackeys will be after her.”
	“And what about Barant, and what’s left of the Order?”
	“The Order can’t support its whole weight on my back alone,” I said. “It’s got to be bigger than one woman. The rest of them can take care of Barant--they’ve done a pretty good job so far. I’ll still be in the fight, trying to help, just--as an ordinary woman.”
	The disappointment with which I contemplated this got to her. “Theamh, no matter what happens, you will never be an ordinary woman.”
	We were close up again now, closer than two people would be who were just talking. And from that close, she could get the truth of it from me in ways words wouldn’t give it to her, and it was starting to matter.
	She put a hand out to trace the line of my face, tenderly, careful, riding the thin crumbling edge of restraint.
	“I would still love you,” she said, almost indignant that I would ask the question even unvoiced. “Just as much--more--without the fire. Don’t think that for a minute.” 
	Her voice was husky, half-trapped in her working throat.
	I put one arm around her waist and drew her in close.
	“But you are a good shriia, Theamh.”
	Her breast was pressed against mine now, so that I could almost feel her heart beating. Unless it was mine I was feeling.
	“You won’t like living without it.”
	“I know,” I said, as my hand skimmed the fabric of her cotton shirt. “You’re the only thing in the world that would make it worthwhile.”
	She blinked hard over tears she couldn’t hide. “We’ll take care of each other,” she said. “The two of us--as best we can--”
	She reached around the back of my head and brought my mouth in on hers, sudden. My hands went to her waist, pulling the tail of that Cretid shirt, sliding underneath until they spread quiet and amazed over the smooth planes of her narrow back.
	there are other memories
	It came from her, as we had both somehow tacitly agreed it would have to. But I took it up as one of her hands found a gap in the sleeves of my hreapa and I shivered under her traveling touch.
	than the memory of pain
	My mouth drifted away down her neck over where the chain wasn’t to the white triangle between those open collar-ends. She could have spoken now, if she had wanted to, but her breath stuttered in a wordless sigh as her other hand held my head there.
	life will bring us more of those
	Her arm slid down through room my hreapa shouldn’t have had under my shift and across my ribs.
	meanwhile we can work with these
	I went back up to look into her open, blurred eyes before returning to her mouth. She strained against me, one knee of those denim trousers venturing in among the voluminous folds of my inexpertly designed skirt.
	heartfriend
	lover
	more than kin
	I wondered if she was feeling it too, as her hands ran among the layers I was wrapped in--the stir, that hungry tremble, the answer down in that other red heart.
	there is nothing you can’t claim
	The waistband of her trousers didn’t fit quite snug to her waist. The space between the coarse weave of the denim and her skin was warm, secret and dark with her own heat.
	what I bound up you unbind
	Istria grappled my waist, her other hand roaming urgently along my chest in search of a way under the hreapa.
	close my wounds
	protect my skin
	Frustrated by the drapery, she settled for pressing her hips forward, up the gradual slope from my bending knee. 
	happy, laughing, bright-eyed, fair
	My hand brushed over the place where her back began to be her gleacha. Lost over the feel of this impossibly soft skin, learning a new shape for beauty, I forgot whose turn it was and said it with her as she exhaled her muffled sigh into my open mouth.
	as we were that long ago
	With my eyes closed and my head turned to follow hers, the pressure of her breast lifting the weight of mine, my hands vanished into that narrow world between her skin and her clothes, I lost track of where I was. I wasn’t sure I was even standing upright.
	search through me
	I search through you
	One of her legs hooked around my ankle, sliding up under the skirt until she lost her balance. She planted it back on the rock, as my arms tightened around her torso.
	find me
	meet me
	everywhere
	Our four feet staggered along the hard surface. To say my legs actually buckled would be stretching it, but we both felt the connection, all the way through.
	<You’re here.>
	<I’m here.>
	I didn’t know what else to say, except <Welcome home.>
	Her hands traveled around to my front, pushing between our joined bodies to grope toward the brooch at my waist. <Where I should be,> she said, finding the points of the metal. <In your hands, in your mind...>
	She opened the pin, and I was surprised by the chill that ran through me, spreading out to cut down what leapt to answer her.
	<What’s wrong?> She drew back and looked at my face, which I was afraid was probably no less perplexed.
	<I don’t know, I just-->
	Tears came suddenly, and then the next thing I knew she had dropped to her knees and was clutching onto the folds where the brooch usually held them, looking up at me.
	“I swear to you,” she said, speaking it out because it was an oath. “On anything you can name to me, on my own life. I’ll never hurt you like that again.”
	And this is what it is to love someone, to find out they know more about you than you do, that it was she who realized, and not me, that the chill came on me because I was remembering the last time she’d helped take off my hreapa. Remembering it in my body even though my heart didn’t want to.
	“Istri,” I said, kneeling down with her because seeing her in that supplicant’s posture reminded me of Slythe and because her kneeling to me was just wrong. “I know it, I know you won’t, I won’t ask you to promise it--”
	“Theamh, if my heart could have killed me that day, it would have--”
	“I know--”
	“If you can never trust me now it’s only my deserts--”
	“I do trust you, Istri, what else am I doing here? I just--I don’t know but...”
	She let go of my hreapa, dropping her hands quietly.
	<It’s all right,> she said, taking one of my hands and putting her lips to the palm. <You just have to be the one who takes it off, that’s all. I’ll wait.>
	With my other hand, I reached up to the wrist and undid the brooch there, saying the words. Her mouth followed me as I undid the one at the elbow, and finally the one on the shoulder. And I suppose anyone else would have been scandalized by my saying the words while she hovered there waiting to trace the skin I was baring, doing what was probably going to be my last act as a shriia with her breath hot against my bare skin and my own breath catching in my exposed throat. I should have been surprised that it felt right, that it seemed like something that should happen this way, as if Idair didn’t mind.
	But I wasn’t surprised, or shocked, and nothing stopped this from being as sacred a moment as anything could be, or from laying my undone hreapa over a wide patch of moss next to the rock we were kneeling on, spreading it out with the pins hooked into its far edges, a shape with strange contours but wide enough now for both of us.
	I turned back to her. She was sitting back on her heels now, her eyes traveling over my bare arms, the folds in my thin shift, down the gape my careless sewing had left in the neck, over the vague shapes that worn linen clung to.
	<No one could sing it,> she said. <You’re that beautiful.>
	I was too embarrassed to answer, except by putting my hands at her waist and running them up over the curves of her breasts to the buttons of her shirt.
	<Yes,> she said, answering before I asked.
	I suppose it’s strange, but what was in my mind was that it was good she hadn’t taken to wearing those wire and strap things the Cretid women all wore, because it was beautiful how her breasts moved under the fabric, taking their own shapes according to their own mysterious way. And because once I got the buttons undone and opened the halves of her shirt, they rose in their delicate skin into the hollows of my hands.
	In the poetry and the tales they’ll compare the beloved’s breast to velvet, to alabaster, to snow-covered hills, to all manner of ridiculous things. I knew at that moment that all of that was tarbhfnaa. Velvet should wish it would be this soft, or alabaster this precious. And if some of these poets found their beloveds’ breasts as cold and still as a snowbound landscape, well, I sincerely pity them and the women they sang of. Nosing under their hanging curves, drawing the warmth and the thrill along with the touch of my hands, mouthing that circle of thicker skin until it rose in the point of her nipple, hearing in the voice she gave to her slow heavy breath more than an answer, reading the rise in the pitch of her desire and feeling it rhyme the pulse in my own red heart, I understood once and for all the limit of metaphor.
	And then there was not the time to search for the fine phrase, because her hands were running over my shift lifting my own breasts into that ill-shaped opening at the neck, and her face disappearing into the furrow between my heavier breasts, her mouth and hands working to change my own landscape as the shiver that answered her touch spread through my whole body from my closed eyes to my groping hands to my other red heart.
	I don’t believe it 
	She hadn’t meant me to hear it, but there at no distance we could pretty much hear everything.
	I know
	you’re so beautiful
	you are
	I moved my hips away from hers so she could pull up the skirt of my shift and slip it over my head. I didn’t watch to see where it fell. I was already working at the waistband of her trousers, and finding that even once I had the fastenings undone her lower half was still pretty well encased. I tugged at the denim, but it didn’t slip easily over her wide hips.
	<Let me, it’s easier.>
	While she backed away, ungracefully struggling out of her trousers, I took the opportunity to take off my ropesoles. I was glad enough to be out of them; they’d been through a lot on this trip and even after Ubh’s cleansing they weren’t particularly savory.
	She laughed at me as I tossed them into the vague darkness around us. <You know we’ll have to find them later.>
	I shrugged. <We can follow the smell.>
	<I love you, Theamh.>
	I turned back, and my heart almost stopped. I had seen her naked a few times in scoil; she was modest to a degree some considered abnormal but with all of us living under one roof and using the same washrooms a certain amount of that was inevitable. And during my lonely nights I had turned over those memories, the visions I’d seen in our innocent youth before I knew what I was looking at. I’d seen her young--that unlined face on a body that was taut and compact the way mine had never been, muscles running firm under the sweep of a close-fitting skin--narrow waist under breasts holding themselves high and apart. Time had worked on her body as it had worked on mine, and now it was--not slack, but somehow looser, as if her body was no longer afraid of its shape, and was living now soft and comfortable in the relaxing curves of her breasts and her hips.
	<You’ve gotten more beautiful,> I said.
	Her eyes shone and she didn’t answer.
	<I wouldn’t even have thought it was possible.>
	<You really think so?> she said.
	<Come here till you read it.>
	She pushed herself across the white wool toward me. I clasped my hands around the back of her neck, resting my arms on her shoulders. Her eyes wet, with a sadness I was suddenly close enough to read.
	<I suppose I haven’t,> I said.
	She drew back, so she could look at me when she answered. <Never say that. You are beautiful. More than anyone, more than anything real or imagined.>
	<Then-->
	Her hands went to my sides and ran down my ribs. <It’s just...you’re so thin.> 
	I had forgotten. I was so used to thinking of myself as too big, part of me refused to hold onto the obvious fact that a month of starvation will take some flesh off you. But for Istria, knowing the blades in my shoulders were sharper than they would have been brought sorrow welling out of her as she drew me back to her breast and her mouth, wanting to show me how it didn’t matter.
	<When we get home,> she said, as I rose on my knees and my gleacha moved under her hands. <I’ll make you things with cheese and eggs and good solid pratai and you’ll fill out like you should be...>
	They tell you in scoil that you read off the head, but I wasn’t sure about that, because it seemed like it came to me from everywhere, from the skin I was kissing along the slope of her shoulder and the valley of her spine that my hand was tracing, that earnest wish to make me well. It brought a sob out of me, a string of them, wringing my throat as she held my head to her breast and stroked my back while I clung to her.
	Because my whole life, nobody had ever suggested to me that flesh was something to want, that there ought to be more of me. And why it was that that did it I don’t know, but there we were, naked in the middle of the night grabbing onto each other as if nothing else was solid, wet with both of our tears and shaking to the same emotion.
	it’s been so hard
	I know
	for you too
	I missed you
	I missed you too
	my whole life
	even before I knew you
	And we were moving again before the tears stopped, my wet face sliding up to the hollow where her collarbones joined, her hands shaking on my shoulders, grief and relief and sorrow and comfort blent together. When her breast came back to mine it was still wet with the tears I’d left there, and my tongue ran along a trickle of salt as my mouth went up the side of her neck.
	“Theamh...”
	It was something more than a sigh--low, slow, starting to be ragged. And all because my mouth was covering her ear. It seemed like too simple a thing, but there was no question about it--as I tongued along its stiff curves or mouthed at the soft little lobe, her breath got rougher and that throb that was spreading from her other heart beat harder. 
	Keeping her waist locked in one arm, I moved the other gently up to her breast, calling that whisper shiver out of her skin. My knee slid forward, my thigh taking up the space between hers. 
	“Ah Theamh...”
	She brought my hand up to her face, brushing the palm across her parted lips.
	“I love you,” I said, moving my mouth around her ear.
	I love you. After another of those ragged breaths, she darted her head forward to bring my hand to her mouth.
	We live so much in our hands, it made sense I suppose that when mine encountered that warm wet cave, when the circle of her lips slid down one of my fingers or when her tongue ran up the other, when I felt that hot uneven breath misting against my palm, it haled the breath shuddering and unmeasured out from under my creaking ribs. Her ear slipped away as my mouth fell open for the gasp I needed. 
	your hands are beautiful
	yours are
	Because one of hers had gone around my waist and down, and while my hand disappeared into the strange wonderful cavern of her mouth my flesh was trembling all the way from the skin of my gleacha to the strings of my red heart.
	The fork of her legs tightened on my thigh. My free hand went to her hips, pressing her gleacha toward me. It’s wrong that the gleacha figures so prominently in so many of our coarser insults, so that there are no words I can use to tell this part. Because there is no word, really, for what I held--for all the beauty in the shapes it changed through as muscles strained and relaxed and her hips struggled against mine. Soft in my grip and then strong under my opening hand, double but joined by that sweet soft valley along which my hand seemed made to rest, rolling down to the backs of the strong thighs that had clenched on mine, it was like nothing you would expect from hearing the word. And why should I feel foolish for saying that if there was one place where her body took shapes that were more beautiful than the others and I can’t say for sure that there was, it would be this place, where she came together, hips and waist and legs, full, firm, a soft touch over a solid form, silk for my hands and an anchor for my clasped arms.
	Reaching around the bottom of that hanging curve, my fingertips found stray wisps of dark hair, the back edge of the fringe protecting her dubhtil. It was coarser than the hair on her head or the cushion of tight-curled hair now pressed against my hipbone, damp over thin skin. A little frightened at the touch of something so quivering and inward, I slid my hand back over the contours above it and the small of her back.
	The breath she had caught for that instant rushed out of her as her hands clutched at my gleacha, bringing me down on the slope of her thigh. In the flush that followed I lost my balance, falling for a dizzy moment in I wasn’t sure what direction until one arm braced itself on my hreapa.
	careful
	lost my bearings
	sorry
	don’t be
	 I lay down, feeling that thin layer of spongy soil and moss under my back. Istria walked forward on her hands, until her face was hovering just above mine. Her breasts fell on either side of my face as I reached up to run my mouth down her breastbone. 
	I had the sudden need to fling my arms around her waist and pull myself up against the curve of her belly, my face burrowing into its warm folds.
	Theamh
	it’s beautiful
	you are
	She swung back on the hinges of her knees, breast touching mine now as the narrow triangle of other hair hovered a hair’s-breadth above my upraised leg. I could feel the heat even before the touch of it. 
	can I
	She was leaning on one hand now, the other sweeping along the skin under my navel, waiting for me to say what she surely read.
	yes
	Her hand brushed gently above me, skimming the ends of my triangular thatch of thick curled hair. A slight enough move of my hips brought the flesh beneath it up against her hand. She followed me down, running her fingers through the thatch as she stroked me quietly, giving that faint soft tremor time to grow.
	Dissolving in expectation, I brought a hand up the inside of her thigh to cradle the place where her legs joined, my hand pulsing on her in time with the pulse that beat under her hand.
	Her breath hissed back through her teeth, and I felt her stiffen. I withdrew my hand. She moved hers, leaning suddenly forward and stretching herself out over me, staring into my now open eyes with desperate anxiety.
	“Oh Theamh--I’m sorry--”
	“Istria.” I took her head in my hands and wrapped my legs up over hers, trying to get her as close as I could. “Your body remembers, why shouldn’t it. I know that.”
	“It’s--it’s all so different--I should be able--” She was crying now, one hand striking the ground in frustration. “I want to--”
	“Look at me.” She trained her watering eyes on mine. “We will. Sometime, somehow, it’ll be time for you to take me there. A history like that doesn’t lift off you like mist in the sun, Istri. I know it’s--I know it’s in there.” It made me cry just watching her watch me talk about it. “Oh Istri...I know I don’t understand anything about it at all...”
	“You do,” she said, blinking. “More than you think.”
	“But I want you safe,” I said. “And till you can feel safe...I don’t care if it takes another three weeks or three years or thirty, I’ll wait till then and be nothing but brought to my knees with gratitude just for the gift of being close to you.”
	Her head dropped toward me. My mouth opened into hers as we rocked onto our sides, legs wrapped around each other, her triangle rubbing against mine, our hands traveling so fast it was hard to say what I was feeling when.
	<All the beautiful talkers in the history of words, they’re nothing to you,> We were deep into each other’s mouths now, gripping each other with all four limbs, her hair tangling around our joined heads. <Nobody else could say that speech.>
	<I mean it,> I answered. I was still so wonderstruck at things like the skin at the backs of her knees, the way her feet could seem as agile and gentle as hands--I would never in the world have thought to be disappointed. <You’re a miracle, as you are. I couldn’t wish up anything better than this.>
	It was lucky we had the link, because neither of us could speak now. It seemed like all the hard things I had lived through, all the pain of the last months and years was rising out on my altered breath and with every throb from that other red heart came another release. As if it could, after all, just leave me, exhaled from my body, as if what stayed behind solid in her arms was something quick and quivering and newborn.
	All the hair on my skin rose as her hand pushed in between our bodies, cupping the triangle, her palm curved along the bone and her fingertips trailing tentative along the edges and entrances concealed under that fringe of hair.
	Theamh
	yes
	you sure
	slow
	of course slow
	Because wet and ready as the place was, there was still that shiver, the instinct to contract. So there was what seemed like a long time of stroking and tracing and hovering just inside the borders and keeping her breast warm against mine and her mouth working over me while I stretched out along the length of my side waiting to let go of the last of it, whatever it was, that tight thing in my throat trying to hold itself together against all odds.
	I love you
	I know
	I loved you the day I met you
	This was news to me. Really?
	how could I not
	I felt her fingers moving inside the folds, sliding down that wet narrow cleft to where my achmor was pulsing.
	that night you woke me
	yes
	you walked away and
	Istri
	from that moment
	you can
	all right
	yes
	from that moment, I’ve been waiting
	if you move up
	is this all
	yes
	I’ve been waiting for this
	you never said
	 you never asked me
	did you know it then
	I did and I didn’t
	She was there now, and I was ready. Nothing hiding, nothing drawing back, nothing left to close tight against her. And why should there be, when her hand joined like it was part of me, when it was just like she had always been there, like it was nothing else but coming home.
	is this all right
	way past all right
	Theamh
	hold me
	I’m here
	hold me
	I’ve got you
	I love you
	I know
	It spread out in me slowly, in soft starbursts, as my body gradually shifted alliances, my muscles answering not to my mind but to the impulses of my other heart, twisting and sighing in tune with this new thing that rose out of my melting center, strange and familiar, the sound of a song I had forgotten at birth.
	Her body was shaking against mine, her arm trembling along its length, sharing the tremor with our joined bodies. A shuddering sigh rasped guttural in her throat and a narrow corridor opened between our hips.
	Theamh
	yes
	touch me
	now
	right now
	I wouldn’t have believed it, but it was unambiguous. I groped toward her, my hands not being completely under my control.
	Istri
	yes
	you’re sure
	yes
	you’ll tell me if
	yes
	And by Idair’s teeth, she was. Because her triangle rose warm and wet into my hand, and who knows by what miracle it got to be possible, but there she was, waiting, ready to open.
	Istri 
	Theamh
	so beautiful
	so gentle
	I’ve got you
	I’m here
	I stayed out of her dubhtil, because I knew she wanted me to. It was, on too many levels, too sore a spot. It was enough to have her filling my spaces, learning at least from that side what things felt like close to the core. But my fingers felt through the folds of her skin down through the red wet dark to where her achmor beat against the bone, and at that moment I understood.
	The word in my mind is fire, only I deal a lot with fire and this was something from a whole different world, the thrill that ran from her raw red heart into my fingers and through my arm. A whole different language, a new link, this wet connection, flesh to flesh, touch happening inside the skin. So of course the earth could open and miracles could be possible now that she had reached through into me.
	ainm na ghaist
	Theamh
	you’re so beautiful
	touch me
	ragat a hIdair
	a chara
	mo bhean
	mo ghra
	And what is the point of even using words now, you won’t understand, no one can tell this, nobody could have told me what it would be like...I said, I said I would tell the whole story, after all she’s given I have to try.
	Understand though, listen to me, there are things that can’t be told, you can put them out there with words stuck on them awkward like ill-made clothes but they remain secret, unspoken, untold, this is one of them, listen to me, no matter what you read, you do not know what this was, what this is.
	this is
	I know
	ah Theamh
	Istri mo ghra
	here
	now
	always
	everywhere
	say my name
	say my name
	I knew then that this was why I had told it to her in the first place. So that at this moment, over our tightening link, she could give it back to me, my real name, as I gave her hers. And if there is a way to tell this, it’s that for the first time in twenty-eight years I was not a lonely spirit trapped in an ungainly body, not an impatient mind wrestling a clumsy bundle of bone and guts, but one thing, one being, heart blood mind spirit confused confounding pouring out from the center to the tingling edges of this new thing that I was becoming. As if--as if this was what, finally, a name is for, as if when I heard my name from her I became, for the first time, the woman it meant.
	A shift to one side and she lay on top of me, collapsed, her limbs unknotted. My legs entwined with hers as her hands stroked my face. Her eyes were wide and soft and the mouth that touched gently onto mine in short little brushes was tender and a little swollen. “I’ll always love you, Theamh. While I live and after.”
	“Forever,” I said, returning the solemnity of her gaze and bringing one hand up to her face. “You and me, through this world and whatever’s next, together, always.”
	We rolled over. “I’ll take care of you, I’ll keep you safe...”
	“I know, Istri.”
	“Are you happy, Theamh?”
	Even if I was now no longer a shriia, the habit was still on me, and I looked for a minute to make sure it was the real answer.
	“Yes, Istri.” I stroked her head, hoping the answer would sink in through touch along with everything else. “I don’t say I won’t grieve the loss. But I will never be sorry that we did this.”
	She almost smiled, but it was too heavy, and her next speech was weighted with consequence.
	“I will never make you sorry for it,” she said. “I promise.”
	“Oh Istri, I know.”
	“I’m yours, forever, my whole life,” she went on, needing to say it even though we both knew it. “I’ll never ask for anything else but to be with you and love you and make you happy. It’s the only gift I want and I don’t care what else Idair or the Dark One takes from me as long as I’m left that.”
	“And I’m yours,” I said. “All the way through.”
	She sighed, laying her head down on my breast and curling around me as she shifted onto her side. “All the way through, Theamh. Right to the red heart.”
	I stroked her hair down over her shoulders, feeling her breath warm against me.
	“I never imagined anything like it,” I said. “Even dreaming.”
	“I know.” Her voice came slow and soft; her hand trailed across to lie curled loose at my breast as her eyes closed. “My only love...ever and forever...” She burrowed in closer, eyes still blind. “I’m so lucky, nobody’s ever been this lucky...”
	It brought tears out in me to hear her say that, so it was a while before I answered. Because if you told her story to any sane person, “lucky” was not a word they would use to describe Istria. Born on some of our country’s hardest, stingiest land to a father who had become such a monstrous figure in my own angry mind that I could hardly be persuaded to see him as human and a mother who wouldn’t know generosity or tenderness if they hit her with a plank. Assigned to a diaoc who could turn the guts of scoili into churning water just by glancing at them, who the whole year of her apprenticeship probably only said two words of praise to her, outright. Sent out at nineteen to go up against a woman almost twice her age and about a thousand times more powerful, with nothing going for her but her own mindstrength and my very ineffectual assistance. Taken prisoner and tortured for that long year by a woman who really knew how it was done, turned inside out and upside down and forced to live inside her worst nightmare. And now, here she was, against all reason saying and believing too that she was lucky, just because she was lying there naked in my arms. It was almost too much.
	“Istri...”
	She hadn’t heard me. Her breast beat gently against mine in time with her regular, easy breath. Her eyes were still closed, and her mouth parted slightly where one corner pressed against the skin of my breastbone.
	She was asleep.
	I reached out for the edges of my hreapa and pulled them in, wrapping the extra fabric around us so we were covered from the night air. And then settled down to watch her enter for the first time in a long time the realm of real sleep. And keep my arms around her, listening to that breath, willing it to stay even and for her to remain safe in there, out of the way of harm and nightmare, hoping the touch of me would maybe stave off whatever dreams would come.
	I thought about calling Aine, but she would want to know what had happened, and this was a conversation that had to happen face to face. There would be time later for me to return to that stone circle and the future. The sun would rise soon enough, pitiless, bright, heavy with consequence. Till then, Istria was having the first good night’s sleep she’d had in four years, and I was--for once in my life--happy.

VIII.
An Ordinary Woman

	The darkness was just starting to lighten into gray. I hadn’t slept much, and so I had had a lot of time to think. Which was unfortunate, really.
	There was my hreapa, for instance. Still keeping us warm, and it would still protect me from a lot of things; but it was done now too, just as I was, and silly as it sounds I felt bad for it. We had been through so much together, and now it was going to sit in a bundle until my death finally undid the magic. It deserved better, the poor thing.
	And Aine too. Even if she did have her fire, it wasn’t responsible of me to abandon my role so soon. There was a lot I could still help her with, but she would have to have a new diaoc once we got home and everything was settled, and she wouldn’t like that, having gotten so attached to me. I should have seen her through it all, but I knew that no matter how heavy the responsibility had been I couldn’t have waited that long, and neither could Istria. I kept coming back to that--that this had been not only the right choice, but the only choice I could have made. But that didn’t make it any easier on Aine.
	At least I no longer had to worry about what Barant would think of me. On the other hand, Lythril was still out there with her minions, and Barant was still weaving her web down in the City, and now I was out of the fight. Or at least I would have to learn a different way of fighting, and the Order could ill afford the loss. I had put myself and Istria ahead of shri, and though I was convinced of my right to do it the knowledge that I’d made the fight harder and longer on everyone else didn’t make me happy.
	And then there were all the things I hadn’t thought about, that came to me during those dark in between hours. My house, for instance; I had no right to it any more. I would have to take up a trade, and I didn’t have one. I could become a lorekeeper, perhaps; or go into the gardai, Idair forbid. But for damn sure I couldn’t farm--I’d learned that painfully enough through my experiences in the garden--and I wasn’t good enough with my hands to be an artisan. I wasn’t even a good cook, and anyone would have to be insane to take me on as a waiting maid. I couldn’t be a lawyer without undergoing ransa, which I was not willing to do--even if it meant, ultimately, that the only thing I could do was go back to the Craoibh Oir and ask my parents to take pity on me.
	I could hope for some leniency on the part of the Order--the real Order--because I had accomplished my mission, at least, and flushed Barant into the open. After all that had happened, and because I hadn’t pretended to be what I wasn’t, they wouldn’t want to do anything much in the way of public shaming. A quiet dismissal ceremony in the Pharc, and then I would return to ordinary life--without a coin to my name or a place to go.
	The idea of working for money was still repugnant to me, anyhow; I wasn’t sure I could ever really bring myself to touch the stuff. And throwing myself on my parents’ mercy had its drawbacks as a plan. For one thing, I didn’t see mathi putting out the welcome mat for Istria. For another--well, I just wasn’t sure I could stand it, living in that frozen house, haunting my childhood like a ghost. 
	Istria’s family might be better. Varen had her problems, but she was sincerely grief-stricken when Istria was lost, and I cherished a secret hope that once she realized she had a second chance she would treat Istria differently. Varen was someone who had lived her own nightmares and had to make her own bad choices, and it might be that after a little time in a better life she would be a better mother. How she would take to me was another question. Varen had disliked me on sight. Either she guessed how things really were with us, and rightly saw me as a threat to her daughter’s promise of a brilliant career, or I just rubbed her the wrong way. And even supposing she threw her arms open to both of us, could I stick life in a tiny town in northern Amst where there was nothing to do but work the soil?
	I could foster, maybe. I had enjoyed teaching Aine, and even granted that she was smarter and more dedicated than any of the children or youths I’d reach as a fosterer, I still might enjoy it. I knew more than other fosterers, and I was used to telling stories.
	Yes, that might work. We could go back to Amst, Istria would work the family holding and I would get work as a fosterer. I might have to travel to surrounding villages, but I was used to that; and I would get very little money, but then I was used to that too...
	Istria stirred, opening her mouth while she stretched up against me. Her eyes opened and she lifted her head from the red mark it had made on my breast, looking at me with such soft amazement that for the moment I really didn’t care what the future held.
	“Morning, Istri,” I said, a little choked up.
	She touched my face gently. “You look sad.”
	I clutched her in what was a little too abrupt an embrace. Because just by saying that she made it all worth it. To be waking up not alone but with her, to see her sharing what was in my heart, wanting to help but willing to suffer it with me if it couldn’t be helped...it was worth any number of years of fostering strange children or crawling to my parents or for that matter walking the public streets hat in hand.
	“I don’t want you to think,” I said, loosening my grip on her a little, “that I’m having second thoughts, or that it’s crossed my mind for an instant to think that I made the wrong decision. It’s worth it, it’s worth it all to be with you like this, but...”
	“But...” she said, waiting without rancor for the end of the sentence.
	“Istri...I will miss it.”
	“Of course you will,” she said, drawing me back to her as I started crying. “Of course, Theamh. It’s rotten that it has to be this way. You’ve been a great shriia, you’ve done good and you’ve done well, it’s what you were born for, of course you’ll miss it. I’m so sorry you have to miss it, even if...even if I’m happy, for me and for us, that...”
	“I’m happy too, Istri,” I said, through tears. “I am, beyond what I could imagine. I just...I mean, I’ve got to go back there and face Aine...and, eventually, Morat...”
	“Oh, don’t bring it up,” she groaned, hiding her eyes against my shoulder.
	“But I’ve been thinking...I could be a fosterer...I think I’d be good at it...”
	She lifted herself on her elbows, looking down at me with heartpiercing compassion and so much love I felt almost ashamed for worrying about these details like food and shelter and a thing to do with your life.
	“You would,” she said. “I think you would...” Tears dropped off her lashes. “It’s wrong that you have to leave...but we’ll go together, we’ll find somewhere to make a home--you and me, beyond dark and bright, just two ordinary women in love.”
	“All right, Istri,” I said, holding tight to her.
	“I’ll be good to you, Theamh...a good lover, a good husband and a good wife...”
	“Istri, I know you will,” I said. “And Idair will help me be good to you, and take care of you like other people should have and never did.”
	The gray was getting lighter; she saw it too. After one more long kiss, she drew back sadly and sat up.
	“We better get back,” she said. “Aine will be worried, and Idair alone knows what that little hellcat from the north is thinking.”
	I folded up my hreapa, and began looking for my shift. I found it in a heap at the edge of the rock near some shrubs. A few moments of hunting turned up one ropesole; the other remained elusive.
	Istria, meanwhile, had pulled her trousers on and was disentangling her shirt from the thornbush it had caught on. I turned around finally to look at her with my other ropesole dangling limp from my hand, and we both started laughing.
	“Lucky there’s no one else around,” she said. “We’d have been in sad plight.”
	She pulled her arms through the shirtsleeves and began buttoning it up. And when I went to pick up my bundled hreapa, it was only natural to take her hand, and kiss her again, and say, “You know, it won’t be so bad.”
	“Maybe not,” she answered. “Morat’ll be too busy fighting Barant to take it out of either of us. And you know,” she went on, “I bet you would be a good fosterer.”
	We picked our way back through the undergrowth hand in hand, retracing the steps we had taken separately. And even with the weight of consequence sinking down on my heart, I still felt yes, I was right, it wouldn’t be so bad.
	I heard NightQueen’s voice through the underbrush before I saw them. “...not exactly printing casualty lists. They want to keep the deaths out of the news.”
	“So you don’t know what’s happened to Lara?” Aine’s voice replied.
	“No,” NightQueen answered. “I know Kwenu’s in jail, that was in the papers. And I know that guy--what’s his name, the guy who ran the march--”
	“Barid,” Aine answered.
	“He’s dead. Shot while resisting arrest, they said.”
	I stopped in my tracks. Istria waited, reading what the news did to me. I hadn’t liked Barid much; but I had admired his willingness to lead, and even--though it made him obnoxious to me--his insistence on his anger. But more than that, hearing of his death reminded me of what was going on, on both sides of the border, and that no matter how Istria felt or I felt the world was not a garden of love.
	“They’ve been gone a long time,” was NightQueen’s next remark.
	“They’ll be back,” Aine said.
	“Aren’t you worried?”
	There was a pause. “I am and I’m not.”
	I sighed. 
	<Do you want to do this alone, or do you want me with you?> Istria asked.
	<I want you with me,> I answered. 
	I pulled back the branches and walked into the clearing.
	The stone circle was dark now; Aine must have figured out how to take the fire back. NightQueen lay on her side, curled up and looking at Aine, who sat with her back against the rock wall looking moodily into the distance. Until she heard us, and turned her head slowly, not wanting to seem startled.
	“You’re back,” she said, keeping her voice even.
	“I did promise,” I answered.
	NightQueen sat up and was looking from one of us to the other, as in the strained silence I sat down on the other side of the stone circle. Istria sat down next to me.
	“Well--what the hell?” NightQueen demanded. “Where have you been? What’ve you been doing all this time?”
	“NightQueen,” Aine interrupted, annoyed.
	“No, I’ll answer,” I said, looking down at the stones. “I told you I would.”
	“Dhiaoc--”
	She remembered too late; but that wasn’t even why the word brought my head suddenly up and the sting to my eyes. It was that I had no right to the title now, or to any of the other things most people were used to calling me.
	“Well,” I said, “the good news is, Istria’s shrimarbh now.”
	“Congratulations,” Aine said, sincerely. “I was hoping it would happen for you.”
	“The bad news is...” Istria took my hand and pressed it. “So am I.”
	There, I’d said it. And it wasn’t the end of the world. But it still felt pretty bad.
	“What does that mean, shrimarbh?” NightQueen demanded.
	“It means I’ve lost my fire,” I said. “I can’t do shri. Idair’s taken it back.”
	“What?” NightQueen sounded almost as shocked as an Ideiren. “Why?”
	“Well,” I said, wishing I could sink into the ground and avoid answering this question, “there are three kinds of loss violation. Abuse of the mind, abuse of the fire, and abuse of the body. I haven’t mindforced anyone, I haven’t told anyone lies, I haven’t killed anything and it’s not like there’s money lying around here for me to be fondling. So by process of elimination...” NightQueen looked blank; I had forgotten she didn’t know these things. “You asked what we’d been doing, NightQueen, well, we’ve been having sex.”
	NightQueen’s gasp of shock was almost comical. “You mean--eeeeew!”
	“Oh, grow up, NightQueen!” Aine snapped. “If you’re going to snicker and make faces go sit at the children’s table. This is a conversation for adults.”
	This was not exactly how I had expected the news to take Aine. That she wasn’t actually surprised made perfect sense; but I would still have thought she would be more upset. Instead, she seemed calmer than the rest of us.
	“Anyway,” I sighed, “I can still teach you some things, although it’ll be hard not being able to demonstrate. I’ll continue your training until things have settled down and the Order can find you a new diaoc who can get you to your orders.”
	“The hell they will,” Aine said. “You’re my diaoc and I’ll take no one else.”
	“I’m sorry, Aine, I know it’ll be hard, but you have to be reasonable. You need a real shriia to train you, especially for this part. I don’t like it any more than you do,” I said, wishing my voice wouldn’t shake. “I’ll wager I like it a whole lot less. But we have to face it. I’m not a shriia any more.”
	Aine looked me straight in the eye, and it seemed to me like I’d never seen that much steel in her gaze.
	“I don’t believe you,” she said.
	That stung, especially in the mood I was in. “Aine, just because I’m shrimarbh now that doesn’t mean I’m going to start lying for the sheer pleasure of it!” 
	“I didn’t say you were lying,” Aine returned, set back by my anger but not wavering in her resolve. “I’m sure you’re telling what you think is the truth. I just don’t think you’re right.”
	“Aine, what are you talking about?” I demanded, hurt and baffled.
	“You said yourself you haven’t done anything else that would be a loss violation,” she went on, not giving ground. “Well, I don’t care what happened last night, you look like exactly the same woman who left here except your hair is all tangled up and you’re not in hreapa any more. You say Idair’s taken your fire back for doing that, well, I say if she did it was a stupid and mean thing to do, and I don’t think Idair’s either.”
	“Aine, the rules are the rules, she doesn’t make exceptions just because...”
	“What, just because she put the fire of love like what you read about into both of you?” Istria bridled a little bit at finding herself interpolated. “You can talk as much as you want, I still don’t believe she would do this to you.”
	“Aine, what do you want from me?” I cried.
	The distress she read off me gave her some pause, but she wasn’t going to give up. “I want you to show me, one way or the other.” I shook my head, wishing this would all just end. “I want you to try to make fire, just once, and I mean really try,” she said, as I looked haggardly up. “Don’t just go through the motions without meaning it. Just do it,” she said, a little more gentle now. “Just once. And if nothing happens, and you tell me you really tried, then I’ll shut up. But I won’t believe it till I see what happens.”
	“Theamh, you don’t have to--” Istria began.
	“No,” I cut in, shaking my hands out. “I do owe it to her, and I may as well.”
	I closed my eyes, so I wouldn’t see it not come.
	“All right, Aine,” I said.
	With a sinking heart, I did what I always used to do.
	“FNAA!”
	That was from Istria. But there was a second one from me, because when I opened my eyes both my hands were full of flame.
	I scrambled up to my feet, staring the whole time at my hands, which were shaking now along with the rest of me as I stood struck dead with disbelief.
	“What the hell is this, Istri?” I said, hoping maybe she’d have an answer.
	“Thurking bats of the northern passes,” she said.
	So, she didn’t. I stepped across the circle toward Aine.
	“Here, touch me.”
	“Theamh, you are not dark,” Istria said, still in shock but very vexed with me for having this thought. “I’ve been there, I know dark and you are not it.”
	“Touch me,” I repeated.
	Aine put a hand on my bare arm and then dropped it. “You see? If you’re dark I am, and I know I’m not and so do you.”
	“But--” I swung back toward Istria, holding my hands out like a question with no answer. “I mean--that all really happened, right?”
	“Of course it really happened!” Istria shot back.
	“I know, I wouldn’t doubt it but--look at me!”
	Her mind was racing, although mostly in circles. “Maybe...maybe it doesn’t count if it’s with a woman?”
	“That’s ridiculous,” I snapped. “How could that possibly not count?”
	“I know, you’re right, but...I mean...”
	I started firing spurts at the stone circle. I could still throw it and take it back as handily as ever, allowing for my intense agitation.
	“This is nuts,” I repeated, as I kept shooting off sparks onto the stone. “This is not possible!”
	“Well, maybe...” Istria gave up in mid-hypothesis and just shook her head.
	“Hasn’t the obvious thing occurred to either of you?” Aine said.
	“What obvious thing?”
	We both shouted at the same time, which made her want to laugh. It was kind of her not to.
	“That maybe sex isn’t really a loss violation?”
	There was a moment of astounded gaping on my part, and I launched back into it.	
	“How could is not be really a loss violation?” I demanded.
	“It has to be, they couldn’t teach us that in scoil otherwise, it would be a lie,” Istria followed up.
	“No,” Aine said, speaking slowly as if it was an effort to marshal her patience. “It wouldn’t be a lie if they believed it was true--and I’m sure they do.”
	“But--but--Idair said it herself, in the First Instructions--”
	“That was a thousand years ago, dhiaoc!” She shook her head. “I mean Theamh...”
	“Well, so was the Burning, but--”
	“Listen to me.” I did, because I couldn’t think of anything to say at the moment. “You’ve said, so often to so many people, the thing to remember is that Idair made mistakes.” Istria made a noise of refusal. “Why shouldn’t that have been one of them?”
	“Oh, come on--” I said, disbelieving.
	“You’re the one grilled me for a month on Order history,” she said. “When was the last time a woman was expelled from the Order over sex?”
	“There was Olham ni--”
	“She left voluntarily,” Aine cut in, as if she had been waiting for this. “There are women who’ve left the order to get joined but they’ve always petitioned for release first.” I was running through it in my mind, and so was Istria. So far neither of us had come up with a counterexample. “That’s what you would have done, if things were normal. Nobody’s ever been found out and expelled afterwards, just over this.”
	“Aha!” Istria cried. “Amnor ni Thrielyit--”
	“Amnor was asked about it and she lied,” Aine replied, unflappable. “You can go all the way back to the second kyelran when they set up the rules, there isn’t one woman who’s been expelled for sex who hasn’t also lied about it.”
	“But...” I wasn’t coming up with a rebuttal, and neither was Istria. “But this can’t be it, it can’t be that she just let us go on thinking this when...when...”
	“Look at the facts, dhiaoc,” Aine said. “It’s the only logical explanation.”
	“You know what,” Istria breathed, as troubled as I was, “I think she’s right.”
	“But she can’t be,” I said, starting to cry.
	Aine finally started to show some uneasiness. “I don’t understand you, dhiaoc,” she said, her voice small. “Don’t you want to be a shriia?”
	“Of course I--”
	“Hey, watch it!” NightQueen shouted, flinching as I spun around. “Some of us are combustible, you know.”
	“I thought you’d be happy,” Aine said plaintively. “If it were true, which I wasn’t totally sure it was, but now that it is--”
	“This is all insane!” I shouted, flinging my hands about and upsetting NightQueen greatly. “If it really is a loss violation, then what the hell is this I’m holding?” 
	“Theamh...” Istria said, reaching to calm me down but halting as I turned on her.
	“And if it really isn’t,” I shouted, in tears, “then why didn’t she tell us?” Istria shook her head. “We could have--you wouldn’t have had to leave, you wouldn’t have been captured, we could have spent these four years together instead of alone--” Aine had backed up now, afraid to be caught in the path of my mounting anger. “Why in the name of anything would she let us go on like that?”
	“I don’t know, Theamh, but...I think Aine must be right,” Istria said. “It makes more sense than anything else, and--”
	“No it doesn’t!” I cried. I took a look around the ring at Aine, now looking lost and scared where she had been confident, at NightQueen huddling into the rock away from the fire, and Istria struggling with the explosion going on inside her own head.
	“That does it!” I shouted, pulling the fire back. I began walking away.
	“Theamh, where are you going?” Istria cried.
	“I’m going somewhere where we can have this out,” I shouted back.
	Istria understood this, although Aine didn’t. She stopped following me, but she wouldn’t quite let me go.
	“It’s not like she’ll talk back,” Istria called. “That stuff doesn’t happen any more.”
	“So what!” I shouted. “We’re having it out anyway, and I’ll tell you, if she does talk back, she better have an explanation, and it better be good!”
	I rushed away, with Aine’s voice at my back. “Shouldn’t you go after her?”
	“No,” Istria said, fading in the distance as I ran. “This is between her and Idair.” And, the last thing I heard, “Don’t worry. She’ll come back when she’s ready.”
	I didn’t know exactly where I was headed. I knew the geography near the river well, but we were away from it now and the hills seemed strange to me. And I didn’t know how I would know when I got there, either, except that I finally had to stop because the outcropping I was running along ended abruptly in the air. 
	The cliff edge I had approached fell off sharply, dropping in a broken plummet down to a narrow riverbed where a little creek wound among the stones. One of Ubh’s ten million minor tributaries. There was a string of twisted, hunkering trees along one edge of the plateau behind me, but the rock that spread out eastward was naked in the morning sun, affording me a vista of the lower hills and outcroppings that wound away beneath it.
	“It’s not fair!” I shouted, knowing that nobody but Idair could hear me. “You want us to be honest and tell the truth and all of it and then you won’t even tell me this one thing.” Thinking about it put the twist of pain into my voice. “I have been so miserable, and she has gone through so much hell--” I broke off, but I swallowed the worst of the anger and kept going. “I gave you half of my life. I’ve been killing myself for you and your children since I was sixteen years old. And denying my heart because I thought you wanted me to do that.” Anger filled my lungs and my voice rode out louder, ringing with a mountain echo. “You could have spared her all that horror. You could have spared me four years of grief, just by letting us know!” I was addressing myself to the view now, and I was really working myself into it, feeling almost as satisfied as if she were really there to be yelled at. “What in the name of anything would possess you to do this to me?”
	Hurt bubbled up in my throat and blocked the air for a moment. 
	“You’re angry.”
	It wasn’t an echo. It wasn’t my voice, and it had come from behind me.
	I spun around, my mind flying to Lythril, Tifni, Barant, any one of a dozen enemies who might have been led to the spot by my trumpeted tirade. But it wasn’t any of them. It was a woman I’d never seen before, standing under one of those short wind-stunted trees, leaning against the trunk with her arms folded over her chest.
	“I’m glad,” she said, dropping her arms and walking slowly out from under the tree’s branches. Her hair was red with some yellow gold in it, pulled back from her face and held behind in some kind of wrap so that it dangled in one short fall down to the top of her shoulders. She was wearing a kind of wool jumper with buttons down the middle, over a pair of trousers that looked like that blue denim the Cretids had, only not quite. “You learned it early. It took me way too long to start getting angry.”
	She talked as if she knew me, and I had an unsettling feeling that I had met her before, even though I was certain that she was a stranger to me. 
	“Do I know you?” I asked, not sure exactly how to keep up my end of what was shaping up to be a very strange conversation.
	She shrugged. “You do, and you don’t.”
	“What’s that supposed to mean?”
	Instead of answering, she walked past me to the edge of the precipice, as if she were more interested in taking in the view than answering the question.
	“Your geography is so weird,” she said, bending down on one knee and running her hand along the gray surface of the rock. “All patchwork, hodgepodge, ad hoc. There’s no reason there should be a cliff here, over a gorge like this, not two hundred yards from that level wooded clearing...” I was approaching her, but slowly, fascinated but not wanting to get within reach. “The only reason it’s here is so you would be able to run up and yell your anger out over the valley.” She stood up, putting her hands in her pockets, and speaking quietly as if to herself. “Yesterday, this valley didn’t exist. It was born two and a half minutes ago because you needed it. But if you could dig fossils out of that cliff base and have the Cretids test them, they’d be millions of years old.” What she was saying was of course insane; but she looked so calm, I let her keep going. “Behind the mountain where that creek disappears there’s a village called Fleatha. People have been living there for hundreds of years. You were there yourself four years ago. But it’s only ten seconds old.” A hand came out of its pocket to smooth down some wisps of hair that were floating in the slight breeze. She squinted into the sun, perplexed.
	“I learn a million things every day I do this,” she said. “But I’ll never really understand how it works.”
	She said it sadly, as if she still wanted to know more but had given up on trying. Her head turned back toward me. Her eyes were somewhere between green and brown, under strong eyebrows the same color as her hair.
	“Who are you?” I finally said.
	She sighed. “If I have to tell you, you’ll never believe me.”
	Something kept me from turning away, kept my eyes fixed on her face with its pale skin and the hair pulled back from it, shining now as the sunlight picked up the highlights in her hair and they began dancing like little flames.
	“Tell me anyhow,” I said, beginning to feel a little uneasy.
	She opened her hands, as if she didn’t know how to answer the question. Finally, she said, “I’m an ordinary woman trying to help.”
	I looked at those indeterminate eyes and the lights flickering in her gathered hair and my guts suddenly turned to water.
	“Idair?” I whispered. 
	Every hackle rising on me hoped she was going to say no. 
	She didn’t. She just stood there, looking at me with a half-sad half-smile. And I knew it had to be her.
	“Ainm na ghaist.” My voice wouldn’t go above a whisper, and I was too busy shivering to worry about whether I should be bowing or kneeling or what.
	She laughed. “I’m not that big a deal, Theamh.”	
	Whether it was the laugh that did it I don’t know, but I wasn’t afraid any more. 
	“Come here,” she said, opening her arms. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this.”
	I launched myself toward her as if I had been waiting my whole life to do it.
	“It’s going to be all right,” she said.
	Her voice was low, but not rough; and gentle, full of the concern you have for something young and in danger. And I felt young, small, curled up like a child against her.
	“I don’t understand,” I said, angry with myself for continuing to protest.
	“I know.” I heard her voice, even though I had my eyes squeezed shut while half my brain hoped this wasn’t really happening and the other half was trying not to explode. “I can’t stay here. Let’s go somewhere where we can talk.”
	Everything went dark, or went white, or went somewhere--the only thing I knew was she was still holding me, and carrying me to wherever it was she’d said she was going, and it seemed like it was only an instant but it seemed also like we were traveling a long way, to some other end of the universe.
	And then things came back, but they weren’t the same things, and they wouldn’t sit still, and it seemed like on the one hand I was looking at a chair but on the other hand I was looking at a pattern of fire that sort of arranged itself into a chair shape but kept wavering and shifting and doubling and tripling itself, and then on the third hand it would shrink down solid to a nice normal chair.
	“Have a seat, if you can...” she said. 
	I tried to sit, but it seemed like I went floating about through some undefined space that should have walls and a floor but didn’t.
	“I don’t know what this will be like for you,” she said.
	The one thing that I could see--sort of--was her. Except that now her hair was flaming, the way it was in the pictures, and her image danced in front of me the way flames do, staying put enough for me to find it familiar but still, when I tried to fix it, wavering at the edges. And the place itself, if place it was, flickered and shifted before my eyes. There was nothing strange about that, of course. I was meeting Idair. I could not expect things to be normal.
	Her legs were crossed under her, as if she were sitting down on something flat, but I couldn’t quite get what it was. “So,” she said. “I do, actually, have an explanation...”
	“Oh--please--don’t mind what I said--” Now that I was actually looking at her, it came home to me exactly how presumptuous I had been, and how insignificant my inconvenience was in the grand scheme of things. “I shouldn’t have asked--I mean--you must have had good reasons for doing it this way.”
	That slight smile came back. “Not necessarily, Theamh. I made a lot of mistakes. Read the Chronicles if you don’t believe me.”
	“But you meant them for the best,” I said.
	“I did.” She passed a hand over her flickering hair. “That much I can be proud of. I tried to do what was right. But the celibacy thing...”
	She broke off, and when I finally couldn’t stand it any more I prompted her.
	“So...that was...a mistake?”
	“A big one,” she answered. 
	I could hardly believe it. But I had to, because it was Idair saying it. And it never occurred to me to question whether she really was Idair. It was something I just knew in my bones, even beyond that, knew like you know when you see someone haled out. Idair is like that, I guess. Carrying truth with her, truth you can feel right down in your marrow.
	“But you had reasons...” I said. “Were they...not true?”
	“It’s not that simple. See...” She thought, her hands quiet. “I thought it was necessary. I thought you couldn’t be devoted enough to shri if you had a family. And you know, what I said about how if shriias could have children there’d be that danger of making shri a matter of lineage, that’s true enough. I wanted every woman to have an equal chance of becoming a shriia, and not for mothers to pass it down to their daughters. I still want that.” Her shoulders moved as she shifted slightly. “But the other reasons...I had this idea that if you had to give up this thing everyone really wants in order to become shriias, then that would ensure that only good people went into shri.” I nodded. “And I had these other stupid ideas about how if you were too attached to one person you wouldn’t be able to serve everyone. And I had this irrational attachment to the idea, just because I was young and stupid.” She looked vexed with herself. “That’s the really unforgivable thing about this, the way my whims become lived reality and because I indulge what I think is harmless sentimentalism, you all have to suffer.” 
	She was silent thinking about it, and I didn’t like to interrupt her. Instead I watched the flames play about her head and down her shoulders, and tried to make out the words floating through the air on their strange invisible music.
	“I don’t think there’s a way to explain to you why I was attached to the idea itself,” she said. “It has to do with things you wouldn’t have any way of understanding. But there probably are other things I could explain. So please, ask me anything you think it would help you to know. I want to make it right.”
	I am doing freagair with Idair. I tried not to let my mind repeat that more than once, lest something terrible happen to me. I felt on the one hand as if I were sitting on the edge of madness, and on the other as if this was where I had always been, as if this conversation were a perfectly natural thing.
	“But...why did you change your mind about it?” I asked, timidly.
	“Talk about your uafach freagair,” she said with a rueful smile.
	“I’m sorry--I didn’t mean to--”
	“No--don’t apologize. It’s a good question, and I may as well give you the answer.” She put her elbows on her knees and her head in her flaming hands. “I changed my mind because...well, because I grew up.”
	“Grew up?” I repeated.
	“You have to understand this,” she said. “When I first visited, I was so young--it doesn’t come through in the Chronicles at all, they all wanted to believe I was smarter and better and more powerful than I was. I was younger than you, Theamh--I was younger even than Aine is.” 
	She was right--that doesn’t come through at all. “That young?”
	“That young. So you can understand, there was a lot I didn’t know. That’s why I had to go there,” she said, warming to the topic. “The place was a mess, because I was too young and too naive to know my job. You were the ones who taught me how to do it. All that stuff in the Chronicles about what you learned from me--well, if you did, I’m glad, but I feel like it was you all who taught me.”
	It was like her to try to put that on us; she was always trying to believe the best of us, even after we proved her wrong. “But what could we possibly have to teach you?”
	She laughed. “Well, consistency, for one thing,” she said. “That you can’t just end the day because you’re done with the scene. That you have to think about what season it is and try to make sure that they change over time. That you have to make sure the sun is going to come up at more or less the same time every morning, even if you’re not paying attention.” Her hands were moving again. “All this stuff that to me was boring spadework but to you it was life and death, it was about whether the place was going to be habitable. That’s why your world needs shriias, really. I mean, everyone’s hard on the rainmakers because it’s not that intellectually challenging, but if you guys didn’t have them you’d all be in big, bad trouble. Because if you leave the weather up to me, I’ll forget.”
	Harani would be happy to hear it, I thought; and she read it, and smiled.
	“So there was that. And complexity, too. And like the thing with the gold--you can see how it would appeal to a young mind, just give everyone enough and then there will be utopia...there is a huge, huge gap between theory and practice. I consider myself lucky to have had a chance to live there, even for a little while. I still don’t understand what made it possible.”
	“What do you mean?” I said. “I thought...you can’t come and go, as you please?”
	She shook her head. “Even now my control over it is limited. And that first time...no, I have no idea how that happened. People build worlds all the time, that’s totally normal, it seems to be how we’re made. But to look up and see that tilu tree and realize, holy shit, I’m here...”
	Her eyes turned inward and there was another of those pauses, while I contemplated her contemplating this.
	“I thought I’d gone insane,” she said. “It was the only reasonable explanation.”
	“Why?” I asked. “Didn’t you believe in us?”
	It was a strange question to be putting, but it seemed like maybe that was what she was getting at--that until she’d come to visit, she hadn’t quite believed we were real.
	“I did, but--see, the idea that something that only existed in my own head, or on paper, could have a material reality somewhere in some other universe--that was a rough one. It’s one thing to spend a lot of time in your own imagination. It’s another to be actually standing on ground you designed under a tree you made up talking to people you created. A world in my head, fine. But how in the name of anything that world got out of my head and became--became--real--I didn’t get that, I still don’t.”
	“But that was your power,” I said. “To make things real.”
	“Well,” she said, “you maybe would know something about using power you don’t understand.”
	“I maybe would,” I said.
	“Anyhow it’s not my power,” she went on. “There has got to be something else out there that made this possible, because for damn sure I couldn’t do it on my own. To make you something solid with breath and a life that will end, rather than a figment of my own imagination--I couldn’t do that.”
	“So where does it come from?”
	“The Spirit,” she shrugged. “And what the Spirit is or how it works or why it decided to make you all I have no earthly idea. Maybe this is what it’s like for everyone,” she said. “Maybe all people who write stories are actually making real worlds somewhere on other planes of existence and they’re all bobbing along out there, Narnia and Middle-Earth cheek by jowl with Bradbury’s Mars. Maybe I’m a figment of someone’s imagination too, and someday my author will pop in for a visit. Maybe that’s just how the universe is set up. Maybe that makes as much sense as anything.”
	“I don’t understand,” I said.
	“No, of course not.” It was as if she came back abruptly to the time and place. “No reason you should. We were talking...what, about celibacy, and how I figured out it was a bad idea.”
	“Yes,” I said, fighting feelings of disbelief.
	“Well, as I said,” she went on. “I was young. And I knew nothing about love. Nothing.”
	“But...you taught Sincil and Anron about it.”
	“If you look back at that story,” she said, “you’ll find that they did most of the talking. All I did was let them know they were right.”
	“That’s teaching,” I said.
	“Yes,” she answered, nodding. “I guess it is. But so my point is...I had never been in love, when I went to your world. I was working out of the world of ideas in that scene. That’s why all that stuff you were saying to Kitth and Ilwath and everyone is true. Big difference between theory and practice, like I said.”	
	“And...now?” I asked, almost unable to entertain the thought that had come to me.
	“Now,” she said, with that secret smile, “I don’t know it all, but I know a hell of a lot more.”
	I looked at her, as her eyes held mine.
	“You’re like me,” I said, my voice faint and myself feeling faint enough.
	“I am,” she said. “A lot like you.”
	I could hardly believe it. All that time the Order had spent poring over Sincil and Anron asking the question and resolving it and refusing to reopen debate--and now here she was, telling me...well, I hoped she was telling me...
	“After I came back here to--to my world,” she said, reading me as of course she could. “I fell in love with a woman. That changed a few things.”
	“Name of the Spirit,” I said, feeling like my mouth was probably hanging open.
	“Oh, don’t say you’re surprised,” she said. “I mean--I was, but that’s just because I’m an idiot. I should have known. But I didn’t--and once again, you paid the price.”
	“But--this other woman--” I said. “Who is she? It--” A terrible thought came to me. “It wasn’t...Cailte?”
	A laugh burst out of her. “No, it wasn’t. You can rest assured that ‘Idair, Princess of Power’ is just as full of shit as you thought it was. It wasn’t anyone from your world.”
	“Well then, who was she? Is she like you? Why don’t we know her?”
	Now she looked sort of embarrassed. “Oh, you know her well enough,” she said. 
	“How?”
	“Because she’s--well, she’s all over your world, Theamh, she’s part of it all, just like I am. Little things, here and there--the way Ethir’s eyes light up when he talks about procedure, that hard-earned courage Aine has, the strength of Istria’s passion--even the way you lose your temper or feel like you didn’t do a good job designing your hreapa,” she said. “We make each other, and so we both make your world. You understand, what I mean, by that?”
	“Yes,” I said, finding it was true.
	“So--I know about love now,” she said. “I know love is part of everything good, that it’s not in conflict with magic--that magic only happens because of love, that it’s part of whatever strange power it is that we all wield. And I know sex is--is--part of love.”
	She was embarrassed talking about it; well, that was nothing to my embarrassment hearing about it.
	“I know that too,” I said, quiet and timid.
	She smiled. “It makes me happy to hear you say so.”
	“I can’t even express...” I felt like I had to try, though. “For all my complaining, I...I am glad, that you gave me the...the power to love her like I do. For all the trouble it’s caused me.”
	It seemed like that made her happy. “I’m sorry about all the trouble.”
	“It seems like...” I shook my head. “It seems too easy. I mean--all this time--I’ve thought I could only have one. And now I can have both? Just like that?”
	“No, not just like that, Theamh,” she said, a little indulgently, as if I were an eager child. “You went through hell to get here, remember? You said so yourself.”
	“But...”
	“Look, it’s the old story...you were willing to make the choice. And because you were willing to give it all up for love--you don’t have to.”
	“That doesn’t make sense, Idair,” I said.
	She shrugged. “Maybe not,” she answered. “I don’t claim that everything does. My point is, you’ve proved--to everyone--why this has got to change. I mean, I can’t just waltz down there and say, ‘OK, guys, new instructions, listen up!’”
	“Why not?”
	“That’s complicated...look, it was clear when I visited: I don’t have absolute power, even over what happens in your world. And for sure I have just about none over what happens in mine.” I nodded. “For whatever reason, a world like yours...it has to be held together by rules. Consistency. That’s what makes people believe in it, and that’s what makes it real. Sudden, arbitrary, miraculous interventions from on high are bad for the suspension of disbelief. It’s bad enough my doing this now--that’s why I keep saying, we don’t have long. People get impatient. If it were up to me, I’d yammer at you all day--I don’t often get this chance.”
	There was something disarming about the way she kept talking--as if she were excited about meeting me too, as if she liked getting to talk about how she made us and how it all worked. But it did mean I had to keep bringing her back to the question.
	“So if you can’t just...tell us different...then how do you change things?”
	“When things change...you all have to act them out, that’s what makes them real. You’ve made it real, Theamh.” I wasn’t sure I understood, in my mind, but in some way beyond meaning I was getting the sense of it. “Show don’t tell, that’s what they all tell you. You two have shown. So things can change now.”
	I took a minute to try to comprehend all of this. That we could be together, and I could still do shri, and the Order would have to change, and I wouldn’t have to divide against myself or to cling to half a life and let go of the other...
	“I mean, I just...I can’t believe it,” I said, aware that tears were filling my eyes again. “That I get to...to go home and...I mean...this is it? Happily ever after?”
	“Ah, the innocence of youth,” she said.
	“What do you mean?”
	“It’s not that simple, Theamh,” she answered with a smile. “I’m giving you a shot. You two are the ones who’ll decide whether you’ll live happily ever after. It’s not as easy as it seems like it should be.”
	“How could we not be happy?” I asked.
	Something about the way I said it seemed to touch her, as if there was some part of her that was just now starting to pay attention.
	“You’ve had...trials, tribulations, remarkable misfortunes, exciting escapes...” She smiled sadly. “And all that’s hard. But in terms of keeping love alive--it’s ordinary life, that’s what’s hard. It’ll be after you’ve been living together fifteen years and that pre-dawn trip to the bathtub has gotten harder to make and--”
	“Fifteen years?” I said, choking up.
	“Sorry?”
	“Fifteen years? Will we really have them?”
	I couldn’t believe it, that there would ever be a time when I could say I had had fifteen years with her, that I could look back on so much living with her and loving her and having her there, it was too much to think was even possible, it was too great a gift.
	“Oh look at you,” she said, moved in some way I didn’t understand. “Of course if you want them, Theamh, I’ll try to make sure you have them. I don’t mean,” she went on, “that I expect you ever not to love each other. Although anything is possible. I just meant that--well, hard as it may be to believe, there will probably come a time when just being next to her will not all by itself make you delirious with joy.”
	“You’re right,” I said. “It is hard to believe.”
	A laugh rang out from her, a happy one, without the shyness that had seemed to come on her as soon as she started answering my questions about love. “Well, God forbid I should force the knowledge on you,” she said. “Just remember, if things should get hard--that’s normal. It happens. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with either one of you, or that you shouldn’t be together.”
	I nodded, figuring there must be a reason she was telling me this, even if I couldn’t really imagine a time would ever come when I would doubt any of that. And then said, “So...you mentioned God...”
	She shook her head. “That doesn’t mean I really believe in him.”
	“Do you not, then?”
	“How about you ask me another question?”
	I looked at her. She sighed.
	“Here’s as far as I’ve gotten,” she said. “Many stories, one spirit, like I said. God is a name some people in my world have for the Spirit. A lot of people in my world really--really--believe it’s the right name. I don’t know if it is or not. I just know that the more sure people are that they know the Spirit’s name, the more damage they tend to do.”
	“Is that the same as the Cretids’ God...?”
	“I feel badly about that,” she said. “I haven’t been fair to them. It’s true they’re a nasty lot, and they were nasty to me, but I took out a terrible revenge against them.”
	“What was it you did to them?”
	“I gave them Christianity but without Christ,” she said. “That’s about as bad as religion gets.”
	“What’s Christ?”
	She shook her head. “I don’t want to get into that. You remember you said you didn’t know why I felt like I had to keep saying I hadn’t died, during the burning?” I nodded, surprised she could remember back that far--surprised I could, really. “Well, it was so there wouldn’t be any confusion. I’m not anything like what the Cretids pray to or what the Dubhinisians and Hendanai and Plenanans pray to. I’m not divine, I’m not immortal. I don’t know what death is or what happens after or why the universe exists or what the meaning of life is. I know you wish I did but I don’t. I’m not a fount of eternal wisdom, I’m not even a specially brave or good person. I’m just a woman with a little imagination to whom something very strange happened a long time ago.”
	“The Burning...” She looked at me. “I know it’s a big question and you don’t have to answer, but...I’m dying to know...what really happened in the cave?”
	“Ah, Theamh, that’s a long story, and we don’t have time,” she said. “Besides, you wouldn’t like me to take all the mystery out of things, would you?”
	“Will you at least tell me whether that story Istria told about the Dark One’s bargain is true?”
	She shook her head. “No. It wasn’t like that, in there.”
	“What was it like then?”
	It took her a long time to decide how to answer, and when she did, her voice was different--more remote, almost as if she were talking to herself.
	“It was a battle,” she said. “But not a battle that’s ever been done on any stage during the Burning. It didn’t end like battles end, with a victory or a defeat or both sides destroyed. It was...” Her head shook, the ends of her hair flaring out into flame. “You can take this home with you and chew on it for a while, if you think it’ll help. Something to remember.” I leaned forward, wanting to listen. “Everything in your world is part of me. That includes, unfortunately, the Cretids--and it includes the Dark One.”
	“How do you mean...part of you?”
	“Well, that’s what you’ll have to chew on, Theamh.”
	I accepted this, and the little smile of satisfaction with which she said it. And now I’d been here a while, it did seem like on reflection it should seem--as if I had known her a long time, as if we were friends. Because I had, and we were, even if we had never met.
	“All right--but--you mean all of it, even the evil, you just...made it all up yourself?”
	She shook her head. “I didn’t create myself, Theamh; I was made, just like you are. When I say it all comes out of me--well, it all had to go into me first. I built your world and you folks out of the materials I have at hand. And there is a lot of evil in my world. I found I couldn’t build your world without it. Because...if there is a reason to why I made you, other than that I was a lonely child...it was to see if in a place that would necessarily be simpler than here, you could maybe find answers to the questions I keep asking. One of them being, where does evil come from, and how do we make it stop.”
	She said it as if this were the most serious thing in the world. Which was right, and fitting, and made me remember who I was talking to, and why I had sworn to serve her.
	“Come on, ask me something else--something human-sized, that I can answer. We don’t have long, and I want you to make the most of this.”
	I thought about all the things I would want to ask her, now that the first question had been answered. There were a lot of them.
	“Do I only get one question?”
	“You’ll get as many as we have time for. I’m not a magic fish, or something.”
	“Well then...” I finally picked one. “Will Istria...will she ever be a shriia again?”
	When she answered it was with seriousness and a sense of almost remorse. “Before you ask me you should ask her whether she still wants to be a shriia.”
	“How could she not?”
	Idair shook her head. “Not everyone feels like you do--and not everyone’s got reasons to. I’m hard on you all, Theamh,” she said. “Everyone tells me that. And I’ve been really hard on Istria. Stranding her alone in Lythril’s clutches for four years, saddling her with that father of hers--if she hated me for all that, I couldn’t blame her. She’s taken a lot of abuse no one should have to take. She’s been in evil’s teeth her whole life, fighting from close range, and she may well be tired of it.”
	“But she doesn’t hate you,” I said quickly. “She still loves you, I know she does.”
	“If she wants to do shri again, then there’s no reason she couldn’t,” Idair said. “She hasn’t killed anyone--she’s been very careful about that. If she wants back in, I’m not going to lock her out just because she worked for the competition for a little while.”
	“Can I tell her that...that you still love her?”
	“Of course you can, Theamh,” she said softly. “I’ve never not. She’s part of me.”
	“That will make a big difference to her,” I said, feeling the difference it made to me. And then feeling that curiosity come back again. “So is Lythril...is she part of you too?”
	I thought I saw her shudder, but it could just have been the flickering effect. “I guess she must be, but I really don’t want to think about where she comes from.”
	“And Barant?”
	“Same thing--although I’ll tell you,” she said, warming up, “if you ask me, Lythril’s not as bad as Barant. At least there’s a forthrightness and a kind of honesty about Lythril’s naked ambition and unashamed greed that you can respect even if you can’t admire it. Barant’s just...” Her hands traced bright shapes in the air. “She’s a consensus builder. A centrist. A moderator.” The flaming head nodded. “Istria’s right. She’s the woman to beat.”
	“And will we?”
	A shadow crossed her. “I hope so, Theamh. I’ll be working for it. But you know...your world isn’t how I’d want it to be.”
	“I know.” It was still disconcerting to hear her admit it, in person. “There is...one more question...”
	“Say it, Theamh,” she said, gently, reading how hard this one was for me.
	“Does...” I felt ashamed to ask, but I had to, because I was realizing just now how much I had always wanted to know the answer. “Does my mother love me?”
	One hand went to her hair, and she paused, a wave of sadness cresting over her that almost drowned me.
	“I don’t know yet.” Startled, I waited for her to go on. “Now I can give you an answer, and whatever answer I give you, it will become the truth. This is how things get made. But you want to think about that. Do you want the question decided--now? Are you prepared to live with the truth?”
	Instead of answering, I whispered, “Why don’t you know?”
	Because it was intense, my disappointment at not hearing the answer. I had been hoping it would be simple at least to her, that no matter what things looked like to me Idair would know the truth, be able to cut through all the tarbhfnaa and explain it to me, and then even if she never got any different at least I would know, one way or the other.
	“It’s one of those questions I was hoping you could find answers for.”
	I swallowed.
	“You haven’t, obviously. I shouldn’t have expected it.”
	“I really want to know,” I said.
	“You want me to make a truth for you?”
	Knowing it was momentous, I said, “Yes.”
	She watched me for a long time.
	“Here it is then,” she said, and took a long breath. 
	“Ulnach does love you. As well as she can.”
	I felt--not happy, but a sense of relief, as if I was not now carrying weight I had been. It wasn’t something to be happy about all the way through, like with Istria. I knew well enough just how much that qualifier was tagging on to the end of the answer. But it still meant a lot, to know that yes, in all its limit and conflict, it was there for me.
	“Does that make you happy?” she said, a little anxious.
	“As well as it can,” I answered.
	She nodded. “I think this is about as much as we can get away with,” she said. “Anything else, before you go back?”
	I couldn’t think of anything but to say, “It’s really true? That I can still be a shriia, and...and...we can keep...doing this?”
	“Yes,” she said. 
	“And you don’t mind?”
	She leaned forward, her eyes boring in on me.
	“I’ll say this clearly so there’s no mistake,” she said. “I learned that I have to be clear.” She clasped her hands for a formal speech. “I want you to be happy, so long as it hurts no one. As long as sex makes you happy, and hurts no one, I want you to have as much of it as you have the time and the inclination to have.” I felt like I would have been blushing, under normal circumstances. “I know, the word’s a poor one, and in my world it gets poorer every minute. But if I use another there’ll be arguments about what I meant. Anyway--nothing would make me happier than to see you and Istria settling down happy together for the rest of your lives, loving each other and loving the people around you and having sex whenever it’s convenient and sometimes maybe when it isn’t. Always assuming of course that you both keep wanting it.”
	“Spirits above and below, what would stop us wanting it?” I said, frankly amazed.
	She laughed. “I just don’t want you thinking this is a commandment,” she said. “In my world, there’s a saying about...the faith I grew up in, that everything is forbidden unless it’s compulsory. I don’t want love--or sex--to be either.”
	“I’ll remember,” I said.
	“And what I hope, and my point in telling you all this,” she went on, “is that once the Order realizes sex is not a loss violation, they will change a few things, and start for one thing joining same-sex couples, for God’s sake it’s time already--”
	“You mean--we could be joined?” I said. “With the ceremony and everything?”
	Her next speech came wistfully. “If the Order faces up to the truth--yes.”
	“Oh Idair,” I said.
	Embarrassed I think by my palpable gratitude, she hurried on. “And for another thing, letting shriias be joined and have lovers and all that.”
	“With men too?” I asked.
	“I don’t like it, but I have to be fair--if I let you two do it, I have to let the straight shriias do it too. I suppose there must be a few straight shriias...”
	“But...I mean, if your spouse wasn’t a shriia--there’s the money thing--”
	“That’s what the Council is for,” she said with a smile. “They can thrash all that out if they take up the question. I’m concept, not details.” She stood up. “Come on, we’ve got to go back.”
	“Please,” I said. “Tell me something I can do for you.”
	“There is one thing,” she said.
	“Anything, Idair.”
	“I want you to tell the story.”
	I blinked. “You mean...of meeting you?”
	“I mean your story. The story about how you found the boy, and how you beat Lythril, and how--let us hope--you bring down Barant. And how you learned, without much help from me, to make love against all odds. Tell that story.”
	“To who?”
	“Just write it down, the way you want it read. The rest is up to me.”
	“I...but...where do I start?”
	She smiled.
	“Well, you keep saying, don’t you, that the world started changing that day you met Mna in the streets on your way to the Pharc,” she said.
	“I do,” I answered. “It did.”
	“Then that’s a good place to start,” she said. “So when you get home--when you get time--tell the story. It will be a great service to me.”
	I didn’t know why she wanted that, but she was still bright in her power before me, and I wasn’t going to quibble.
	“The...the whole story?”
	She nodded. 
	“Even the part about...last night?”
	“Oh, especially that part, Theamh.” I colored. “It’s important. To make things change. It’s--it’s a gift, a great gift for you to be able to give your world and mine. The story of sex, told by someone honest.” She shook her head. “You have no idea how badly the world needs that.”
	“Since you want it,” I said, “it will be hard, but...I will.”
	“Thank you,” she said. 
	“I’ve never done anything like that,” I said. “I’m not...you know, outside of shri, I’m not really a writer.”
	She smiled. “You’ll figure it out as you go along.”
	“And...I mean...how do I know when it ends?”
	Her eyes abstracted themselves, as she thought about it. “Well, I have to tell you,” she finally said. “Traditionally, stories end one of two ways--with a death, or with a wedding. And--anything’s possible, like I said, I don’t have total control. That’s the problem with your being real. But I’m hoping it’ll be the wedding.”
	“You mean...our wedding?”
	“I hope,” she said. “We’ll see.”
	I thought how unreal this was, and I said, “But...what if the Order doesn’t believe what I tell them? What if I don’t even believe this all happened, once I get home?”
	She thought.
	“I’ve left something for you, as evidence,” she said. “I know the value of it.” I waited. “When you get back, take everyone back to the place where it happened. There’ll be something there for you, to remind you that this was real.”
	“I will, Idair.”
	“And if they don’t believe you when you tell the story, then tell them...tell them...”
	As she turned it over in her mind, I thought I could see the flames on her head and her hands flickering faster, and hear the rush of fire until her head lifted and her eyes flashed and it came out of her.
	“Tell them that truth’s shape changes
	But truth does not;
	Before I knew
	What love was
	It moved your world;
	And when I burned
	It was with this
	Final knowledge--
	That body and spirit
	Are not divided;
	Flesh is not
	Where evil lives;
	We call it the heart
	Because it shudders
	Red and real
	
	Tell them this is what
	The fire is--
	To feel your spirit
	Know your body,
	To watch the split
	Vanish at last,
	To bring it all
	Together--

	Tell them 
	It’s division
	That makes darkness
	And denial
	That casts the shadow
	The fight is not
	Against desire
	But against greed
	Against harm
	And what do we fight with
	If not desire

	Tell them this is love,
	All you have worked for,
	And all you have burned with,
	And if I say now
	That you can love
	(And when I say love,
	I mean with the body,
	With the heart,
	With the mind--)
	It is not quite
	A new thing;
	You have always given
	Love to others
	There is no harm
	In receiving

	And tell them
	That I told you,
	That you are joined,
	Theamh and Istria,
	Body and soul,
	And that you still burn
	With my fire
	And tell them
	That this is how
	I wish it to be;
	And anyone who 
	Comes between you
	Will answer to me.”

	Watching her before me, burning with the words and with all her power, I couldn’t do anything but to remember to breath, and to murmur, lost in wonder, “Ta se mo hIdair.”
	“I guess I am,” she said, walking through that unspace. “You ready to go back?”
	“I...” The thought of leaving made me inexpressibly sad. “Will I see you again?”
	“You see me all the time,” she said. “I’m all over the place.”
	“I know, but--I...” Much as I wanted to go home, I hated to leave. “I’ll miss you.”
	“You won’t have to miss me,” she said. “I’ll be right there.”
	I nodded, ashamed of wanting more when I already had so much.
	She put her arms around me.
	“See you later, Theamh.”
	And there I was, on that rock in Dairc, with the sun a hair’s breadth higher, and the same wind stirring my hair.
	I stood like that for a long time, not sure I could move. The world swept below me like the curve of an empty bowl, and I wondered if I would be able to walk back into it.
	“Theamh!”
	I turned around and saw Istria trotting through the scruff of little trees, and I thought yes, I’ll make the journey back, it’ll be all right.
	Aine emerged behind her. “Thank Idair.”
	“I called, and you didn’t answer, and--” She was close enough now to see my face, and she stopped in her tracks. 
	Her own face paled, and she put a hand to her mouth.
	“You’ve seen her,” she whispered, terrified.
	I don’t know how she knew it, unless it was just that she knew that nothing else could make me look like that.
	I nodded, slowly, still dazed.
	“Dhiaoc?” Aine said, hesitant.
	“Well--I--” Istria put a hand out toward me, then dropped it, then seemed not to know what to do next. “Was she angry?”
	I shook my head.
	“Then...what did she say?” Istria asked, frightened but really wanting to know.
	“She says...” My voice shook, and my hand shook too when I brought it up to adjust my hair. “She says she wants us to be happy, and that if sex makes us happy and hurts no one we should have it, and I can still be a shriia,” I said. “And she says you can be a shriia again if you want to only she says she’ll understand if you don’t because she’s been hard on you and she’s sorry for it and she says she still loves you and Ulnach loves me as well as she can which isn’t maybe much but it’s something and she says the celibacy instruction was a big mistake but she couldn’t change it without us and she gave me a saying to say I just hope I can remember it all and and and I think I need to sit down.”
	Istria was already there, holding my elbow as she guided me down to the rock. “All right, chara. All right.” She knelt in front of me, taking my hands and holding them up between us. Aine squatted nearby, watching me with bright eyes. She believed me. That was the frightening thing, they both believed me. I must have come back with some sort of otherworld halo. “Sit, and take your breath, and tell the story...slowly.”
	So with my hands in hers and her eyes on mine, I took my breath, and started.
	At least I had no trouble remembering the details. It was, it still is, written in fire on the inside of me, word by word, right down to the last saying she had said to me, which I repeated for them. I saw them looking at me and along with the flush of the fire I felt the chill of fear, realizing for the first time what had happened, what this was going to mean.
	“That’s it,” Istria said quietly, when I had finished. “That’s her. Not even you could make that up.”
	“It is,” Aine echoed. “That’s Idair.”
	We sat silent, as the sun rose higher, spilling morning light over all three of us.
	“Why me?” I finally said, my voice sounding hushed and small in all that space. “Good shriias live years wanting nothing more than to see her and die at seventy disappointed. I’m not even thirty, I’m disobedient, I put myself above shri...why appear to me? I don’t deserve it.”
	“Yes you do,” Aine said.
	“And anyhow,” Istria answered solemnly, “it’s not about desert.” She seemed to have reached some understanding. “She appeared to you because you can do what she needs done. Because...” She glanced at Aine, amusement floating up but not breaking the surface. “Because you’ve learned insubordination.”
	Aine smiled, briefly. I wanted to laugh, but the weight of wonder was still on me.
	“She said she would leave something for us at the...at the place,” I said. “Where it happened. She said I should take everyone to see it.”
	“All right then,” Istria said, standing and looking out over the view. “Do you know where we are, Theamh?”
	I squinted down into the valley. “We’re northwest of Daircri, near a little village called Fleatha,” I said. “Just around the bend in that hill, where the creek disappears.”
	Istria nodded. “But it seems like we can’t get there from here.”
	I smiled. “You could say that’s Dairc’s regional motto.”
	NightQueen was waiting at the camp, looking a little sour.
	“There you are,” she said. “I don’t appreciate being left alone. If you guys don’t come back, what’s going to happen to me?”
	I scooped up my hreapa and handed Istria hers. She took it without arguing. “Come with us then,” I said. “I want to show you something.”
	“What is it?” NightQueen asked, a little suspicious.
	“I don’t know yet.”
	Istria led the way; she was better at retracing steps and navigating unmarked terrain. I recognized the path, more or less, but I could never be totally certain. Until we got to the place itself, and I recognized the bushes and the rock I’d stood my ground on.
	“You sure this is the place?” Istria said, looking doubtfully at the spot.
	“Yes I am,” I said. “I’m also sure that wasn’t here last night.”
	Aine walked toward the rose bush that was now growing out of the moss-covered patch of loam. It wasn’t full-blown, but on the point of it, the blossoms still partly fisted. But they were open enough that the sunlight caught the velvet inside the petals. A broken carpet of vermilion, bright, deep, wavering like flame as the wind ruffled it. 
	She reached out toward it, taking one of the stems gingerly between her fingers. “It’s real,” she said. 
	“I mean...it couldn’t have been,” Istria repeated, struggling to grasp the obvious.
	“Under normal rules,” Aine said, her voice matter of fact even if her eyes were stunned and wide, “it couldn’t be here now. There’s not enough soil for the roots.”
	Which we both knew, having felt the bedrock under the loam under my hreapa. And knowing also that most roses don’t bloom in early autumn, and that even if they did roses don’t come in that color, at least they didn’t, before now.
	“Why roses, do you think?” Aine asked, as Istria and I walked toward it, like moths drawn to flame. “Because they were the first flower?”
	“Partly, maybe,” I said, brushing gently the petals of an opening blossom.
	“Partly,” Istria echoed.
	Slowly, she broke off one of the stalks. Aine looked as if she wanted to prevent her, but when we looked back at the place it came from there was no broken stalk. Just as there was no broken stalk when I snapped off one near me.
	Istria walked up to me, eyes glistening, and put a hand up to stroke my hair.
	<Always, everywhere, all the way through,> she said. 
	I pulled my hair back, tying it in a loose knot at the back. Istria slipped the stem gently into my hair, so that the flower stuck out above my ear.
	<Always, everywhere, all the way through,> I answered.
	Istria already had her hands behind her head, plaiting her dark hair into a braid. I pushed the stem through the weave near the top, nestling the blossom in that nest of heavy dark hair.
	I took her hands, and with Aine and NightQueen watching us, we leaned together to kiss, quietly, lost more in memory than in passion.
	“Aren’t the thorns bothering them?” NightQueen said, because she was uncomfortable and she wanted it not to be silent.
	“These roses don’t have thorns,” Aine said, looking back at her with the pity some shriias have for unbelievers.
	It was true. The stalks were smooth, with the same dark leaves as ordinary roses, but without the spines. One more way to let us know, this was not an ordinary thing.
	“All right,” NightQueen said sharply, once we had separated, and she had gone up to inspect the bush. “What is this huge deal over a bush?”
	“Pure Cretid,” Istria said. “Spend your whole life worrying about the other world and then you don’t see a miracle when you’re tripping over it.”
	“It’s a pretty color,” NightQueen said, testily. “But it’s just a rosebush.”
	“But you do see it,” I said.
	“Of course I see it.”
	“Good,” I answered. “Thanks, NightQueen, you’ve been a big help. I mean that.”
	We stared at it for a little while longer, NightQueen becoming restive.
	“It is beautiful,” Istria said.
	“Too bad we can’t eat it,” NightQueen muttered.
	“So help me--” Istria rounded on her, but I put a hand on her arm. 
	“She’s right,” I said. “Idair’s given us new instructions, a beautiful day, true love and a magic rose bush, and for all that we must be thankful. However, she has also stranded us on a mountainside in Dairc without so much as a fishhook, and about that we must do something.” I sighed, and clapped my hands. “Friends, my mind is pretty much blown right now, so until I get over all this someone else is going to have to be in charge.”
	Istria looked at Aine, who was staring at the rosebush, and turning red.
	“Blink and think of something else, it’ll go away,” she said.
	Aine turned away, deeply embarrassed. To cover for her, Istria said, “What do you know about this Fleatha place?”
	“It was hit hard by the long slow burning,” I said. “I spent a lot of time there; they should remember me. Fondly, I hope.”
	“We’ll chance it then,” Istria said. “We need food, and supplies, and we need to find out what’s going on.”
	“And maybe they could find the shriia for us,” I said. “If she’s still true...because my uisce and speeder and showdust and everything went into the drink with the raft--”
	“LEAVE IT ALONE!”
	Istria broke off, turning with a snarl on NightQueen, who had wandered off and was pulling the links of a silver chain through her hands, watching it like a magpie watches something shine in the sun.
	The chain flew rattling out of NightQueen’s hand toward Istria, who caught it in one upraised fist as NightQueen recoiled from the look in her eyes.
	“You need to listen to a few things right now,” Istria snapped, advancing on her with sparks flying. “One: this is a dark user’s chain. You do not ever touch a dark user’s chain. It has power all its own and now I’m shrimarbh it won’t even answer to me. The Dark One alone knows what it’d do to you.”
	“What’s the--”
	“The Dark One is the fount of evil and the wellspring of suffering. And the Dark One likes silver. Anything you see that’s silver, if it’s not star-shaped, you leave it alone. You understand?”
	“Stop yelling at me!” she shouted.
	Istria balled the chain up and stuffed it into her trouser pocket. She didn’t like even handling it, which is why she had dumped this undeserved tirade on NightQueen. But she had realized, in that instant of peril, how dangerous it was to leave the thing lying around. Now she would have to carry it with her, to avoid having it fall into innocent hands and pass on whatever evil she had forged into it. 
	“I’m sorry if I’m harsh,” Istria said, swallowing a lot of proud anger. “It’s to do with who trained me. I hated it myself sometimes, but I see her point now. The world is full of danger, and if you are going to be a shriia you can’t afford to go fooling around--”
	“What do you mean, ‘going to be a shriia’?” I cut in.
	Aine looked reproachfully at Istria, who looked at NightQueen, then at me, and sighed.
	“We were talking about this while you were gone,” Istria began.
	“You can’t be serious,” I cut in.
	“I’ve said I would work with her,” Aine said quickly. “To see if she can develop the skills. That’s all.”
	“What makes you--what makes any of you--think this would even be possible?” I demanded. “NightQueen, you haven’t even read the Chronicles.”
	“I read some of the stories in grade school, before my mother started schooling me at home.”
	“Regardless--”
	<Look, Theamh,> Istria broke in. <You know and I know it’ll probably never happen. But she’s fifteen and she’s lost. If working for this gives her purpose, even for a little while, it’s worth it.>
	Istria had been so cross with her so many times that I had forgotten to read underneath. And forgotten too that she knew NightQueen’s story was like hers, and that she would see herself in this scared, angry, displaced child. It made me glad that she wanted to help her, even if I was still highly skeptical about this shriia idea.
	“What are you saying about me?” NightQueen demanded.
	“I’m saying I have my doubts about this,” I answered. “They have explained to you, I hope, the amount of work that goes into this, and the number of years it will take you just to reach the point where you could enter the scoil? If that ever happens?”
	She nodded.
	“As long as you know what you’re signing up for,” I sighed. “Idair knows we can use all the help we can get, and who’s to say it won’t come from strange quarters. But you are going to have to pick another used name.”
	“How about--” she began.
	“Oh, for Idair’s sake!” Istria cut in. “You don’t pull a name out of a hat--not even a used name. Here, let’s walk, if we wait for her to get a grip we’ll be here all day.”
	“You go first,” I said. “You’ve got the woodscraft.”
	“Yes, but you know the terrain,” she said.
	“True, but I cut a swath like a bull in a wheatfield,” I answered.
	“Morat was just having a bad day when she said that,” Istria said. “You were getting much better, even by the time I left--”
	Aine walked between us toward the edge of the clearing.
	“Do you know where you’re going?” I asked.
	“No,” she called back. “But at least I’m moving.”
	When she looked back at me she was smiling. Happy for us, and for herself too, and not even minding NightQueen, who crashed along after us as if she was walking up one of those paved roads.
	<The woodscraft question is moot, until we can teach her a few things,> I said, catching up with Aine. <Would you like to do the honors?>
	She glanced at me sideways. <So once you get to be a shriia, it’s just work, work, work, is that it?>
	<That’s it,> I answered.
	She dropped back. “Here, NightQueen, let me show you something...”
	Istria and I led the way, listening to Aine try to teach NightQueen the basics behind us. We looked at each other, and she reached out and took my hand.
	<Tell me again what she said about me?>
	<She said she’s always loved you, Istri...and that she would take you back into shri if you wanted to come back. But she said she would understand if you were too angry.>
	<How could I be angry?> she asked, pressing my hand. 
	<It has been hard.> I looked at her. <Hard for me, a million times harder for you.>
	<I will tell you about it,> she finally said. <Sometime, when we’re alone.>
	<Dhiaoc.>
	<What is it, Aine?>
	<Can I...would it be all right if...I called my family, to tell them I’m still alive? And that I have my fire?>
	I thought for a moment. <Yes, Aine, they must be very worried. Just--don’t tell them where we are, and make sure they keep it quiet. And find out what you can.>
	<Thank you, dhi-->
	<THEAMH.>
	<Theamh.>
	Istria glanced at me inquiringly. <Aine’s going to let her family know she’s all right, and see what they have to tell us.>
	<What about yours?>
	<I broke all my links before...>
	Istria nodded, stepping more briskly over the bracken.
	<Yours too?>
	<Yes.>
	I pressed her hand. We walked for a long time, without talking, content to be linked to each other even if the rest of the world was broken from us. Heading toward a town we weren’t sure would receive us, having to learn our own country like strangers. Walking into the teeth of a war. Nervous, apprehensive, grim...and happy.

IX.
Free Dairc

	<Make sure she’s all right, Theamh.>
	We had been scrabbling for a long time down the rocky slopes of Mount Hiewn, and NightQueen had once again lost her footing, sliding in a shower of loose dirt and pebbles down a too-steep incline. We were all getting annoyed, but Istria was showing  more patience than anyone who knew her would have given her credit for having. It was a testament to what NightQueen meant to her, and so instead of cursing I just went to crouch down by the dirty heap that was NightQueen and murmur, “Are you all right?”
	Aine was the closest, but she was deep in conversation with her family and couldn’t be bothered. She had been talking to them for a long time, keeping her eyes on the trail but letting her face reflect the changes this long-awaited reunion was putting her through. I could not have blamed her family for assuming she was dead; she wasn’t important enough to the newsmakers to figure in the public reporting. My parents at least probably thought I was still living, even if they believed the next thing they would hear was going to be that I was scheduled for execution. 
	NightQueen knew that was what Aine was doing, but she still didn’t quite understand these things, so it was with a very injured look at Aine that she dusted the worst of the dirt off her legs and arms and said, “I’m fine. It doesn’t hurt.”
	“If you’re serious about this shri thing,” I said, “you’ll have to get into the habit. It does hurt; you’ve got scrapes and bruises and you’re getting dirt in them. Bearing pain is something we all do have to learn, but you don’t bear it by pretending you don’t feel it.”
	It was wasted instruction. She was tired, and frustrated--with the mountain for treating her this way, with us, and with herself for not being strong enough. And for being about to cry, when she was trying to show how grown-up she was.
	“Maybe we should rest  a while,” I mused, looking at her.
	“Don’t stop on my account,” she returned immediately.
	<Let’s not stop at all.> Istria put a hand on my shoulder. <We’re being followed.>
	I stood up. <Don’t look,> she said quickly. <They’ll move on us as soon as they see we’ve spotted them.>
	<Or more precisely that you’ve spotted them. Where are these phantom people?>
	Istria started forward again, with us in single file after her. <They’re further up the hillside. They move after us as we descend and stop when we stop.>
	I couldn’t look without giving us away. <Can you see who they are?>
	<Whoever they are, they’re pretty good at this,> she answered. <They’re making the most of not much cover, and they move so that the noise of our passage covers theirs. I think they have to be local.>
	<How many?>
	<Hard to say. At least five.>
	More than we were, especially since NightQueen was a liability rather than an asset. <Armed?>
	<Hard to tell. No guns, at least; that’s a comfort.>
	<How would they get guns through the border?>
	<There’s a hole near Mypril, remember?>
	<Ah, that’s right.>
	<So the question is-->
	<Moot.>
	Because once we got around the shoulder of the slope we were climbing down, we saw four people spread across the mouth of the valley we were headed into. Four people dressed identically, in green tunics belted into gray trousers. All men, one with a long sword girt on his narrow hips and three with crossbows and quivers.
	We stopped in our tracks, wary. <Aine, say your goodbyes, your mind needs to be here right now.>
	“Stay right there,” said the leader. 
	We started backing up.
	The four of them fanned out, trying to surround us. By quick agreement Aine, Istria and I took off in three separate directions, each drawing one of them. 
	“Run for it, NightQueen!” Istria shouted. “Anywhere, just lose him!”
	But the one left in the pass had already got his crossbow out and trained it on her. She froze in its sights like a deer, looking at the twin edges narrowing into the point trained on her breast. 
	“Surrender yourselves or lose your comrade,” said the man with the bow.
	The strings of the bow broke and the arrow fell harmless on the ground. Istria was closest to him, and her mind had always been stronger than mine. It’s hard to snap a bowstring in one blow, but she was the woman to do it.
	“NOW run, damn it,” Istria shouted. 
	NightQueen took off like a hare. The man covering me aimed, but missed; and there was no second shot, because by then I had pulled the arrows out of his quiver and scattered them over the rocks. Aine opted for wrapping; her man’s bow was already out of his hands, which were struggling to reach for it. Which left Istria, facing off against the man with the sword, who benefited from the time and attention she had had to devote to saving NightQueen’s gleacha.
	And I didn’t have time to go to her aid just now, because my man had drawn one of those narrow-bladed daggers out of his trousers and was coming at me.
	I eluded the first strike, but now that he was ready it wasn’t so simple a matter to disarm him. He brought his mind to bear on the knife too, which for a long time made it unpredictable, liable to swerve in ways neither of us could really direct. My safest course was to avoid the blows and pummel him as well as I could. Which was difficult, because unlike what I’d been fighting up north he knew what he was doing.
	So it wasn’t too long before the knife reached me, driving toward the soft area of my abdomen that I had foolishly left open. Which would have been a problem, except that I had my hreapa pinned around me.
	I caught the knife in its folds as the blade rebounded from the weave. He grabbed at it, but I got my mind on it first and it skittered back over the rocky surface of the hill behind me. Aine’s man was now on his face on the ground trying to get up, with her standing over him trying to keep him there.
	<It’s not holding, dhiaoc,> she sent.
	<Then let him up and let him have it,> I said. <If you knock him out it’ll be easier.>
	Istria had shaken her hreapa out in front of her and was circling the man with the sword, hoping he would give her a chance to drop on him with this makeshift net. He wasn’t. His mind wasn’t quite matching hers but he still managed to stay out of the positions she was trying to force him into. Just the way mine wouldn’t leave me a clear shot at his head, even if he was wavering and weaving more than he wanted to be.
	“Oh FNAA!” from Aine. “Idair’s teeth, I’m sorry--are you all right?”
	She was talking to the man who had been attacking her. He was down on the ground, and she was rolling him in the dirt to put out the flames charring his tunic.
	“Dhiaoc, come help me settle him,” she shouted, in her excitement forgetting to send it. “I think he’s burned.”
	I gave up on my assailant, tumbled under his driving arm out of his way, and scrabbled up to where Aine was crouched by the man, who was shuddering and groaning.
	“He’ll be all right,” I said, moving my hands over his side. “It’s just the skin. Here, I’ll show you how to--leave me alone, can’t you, so your friend can be helped, you little fnaahead!”
	But he wouldn’t, so I had to send Aine the directions while fending off the man who had followed me over. <Start with the part that’s still buckling--if you look, you can see the fire inside it--> 
	I had to break off to absorb a blow to the head. I spun away from it into a crouch, backed up against a thorn bush and glaring at the man ahead of me with real spite.
	“You know, this is complicated,” I said, as he drove a fist past my swerving form into the thorns. “You should let me talk to her.”
	He didn’t like having put his arm through a thicket of spines, and he didn’t like it any better when a kick from me found the pit of his gut. I knew better than to go for the zazb, which they think to protect. <So you think it back into what it should be--blood, flesh, skin. I’ll send you the words-->
	Which I did, despite having to take breaks to work on my fellow, who was bleeding from his encounter with xericulture and as mad as a startled hornet. And he was clearly proving to be one that anger worked against instead of with, so I started needling. 
	“It’s a little forward of you, isn’t it?” I said. “I mean, here you are trying to score and we haven’t even been introduced.”
	“I know who you are,” he growled through his teeth as he went for me. 
	“Who am I then?” <How’s he coming?>
	<It looks like...Cailte and Anron, dhiaoc, this is very strange to see happen.>
	“You’re a dark shriia,” he said.
	<I know, but you’ll get used to it.> “Wrong on many levels,” I answered, hoping he would fall into the bush again if I feinted. “First of all, there’s no such thing as a dark shriia. You’re either a shriia or a dark user, no matter what you may be wearing--”
	<Will you just finish him and help me?> This was from Istria. <This bastard’s been trained by someone good.>
	<I’m trying.> He drove at me, and I nailed him--hard under the ribs so that the breath drove out of him. While he gasped and tottered I landed a few on his head, and ultimately dropped him onto the stones, where he lay inert.
	I ran to Aine, who was still crouched over her attacker, hands hovering over skin that was red and blistered, but much closer to whole than it had been.
	“I’m sorry, dhiaoc,” she said, greatly upset. “I didn’t mean it to come out, it just--whoosh!”
	“I know, that’s going to happen sometimes until you get a handle on it,” I said, helping her get the red out. “That’s why we don’t let you all practice until you get your orders. You need to control the reflex.”
	“I’m lucky I didn’t do him permanent harm,” she said gravely.
	“Don’t worry,” I answered. “Idair usually looks out for us in the early stages; it’s rare to have a really serious accident--”
	<Theamh, for thurk’s sake!> Istria shouted.
	“Wrap him good, I’ll be back.”
	I sprinted down toward her, trying to get around behind him. He zigged and zagged himself around until we were both on the one side of him, but it meant he had his back to the hill and was glancing warily from one to the other.
	<I’ll drive him toward you,> I said, dodging his thrust at me. <On three.>
	When it was time, I sent out a stream to his right. The idea behind this is that people naturally recoil from fire, so he would swerve toward her and give her a chance to snare his weapon. But he didn’t. Instead he drove toward me, without deviating right or left. The blade bounced off my hreapa but it glanced upward, and cut in a red line across the underside of my arm.
	Istria called him something too foul for even me to repeat, and thrust her hands at him. Of course nothing came out of them, which made her that much more frustrated.
	“Ah that does it, you bastard,” I shouted, feeling angry as well as helpless as I found myself spending all my skill and energy just not getting stabbed. “That son of a bitch I was fighting may or may not have known what he was thurking with, but you have no excuse whatsoever.”
	“I don’t need one,” he answered, flourishing the blade around in front of him as I backed away. “I have my orders, and I’m bringing you in--dead or alive.”
	Istria charged him, tackling him from behind and bringing him face down onto the stones. He kept hold of the sword, but he couldn’t put it through her that close up. Whereas she certainly could use the knife whose blade shot out of the sheath in her hand.
	“Take your hands off me. NOW.”
	His hands went into the air, the sword falling out of the right one to clatter onto the rocks. Because she had his throat in one hand and the knife in the other, its blade pressed into his neck right under the line of the jaw, where the blood beat.
	“Call your third lackey home from the pursuit.”
	“It’s a little late for that,” he said.
	<Istri, don’t.> She was about to drive the blade further in, but I had gotten to my feet, and I could see NightQueen being marched over the stones by the fourth attacker, her hands pinioned behind her. And two other men in the same uniform flanking them.
	“Release our Aiv,” said one of the new arrivals.
	“Thurking NightQueen,” Istria muttered, refusing to let go.
	“All right,” I shouted, holding up my hands in the gesture of surrender. “So you’ve got one of ours, and we’ve got one of yours. What say we trade off and call it a draw?”
	“Release our Aiv,” repeated the man, “or we’ll execute your friend.”
	“So do you work for the Dark One himself, or are you Barant’s boys, or what?” I demanded, sourly.
	“Look at the uniforms,” Istria said bitterly. “They’re thurking Amstian Army.”
	“Oh fnaa,” I said, involuntarily. “Man, the tales are right--you all are good.”
	“Release our Aiv,” he repeated, drawing his sword from its scabbard and laying the blade along NightQueen’s shoulder, the edge against her neck.
	<I think you better let him go, Istri,> I said.
	<Not on your life. When you’ve got an enemy by the zazb you don’t let go.>
	“Look, we don’t want anyone hurt,” I shouted back, as Aine made her way slowly along the ridge toward where they were standing. “I mean, we’ll let you keep her if you’re that set on it, as long as we can keep him.”
	“We are licensed by the Seated Leaders to use deadly force as we see fit,” the other man observed.
	“And I’m not,” I answered. “But I am allowed to use it if there’s immediate danger to another person’s life, and I’ll tell you, if that sword moves any further to the left, there’s gonna be fire on the mountain.” He didn’t answer. “I just got out of one dungeon, you’re going to have to kill me to get me into another, so unless you’re prepared to--”
	“AAAGH!”
	I spun around. The bastard Istria was holding had broken her grip and sent the blade back toward her, where it struck glancing across her jaw. And in that instant the situation exploded. Swords were drawn, arrows started flying, and Istria and the Aiv went rolling along in the dirt at each other’s throats. And as I hovered near them looking for a way to get in there without accidentally causing her harm, I found myself suddenly grappled from behind as the cold edge of a bright blade nicked the skin of my throat.
	“Move and it goes in,” growled a voice in my ear.
	I believed him; the arm holding the knife was marked with thorn scratches and his voice sounded depressingly familiar.
	“Call your friend off,” he barked.
	I said nothing.
	I felt a trickle of blood spidering along the line of the blade. But it went in no further. The arm went limp, and the blade fell to the ground, a few moments before he did.
	I spun around. My attacker had been stabbed, from behind, and the knife that had slid backward out of his ribs to let him fall to the ground was clenched in a large hand whose broad fingers were downed with blond hair now dewed with drops of blood.
	“No fear, shriia,” he said, meeting my horrified stare from under a fringe of yellow hair. “Even Idair won’t miss him, much.”
	“Taric, what are you doing here?”
	It was an irrelevant question, really, and he didn’t pause to answer. Instead he raced into the fray, which was already turning against the poor fellows from the Amstian Army. Because after all there were only six of them, five now that the man I had spent so long trying to put out of commission had been felled like a dead tree. There were six people against them now besides Taric, and three of them were women, and they were all slicing about with silent but deadly fury.
	The man behind NightQueen was dead before I reached them--run through with his own sword. His two flunkies were retreating, along with the man Aine had taken such pains to cure.
	“What the hell is this?” Istria shouted, marked with her blood and angry, as the one called the Aiv was harried forward to join his fellows in the retreat. “You’re Amstian Army, you little bastards, you don’t thurking retreat!”
	“Now Istri,” I said. “If they want to retreat, that’s their business.”
	“Go after them,” said one of the women, with a nod to two of her fellows. They took off into the pass, as I looked disquieted after them.
	“Don’t worry,” said the woman, turning her lined but strong face to me. “They won’t kill them, now they’ve got them on the run. We take life as little as we can.”
	“Oh do you,” I said, looking at the dead body sprawled on the little ridge where Aine was trying to get NightQueen to stop shaking.
	“This is a war,” the woman repeated, unabashed. “We can’t afford to play by shriia’s rules.”
	“Who are you?” I demanded.
	“I’m Filim ni Sheonin,” she said. 
	The breeze lifted the gray hair that waved across her forehead, and I knew she knew who I was.
	“Daire’s mother,” I said quietly.
	She nodded. “Welcome to Free Dairc.”
	The two outrunners had come back. “They’re back over the Ubh,” the taller woman reported. “Along with the other patrol. What do we do with...”
	She stopped, evidently receiving information from Filim that changed her perspective. Istria had walked up to us. “Theamh, let me see where he hit you.”
	“Look to yourself first,” I said, touching her face. “I wish we still had some uisce.”
	“It’s just a scratch.” She was panting from the struggle, and still lit with that high anger. Beautiful even now, even if mostly what I wanted to do was wash the blood off and stanch the cut.
	“Taric!” Aine’s call rang out over the valley as she ran toward us, NightQueen hanging onto her and stumbling afterward. “Taric, how did you get all the way up here?” 
	She pulled up short as she saw that he was wiping his knife on the grass. Her eyes went to the body he’d left by the rocks.
	“Death is bad business,” he said laconically. “All the same, I’m glad it’s him dead and not you.”
	I saw it in his eyes and in Filim’s. And in the others’. They had accepted death, for the time being. A hard thing they were prepared to bear, the way the Jiprani bear the sea’s wrath and the Kengdans bear weather. A thing they had learned to deal out, but not without pain, and not without cost.
	“What do we do with...them?” asked the taller woman, looking at me with a kind of starstruck stare.
	“Hold the pass till you’re relieved,” Filim said. “I’ll take them to the camp.”
	She nodded. “Idair go with you, learfeicann.”
	The four of them melted into the passes. Taric didn’t.
	“I’ll come with you,” he said.
	“You’re posted here,” Filim told him.
	“I’m not one of your regulars,” he said. “I came here to do a thing and now I’ve done it. Dairc’s not my business. They are.”
	Filim was about to answer him back, but I intervened.
	“Taric, if you come with us they’ll be one man light,” I said, trying to sound persuasive. “Why don’t you come see us when your watch is over, and you can tell us all about everything. Filim seems like a woman who doesn’t take disappointment well.”
	His mouth curved very slightly in something you could almost call a smile. “All right, shriia. I suppose she can keep you safe as well as I can.”
	He disappeared into the hillside. Follow me, Filim said, setting off. And for Idair’s sake keep that Cretid close to you, she hasn’t got the sense the Spirit gave sheep.
	Fortunately she didn’t have the mindstrength to read the insult, either.
	<Let me see where he hit you,> Istria repeated as we hugged the hillside, trying to stay inconspicuous. 
	<It’s not bleeding now,> I said, lifting my arm. <I wish I had a new shift, though.>
	Her eyes went to my neck. <That bitch’s bastard.>
	<What, am I bleeding there still?>
	<So you are. They sent you the tough one.>
	<Aine, are you all right?>
	She helped NightQueen back up. Poor thing, she was still shaken, and starting to stumble just out of fatigue and shock and the wish to be elsewhere.
	<I’m not hurt,> she answered. <I’m sorry about having burned him, though.>
	<I’ll teach you how not to do that, once we get the chance.>
	<Thank you, dhiaoc.>
	<For the last time-->
	<I mean Theamh.>
	<You’re welcome. Did your man say anything, while he was fighting you?>
	<No. He was dead quiet, even when I hit him.>
	I went back to Istria. <What do you think? Personality suppression?>
	<Has to be,> she answered, still angry. <That one that’s dead now just kept repeating the same order, and the other two said nothing at all. And they retreated.>
	<Well, they were losing-->
	<The Amstian Army doesn’t retreat, losing or winning.>
	<What about their Aiv?>
	<He I think was under his own power, my curse upon him and all those other friends of Engnor.>
	<And the one I was fighting did talk back,> I answered.
	<It would make sense,> Istria said. <Thrall the rank and file, turn the leaders. The rank and file work just as well thralled; leaders wouldn’t.>
	We had stopped in the shadow of another mountainside, in front of the entrance to a ravine. I was worried about the lack of anything in the vicinity, until I saw a patch of air wavering and a rectangle of different space appeared. Filim ushered us through it. The door closed behind NightQueen, leaving Filim on the outside and us on the inside, looking at a woman in a hreapa who was watching me with wet silent eyes.
	“Dahern,” I said, with great relief.
	She put out her hand, which I took. Each of us put fire out of the other. Then, as soon as I’d pulled the flame back in, she grabbed me in an embrace I hadn’t been expecting, holding on with something like desperation and something like determination.
	“Theamh ni hUlnach,” she said. “Thank Idair.”
	Embarrassed in another instant, she let go of me and turned to Aine. “And this is your scoilin, under these Cretid things?”
	“Not any more!” I said, proudly. “Show her, Aine--CAREFULLY.”
	Aine put her hands up, frowned at them in concentration, and brought the fire slowly out of them.
	“Praise the spirit and Idair,” Dahern said, with feeling. “Oh, child, you and your diaoc are the first good news I’ve had in a long time.”
	“You can take it back now,” Istria said, with almost a smile.
	It disappeared like an extinguished candle flame, with a shock that left her a little unsteady. Dahern smiled, but didn’t laugh.
	“You’ll learn finesse later,” Dahern said. “Right now, you may as well come in and have something to eat. It’s mostly game these days--and if things don’t get back to normal even that’ll dry up. But I’ve got some left in my personal ration that you and...Aine?...can have. I’m sorry,” she suddenly interrupted herself. “I haven’t met your friends.”
	“This is...well, have you given any thought to the naming question?” I said, turning to NightQueen.
	She looked back at me, clearly thinking that I had lost my mind.
	“Well, her mother called her Sonnia,” I returned. “And--”
	“I’m Istria ni Vharen,” Istria said. “And I’m shrimarbh, so don’t bother.”
	Dahern, having of course heard of her, had taken only a moment to register the shock before automatically extending her hand. 
	“If you don’t mind,” Dahern said, leaving her hand in the air and looking at her. “If only so I know you’re real.”
	Istria took Dahern’s hand reluctantly, reading her to see if it was suspicion that made her insist.
	“I’m glad to know you,” she said, pressing Istria’s hand before releasing it. “Please. Come with me.”
	We went through a second door, and the empty valley changed before our eyes. The floor was carpeted with makeshift dwellings--tents, shacks, scraps of cloth strung along ropes tied to tree branches, anything that would provide shelter in a hurry. And in, around and before the entrances to these shelters we could see what looked like hundreds of people--many of them children, many of them old, some of them youths just on the point of being adult. Grouped around stone hearths, roasting their evening meals over shri fire that Dahern must have provided.
	“Refugees,” Dahern said. “They’re my people now. I’m a refugee too, after all.”
	Her shelter was a little better-built than some of the others; different in skill, not in materials, which were as flimsy as the rest. She uncovered a misshaped cookpot and poked in it with a long wooden spoon.
	“It’ll be cold,” she said. “But I can warm it up--”
	“Here, let me,” Aine said, beating me to it.
	“Thanks,” Dahern answered, as Aine went to the stone circle outside. “It’s a huge drain on me, but if they cut firewood the Amstian Army will notice and be down on us. And they have so little left now, I hate to begrudge them a hot meal.”
	“Refugees from where?” I asked, while Aine struggled to turn the column of flame she had thrown onto the stones into something that wouldn’t make the baked beans into a charred holocaust.
	“Eastern Amst,” she said. “My villages, Daire’s, some of Wriana’s.”
	“Where’s Wriana?” I asked, apprehensive.
	“Still alive,” Dahern said. “She’s still out in Amst, trying to open a corridor.”
	“A what?”
	“A corridor, between here and Amranth,” Dahern answered. “For safe passage. See, the Amstian Army’s got control of everything between the Ubh and Amranth. The Dairc Volunteers are holding everything east of the Ubh--holding it pretty well, too, considering. So all I can do is stay out of the way and look after the people. Further east, it’s safe enough; but you know Amstians, it’s hard to shift them.”
	She glanced at Istria guiltily, remembering she was Amstian and afraid of having given offense. Istria shook her head. “You’re right; it is.”
	Aine had wrestled the flame down. Dahern set the pot on its tripod while Aine stared at the flame, still working to keep it even. 
	“So these...these are our partisans?” I asked.
	“Some of them,” Dahern answered. “Some of them are just scared, and some don’t care what side I’m on as long as I’ll get them food and a place to sleep. But a lot of them are on our side. Of course most of the people with real convictions are out there with the Dairc Volunteers, those who are able for it.”
	Istria had for this little while been looking out over the assembly. “Idair’s teeth, is there anyone left in Amst?”
	“Oh sure,” Dahern said bitterly. “The Amstian Army, and a lot of turncoat bitches who by rights ought to be strung up by the chains they’re not showing. And a lot of ordinary folk caught in the middle, trying to stick it out and not get involved.”
	Including, probably, Istria’s family. I took her hand. 
	<I hope they’re all right,> I said.
	<It’s Sinal I worry about.>
	She was worried about Varen too, and Dohem and Larc and Merth, but I didn’t get into it with her. 
	“Varen wouldn’t evacuate,” Dahern said, gently. “It was her choice to stay. A few other families chose to stay, but most of Ancinte is here with me--along with half of Slieve and what’s left of the Back Three.”
	“What do you mean, what’s left?” Aine demanded, while I kept a hold of Istria’s clenching hand.
	“Oh,” Dahern said, suddenly grave. “You were up north, that’s right. You wouldn’t have heard about the massacre.”
	“What massacre?”
	Istria’s anxiety came out as truculence, but Dahern seemed to have read it right. She sighed, stirred the pot, and then set down the spoon, folding her hands in her lap.
	“They fired Second of Three, a little over two weeks ago.” Istria turned white. “Most of them were burned in their beds. There was very little warning. The fire spread to the other two, but we were able to get most of them out in time.”
	Istria gulped. It came out as a whisper.
	“Why?”
	It was a lost, desperate question, in search of an answer it wouldn’t find. 
	<Chara, I’m so sorry.>
	“What for?” she repeated, blankly.
	“Because they were there the night Daire was killed,” Dahern said, the hard edge in her voice belying that still-wet grief. “They saw her haled out, and they saw Tifni and Hern burn her up. They knew who was on the right side, and they weren’t keeping it to themselves. The others couldn’t let that keep happening. You can’t kill a story, but you can kill the people telling it, and that’ll do in a pinch.”
	Used as she must have been by now to horror, Dahern still couldn’t get that out without her voice breaking. 
	“You think Barant ordered that?” I said, feeling my own heart harden.
	“I don’t know,” Dahern answered, shaking her head. “It may have been Vrila--she seems to be running the show up here. I don’t care who ordered it. They’ve all worked together on this evil thing and that blood is on all of their hands.”
	“Istri--”
	She was running off, although I’m not sure where she thought she was going. Dahern shook her head. “It’s a hard story, I know, and her coming from so nearby there--where are you going?”
	“I’ll be back,” I said.
	I caught up with her near the shield, which she was testing, trying to see if she could find the door.
	“Istri, talk to me,” I said.
	She spun around, her eyes wet and her face convulsed. She couldn’t get anything out for a minute.
	“Istri, you’re not responsible--”
	“Tarbhfnaa!” she shouted, raw in anguish. “I should be dead!”
	“You didn’t know--”
	“I worked with her, I made her thurking guuns for her, I helped her sell life and death, and this all comes out of that!” 
	“You were under duress,” I said.
	“I’m a traitor to Idair, I’m a traitor to Amst, I’m a traitor to you--”
	“Listen to me,” I said, sounding dangerous even to myself.
	She stopped talking, her chest still heaving with the grief and shame.
	“You never wanted this. You would have let her kill you before doing a thing like this. She knew that, that’s why she had you doing research. That’s why she never told you about Dunta.”
	“But without me--”
	“You helped ruin the lives of a fair number of notborns and unwilling mothers,” I said. “You put your talents to dark work and you broke rules you swore to respect. You made a breed of monsters that took a lot of life before they were done. You helped her take me captive.” She swallowed whatever it was that rose in her throat. “That’s your slate, Istri. That’s what you have to live with. That’s plenty. Don’t go taking on guilt that’s not yours.”
	“But--”
	“There are ways and ways to be dark. At the blackest moment of your life you were never this kind of dark.”
	“How do you know?” she said, her voice a stricken whisper.
	“Because if you were, you couldn’t love me,” I said. 
	She looked at me, and things began to settle in her.
	“So saying you love someone, is that a loss violation, for the dark side?” I said.
	“Only if you mean it,” she answered.
	Her eyes shifted, the flint melting, and she was there again, grief winning past the anger and reaching toward me.
	“And I did mean it,” she said. “I do.”
	“You thurking well better,” I answered, putting my hand up to her wounded face.
	“Ah Theamh,” she shuddered. “How will I live with it, all the same?”
	“I’ll be living with it too,” I answered. “It’ll be easier with two of us.”
	She threw her arms around me. I pressed my mouth against her ear. “You’ll do good and do well,” I said. “You’ll forgive yourself one day, like I forgive you.”
	Forgetting we were in the open, she brought her mouth over to mine. And for a few moments I forgot too.
	<Dhiaoc!>
	I drew back and turned around to see Aine standing behind us, blushing.
	<Supper’s ready,> was all she said.
	We followed her, a little shamefaced. <We have to be careful,> I said. <They don’t know the rule’s changed. If they see me breaking it they’ll just think I’m dark, and we have enough problems.>
	<I know,> Istria answered. <I’m sorry, I just-->
	<I know, me too.>
	Dahern spooned the beans into some wooden bowls, talking to NightQueen.
	“...about six years, in scoil, and then two in tutorial,” she was saying. “That’s what it is for most people. Unless you’re insanely smart like Istria.”
	Istria looked down in confusion. She never did take praise well, and in her mood it wasn’t surprising she wouldn’t know how to answer that.
	“Or like Aine,” I said. “In scoil at fifteen, in tutorial at nineteen, on fire before she’s twenty. I think that may be the first time that’s happened since Istria.”
	NightQueen was starting to look a little discouraged. “I told you,” I said, slurping at my beans. “It’s an awful lot of work.”
	“And then all of these women just throw it away,” Dahern said, looking out into the camp. “I don’t understand it, Theamh, I keep trying but I don’t.”
	“But how many are they, really? Tifni, Hern, Vrila, Riina, Barant of course, Gwilna but she’s blocked now, Hlos and Ygren--”
	“There’s eight or ten down in the City, and I’d say about two or three in every province,” she said. “Not counting the ‘envoys’ out in Amranth trying for the ‘peace settlement.’ We’ve got the numbers. But they’ve got the Leaders.”
	“I don’t believe that,” I said. “There were so many of them--Paigin would never--”
	“Paigin’s in jail,” Dahern said.
	“Jail?” I echoed. “Since when do we have jails?”
	“Since that bastard Nuet found a need for them,” Dahern spat. “They’ve taken over one floor of the Courts and they’ve got half the Seated Leaders up there--Paigin, Weall, Conn from the south--all the ones who joined Paigin’s Protest at the Dais, they’ve been ‘temporarily detained’ in our country’s first ever maximum security prison.”
	“Well, so how are they explaining that?” I demanded.
	“Apparently the story is that they’ve been thralled by us, and so they have to do this for their own good.”
	“Which all of Jipran recognizes for the load of fnaa it is,” Aine piped up.
	Dahern looked at her. “Really?”
	She nodded. “Mathi was telling me all about it. You have to understand,” she said, realizing Dahern was from Dairc and wouldn’t maybe. “Paigin’s like--she’s like something out of the tales, we’re that proud of her. Too smart, too honest and too brave to be hoodwinked by anyone, shri or no shri. And all of Jipran that matters is behind her because Idair knows nobody else down in the Seat ever gave us the time of day.”
	“So arresting her, that was probably a bad move,” I said.
	“Well, so was arresting Weall,” Dahern answered. “Dairc was sort of hemming and hawing and trying to stay out of it, and then they locked Weall up. Twenty-four hours later, the Volunteers were driving the Amstian envoys back over the Ubh, and we became the Sovereign Republic of Free Dairc.”
	“How does Jipran stand then?” I asked.
	“Our local Seat has never been strong,” she said. “It’s an institution transplanted from the City and nobody’s ever put much stock in it. The provincial Leaders are all backing the City Leaders, but all that means is that nobody in the City has bothered to send an army out to keep us quiet. The place is free,” she said. “So far--and on our side.”
	“What about Kengda and Naucht?” I asked.
	Dahern shook her head. “Kengda’s politics can be summed up in one line,” she snorted. “ ‘Not in Kengda you won’t.’ They don’t care whether the rest of the place goes to hell, as long as the Seated Leaders don’t interfere with the price of eggs.”
	“And Naucht?”
	“Conn’s from the point, they all have a grudge against the City,” she said. “All those City people vacationing down there in the summers, it gets on their nerves. But the northern parts--well, it’s just gotten to be one big suburb lately, I’d say they’re solid behind the City Leaders.”
	“So the battle’s in Amst, really,” I said. 
	“Isn’t it always,” Istria muttered.
	Dahern nodded, sighing, and looked up at the sky. “Sun’s going down,” she said. “Time to do the reading.” 
	By the time she was standing she had noticed the sharp stab of regret that ran through me, through Aine, even through Istria. It had been so long since we’d heard the stories, or read them--long enough for Aine and me, so many times longer for Istria.
	“I’m reading in Ancinte today,” Dahern said, gently. “Would you like to come?”
	A lot went on in Istria, and I waited to see how it would settle out.
	“Yes,” she finally said.
	“Come then.” The three of us got to our feet. “Aine, you better take your fire back.” Aine stuck her hands out and began struggling with it. “And why don’t you come too, Sonnia or whatever you answer to. You have too much to learn, you may as well start somewhere.”
	We walked through the camp as the sun sank. We didn’t attract much notice; they were used to new arrivals, I supposed, and with my hreapa just slung around me I wasn’t as identifiable as I would have been. To them we were just more displaced people, a little odd because of our Cretid clothes.
	So nobody noticed us, except to nod to Dahern as she made the sign. Until, that is, we got to a large cluster of shelters near one of the few really tall trees. 
	“Idair save us!”
	It was from an older woman, who was coming toward us as fast as her bent back and fragile legs would let her. “Idair, Cailte and Iandar, it can be no one else but it can’t be you.” This apparition stopped in our path, lifting the stick she had been leaning on and jabbing it into the air toward Istria. “Or did Enselm leave some other daughter somewhere else? Speak up, child, and say who you are.”
	“You were right the first time,” Istria said, masking so heavily I couldn’t even read her. “It’s me, Istria.”
	The old woman’s eyes swung to Dahern, expecting Dahern to tell Istria to stop pulling the poor woman’s leg.
	“It really is her,” Dahern said. “She’s not dead after all.”
	“Then where have you been?” the old woman snapped, peering up at her.
	“Lost,” Istria answered.
	True enough in its way. The old woman looked at her, and said, “Hmph.”
	“That’s all you’re getting, Grune,” Istria said. “There’s a long story behind that word, with all kinds of juicy tidbits, and I’m not going to give you a single one.”
	I couldn’t tell whether they were bantering, or really sniping. Grune I had heard of, even if I was surprised she was still alive. She was one of these people every village has--in Kengda they call them sceal-eaters, people who live off other people’s news, who know or think they know everything, every one, and every story that’s ever happened or is happening or might be about to happen. It occurred to me that this would have made her peculiarly connected to Istria, who was at the same time the biggest success and the biggest calamity to have befallen Ancinte in anyone’s lifetime. And whose story Grune had spread in a way that did her harm but no good.
	“Sure haven’t we got plenty to talk about without your story,” Grune finally said, hobbling back to the fire around which the old people were gathered.
	But not everyone was able to show such self-control. Because by the time she, Aine, NightQueen and I had installed ourselves in the semicircle that was forming, the news of her return was running from mind to mind in an audible ripple, and people were staring, frankly and without shame. Staring, but so far saying nothing, as Istria stared straight ahead of her, chin up and eyes fixed.
	<Tell me who some of them are,> I said, reminding myself that I couldn’t hold her hand without exciting some serious comment.
	<She was right; most of them are here,> Istria said, not taking her eyes off Dahern. <There’s Mrilo, and his wife.>
	I looked. He had gray hair, and was of course no longer wearing the blue jacket he would have had on the day Istria called scrainnte on her father. That was fifteen years ago, and there would have been three or four town leaders in Amst since then, including the woman whose thin shoulders shrugged under a torn blue jacket as she led Dahern into the semicircle and then took up her seat right next to us, glancing sharply over at Istria.
	It seems you’re found, she said, as Dahern sat on the cleared ground and raised her hands over a scroll she had laid out. In all the confusion, she had managed to keep her copy of the Chronicles safe.
	So I am, Istria answered, not looking at the woman in the blue jacket.
	Perhaps it’s true then, she answered.
	What’s true? Istria demanded, sharp and on the defense.
	That it was a judgment, the woman replied. On us.
	“Ta se dubh anseo,” Dahern said.
	I’d said the words every other day for five years, but they meant something new now. Because instead of a kitchen or a hall or some other room, they were said outdoors under the hollow sky, and though the sun was just down it was dark in here, way too dark.
	“Ta’n solus ag dorith,” they answered.
	“Thrinnibh an linn,” she replied.
	Aine was watching her intently, looking to see how she would do it, impatient to be able to do it herself soon.
	“Ceard a bhfuil an linn?” 
	I’d never heard people put this much heart into the question. It was as if they had forgotten, and needed to be told, what fire was.
	Dahern opened her hands. “Ta se an linn.”
	The fire rose out of them, into the air, glowing brighter so the yellow light fell soft on those upturned faces, bobbing from person to person as they held up bits of wood, twigs, anything that would catch, and the fire touched them, leaving spurts of yellow winking from the tops of these impromptu candles, traveling back to Dahern’s hands.
	<I feel like I’m never going to be able to do that,> Aine mourned.
	<Never say never,> I corrected. <It’s complicated, but once you can do it once you can do it a million times.>
	“What are you going to read us today, shriia?” Grune called.
	“I don’t know,” Dahern answered, her eyes on Grune but her mind on Istria. “What do you want to hear about?”
	There was a heavy silence. Nobody seemed to have a favorite in mind; it was as if they were too depressed to summon up the energy for choice.
	“Anything but the Cretid Wars,” said a woman.
	Someone laughed, bitterly. “Or the Burning.”
	“What about the coming of the seasons?” someone suggested. “Since they’re turning?”
	“No,” someone else complained. “It’s not a natural time.”
	“The First Delivery?”
	How could you? sent someone’s very loud mind. So soon after Ialtry lost hers.
	Finally, in the chagrined silence, the woman in the blue jacket spoke up.
	“The Freeing of Anron,” she said, her voice gravel with an iron rasp.
	Dahern was startled, with good reason. If Iandar and the Thief is an unpopular tale, I could count on the fingers of no hands the number of times I’d heard this one requested. It’s told in fosterage and around firesides on dark evenings, but nobody asks for it at a reading.
	But nobody spoke up against the choice. And around me I could feel people putting their weight behind it.
	Dahern looked at Istria, vexed with herself because she hadn’t meant to.
	“Why not,” Istria said in that flint-edged voice. “They’re all thinking of it.”
	“All right then,” Dahern said, after a final glance at Istria. “From the beginning of the third scroll, the story of how Idair found and freed Anron.”
	I looked over at NightQueen, who with true Cretid insensitivity was settling back as if she were about to hear a bedtime story. I figured she would catch on soon enough, but it was anyone’s guess how the tale would take her.
	<In my mind, I’m holding you,> I said to Istria.
	I heard her swallow. <I feel it, Theamh.>
	“And so it was that they finally came to the house that the thief had spoken of, where they might find his brother and his father, and tell them of what had befallen the other son, who was called by his mother Little Apple and who later called himself NightBird. Idair had long been turning over in her mind what she would say to them, for she had promised the thief that she would not tell his brother Anron how he had died. ‘Or at least,’ she had said to Cailte, ‘I promised him that Anron would not be ashamed of him, or avenge his death. I wonder if I can keep my promise, and tell what happened? I think Iandar wants to confess it.’
	“ ‘I do not know, Idair,’ Cailte said. ‘Only you can answer such questions.’
	“And Idair shook her head, and said nothing, so that when they finally came upon the house in the cool of the afternoon, and Idair lifted her hand to rap on the door, Cailte still did not know what Idair intended to say. And indeed it looked as if they might never find out, for when she rapped on the door, there was no answer, and when Sincil peered in the window the house was empty.
	“But then they heard noise in the yard, and when they went round the house they saw a young man, in trousers but no shirt, hewing wood and drawing water, with his skinny arms prickling in the cooling air as he swung the axe toward the chopping block.
	“ ‘May the day be good to you,’ Idair said to him. ‘We came looking for a youth named Anron, and for his father. Would you be either?’
	“ ‘I would,’ said the young man. ‘I am Anron, at least my father calls me that. And why would you be seeking me, when there is not a soul outside this house I could say knows mine, excepting for the birds and the beasts, and one brother I had once who left me here long ago?’
	“ ‘We were sent here by that same brother,’ Idair said, ‘with a message for you.’
	“And Anron dropped the axe by the bucket of well water, and he said, ‘You have seen Little Apple?’ And Idair nodded, and Anron said, ‘And is he well?’
	“Idair’s brow furrowed, and she passed a hand across her hair in perplexity. And finally she said, ‘I hardly know how to answer you, except that it should not be here. Is there a place we could go, where you might rest for a moment, and hear a story?’
	“ ‘We can go inside,’ Anron said, with a look at the sun. ‘My father is still hunting, the house is empty. Please, come with me.’
	“ ‘Anron walked ahead of them toward the doorway of the house, and Sincil followed after, half a pace behind him, making talk with him and asking him small things to set him at ease. But Cailte lingered near Idair, who stood by the block and the split wood and watched him walk away.
	“ ‘What is it, Idair?’ she said.
	“ ‘There is something about him that bothers me,’ she answered, with her brow still furrowed.
	“ ‘He seemed like he had an open heart,’ Cailte faltered.
	“ ‘I believe he does,’ Idair said quickly. ‘It is not that. I mean that there is something about him that troubles me, that makes me fear for him.’
	“And they began walking toward the house, Idair deep in thought and Cailte bending her eyes on Anron to see if she could see what Idair saw. But her sight was not as Idair’s, for nobody’s is or ever was...”
	I found my mind wandering, because hard as Istria was trying to mask I could read the mess rising in her, anger and fear and then the strange elation with which she had always read this story, or heard it read, as I had read it to her, that one time after she showed me, to prove how it didn’t matter except to make me more sure that she was something rare and beautiful, even if I would never have said the word beautiful to her then. And I was discovering that the story read different to me now. They all would. Because I could see Idair, hear her voice, and although she hadn’t spoken to me as she does in the Chronicles I could see through the high-flown translation the words she might have used. She was flickering in bright glints through Dahern’s words, and so it wasn’t until they were all finally sitting around the kitchen table and Anron had set out the food for them that I picked the story up again, midway through Iandar’s confession.
	“ ‘...and so I offer myself here, as prey to your anger, and I beg you if there is a remedy I can provide, that you name it to me, for if I can give anything, even my own life, I will give it, to put this right.’
	“Anron looked at him, and the tears were standing in his eyes. And Anron said, ‘You have taken out of the world the last thing that loved me. There is no remedy.’
	“And he fled the room, and Iandar looked down at his untasted food, and his heart was as lead within him. But Sincil walked through the door into the house’s other room, and Idair followed her, leaving Cailte to comfort Iandar as best she could.
	“ ‘What you say is not true,’ Idair said, as Anron wept on the sill of the window. ‘He was not the last thing that loved you.’
	“ ‘My mother is dead, and my father is my father,’ Anron answered. ‘Little Apple was the only other human creature who knew me, and now he is gone.’
	“ ‘I am a human creature,’ Idair said. ‘I know you, and I love you.’
	“Anron looked at her, and asked simply, ‘Why?’
	“ ‘Because it is my job,’ said Idair. 
	“And they talked to Anron for a long time, and gradually Anron mastered his grief, and they returned to the table, and Anron said to Iandar, ‘There is no remedy and shall be none, but I cannot return him to life by hating you. And since I have made you understand what my brother was, I am sure you will suffer enough, knowing you have taken from the world such a brave and kind man. So stay with us, please, for the night, along with your friends, who are dear to me because they were with him in his last hour.’”
	Istria always lost it at that moment, but this time at least it wasn’t noticeable to anyone but me. She was thinking of Sinal, and it occurred to me that Sinal was just about the age when boys enter the Amstian Army, if they’re going to, which most of them do.
	“...and they were almost ready to be merry, but there was the sound at the door of a heavy hand falling, and Anron stiffened where he sat, and said in a stiffened voice, ‘Please excuse me, my father has returned.’
	“He left to open the door. Cailte said, ‘What is it, Idair? What do you see?’
	“Idair shook her head. ‘It is too vague,’ she answered. ‘Something about the way he moves now. It is...it is as if his body were not his own.’
	“And Cailte was puzzled, and would have asked her what she meant by it, but the father had entered the room, and was looking down on them from his burly height, and said as one heavy fist landed on the table, ‘I hear one of you killed my son?’
	“ ‘I did,’ said Iandar, standing solemnly at his end of the table. ‘And I offer myself here as prey to your anger. Do as you see fit.’
	“ ‘I’m sure he deserved it,’ said the father. ‘He was a thief from his earliest years. Sit, man, and take your share of the dinner. You are all welcome in my house.’
	“And Iandar sat, but with misgiving. And it was with misgiving that Idair listened to the father talk, and answered his questions, and cast her eye ever on Anron, who listened too, attentively enough, but as if under some kind of constraint that she did not understand. And it was with misgiving that Idair allowed him to make them a sleeping place in the stables in the yard, and bed them down in the straw near where the horses stood.
	“ ‘It is well enough,’ Cailte said, as they watched the father return to the house. ‘If you do not like the straw, I can spread out my coat over it, and--’
	“ ‘It is not that,’ Idair said. ‘It is a well enough place, you know I would not complain.’
	“ ‘Then what is it?’ Cailte asked.
	“ ‘It is maybe nothing,’ Idair replied. ‘Let us go to sleep.’
	“But Cailte, as it often happened, could not sleep because she was thinking, and so it was that in the dark of the night she saw Idair sit upright in the straw, and shake her head, and get to her feet.
	“ ‘Idair,’ Cailte whispered. ‘Where are you going?’
	“ ‘Go back to sleep,’ Idair said. ‘It may be nothing.’
	“ ‘And if it is not nothing, then what may it be?’ Cailte insisted.
	“ ‘I do not know,’ Idair answered. ‘Only why should he quarter us here when we might just as well have stayed in the kitchen?’
	“ ‘Perhaps he is nervous about his gold,’ said Sincil, who was still angry with Iandar, for having taken life and for having made Anron sad.
	“ ‘I heard that,’ said Iandar.
	“ ‘In the name of the spirit, is no one sleeping tonight?’ Idair demanded.
	“And as she said it, there was a strange muffled sound from the direction of the house, as if to say that in the house no one was sleeping either.
	“ ‘Stay here,’ Idair said, stepping to the doorway. ‘It may be nothing.’
	“But it seemed as if it were not nothing, for within minutes of her leaving there was a loud cry of protest in Idair’s voice, and many words she shouted that they did not understand, but that they felt must mean no good, and Cailte went running to the house, with Sincil and Iandar after her.
	“And they found Idair in the house’s other room, and the father was standing there in nothing but his shirt, and it seemed as if he had been flung suddenly against the wall, for he was stumbling, and Idair was facing him in great anger, and Anron was huddled in on the pallet in a corner, and Sincil saw that he was naked, and that he was afraid, but that he was also watching Idair as if he were beginning to hope for something.
	“ ‘This is my own house,’ said the father.
	“ ‘I do not care!’ Idair shouted. ‘I tell people I am not here to give commandments but by the spirit I will give you one now. You do not do this!’
	“And Cailte was terrified in the silence, and she said, ‘Do what, Idair?’
	“But Idair did not answer, and instead repeated, in her high anger, ‘You do not do this to a child!’”
	NightQueen was suddenly paying a lot closer attention. Aine had been riveted on it from the start, watching to see how Dahern told it and how NightQueen would take it. I looked at Istria. She nodded, once.
	<Ta se mo hIdair,> she said, as her jaw set.
	<Sin e,> I answered.
	“The father was vexed, although he was also frightened, and he said to her, ‘My wife is gone, and if I wish to use him in her place, then he is my child to do with as I please.’
	“And with that Idair became even angrier, and she shouted, ‘He is my child too, and I did not put him in the world to be abused in this horrible manner.’
	“ ‘Where is the abuse?’ asked the father. ‘I give him shelter and food, and he gives me the use of his body. It is a common enough arrangement.’
	“And Cailte was worried, not only because she saw horror on Iandar’s face and anger on Sincil’s, but because it seemed to her that Idair’s anger would become too great for the place, and that something terrible might befall them all. And Idair said, 
	“ ‘You do not do this,
	    You do not do this to a child.
	    Because if the body is given,
	    It must be given freely,
	    And between parent and child
	    Nothing is free.
	   
	    You do not do this
	     To a child,
                Because a child has not
	    Learned his body;
	    Because it is not yet
	    His to give.

	   You do not do this
	   Because a child cannot
	   Refuse what you ask,
	   And so it cannot
	   Be a gift,
	   But only theft.

	   You do not do this,
	   Because for this theft
	   There is no remedy;
	   Because you cannot restore
	   What you have taken.
	   You do not do this,
	   Because you are stealing 
	   All your child has,
	   His body, his freedom,
	   Himself.
	   You do not do this,
	   Because it does
	   Permanent harm.”

	“And as the father was still staring at her, as if he had been shot through with arrows fixing him to the wall, Idair turned to Anron, and she said, ‘I will not take from you the chance to choose your fate, and so I will not tell you, come with us, but I will say, that we are leaving this place, and that if you leave with us, we will take care of you, and for certain sure this thing that calls itself your father will never touch you again.’
	“Anron stood, although he was embarrassed to be naked, and he said, ‘Please take me with you.’
	“And Idair turned on the father, and she said to him, 
	“ ‘Somehow I made you too,
	   Although who knows how or why,
	   And so I cannot unmake you;
	   Only let you know
	   That this that you have done
	   Is the crime at the root
	   Of crime,
	   And you may tell anyone
	   Who asks what happened
	   That Idair came to you,
	   And she said 
	   That whatever else you forget
	   You are to remember 
	   That you do not do this
	   To a child,
	   And that because you used him
	   As if he were nothing
	   But a toy for your need,
	   We are taking him from you,
	   And so shall it be done,
	   To any who do so,
	   As long as I have the power
	   To see it done,
	   Because a child is a gift,
	   And such as you
	   Are not worthy.’
	“And Sincil had gone to a corner and fetched clothes for Anron, who put them on, and he walked with them out the door of the house, and they started down the road. And Anron said to Idair, ‘Who are you, that you were able to speak to him thus, and he could not raise a hand against you?’
	“And Idair said to him, ‘Friend, that is a long story, but if you stay with us a while, I will have time to tell it you.’
	“ ‘I will,’ he said, and they walked together, to leave that place behind them as fast as they could.”
	Dahern rolled up the scroll and looked out at the audience. It was going to be a while before anyone asked a question. At the best of times, this is not a happy story. At least not the way we understand happy. I remembered Istria telling me, with a lot of pauses and trepidation, how she had heard the story read at fosterage, in a hurry by a fosterer who was embarrassed, and how as it flew past her she was grabbing the words, storing them in her mind to repeat to herself later, so that in the worst hour of her torture she would have them there, Idair telling her, telling him if only he knew it or would listen, but at least telling her she was right, that it was a crime, that you do not do this to a child.
	“What happens now?” NightQueen whispered to Aine.
	“People ask questions,” Aine whispered back.
	NightQueen waited, but nobody did. Finally I raised my hand.
	“Theamh?” Dahern said, a little surprised.
	“She keeps saying ‘It may be nothing,’” I said. “Before she goes into the house and finds them. Why is that, do you think?”
	I felt their minds and eyes on me. None of them knew me by sight; but my name is not a common one, and it had been linked with Istria’s close enough and often enough.
	“I always assumed,” Dahern answered gravely, “that it was because she didn’t want to think it could be possible. She always wanted to believe the best of us.”
	Someone else raised a hand. “Yes, Almint?”
	“What happened to the father, after they left?”
	“We don’t know,” Dahern said. “There’s no record in the Chronicles.”
	“What do you think happened to him?” the questioner pressed. 
	“I suppose he had to cut his own wood and draw his own water,” Dahern answered. “And live with the loss of his son, knowing it was his own fault. Idair seems to have thought that was punishment enough.” And, as she was learning how to read them, she went on. “If you read what she says, it is true she talks of it as a crime, a theft and a violation. But you notice that what she cares about is not punishing the father, but freeing Anron. That’s what this story is about. We don’t call it ‘The Cursing of Anron’s Father,’ nor indeed do we call it ‘The Cursing of Anron’s Father’s Village.’”
	There was an uncomfortable silence, and a lot of shifting around. Seeing no one forthcoming, Dahern went on.
	“Idair does not punish whole towns for the wrong done by one man, and in any case this terrible war is not her scourge. It was brought down upon us by the minions of the Dark One, and it is they who have torn your home up by the roots and driven you here to make camp on a strange mountainside. To believe that this is your judgment for looking the other way is an outrage to Idair. And it is an insult to the dead of the Back Three, who are innocent of anything but having seen the truth and wanted to speak it.”
	There was a long, chastened silence. Finally Istria spoke, looking at Dahern but obviously meaning it for the listeners sitting around her in the dark.
	“What mattered to Anron was that he was freed,” she said. “And that as it turned out Little Apple was not the last thing on earth to love him.”
	“That’s true,” Dahern said. 
	“Every other week, it used to seem, someone would ask for Sincil and Anron,” Istria went on. “Nobody asks for this story. But Sincil loved Anron knowing this story,” she said, sending out a little more than she wanted to but going on anyway. “And this story is part of that one. And I’m glad to hear it read, if only to have the chance to say that when Anron died a happy man, I’m sure he didn’t spare a single thought for his father, or for any of the people who may have known what happened in that house on the hill and said nothing. And that he died a happy man without knowing whether his father had suffered or been punished or had gone on his way unbroken, because he was loved, and so none of that mattered, to him or to Idair.”
	The air seemed to move, almost, as I felt the minds around me rippling with the effect of that speech. Including Aine’s, and NightQueen’s, and I’m sure mine.
	Dahern waited for it to subside, and to know that no one else was going to speak.
	“It’s a true thing you’ve said, Istria ni Vharen,” Dahern said, as she got to her feet. “Be proud to have a heart that can be home to a speech like that.”
	The woman in the blue jacket got up. “Have we heard enough to keep us?”
	“Yes,” someone finally said into the darkness.
	“Then it’s ended,” Dahern said.
	The fire flew back to her hands, leaving us in the darkness.
	In the moments before Dahern hung the globe, I found Istria’s hand.
	<I love you so much,> I said.
	<Like I love you.>
	And then the globe was hanging in the air by Dahern’s face, and it was time to go. NightQueen was the last to remain sitting on the ground, staring into space, lost inside.
	“Come on,” Aine said, gently pulling at her elbow. “Let’s go back to our place.”
	But it was a while before NightQueen could be shifted. Long enough for Mrilo to come over to us and stand awkwardly before Istria.
	“We’re not at home now,” he said, without even greeting her. “We can’t welcome you back properly. But truth is the same anywhere.” He took a breath. “We didn’t treat you right. I know this isn’t a judgment on us, I know that’s all tarbhfnaa. Pardon, shriia.” This was addressed to Dahern; evidently my reputation had preceded me. “That doesn’t change things. I never thought I would have the chance to say it to you,” he said, “you being dead. Since you’re not, I say it. I didn’t do my duty by you. I’m sorry.”
	Before she could answer, he had ducked away. She watched him go.
	“Let’s get out of here,” Istria said.
	We walked back toward Dahern’s shelter. 

X.
Weaving the Wind

	“Someone at the shield,” Dahern said. “Be right there.”
	I settled down near the stone circle and threw some fire on it. The others crowded around it, warming themselves while Aine tried to figure out how to hang a light. NightQueen was sitting next to Istria, glancing at her, afraid to say anything.
	“Yes,” Istria finally said, stretching hands out to my flame.
	“I didn’t say--” NightQueen began.
	“Yes,” Istria repeated. “It happened to me too.”
	NightQueen turned her eyes back to the fire.
	“And you can forgive him?” NightQueen said, tentative.
	“I didn’t say that,” she answered.
	“But you said--”
	“I said that what matters is that I’m free, that my brother is free, that my mother even is free of the bastard, and that I’m loved by someone worth three hundred thousand of him,” she said. “All that’s true. Whether I forgive him is another story.”
	“Even to get there,” Aine said. “That’s something.”
	“Maybe,” Istria answered. 
	“Of course it is,” NightQueen snapped. And then, wistfully, “I’ll never get there.”
	“Never say never,” I said.
	“She’s right,” Istria put in. “Anyhow, you don’t know the whole story. I can talk big-hearted now, but that’s only because I beat the living fnaa out of your father in the parking lot of a Cretid strip joint.”
	NightQueen stared at her with an open mouth and eyes the size of soup plates. But at that moment Dahern reappeared, with Taric in tow.
	“I’m off duty now, shriia,” he said.
	“So sit down,” I said. “And tell us how you came to be up here and to be so handy in so tight a corner. Because there are limits even to the Idair Effect.”
	“Right enough,” he said, sitting by the fire. “I saw it ahead of time.”
	“And you came all the way up here just to be there to stop that bastard from cutting my throat?”
	He looked away. “It was a fight I wanted part of,” he said. “That bitch who killed Keanrih is in it, isn’t she?”
	“Yes she is,” I said, “although I’m not sure exactly how that’s going to affect things. But tell me--how’s Cinhe? I mean--how’s Mna and the twins?”
	He almost smiled, because he could tell I was embarrassed to ask after my horse first. But Taric never smiled easy, and his tour of duty in Dairc wasn’t going to change that. “All well, shriia. Ilwath and Gilish are with them--Gilish helps with the twins while they take care of the farm. I’m pretty sure I’ll lose my crop; but Ilwath’s handy with the horses and the hens and Mna sort of understands sheep.”
	“Sort of?” Aine asked, amused.
	“I’ve been teaching her some,” Taric said. “Since she’s from the south, I figured that would be the easiest place to start.”
	“And how is...how is it with Crann?”
	<Crann?> Istria said, while Taric’s face changed.
	<Crann’s the child your guun put Keanrih into,> I answered.
	Istria watched for the answer. “It’s fine, shriia,” he finally said. “I’m used to him now, and the boy’s so young, it’s easy enough to forget where he comes from.”
	This struck me as not exactly what I had wanted to hear. If Taric was dealing with the situation just by trying not to remember who Crann was, he might be very unprepared for what would happen once Crann got to be old enough for those memories to start taking more complicated shapes. But I couldn’t think of what to say, except “I’m glad it doesn’t trouble you so much, any more.”
	“If you don’t think it’ll harm anyone,” Taric said, “shall I tell Mna you’re found? She’s been very unquiet over you, since you left.”
	“Well,” I said, “I know she can keep a secret, just make sure she understands she has to.” He nodded. “So you two have a link now?”
	He looked a little flustered. “Before I left, we set one up,” he said. “So she would know, if anything happened to me.”
	<It’s getting more complicated,> Aine sent.
	<I know,> I said ruefully.
	“But so tell me, shriia,” he said. “What did they do to you, up north?”
	“Now we get to it,” Dahern said, rubbing her hands. “I’ve been dying to know since they showed up but I’m the host and it’s impolite to ask. We gather from what we hear over the repeaters that Lythril and Barant are at odds--was that your doing?”
	“Indirectly, maybe,” I said. “We burned down Lythril’s lair, so it left her weak, and then Barant decided to go after her.”
	Dahern looked at Istria. “But I thought you said you were shrimarbh?”
	<Oh fnaa, Istri, I’m sorry.>
	<You don’t have to protect me, Theamh. Tell the whole story.>
	“All right,” I said. “Clearly I have to back up...well, after we left, it was pretty clear sailing except for the weather, until we got to Dunta...”
	I went through it as fast as I could, although they kept interrupting me and asking me questions. NightQueen had never heard the parts that happened before we met her, or some of the parts that had happened after; and she was surprised I think by my description of the Death Mask Circle meeting. She had appeared to accept the fact that I was there in spirit, but it was something else to see the evidence, perhaps. When I got to the description of Atella’s induction Istria interrupted.
	“I can’t believe she let him live,” Istria said. “After letting him follow you like that. He’d been on thin ice as it was.”
	“Well, she obviously did want me to find her,” I said. “Just not right then.”
	“Why?” Dahern asked.
	“She knew I would eventually,” I answered. “And she was getting the trap in place for me--only the most important element wasn’t ready.”
	“The most important element being?” Dahern prompted.
	“Me,” Istria said.
	The others looked at her. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her chain.
	Dahern didn’t say anything, although I knew she wasn’t able to look at that and remain calm. Istria laid the chain across the stones, near where the fire was blazing, and looked at it meditatively for a moment.
	“At that point, I had been working for Lythril for a little over two years,” she said. “It took her about a year to get me shrimarbh, but once that happened it wasn’t long before she turned me. How she did it is a story I won’t tell to just anyone.”
	“Fair enough,” Dahern said, while Taric watched her darkly.
	“I was working on what she called the Project,” she said. “The plan was for me to create a body out of spirit matter, that would be something she could put her spirit into. Close enough to her mortal body to keep her as she was, but made of stuff that would never decay and never die.” She drew her knees up, wrapping her arms around them and staring into the fire. “Meanwhile, Maerin was working on it from the other end--trying to create a mortal body that would be exactly the same as hers, into which she could put her spirit. Like what we were doing with the returners, only because the copy would be exact she could keep her personality and her memories completely intact. That was the theory, anyhow.” She shook her head. “I don’t think it could have worked, even if Maerin understood science well enough to create a viable clone. The only reason he got as far as he did was because the computers knew what they were doing.” She sighed. “But who am I to talk, because no matter what I used I could never get it right. The color would be wrong, or the body would have some huge drawback--like not being able to survive without drinking blood, for example. Not that taking life bothers Lythril, but the whole point was for the body to be self-sustaining. I knew after a while that I would never succeed, and that once I failed she would kill me or force me into the other side of the business--overtaking, murder, burning the innocent in their beds, that side of things.”
	Aine was watching her with compassion, NightQueen with fascination. This was, after all, what NightQueen had thought she was working toward, all that time she was playing around with Death Mask.
	“So there I was one night, working on the rappari, and nothing was going right, and I knew it wouldn’t, and the whole thing was coming apart at the seams...and I just looked at it, and I knew I was in hell, and I started crying.” Aine looked at me, knowing what happened next. “And then I heard you call me.”
	I figured what the hell, and took her hand.
	“I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “After all that time. I’d heard reports of you from Lythril, now and again--she would tell me whatever would hurt me worst. I knew you’d cleansed Keanrih, and I knew she’d killed him and put him into a child. And I knew how upset you would have been to hear he’d taken his life, and how you would have blamed yourself for it,” she said, returning the pressure of my hand. “But she never told me you were coming north. I just--I saw your face, when I turned around...”
	There was a long pause, and nobody pushed her. 
	“You know after you were taken,” she said, “I used to go to the lab, late at night, and I would look for that moment, and freeze it there so I could look at you. That one moment before you knew what had happened. When you were just--happy to see me.”
	Nobody could really answer that. Not me, anyhow. So she went on.
	“You ran up to me, and you touched me, and I’d had a moment to brace myself so it was worse on you. When I got up I saw Lythril appearing. The bitch had followed you down,” she said. “I’ve never hated her more, before or since, than I did at that instant.”
	When she went on, her voice was hard. “I had thought for those two years that I was already dead. I did what she wanted me to do, just like one of her dead minions would have done. Since I had long been dead anyhow, what would it matter to do this final thing, and craft my last piece of treachery.” She wasn’t looking at me, but she was still holding my hand. “Then you asked me to kill you. The barb got through to the last shred of flesh I had left in my heart, and it stung. And even though I was angry then, and full of hatred, I knew I would never be able to do it, and...and that I was still alive.”
	“So instead they stuck a needle in me and pumped me full of this stuff that puts people unconscious,” I said, because it seemed like Istria really didn’t want to tell that part. “I woke up in a cell with no windows, two doors without handles, and upholstery on the walls, and I wanted to die.”
	They all accepted this. Except for Istria, who was still hurt to hear it, and NightQueen, who seemed surprised by the way I said it, calm as if stating a logical result but talking about life and death.
	“Lythril put me in charge of maintaining her,” Istria said. “I suppose she thought she was being smart, but it was the worst thing she could have done. It caused me pain, but the pain reminded me that I was alive. And as long as I was alive...”
	She broke off, after a quick glance at me, and resumed. “You say you wanted to die, and I believe you. For sure you were trying. But you were still you. Lythril brought me down to clean up after you put your dinner all over the walls--I knew your heart was broken and that I’d broken it but you weren’t giving up. Even when she came back after the first session and you lay in there like a broken doll on a trashheap...you were still you.”
	<Please tell me it was you cleaned me up after that,> I said.
	<It was.>
	“And it was about a week after that,” she went on, “that I got the first message from Aine.”
	“Good spirits, how did you get one in there?” Dahern demanded.
	“Cretid technology and a little Ideiren know-how,” Aine answered, justly proud. “I’d been working with a computer called Ira, and we’d figured out how to communicate--not the way the Cretids do it, where everything means one thing to the computer but something totally unrelated to the Cretid, but how to translate between what they can send and read and what we can send and read. I got Ira to send a message to Istria’s Ethernet address that said something innocuous in the text of the message, but made the other computer put out signals that Istria would be able to read--that said something different.”
	“She did it over a week, on three different days, with three different messages,” Istria said. “So even though at first I thought I was losing my mind, eventually I had to write back...carefully, so Lythril wouldn’t find out what was going on.”
	“But I knew what she was doing,” Aine said. “We were pretending I was a supplier--you know, for Erysin. She’d write with questions about my prices and availability and so on, and I’d send back the answers...and so we got the plan together.” 
	I was starting to understand how much this must have involved. Lythril would certainly have tried to monitor Istria’s mail, and since Istria never left the compound there would have been no other way to communicate. The method Aine had hit on was brilliant--but even more impressive was the raft of small, difficult decisions she would have had to make about what Istria’s coded responses meant. She must have had to take a lot on faith, and trust her own judgment. In other words, while I was sitting in that cell hoping to starve to death, she’d been growing into her power.
	“Which plan would this be?” Dahern asked, a little amused by Aine’s excitement in telling her part of the story.
	“I knew Istria couldn’t just release Theamh, on her own,” Aine said. “Lythril had too much control. There would be no way to get Theamh out of that cell without alerting Lythril, and she could shut down any attempt Istria made. It would have ended up with the two of them in prison or dead instead of one. The only way to do it would be to keep her and her minions occupied while the escape was in progress. It seemed like the best way to do that was to create a false trail--a rescue attempt that wasn’t really a rescue attempt.”
	“That was Aine’s idea,” Istria said. “She had some elaborate plan in mind involving that crazy woman Chandra--”
	“Now come on, Istri, she did give us her car--”
	“That’s as may be, she’s still stark raving mad--”
	“--anyhow,” Aine cut in, as Dahern and Taric started getting restless. “Istria suggested something different, and I saw it was much better--even though I was worried for a little while that it was just a trick to trap me.”
	Istria looked at her. “I know you must have been,” she said. “I was sure you’d never agree to it. I still don’t know why you did.”
	“Agree to what?” Dahern demanded.
	“The plan was for us to do a temporary ransa,” Aine said. “Put her in me and me in her, and then send me--I mean, her in me--in to ‘rescue’ Theamh. And of course I--I mean she--would be taken prisoner, and Istria knew they’d talked about using me as a spy, so she figured Lythril would try to overtake me. But it wouldn’t be me, it’d be Istria, and Istria’s got mindstrength like you read about, so she’d wallop her good, and that would give Theamh an opening to break the block. Theamh would escape, and the minions would be too busy trying to figure out what was happening to the computers to interfere.”
	Dahern nodded; Taric still looked confused. Istria compounded this by making Aine backtrack. “Seriously, I want to know. You’re a smart woman, and to take a dark user into your body is, if you don’t mind my saying it, a stupid thing to do.”
	Aine decided to give the real answer, and Dahern sighed as she saw that it would involve a long speech.
	“Theamh hasn’t really known me that long, in the grand scheme of things,” Aine began. “I only met her a little over a year ago, at my tutorial examination. But she learned a lot about me, quick, even though I was so scared I couldn’t really tell her much, in those first months.” She looked over at me, and I remembered what it had been like, trying to get her to have a natural, easy conversation when it seemed like all she wanted to do was watch me with those bright eyes and memorize every pearl of wisdom that fell from my lips. “She knew enough to realize something was wrong, as soon as that thing with the Council happened. At the same time, she knew enough to know I hadn’t...that I hadn’t intentionally betrayed her, no matter what the thing was, that I wouldn’t do that. And even when she had reason to, she never believed I was false to her, even after she found out what I’d done. Now a lot of people would call that gullible.” Dahern laughed; Taric looked embarrassed. “But she was right. And then Lilea asked her those questions about who to go to to get scoured,” Aine went on. “And she said she thought Morat had the most integrity, even though at the time she was still hopping mad at Morat for not doing right by Istria and for not treating her well, and wasn’t she right about that?”
	“You got that right,” Dahern answered.
	“And she said she trusted Slythe, and a lot of people would say that’s stupid because Slythe opened up that hole in her shield, but Slythe came around to us in the end and she helped flush them out and lost her life doing it, so wasn’t she right about that?”
	“Yes,” Taric said, shortly. 
	Everyone turned to look at him.
	“She was a brave woman,” he said. “Everyone thinks so now, in the Vicinity--everyone with at least part of a mind.”
	“You see,” Aine said, turning back to Istria. “And she said too that she trusted Barant, but not the way you trust someone you’re close to. And seeing as Barant was her diaoc, that says a lot, because look how she wanted me to trust her like someone you’re close to, but then she never had that with Barant, and what could that have been about except that she knew not to let Barant get close to her?”
	“But I didn’t see she was dark,” I answered.
	“Neither did anyone else,” Dahern said. “Till too late, that is.”
	“All those people, and even if on the surface you could say Theamh made some mistakes about them at the bottom she knew who they were and what they were worth,” Aine said, earnestly addressing herself to him now. “And she loved Istria so much, right from the beginning, and when I was living in that house and Istria was way off we didn’t know where it was there, the whole time, all that love and all that loss, and I knew--she couldn’t be that smart about everyone’s heart and have made that big a mistake about yours.” Istria was watching her, as Aine’s eyes came back to meet her. “So you’d turned, so you were a dark user. So what. I knew you had to still love her. And I knew you weren’t a woman to betray that just out of cowardice or greed or some other venal thing.”
	“So you did the switch, and...?” Dahern said, impatient.
	Since Istria was still digesting Aine’s speech, I took it up. “Well, I’d been trying to starve myself to death, and it was a trying business, and then there was the electric shock stuff--”
	“She never did that to me,” Istria said quickly.  “I’d never have stood it a year, if she had.”
	“Anyhow,” I said, since Dahern and Taric were starting to look very concerned, and since NightQueen was positively frightened, “skipping over that whole part--”
	“My gleacha,” said Dahern. “She put lightning through you?”
	“She was trying to learn my name,” I said.
	“Damn,” Dahern answered.
	“So I was trying to starve to death so I wouldn’t have to go through that any more, and then I asked Idair to hurry me along, and I came down with carathian fever--”
	“The plague?” Dahern said, her voice rising in alarm. “The thurking plague?”
	“She’s not contagious,” Istria said quickly. “Fire sterilizes, and--”
	“Forget contagion--how did you survive?”
	We told the story, interrupting each other and jogging along in uneven fits as we went back over parts one or the other of us hadn’t heard yet, but nobody bothered us. Dahern and Taric sat watching us, amazed I was still alive. Until at last we were able to get the story up to the point where Aine got her fire on the banks of the Ubh, and they sat back, Taric embarrassed by the interest he’d shown, Dahern looking more...well...
	“Flabbergasted,” she said, returning my anxious stare. “That’s what I am. Do you even understand what you’ve been through, Theamh?” Before I could answer she started enumerating. “A lurer attack. A death mob in Dunta. Tifni and Hern. An attack by a gang of thugs. A bomb explosion. Two arrests by the Cretid City police. A riot. Capture. Starvation. The plague. The long slow burning. Lythril’s last stand. And now, a run-in with the Amstian Army. Don’t take this the wrong way, but...why aren’t you dead yet?”
	Put like that, it did seem like an awful lot. “Idair looks out for me, I guess.”
	“If you call that looking out,” Dahern said. She shook her head. “Whatever made it possible, I’m glad you’re here, whole and sound even if you’re still too thin,” she said. “And that Aine’s made now, and that you found Istria.” She looked back at her. “You never told us how you came to be shrimarbh--the second time, I mean.”
	Istria sighed.
	“On the dark side,” she said, “they’re less clear about the rules, but they did tell me one thing. You’re not allowed to say you love someone, unless you lie when you do it.”
	Istria picked the chain up off the stones. “I don’t know what to do with this, except keep it with me,” she said. “It would be dangerous for other people, and I don’t know a way to destroy it. I suppose I may be stuck with it till I die.”
	She put it back in her pocket.
	“I can’t speak for all my colleagues,” Dahern said. “They’ve all been through a lot and some of them were never particularly flexible about the mind to start with. But speaking for me, Istria, you’re welcome at my fire, and I’ll be proud to fight with you.”
	She got up without waiting for Istria to thank her, and went to see to one of the old women, who had come by to ask her something.  
	Taric was still sitting there, considering.
	“Tell me the truth, shriia,” he said, looking at me and not her.
	“Don’t I always?” I said.
	“Did she have any part in overtaking him?”
	“You mean Keanrih?” I answered.
	He nodded.
	Istria answered instead. “I had nothing to do with that kraikk, or with killing him. I found out about all that afterwards. I did make the thing that was probably responsible for putting him into the new body, and for taking him back out of it. But I never did overtaking, and I never did murder.”
	“You believe her, shriia?”
	“I do,” I answered.
	“I do too,” Aine added.
	He watched me for a while longer.
	“All right then,” he said, turning back to Istria. “I won’t have to kill you after all. So that’s good.”
	“I’m glad to hear it,” Istria said, fighting the desire to smile.
	He got up. “Filim says she’ll call tomorrow after sunrise, when you’re in hreapa,” he said. “She wants to talk to you. I’ve got to get back before she thinks I’ve deserted.”
	“You’ll give our love to Mna, won’t you?” Aine said anxiously. “And Crann and Frih? And tell them we hope they’re all doing well?”
	“Of course, shriia,” Taric said, bowing to her and walking out.
	Aine looked at me.
	“Start getting used to it,” I said, with a smile. 
	<Amst is bleeding,> Istria said, as Dahern walked out to take the fires back. <And my heart bleeds with it. It has to.>
	<I know.>
	<All the same,> she said. <You love me, and we’re together, and the world is a great miracle.>
	<I know.>
	<I don’t want to sound ungrateful for all we’ve been given,> Istria went on, <but this not being able to hold you, it is starting to grate on my nerves.>
	I smiled. <I know, Istri, but we have to be careful. If I thought it would be safe to sneak out of the camp, I’d do it, but I don’t want to be facing the Amstian Army in my skin, especially now that I know they live up to the reports.>
	Dahern came back, and looked about to speak, but on the point of saying something she swerved. “The gate again,” she said. “I’m the only one who can open the thing, I feel like a big house steward.”
	“...it would have made a difference,” NightQueen was saying. Aine was sitting with her, trying to go to sleep but been prevented by NightQueen’s need to talk. “You don’t understand how lucky you are.”
	“I’ll tell you,” Aine said. “Right now, I don’t really feel lucky.”
	Istria and I sat down with them. “All I meant,” NightQueen said nervously, “is that...that you’re lucky to have that story.”
	“What story?” I asked, abstracted in my own thoughts.
	“The one about Anron and his father.”
	Istria’s eyes narrowed on NightQueen, who felt bound to keep talking.
	“Our book doesn’t have a story like that,” she said. “Look, all I meant was...at least you knew, even if nobody else was going to tell you, because you have the story you knew that...that what was happening to you...was wrong.” 
	“Yes,” Istria finally said, her voice distant. “That way I was lucky.”
	I put a hand up to my hair in the awkward silence.
	<Istri, I’ve still got the rose.>
	I was surprised to pull it out of my hair, which fell around my head when I undid the knot. I had almost forgotten it was up there, and  I was struck by the unlikeliness of its still being there after my fight with the Amstian Army. And of its looking as fresh as it had when Istria plucked it.
	Istria’s hand went to the plaits that had come mostly undone at the back of her head. Hers was there too, and just as undamaged.
	 “What is that?” Dahern asked, walking back in and sitting down by the fire.
	She said it a little distantly, as if she were already starting to think this was something other than ordinary. I turned it over. In the light of the flame it looked even more like fire, but the petals were still soft like rough silk.
	“Dahern,” I said, looking at it, “if I tell you a story that’s very strange, you won’t think me a liar, will you?”
	“Of course not, Theamh,” she said, hurt that I would think her capable. “I was there at Two Flocks, I know what you are.”
	“The rose is a gift from Idair,” I finally said. “To remind me that what she told me is true.”
	Dahern drew closer, and dropped her voice. “What she told you?”
	I felt everyone watching me, all waiting for something different. I kept my eyes on the rose, telling myself that if I wanted things to change I would have to tell the story.
	“You know how in scoil they teach us that having sex is a loss violation,” I said.
	“Yeeees,” Dahern answered slowly.
	“Well,” I answered, “I’m here to tell you it isn’t.”
	There was what seemed like a very long pause.
	“What?” Dahern finally said, more as a retort than a question.
	I told the story, while she stared at me. Then there was another pause.
	“Say the saying again,” she said.
	I repeated that part. And waited.
	“It’s her,” she finally said, still a little disbelieving. “I can hardly stand thinking it, but it’s definitely her.” She got up and walked away from the fire. Aine watched her, still not understanding why people couldn’t greet this news more cheerfully. NightQueen was watching me, and having second thoughts about getting involved with these lunatics.
	“So are you saying,” NightQueen finally demanded, “that you went up to heaven and talked to God?”
	“Idair is not God, for the millionth time,” Aine said, impatient. “If you want to do this you’ll to have to forget all about this God creature, he has nothing to do with us.”
	“Well then who is she?” NightQueen demanded.
	“Oh not this again,” Aine answered wearily.
	Dahern saved her from getting into it by swerving around, crouching down near me, and speaking with quiet, controlled anger in low sharp bites to us.
	“For anything’s sake, couldn’t she have told someone that before Daire died.”
	Her fingers went through her dark hair as she buried her head in her hands. 
	“I didn’t know,” I said, clumsily.
	“There was nothing to know,” she said, still speaking from behind her hands in a kind of aggrieved wail. “I never said anything, I don’t know if she ever knew. I’m not...I’m not like you, out on the surface.”
	I didn’t know what to do. To say I was sorry for her trouble sounded about as impoverished as anything could. When I knew that if I had seen Istria die like Daire had it would have turned my heart into a cinder in which nothing good could find a home. 
	“You’re a good woman,” I finally said.
	She looked up, and when she sighed it sounded like a hundred years of sorrow.
	“That’s why I’m here,” she said. “They’re my people, of course, I’m bound to care for them. But I’m here, and not in the fight, because I can’t be in the fight with a clean heart. If I ever got my hands on Tifni or Hern I’m not sure I could be held responsible.”
	“You’re doing work that needs to be done,” I answered. “It’s as important--more important, in the long run, than what we’ve been doing.”
	“Maybe,” she answered darkly.
	“No, not maybe,” Istria said, a little sharp. “You’re taking care of Daire’s people. That’s the way to mourn her. That’s vengeance.”
	Dahern’s eyes went to Istria, and stayed on her for a while.
	“Theamh’s done all right for herself,” she finally said. And then, nodding at the rose in my hands, “Can I see it?”
	I handed it to her. She turned the stem between her hands, thoughtfully.
	“You deserve it,” she said, handing it back. “She came to you because you risked it. I never did. What is it they say, only the brave deserve the fair.” I looked away, embarrassed, and Dahern laughed. I took the flame back. “Good rest to everyone.”
	It was a small shelter, but that was well enough; it gave us an excuse to crowd together. Even though the close quarters made things impossible, it was a new different wonderful thing now to wrap myself around her and fall asleep with her in my arms. Or at least to try to fall asleep, before NightQueen got going.
	“Aine?” she whispered, under the mistaken belief that nobody else would hear her.
	“Go to sleep, NightQueen,” she said.
	“Do you have to be queer to be a shriia?”
	I thought I heard Dahern groan. Aine finally said, “No, NightQueen.”
	For an instant it looked like we might be free and clear.
	“Aine?”
	“What?”
	“Are you...”
	“Am I what?”
	“Are you queer?”
	Now Dahern was seriously annoyed, as was Istria.
	“I don’t know, NightQueen.”
	Pause.
	“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
	“Oh for Idair’s sake!” Dahern finally snapped. “Go to sleep and vex your brain about it in the morning.”
	Silence finally fell. Istria moved against me, finding my mouth in the dark.
	<I’m proud of you, chara,> she said.
	<And I of you,> I answered. <You were brave tonight.>
	<So were you.>
	After a while, when she had nestled into me and closed her eyes, she said, <I’m going after them, Theamh.>
	Her family. <I know. I’m coming with you.>
	I felt her arms tighten around me. <You and me, through this world and the next.>
	<Always, everywhere.>
	
	It was gray, like the uncertain light before dawn, and I was walking through a landscape that was strange to me. Hilly, bare ground with a thin cover of pasture carved up by low rock walls that snaked with the contours I was climbing over. And at the top of one hill, a house built of the same stone in the walls, with a thatch roof and a wisp of smoke escaping from a crude chimney stack that jutted into the graying sky.
	I knew I was headed toward that house, but I didn’t want to go in. There wasn’t a light on anywhere, which was all the more sinister given the smoke. A fire should have made at least one of those windows ruddy. But the house was like the landscape--gray, misted, unforthcoming.
	But I was headed toward the house. So that’s where I headed, even though it seemed like it was taking a long time to get there.
	“Don’t go in there.”
	The voice came from a woman standing on the other side of one of the low stone walls. In the gray I couldn’t quite see who she was, except that she was older than me.
	“Tell me why not then,” I said.
	“Best not to, that’s all.”
	“Why? What will I find?”
	“Maybe nothing,” she said.
	I stepped toward her, but she wasn’t there now. So I kept going up the hill, till I found a creaking gate and stepped into an overgrown yard. A cat appeared from nowhere, crouching in the long grass, backed up on its haunches and hissing.
	“Here, kitty kitty...”
	The cat sprang at me, claws out. I swatted it off me, but not before it left scratches down my arms. By the time I reached the door, the scratches had begun to fester, and when I turned the knob I could see the yellow pus forming in the furrows that cat had dug.
	“It’s gotten infected.”
	“Maerin, give it up, you’re dead,” I said, as he walked toward me with the tongs. A hot coal trapped between the rusty metal prongs gave a bit of color to the scene, finally; but the lurid light it threw on Maerin’s swollen features did not improve them.
	“Heat sterilizes, now just hold still.”
	“NO!”
	It sounded to me like the place had an echo, or like someone else had shouted the word with me. I knocked the tongs out of his hand, but somehow as often as I did that he would come back again with a new pair of tongs and a new hot coal. Until finally he pressed the thing into my arm and I felt the flesh burning.
	“All right you’ve had your fun now,” I said, clutching my wounded arm and backing away toward the slanted ladder that led up to the loft. “Just leave me alone, you were bad enough alive and you’re worse dead.”
	“She’s right, Maerin,” said Lythril, coming around from behind him. “This is woman’s work. Go play with your tools somewhere else.”
	“To hell with both of you.” I backed up the ladder, watching Lythril advance. 
	“NO!”
	It wasn’t my voice this time. I was standing in the loft, although what had happened to Lythril was a question I could not now answer. It was somehow a lot darker in the loft than it had been downstairs; probably because there wasn’t really a window. Light got in through cracks between the stones. In the patchwork of dim and dimmer I made out two shapes, one almost blocked from view by the other. They were pushed up against the stone wall, but the only one I could see was the man whose back was to me.
	“What are you doing, friend?”
	The square head turned on its neck to growl at me from within the rough beard. “Nothing that concerns you.”
	“Theamh!”
	I looked past him at the woman he had crowded up against the stones. She was wearing a dress too short for her, dirtied at the neck and with stitches ripped out at the waist where the skirt had been pulled away from the bodice. A woman’s body, but with a girl’s face, young, unlined, and frightened.
	“Istria?” I said, sure and unsure at the same time.
	“Get out!” She sidled along the wall trying to get past him. “It’s not safe here!”
	The man caught her by the throat in one hand and held her, pinned by his grip but also by fear, paralysis, knowledge of a foreordained defeat. “No you don’t, my girl.”
	“Get away from her,” I said.
	“Stay out of it, galla na siudh.”
	The sound of the phrase made me angry, and I flew at him, raining blows down on a broad back that seemed not to notice them.
	“Leave her alone, will you leave her alone!”
	He paid no attention, instead crushing himself closer against her. She leaned back, dredged her throat and spat into his face.
	When he recoiled I stumbled back, and now I was back to the wall too, watching him curse and wipe his face. And then he unbuckled the belt at the waist of his canvas trousers and I watched it snake slowly into the air.
	“Manners,” he said, as it snapped above his head. 
	“Thurcte bi thu!” I reached between them and the end of the belt wrapped around my arm. “Agus do leathair agus--”
	He yanked the belt back which brought me up close to him, so that I could see the hard blue eyes above that beard, and so I had time to think, as his hands clenched around my arms, he really does look a lot like her.
	“You can beat and thurk as much as you want but evil is evil and you’re nothing but a blackhearted bastard,” said, speaking slowly and deliberately as his face shifted into Maerin’s.
	“Time for the second course of treatments,” he said, brandishing the wires.
	“Oh for thurk’s sake no,” I said, suddenly reduced to fear and quivering and unable to move from the spot. He began fixing the pads to my arms.
	“Just a couple more sessions and that nasty infection will be a thing of the past.”
	“Am I not allowed to be flesh and blood?” I shouted back, rising to the edge of insanity. “Because there are limits to what I can stand, does that make me weak?”
	“Mac na mhada!”
	It was Istria, still wearing that dress but with her right face, grabbing the wires out of his hand. “Son of the worst thing the Dark One ever made, if you touch her again it’ll be the last thing you do in this world.”
	“I’m already out of this world,” he said, showing the hole in his chest.
	“Good,” Istria answered, grabbing the belt and playing it across the wound.
	He stumbled backward and fell, his head striking the plank floor with a hollow sound. We ran for the opening in the floor, but the ladder was gone.
	“What now?” I asked.
	“Jump!”
	I leapt through the hole and went plummeting, forever, racing past rock tree creek rock down a precipice while the river below spun dizzying  up to strike me dead.
	And I wasn’t dead, of course; but the shudder brought me out of the dream, into a darkness that was almost complete. I could hardly see Istria’s face in front of me, but I felt her body twitch and heard the unformed grunt of alarm. Then her eyes were open, looking around for some confirmation about where she was and who we were.
	<Istri.>
	<Oh spirits.>
	<Istri, it’s all right, we’re not there.>
	She drew herself closer, nesting her head on my breast. <Keep telling me that.>
	<It’s all right, we’re together and your father is dead and so is Maerin.>
	<And if Maerin ever does turn up I’ll kill him again.>
	<Is that what your father really looks like?>
	Her head shook slightly. <In real life...he wasn’t so big. But then I was smaller.>
	<Ah, Istri>
	I held onto her while she cried, quiet because of the others but not gentle because quiet, getting out in tremors what she couldn’t voice. And I was crying with her, but that was all right, because it was a dark night on a strange mountainside in the middle of a civil war but it was still better than what we’d known.
	<Theamh?>
	It was Aine, and she was nervous about calling me, but calling me all the same.
	<Yes, Aine?>
	<Are you all right?>
	<I wouldn’t say that, Aine...but I’m getting better.>
	<Can I do anything?>
	<Thank you for asking.>
	After only a short pause, she said, <All right then. Better rest to both of you.>
	Istria pushed a strand of hair out of my wet face and kissed the salt on my cheeks. <I’m sorry. My sleep is a bad place to be. I should remember to close the link.>
	<You have that dream often?> I asked.
	<Usually without Maerin in it.>
	<I’m sorry I couldn’t stop him.>
	She sighed, snaking up closer to me. <Theamh, you can’t stop what’s already done. You were there. That’s enough. That’s what matters.> I stroked her hair. <I’ll close the link now so that doesn’t happen any more.>
	I lay there waiting for sleep to take me, looking at her head on my shoulder, the closed eyes and their dark lashes, the soft relaxed mouth. It was true, what I’d said. I wasn’t all right; but I was getting better.

	I woke first, but it wasn’t long before Dahern was moving in the half-light, and Istria stirring in her sleep as I tried to extricate myself from her embrace without waking her. It didn’t work; by the time I was on my feet she was sitting up watching me, gathering my hreapa into a bundle and handing it up to me.
	Now for the fun part, I said, walking over to shake Aine awake.
	She was piled up half on NightQueen and half on the cold stone circle, which said something about how tired she must have been. So it took some shaking.
	“Dhiaoc?” she said, blinking in protest.
	“It’s almost sunrise,” I said. “Time to make the daylight.”
	I was surprised at how fast she got up. Eagerly, almost, despite the yawning.
	“I don’t have a hreapa,” she said.
	“Well, just go through it,” I said. “It’ll get you in practice.”
	The three of us ducked out of the shelter. We watched the light break over the mountains, straggling toward the swath of ramshackle spread out along the valley. 
	“It would come up anyway,” Aine said, shading her eyes. “Wouldn’t it?”
	“As long as someone somewhere is doing this,” I said. “To remind her.”
	An answer I would have given anyway, a month ago; only knowing what she’d said about Rainmaking it had a whole new ring to me. 
	Dahern just nodded. “And maybe even without anyone doing it; who knows. The sun seems to rise on the Cretids all right.”
	“Yes, but that’s only because we take care of it,” Aine said. “They wouldn’t get by without us. You have to see that place to believe it.”
	“Please the Spirit I never will,” Dahern said. 
	Without even mentioning it Dahern went to get the gate. Aine and I looked at each other. I could taste the envy.
	“When we get back, you can start your hreapa,” I said. “That’s assuming my house is still standing and you can find your wool. Where’d you leave it?”
	“In the stable loft,” Aine said. 
	“Probably no one will bother it there.”
	Dahern came back with Filim in tow. Filim motioned Istria to come with us as we withdrew into the shade of the shelter wall.
	Filim looked to be about five years older than my mother, but showing it more; gray hair tied into a short tail in back, square face with a sharp jaw, a body whose hardness accentuated the slack in her aging skin. Somebody, as I looked at her, who struck me as tough but not hard, doing what she saw was necessary because someone had to. And keeping buried as far down as it would go the grief that was driving her and through her the Dairc Volunteers. Because this was a woman people would die for--not out of anything like love but because she could infect them with her own sense that she was on the side of right.
	“I hadn’t time to talk properly, yesterday,” she began. “Daire would have told you, if you’d known her, that etiquette is low down on my list of things to care for. But even so, I should have found the time to thank you for what you did for her.”
	“I deserve none of it,” I said, as a flickered glance from Istria showed she was registering my upset. “I should never have agreed to do it, I knew it was suicidal.”
	“You say that because you didn’t know her,” Filim said, tearless in the voice and in the eyes, preempting the protest Dahern had been about to make. “Life wouldn’t have been worth a copper to her if her people doubted her. If she had foreseen her death clear as daylight she would still have asked you to do it. And still been grateful after, just as I am.”
	I couldn’t think of anything to say to this except, “She was beautiful.”
	“I know,” Filim answered.
	After a while of nothing, she resumed. “I’ve come to ask a favor of you. It’s a favor for yourself, too, if you look at it as I do. But it’s a big one, and you have the right to refuse.”
	I glanced over at Istria. “I’ll do anything I can, Filim, only I did promise Istria I would go with her to Ancinte.”
	Dahern shook her head. Filim let loose a short, loud and bitter-edged laugh. “You’ll pardon my saying it, shriia, but she’s mad and so are you. You’ll never get past the Ubh. We haven’t--and we kill. Wriana is staying alive out there somehow but even she’s got no farther than Slieve. There is literally no way to advance farther and live.”
	Istria greeted this news not with the refusal and disbelief I had expected, but with alarm and grief. Filim had evidently made an impression on her. That, or her tussle with the swordsman had brought home some of these unpleasant realities. 
	“But,” she said, before I could interject. “There is that favor I was mentioning.”
	“Tell me what it is then,” I said.
	She looked at Istria for a moment. “You’re Amstian. Tell me, what’s your opinion of the people you were fighting yesterday?”
	“Do you want my personal opinion or my professional assessment?” Istria answered.
	Humor lit Filim’s eyes briefly. “The latter. The former you made clear yesterday.”
	“I think they’re under thrall,” Istria said. “Except for the Aivs.”
	Filim nodded. “Amstians are not known for being big talkers, but this is different. You hear the same story from all the patrols. Dead quiet except for orders given. And they always retreat once the battle has definitively turned. Know why?”
	“Because whoever’s thralling them is a water-veined coward?” Istria ventured.
	“It’s to avoid capture,” Filim said. “They know--or whoever’s controlling them knows--that we can’t afford to chase them far if they run. And so I thought to myself, why should this be? Since if they’re thralled it shouldn’t be fear that’s doing it.”
	Istria was gearing up for a few more choice epithets, but Filim went on. “Then one of my watch leaders, who is a huge fan of yours--” She nodded at me. “--was telling me all about what you did at Cacht.”
	“Of course,” I said. “I mean--of course that’s why they retreat. If we could get to one of them...”
	Filim nodded. “He said once you found the right ten people, it was over in a day. That true?”
	“Well,” I hemmed. “ ‘Over’ is a thing that’s always hard to say...but the actual freeing didn’t take very long, considering.”
	“You never told me what they were doing,” Istria said. “The thralled in Cacht.”
	“Anyhow,” Filim said, bringing her hands together with a furtive little gesture of satisfaction. “Last night we captured one.”
	Istria and I were both momentarily silenced by the possibilities this opened up.
	“And you want me to take a look at him?” I finally said.
	She nodded. “Will you?”
	“In a heartbeat. Except--” I turned to Dahern. “Have you got any showdust? Mine’s in the Murky River.”
	Dahern started fishing around in her sleeves. “Not much,” she said. “I had to make choices, and I opted for food and uisce. I should have some...” She withdrew a small pouch and opened the drawstring. “Hmm...I’m not sure it’s enough to do you any good.”
	I took it from her. It wasn’t much.
	“Well, it’s better than a kick in the gut, as apparently they say up north,” I said. “I’ll give it a shot, Filim. Dahern, do you want to come help?”
	She shook her head. “It’s not my field, and I’ve got work to do here,” she said, standing up. “But you’ll tell me all about it when you’re done.”
	“Do you want me to come?” Istria asked, a little wistfully.
	“Of course,” I said. “You too, Aine. Time you started learning the business.”
	“I thought that’s what I was doing,” she said.
	“You don’t know the half of it,” I answered.
	“Have fun,” Dahern said, opening the gate for us. “Be careful.”
	Dahern went off into the camp. I watched her with some remorse. This is work that doesn’t get you famous--going out to your people, one day after the next, doing what they need done. But it’s what’s most important. Nobody was looking after my people. If they assumed I was dark I could hardly blame them. I had, after all, abandoned them.
	“Theamh?”
	Istria’s voice recalled me to the task at hand. “All right then,” I said, as the gate closed. “Let’s go see what the bitches are working with.”

	<How often does that happen to you?> Istria asked, as we ducked down the narrow passage that led between farmhouses to the yard where they had him tied. 
	<Up here, pretty often.> We had been in Fleatha about thirty seconds before the crowd started gathering. I had worked there during the long slow burning, and there were a lot of people who remembered me. They all seemed to want for some reason to cluster around me in a crowd that slowed us down significantly. I had been answering questions fired at me for probably fifteen minutes before Filim got impatient and got them dispersed. Aine, who had been expecting it, was still startled and a little frightened by the suddenness and size of the welcome; Istria, who hadn’t, had been taken much further aback.
	<It bothers you,> she said.
	<It does.>
	She didn’t ask me why; she knew well enough. Despite the good I’d done in Dairc I had never been able to take real pride in it. The blackness in my heart had poisoned the memory of it, and somehow I had a hard time accepting praise for something that hadn’t felt good to me when I was doing it. And then it was always hard for me to understand why anyone should think it was a pleasure and an honor just to see me passing. 
	The boy in the yard didn’t seem struck by me one way or the other. He wasn’t paying attention to me, or to anyone else. His arms were pinioned behind his back and his legs tied at the knees and ankles. Filim had told me he’d been captured hours ago, but he was still fighting--thrashing around on the ground as if he could jerk himself free. Three women from the Dairc Volunteers, were standing around him marveling at his determination even as they laughed at his failure.
	“Glad to see you, shriia,” said the first woman. “Looks like we got a live one.”
	He did move a little like a landed fish. I squatted down near him, but he was squirming so forcefully it was hard to get a fix on his head.
	“I think you’re going to have to hold him down,” I said. 
	The other two stretched him out, his muscles standing out in their browned arms as he fought the pressure of their hands. “He’s certainly a man of action,” one said.
	“Well, for damn sure he’s not a talker,” the other answered.
	“Come on, Aine,” I said. “Tell me if you see the signs.”
	She knelt and put a hand tentatively on his head. <What am I looking for?>
	<Energy that shouldn’t be there. Anything that seems like it’s not part of a human consciousness. You’ve been in enough minds you should know what they feel like.>
	Istria watched as her brows knit in concentration. Finally, a new knowledge seemed to come into her eyes. <I think I’ve found...something.>
	I went to help. <For sure you have,> I said. <Negative evidence is evidence.>
	What I meant, as she realized, was that his mind was not as active as it should have been. Not empty, like Crann’s had been, but unnaturally quiet--dampened, suppressed. 
	<Thralled?> she ventured.
	<Looks like it,> I answered. <His mind isn’t doing much, and yet his body is working overtime. And if you concentrate on the part where the will lives, you’ll notice...>
	<Yikes.>
	<A technical term, is that?> I answered.
	She blushed a little in embarrassment. <I mean...that’s very strange.>
	<Be more specific.>
	<The signals are strong...but too simple.>
	I nodded. <There you go. Except in the mad, you don’t get that kind of one-note insistence unless there’s a second entity driving the obsession.>
	<But what kind is it?>
	<Well, until you get the showdust on it, there’s two ways to tell. One is to go by behavior, and the other is to try to identify its signature.>
	Aine worked at this so furiously I thought I could smell something burning, but she seemed to be making no progress.
	<It’s all right,> I finally said, because she was starting to get upset. <You haven’t got the experience--you’ve hardly ever been in the ether. Just remember what this thing feels like, so the next time you run into an arani you’ll recognize it.>
	Her head flew up and her eyes got big. But all she said was, <I’ll remember.>
	<All right, back off now.> I stood up; Aine stood with me. 
	“Arani?” Istria guessed.
	“One for one,” I answered.
	The face of the woman who was holding him down went an interesting shade of gray. Filim didn’t turn a hair, although I could tell it bothered her to hear it confirmed.
	I took the cieridh out, holding the pouch of showdust in the other hand. “I’m not sure you all will want to be in the area,” I said to the Volunteers. “Nobody can predict the future, but it’s a good bet this is going to get ugly.”
	“I’m not afraid,” said one of the women holding him.
	“You shouldn’t lie to a shriia,” Istria observed dryly.
	She shot an irritated look at Istria, then said, “Well I’m not leaving, anyhow.”
	The other women shook their heads. I hadn’t bothered inquiring of Filim, who seemed like someone whose guts wouldn’t curdle for anything in this world or the next.
	I raised the cieridh. “Tabhair, mo sielnai.”
	The air sizzled around me, and the vigils were there, crouched ready for the battle with the thing they could sense. Tense, and very much on edge. Which Istria didn’t like to see, because she knew that if the thing was scaring my vigils it would surely scare us.
	I tucked the cieridh into its bag and tucked it into my hreapa. “Idair stand by me.”
	I knelt down by the boy’s head. He had reddish-brown hair, kept a little long on the top, and as I put my hand on his head it struck me how young he was. The face wasn’t lined at all, and big as his frame was it had the look of something new. And his mind wasn’t very old either. Which had probably made it easier work for the arani.
	I found it where I had expected to find it--wrapped around the will in a tight coil, with fibers trailing off to just about everywhere else. It had a good grip. The thing was going to take some shifting.
	With my free hand I fired a little puff of showdust at the boy’s head. It scattered through the air, and then a narrow thin cone seemed to sprout from the back of his head, twisting up into the air like the funnel over a running drain. A thin and watery whey kind of color, weak yellow diluted with gray. 
	“That’s a funny shape for an arani,” Istria said, resigned but grim.
	She knew it, but I said it for Aine’s benefit. “Oh, that’s not the whole thing.”
	I hadn’t been able to use much showdust; so it had only gone a little ways up the tentacle that was into my victim. If I’d had more, it would have gone out further, and the line would have stretched over the trees until it disappeared in the distance, or maybe until it joined with the roiling center from which this and many other tentacles were surely sprouting. Each tentacle was in one mindspace, thralling one soldier. The trick would be not just getting it out but holding it fast so that the arani had to bring the other tentacles to help--which would mean unthralling its other victims.
	<All right, friends, do it just like in Cacht.>
	Carefully, Phredi trickled over to where the boy’s head was and began twining up into the air, staying clear of the whey-colored spout but circling around it in loops. When it was ready, Zott shot over me in an arc to hit a glancing, sizzling blow at the end of the part of the arani that we could see.
	The tendril embracing the boy’s mind tightened. Jayla, at my command, followed me in and began her work, sliding along the contours of the invading thing and turning up heat on them in a slow rising burn.
	It wasn’t easily moved. But after a time, I could feel the restlessness setting in. It couldn’t just sit there, and not fight the burn. At the first twitch of movement, before it could lash out at Jayla, I sent Shaineen after Zott into the air above him.
	She struck with the bright stab that is her peculiar talent. Stung to the marrow--or whatever it is spirits have--the arani jerked its tentacle up into the air to slash at Shaineen.
	<Hold him!>
	Phredi hadn’t waited for the command. The pink rope tightened around the retracting coil. Wrapping his other end around my waist, Phredi pulled the trap taut.
	I felt the thrill as the arani reached the end of his retreat. Phredi was tight with the strain of holding him, but he was held. The curdled tentacle was traveling no further, snared as it was inside Phredi’s grip.
	“You’ve got him!” Aine said, looking up at the trapped tentacle and not at the victim, who had rolled away and was huddled in a terrified lump at Filim’s feet.
	“Yeah, well, that’s the easy part,” I said.
	I pulled the fire out of my hands. <Harry him hard, he looks like a big one.>
	Zott and Jayla went buzzing up and down the tentacle, covering the part that we still couldn’t see. Little teeth of blue and yellow flame dazzled along an invisible rope, needling it, calling the rest of the thing back to defend its trapped limb. Intermittently, Shaineen swung in from the corner of the yard where she was hovering aloof and dealt one sharp spike to its invisible tenderness. I wished that I had more showdust.
	“Dhiaoc?” Aine ventured.
	“You feel it?”
	“Careful, chara--”
	Istria felt it too; so did I. The vicious swish toward me of another one of those tentacles, but one I couldn’t see. Another tendril shot out of Phredi and began curling around it, tightening on it and snaring it down at the other end with its fellow.
	I could now see two of these things, one in its own light and one in the space marked by Phredi’s coil. Then another, grappled and fastened by Phredi like the others. And another. And another.
	Before I had gathered my wits to count there were fourteen of them, strung out on the end of Phredi’s pink banner like fish dangling off an angler’s line. And there was something about the angles they made that I didn’t like at all.
	I estimated the point at which all those lines should be converging. It was a point very far away. Too far for my fire to reach, and high above all of our heads. 
	I shook out another ration of showdust and gave it my best shot.
	I was afraid at first that the dust wouldn’t stick. I was even more afraid when I saw that it had.
	“What is that?” Filim asked, shading her eyes as she tried to pick out the light gray blotch floating what seemed like a mile and a half over us against the whitish clouds.
	The fact that we could see it at all from here was cause for concern by itself. The fact that we could tell it was round--well, that was worse.
	“Filim?” I said.
	“Yes, shriia?”
	“Send someone back to the camp for Dahern, will you?”
	Filim went to speak to one of the Volunteers. Aine’s eyes were still on the gray disk floating above us, but her mind was on me. <What is it, dhiaoc?>
	<You see that thing up there that looks like it could be a new moon seen by day?>
	<I see it. What is it?>
	<It’s the arani,> I answered.
	<But we’ve got hold of it down here.>
	<So we do.> I sighed.
	<You mean...what they’re hanging onto and what’s floating up there in the clouds, that’s the same creature?>
	<That’s what I mean.>
	<I didn’t know they came that size.>
	<Neither did I.>
	Istria had moved in closer. <That’s twenty-three Phredi’s up to now,> she said. <He can hold, what, thirty?>
	<Thirty’s pushing it,> I answered. <I’ll have to join the battle now.>
	She backed up, sadly. <I’m sorry I can’t help, Theamh.>
	<I know you would,> I answered.
	I crossed my arms over my shoulders.
	“Close your eyes!”
	Istria averted her eyes; Aine closed hers. The Volunteers had stopped looking long ago. When the white fire was crackling around me, I cast a rope of it as high up into the arani-ridden air as I could.
	I felt it take. Then I felt the thing trying to drag my fire into the clouds and me with it. And I started trying to wrestle it back down to earth.
	“Fnaa in a hot pot!”
	Istria grabbed my legs as the thing jerked me off the ground, anchoring me via her hold on my hips. I didn’t like the way this was going.
	“Aine!” I shouted, as I tugged on the thing in vain. “Reveal!”
	“How do I do that?” she shouted back, her mind too blasted by the sight in front of her to care about what people thought of her skill.
	“Cross your arms, touch your shoulders, and call on Idair to show you who you are!”
	“What?”
	I passed the words to her over the link. Istria was struggling to keep her grip on me, elbows locked around my hipbones and hands digging into my stomach as the thing kept trying to jerk me into the air.
	Aine slowly crossed her arms, knitted her brows, and forgot to yell the warning.
	“Close your--” I shouted.
	White fire exploded around her. It was a long time before I could see through it to her face, but when I could it seemed like she was beginning to gather it into her hands. 
	“Throw it on the arani!”
	“I can’t see it, dhiaoc!”
	She wasn’t panicking, exactly, but she was far from calm. And to be fair to her, it is difficult working without a visual; that’s why we have showdust in the first place. To make it easier for her--and thus to make it less likely that the arani would succeed in sending me on a several-mile flight with a hard landing--I fired the last of the showdust at the invisible expanse of tentacle with which Shaineen, Zott and Jayla were grappling.
	“Idair save everything,” Istria said.
	Filim was just gaping. Because finally there was enough showdust on the thing to outline it all. Not very distinctly. But if your eyes tuned well enough to follow the faint lines, it was visible. Thirty lines stretching from Phredi’s pink grip up to that round gray body in the sky. Along with a hundred, two hundred, maybe three hundred more, leading from that same body off in other directions, far away from us out along the curve of sky and down invisible on the other side into another three hundred heads.
	“You know,” I said, in a calm moment I was surprised I was having, “there are a lot of people who are born, live, and die without ever realizing that we share the world with things like this.”
	“What she means,” Istria observed as Aine stared at me with her hands blazing, “is that this is the biggest thurking arani either of us has ever seen.”
	“So get your fire on it,” I said. “NOW.”
	Aine gulped, held her breath, and threw it.
	It hit. It couldn’t very well not; the broad side of a barn would have been a considerably smaller target.
	“All right now on my count!”
	After the first couple of pulls it weakened to the point where my feet were on the ground again. Istria was still behind me, arms around my waist underneath Phredi’s tail.
	<You can let go now,> I said to Istria, as I felt the thing give a little.
	<Like hell,> she answered.
	Well, perhaps she was right to be prudent, and anyway it was no hardship. I could not, of course, allow myself to be distracted by the pressure of her body or the warm smell of closeness that came over my shoulder. But as long as I was fighting an arani the size of Kengda, I might as well be doing it with her behind me.
	It was definitely giving. More than giving. Rushing in a vicious rage down through the air at us with a hundred tentacles waving, that was what it was doing.
	“Damn it!” I shot little bursts off when I could, nailing the tentacles as they threshed the air. “Keep them in the air, Aine, we don’t want it thralling the others!”
	“Matter of fact,” Istria shouted, “you better clear off, and take the boy with you.”
	Filim gave the nod, and the Volunteers moved out. A fistful of tentacles that swung after them recoiled back from a cross-cutting shot from Aine. She was getting better at this already.
	<Zott, I know you hate the work, but suck it up.>
	Well, “suck it up” is not an expression that translates easily into Zott’s dialect, but he took my point. Interlacing himself with Phredi and anchoring there, he began sending out crackling blue cables to catch and fix some of the tentacles. But even with his help they couldn’t hold more than about seventy, which left, what, two hundred and thirty, maybe more, who had time to count. It seemed like the thing was a giant hairy gray glob bouncing malevolently along in the near air while every hair on its disgusting body turned into a slashing and venomous weapon of destruction.
	“Dhiaoc--”
	Aine was starting to waver. She hadn’t learned yet to manage the drain, and she was a small woman to start with. <Hold on as long as you can, Aine. If one of us breaks our hold we’re all in danger.>
	<I’ll try.>
	There were still a few lines stretching out away, a few minds still caught in its grip. The battle was even now and it could afford not to dedicate its full strength. Which bothered me greatly. We were going to get weaker, but I wasn’t sure it was. 
	“Dhiaoc...I don’t know if...”
	“Close your eyes!”
	Dahern had found her way to the yard, and summed up the situation. Istria flinched away as another white rope sailed through the air and landed just short of the body.
	<Shaineen, take him. Right in the fat.>
	Because incorporeal as it was the body of this thing did resemble nothing so much as the clammy marbled glop butchers trim off meat. And Shaineen glanced green into it like a pike into custard.
	The convulsion shook those far-off gray lines and I thought I saw them contract. Then I was sure of it. They came hissing toward the rest of the creature, swatting Shaineen out of the way and then recoiling to try themselves out on Jayla, who bobbed around it just out of reach, drawing its fury but escaping its grasp.
	“We send it home on my count!” I shouted, aware for the first time of the perspiration trickling down my front and back. “On three. A haon and a do and a--”
	“TEIR ABHAILE ARANI!”
	Aine was a little early, but no matter. Three beams hit right on that bulging body. 
	The tentacles shrank, curling in away from us toward the gray shuddering center.
	“One more. A haon and a do and a tri!”
	“Teir abhaile arani!”
	This time we were all on the mark. Graying tired spark roamed around the collapsing interior. It vanished, with a bad smell and a sighing rumble that shook the tree branches above us and seemed to last long after it had departed.
	“Take it in now, Aine,” I said, after a few seconds of stunned silence.
	Aine crossed her arms, trembling, and withdrew the fire. Istria opened hers so I could run and catch Aine before she collapsed onto the flagstone path.
	“Is she all right?” Dahern asked, crouching down near us as I propped her up in my lap. “Poor thing, and her so new to it. I’d have come with you, only who could have known the things grew to that size?”
	<Tar cieridh, mo sielnai.>
	The vigils flew back to the cieridh. <You’ve done good and well. As soon as I can spare it you’ll have your reward.>
	Aine’s eyes fluttered open. She didn’t say anything for a while. Finally, seeing our three faces bent over her, she took a shallow breath and spoke.
	“It can’t be that serious?”
	It was a real question, tentative, afraid. I smiled to show her she was all right.
	“You’re going to be fine, Aine. But you have to learn to pace yourself.”
	“Yes,” she said, nodding slightly and not moving. “I would like that.”
	A sigh from Istria alerted me to the fact that she was just now starting to relax. 
	“Iandar’s trousers on Cailte’s hayfork,” Dahern finally said. “How in the name of anything do you get a monster like that to do your bidding?”
	I shook my head at an unanswerable question. Istria answered it.
	“Arani grow if you feed them,” she said, her voice detached even if her mind wasn’t. “The more they thrall, the bigger they get. You catch them small, and nurse them up as your pets.”
	“ ‘You’?” Dahern inquired.
	“Well,” Istria said, striving for equanimity. “If you’re Lythril, that is.”
	The wind blew through the trees around the yard. Scraps of leaf scurried along before it. An empty wind, innocent of arani or anything worse. We hoped, anyhow.
	“And this is the size they get to?” I finally ventured.
	“I’ve never seen one this size,” Istria said. “That’s why I asked you, what the thralled were doing at Cacht. If it wasn’t anything special...”
	“It wasn’t, as a matter of fact,” I answered. “I mean, they were thralled, they were certainly behaving oddly. But nothing really organized.”
	“Then they were probably being used as a farm,” Istria said, her blue-edged eyes meeting mine. “In preparation for this.”
	“By Lythril?”
	“Probably by Barant, or one of her lackeys.”
	“This has been in the works a while, then,” I said, looking back at her.
	“Evidently,” she answered. And then, bitterly, “I’m guessing as much as you are at this point. Obviously, when you come down to it, she didn’t tell me much.”
	“Figured what you didn’t know couldn’t hurt her, I suppose,” I said, glancing out at the gate as it flapped in the breeze. 
	It was a minute before Aine sat up and said, “What about the client, how is he?”
	I laughed. “I guess we better check,” I said.
	They had retreated up the street to the shelter of a doorway. The boy had been untied, but was still huddled, shivering a little bit even though the wind wasn’t that cool.
	Istria dropped to one knee by him. “What name do you use, friend?”
	“Gulon mac Iliam,” he answered, still wary and on edge.
	“Gulon mac Iliam na what?”
	“I’m a na Cnuic,” he said.
	“From Slieve?” Istria asked.
	He looked up. “You know it?”
	“A little,” she said. “I’ve been to the market there.”
	I motioned for the others to withdraw. Istria went on talking to him, while we gathered across the street. 
	“So what will this mean, Theamh?” Filim asked.
	“It means that three hundred soldiers who used to be thralled aren’t,” I answered. “And won’t be soon; that thing’s back in the ether and I think it would take some convincing to get it to return. I don’t know what happens next. That’s your province.”
	Filim considered, her eyes abstracting. “Hard to say,” she said. “The Amstian Army has discipline like dogs have fleas. If the Aivs are corrupted, it may not matter too much whether the soldiers are thralled or not.”
	“Well, it’ll matter to the soldiers,” Aine said.
	Filim nodded. “True enough.”
	We looked up as Istria approached, with the boy leaning on her arm.
	“Gulon would like to come back to the camp and see if he has any family among us,” she said, saying what he asked with his eyes for her to say. “He says he would like his bow back, if you see fit to give it him, but he can see why you wouldn’t.”
	“Indeed I won’t,” Filim snapped. “Bobtailed pup--do you even know what you’ve done and who you’ve killed?”
	Dahern answered for him; his eyes were as silent as his mouth. “Thralling doesn’t affect the memory,” she said. “What he did, he’ll remember. It’d be kinder otherwise.”
	“Take him back with you then,” Filim finally said, after a long withering look at him. “And when he’s ready to make himself useful, send him back to me.”
	We left her standing in the stone arch with the women around her, watching us walk away. They had been kind enough to him. But he knew they grudged it to him, that they held it against him even though it hadn’t really been his doing. And he still wasn’t sure he believed everything that had happened, that maybe it wasn’t his Aiv who was right after all and we were all just inveigling and hoodwinking him.
	“Before you were a soldier, what were you, Gulon?” Istria said, as we walked up the street.
	He looked down in some embarrassment before venturing his answer. “I was training to be a weaver,” he said.
	“It’s a good trade,” Istria answered. “Is there already a weaver in Slieve, because I know people go to buy stuff there...”
	“Oh, yes, Baein--I could never touch him--haven’t you ever seen those tunics the gardai wear up in Mypril, he does that material. I’d never be like him, but I’m apprenticed with him and then I hope to start someplace else, someplace like Ancinte...”
	<Speaking of weaving,> Aine said.
	<When we get home,> I answered.
	<Because this shirt has almost had it, and I don’t know where I’ll get another.>
	Her shirt was now sleeveless, and there was little to hold it together now at the top, the charring having made inroads. <Soon as we can do it I’ll find some stuff to make you a learning tunic. You won’t be wearing anything with sleeves for a while, Aine.>
	She walked on with a small, shy smile, thinking about what that meant. And Istria kept drawing out the young man with the reddish-brown hair who now that he was released was talking as if it would kill him to stop. Dahern, on the other side of them, watched with a mixture of amusement and sorrow. Life, and hope, and the mystery of personality, all going on, persisting in the midst of fire and strife and under the invisible webs spun by who knew how many arani.

XI.
Patience

	“Oh no, what now?”
	As soon as the gate opened Dahern saw the blue jacket in the distance, hovering near her shelter. “It’s never a good sign,” she sighed. “It’ll be some dispute about space, or food...too many people living too close together, all perpetually angry and depressed. Go on, boy, Slieve is gathered outside the mouth of that cave back behind the big tree. You better take off that tunic before you go or there’ll be trouble.”
	Gulon stripped off the green tunic and went off in his undershirt and trousers to look for the people his army had driven out. I didn’t envy him the experience. But once I saw that the town leader whose jacket we’d spotted was hanging onto NightQueen, who in her efforts to break loose from him was doing just about everything but biting, I felt like maybe he was luckier than we were.
	“Sorry to bother you, shriia,” the town leader shouted to Dahern. “But rules are rules, and Taleina doesn’t want her son blamed if it’s not his fault.”
	A boy a year or two older than NightQueen was sulking nearby. He was wearing the usual beige drab, and his face would have been unremarkable except for the diagonal scratches running along one cheek. NightQueen had a swelling around one eye that was turning livid. Aine and Istria were beginning to share my sense of fatigue and dread.
	“And what is it that’s happened?” Dahern asked.
	“She hit me first!” the boy shouted, indignant.
	“I did not!”
	“Both of you hush when a shriia’s talking,” the town leader snapped. “They were discovered out by the privy, locked in combat. Neither seems to have done any very bad harm, and ordinarily I wouldn’t bother anyone with it, but you know the rules...”
	Dahern looked coldly at both of them. “The town leaders agreed,” she said. “Anyone discovered fighting gives up their food ration for one day. Anyone who starts a fight gives it up for two. We can’t afford scraps like this, not at these close quarters.”
	“She started it!” the boy insisted. “She swung right at me! What was I supposed to do?”
	“Is that true?” Dahern turned to NightQueen. “Did you strike first?”
	“I did not!” NightQueen insisted. “I was just minding my own business--”
	“Liar!” shouted the boy, looking about ready to go for her again.
	Dahern was about to say something, but I intervened first.
	“NightQueen,” I said. “I am asking you a direct question.” I fixed her with as hard a stare as I could summon up. “Did you or did you not strike him first?”
	“No!” she shouted. “He started it, it’s his fault!”
	I looked at her for a while, and she started to get anxious.
	“I’m sorry for all the trouble, friend,” I finally said to the town leader. “She’s from north of the border, and she doesn’t understand things down here. Maybe going without for a couple days will teach her.” He nodded. I turned to the boy. “As for you...” His eyes dropped as he felt the harangue coming. “If I were your mathi I’d send you to bed without supper anyway just to teach you manners.” Dahern nodded agreement. “She may have struck you first, but you had it coming. No woman likes to be called a public whore.”
	He glared at me. I was about to go on, but Dahern jumped in. “I don’t care what she dresses like. We’re trying to keep half of Amst’s people penned up in this valley without anyone killing anyone and remarks like that don’t make it any easier. You go back with Kevan and tell your mathi you’re not to have your ration and you tell her why.”
	“I’ll see to it he does, shriia,” Kevan said, looking at his charge with disfavor.
	“Tell the guardians to take two portions out of our allowance,” Dahern went on. “They can reallocate them however they see fit, only I don’t want them going to the boy or his family.”
	“I will, shriia.” Kevan nodded. “Thank you for setting it right. I’m sorry to bother you with trifles like this...”
	“They’re not trifles,” Dahern said. “Thank you for coming to me with it.”
	He bowed, touched his lips, and departed, dragging the boy after him and muttering to him in Amstic. NightQueen began justifying herself.
	“I wasn’t bothering him, and he just started talking to me--”
	“That’s enough!” Istria said it before I could. I was angry, but Istria was angrier. Aine might have been angry too, but in deference to age and experience she let us go first.
	“But--”
	“You don’t talk right now,” Istria said, looking very dangerous. “You listen.”
	NightQueen opened her mouth, but something in Istria’s face stopped her.
	“Your picking a fight in a situation like this is bad enough,” I said. 
	“Do you know what he said to me?” NightQueen protested, evidently finding me less intimidating than Istria.
	“I do know and I don’t care,” I returned. “Because someone else is thoughtless and irresponsible that doesn’t give you license to be the same.”
	“But he called me--”
	“I’ll call you worse if you don’t shut up!” Istria shouted, as NightQueen recoiled.
	<Istri.>
	She heard the note of reproach even in my head voice; and it did stop her, for a moment, as she gathered herself to make sure that when she next spoke it would be her talking and not Morat--or her father.
	“You cannot go about gratifying whatever impulse you have the instant it comes to you,” she said, her voice quiet but no less impressive to NightQueen. “Until you learn that, Idair will have nothing to do with you. Until you can give a true answer to a direct question, Theamh will have nothing to do with you. And until you learn that having been hurt does not give you the right to hurt other people, I will have nothing to do with you.”
	Istria started walking away into the camp. Dahern and I followed her.
	“You said you wanted to be a shriia,” Aine said, more gently than we had spoken but still reproachful. “You answered a straight question with a boldfaced lie. Theamh will put up with a lot. But we all have limits.”
	“I didn’t even hurt him that bad!”
	“You’re not getting it, NightQueen,” Aine answered. “Striking a blow in anger is one thing. Lying about it afterwards--that’s another.”
	Aine left NightQueen standing there and joined us.
	“Now what?” I said, with a sigh.
	“Let her think it over by herself for a while,” Istria said. “When we get back, we’ll see what she’s really made of. Meanwhile...surely there’s work to do here?”
	She looked up at Dahern, waiting to hear whether Dahern would let her take it up.
	“There surely is,” Dahern finally said. “Theamh and Aine can take the eastern passes. You come with me.”
	<Eastern passes?> Aine asked, as the two of them walked away.
	<You’ve noticed it, surely,> I answered. <They all talk about the valley as if it’s Amst. She’s got the towns arranged in about the right order and she does siulin on the usual schedule. It’s to make things feel a little like home.> I headed with her toward Two Flocks. <It’s a fiction, and they know it...but they’re glad to have it, all the same.>
	<A lie?> Aine asked, looking off after them.
	<A metaphor,> I answered.
	She nodded. <You think we’ll be able to explain the difference to NightQueen?>
	<Crawl first, run later,> I said. <Let her learn not to tell whoppers just to save her own gleacha, then we’ll worry about the finer points.>
	<If she gets that far.>

	Making showdust is time-consuming and labor-intensive, but not particularly difficult; and fortunately, you can make it out of just about any kind of rock. All that matters is that you grind it very, very fine. Slythe had some kind of recipe that involved glass, quartz, and soapstone--”for consistency,” she said, although I never really knew what that meant. She used glass and quartz to give it more sparkle; that helps make the things show up better. The drawback is that glass and quartz are hard, and to grind them down you need special equipment that we didn’t have. Which was why Istria and I were heading out to the Ubh to pick up some river sand. When you know you’re going to be grinding something by hand between two flat stones, it makes a lot of sense to use something that nature has already got started for you.
	Aine had volunteered to stay and train NightQueen. Well, “train” is perhaps the wrong word; her plan, as far as I could tell, was to see to it that NightQueen tidied up the shelter, washed what laundry we had in the stream that ran through the camp, peeled about two hundred pratai and in general did as much undignified, sweat-making, messy work as she could be made to do. When we left Dahern was looking on with ill-repressed amusement and NightQueen was doing as she was told, albeit while radiating plenty of commentary that she wouldn’t have dared voice.
	 <She does seem to want it,> I said, as we passed out of the trees toward a sloping hill of open moss-covered rock. 
	<Well, that may not be enough,> Istria answered. <Then again, even if it never happens, at least maybe by the time she quits she’ll be something other than a pain in everyone’s gleacha.>
	<She did help me find you,> I said.
	Istria looked not at me but ahead of us at one of the Ubh’s tributaries, a wide cold stream slicing through a narrow channel and then out over the rocks into a pool. Below us it fell away again, plattering boisterously down the hill. But a narrow margin of pebbly sand had collected around the edges of the pool, and that was what we’d come for.
	I sat on a rock and took off my ropesoles. <Yes, and she almost got Maerin killed,> Istria answered, as she took off her shoes. <I only figured it out after you told the story to Dahern. I thought at the time they were just going through one of their phases.>
	<What phases?> I waded into the stream with the pail and began scooping the pebbles into it. It wasn’t sand, exactly; you could still see the shape of the grains. They were cool and hard in my hands as I dropped them into the pail Istria held out for me. It felt good, getting into the water and putting my hands in the earth. The closest I’d been to taking pleasure in the work I’d done up in Dairc that time was when I was in the final stages of cleansing the Ubh, swimming up and down, skimming the bottom and stirring the silt, flushing it all out of the water, the plants, the pebbles, leaving it clean behind me.
	<Theirs was not a quiet relationship,> Istria said, shifting the pail from one hand to the other as I dumped more pebbles into it. <She said it didn’t bother her to see him thurking the minions, but it did; and he knew it. He never challenged her directly, but he knew her well enough to get to her.>
	<Why didn’t she just forbid him?>
	<She considered that beneath her,> Istria said. <Squabbling like a married couple--that didn’t suit her image of herself at all. It suited her better to pretend it couldn’t possibly bother her and take it out of him in other ways. And she did take it out of him. But that’s the thing...> She bent over to rinse her free hand in the pool. <You’ll have noticed it about Gwilna, I’m sure, she had it worse than anyone.>
	<Had what?>
	<The wish to be hurt.>
	<I did notice,> I answered, letting another handful drip through my opening fingers into the pail.
	<He’d cringe like a beaten dog but he loved it, you could see his eyes, they were just waiting for the whip.> The pail trembled a little as she shuddered. <Creepy bastard.>
	<Well, so she likes to hurt people, he liked to be hurt,> I said. <A match made by fate, it would seem.>
	<And of course he had to pass it on to other people,> Istria answered. <That’s why he thurked around on her--with the minions he was the one dealing it out.>
	I looked into the pail. It looked like maybe it was full enough now--there was a limit to what we’d have the time and inclination to pulverize, and although I felt like a bushel would be too little for the task ahead I had to be realistic.
	<Theamh.>
	“Hm?” I hadn’t realized that in my abstraction I was letting the pebbles fall through my fingers back into the water. Istria was watching me, concerned. She put the pail down behind her on the bank. 
	<When we were there, the first time,> she said, her eyes darkening. <Did he-->
	<No.> I shook my head, wanting not to talk about it. <No, that time in the cell was the first. And last.>
	<Then why did he frighten you so much?>
	I sat down on the edge of the pool, leaving my feet in the water. Istria sat down next to me, looking out at the light on the ripples.
	<I don’t know, Istri,> I said.
	She put her hand over mine. Water pooled around them as they pressed into the wet coarse sand. I paddled my feet in the shallows, idly, waiting for understanding.
	<Is it because of the mothers, maybe?>
	But that had been just as bad for Istria, who had had to harvest the women who died in that little hut. And who had had to confront the putrid products of the infection and fester that had killed them. “All the stuff below the ribs was so nasty even Lythril couldn’t use it,” was how she had put it that one time. “She told me so herself. Eyes, brains, blood, that’s it. She put the rest out back to be burned.”
	<It was truly horrifying,> I said. <I don’t think I ever got over that. But...I still don’t see how that would explain it. I’m never going to be pregnant, after all.>
	Istria’s fingers interlaced with mine. <No, chara, but...>
	We sat like that for a while. And I knew what she meant: that there was no logic to it, but that had to be it, somehow, that watching him do what he did to those birthing women had been what made me loathe and fear him as the last word in evil when for Istria he’d never been more than a dangerous lunatic.
	I waded a little further into the pool. Ubh wasn’t formed; but she was there, all the same, and it felt good to be standing in a river that liked me. I hadn’t realized until we got back how much of a difference it had made to be on strange soil where I didn’t know what was living in the waters or the trees or even if there was anything living in them at all. And it must have bothered Istria just as much, more, to be without that all that time.
	She knew what I was thinking; and it made her smile a little to see me there with the water lapping around my knees. <I’m glad you came here,> she said. <Instead of coming for me. It was the right thing to do.>
	Both of us felt a weight shifting, a mass of gravity lifting. Not wanting to plunge both of us back into tears, Istria added, <And I’m glad I got to meet your new friend.>
	I laughed a little, stirring the silt with my feet as I wandered a little further in. <It’s good to have a river that likes you--comes in handy.>
	<Just be sure it doesn’t like you too much, Theamh.>
	She seemed almost serious. <What, you mean like the Tsraid and Hilas?> Istria looked off to one side, a little embarrassed but at the same time a little exasperated with me. <Oh come on, Istri, geniuses are different, they’ve got no use for human lovers.>
	<It’s a story older than Idair, Theamh.>
	<It’s still a story,> I said. <No river nowadays would--aaagh!>
	I fell into the pool with a flailing splash, disappearing under the water.
	“Theamh!” Istria shouted in alarm, leaping to her feet.
	I stood up. She could see that the water only came up to my waist.
	“Gotcha,” I said.
	Her look of concern and anxiety evaporated. “Why you--”
	I didn’t hear whatever she finished with, because she was already splashing toward me with obvious intent. I could probably have eluded her swimming, but I tried running instead, so when she launched herself forward she attained her goal, which was to topple me into the water. As soon as I surfaced I went after her, but somehow when I dunked her she had her arms around my waist already, so that I went in with her. We were into the deeper water now; when she stood up the water came to her shoulders, and she could gather me up against her, the water supporting my weight as she lifted me in her arms.
	It seemed very cruel as I looked into her face that I couldn’t kiss her. And then I remembered that I could.
	At some point she lost her footing and the water closed over our joined heads. I wasn’t worried; Ubh would take care of me, and Istria had spent enough time in quarries and mountain lakes not to be put off by five feet of water. We fell sideways, plunging at first but gently after, her hair waving around her in a dark cloud and my legs twining with hers as the water ballooned the skirt of my hreapa.
	We clung to each other still as we fumbled along the bottom, our knees looking for purchase on the carpet of pebbly sand. Our heads finally burst into the air as we rose kneeling in the shallows, separating for a moment to get back our breath.
	The dark, wet folds of her shirt clung to her breast as her lungs worked. She looked back at me from eyes that seemed to be a deeper blue now. I thought, possibility is a wide deep thing, and I could swim it the rest of my life and not run out of new.
	<You’re beautiful,> she said, reaching with one hand for my face.
	<So are you.> The water on her lips made them feel cooler, and taste more subtle. Her hand slipped down the back of my hreapa, sliding along my shoulder blades. Her tongue darted into my suddenly-opened mouth and we were back in the water, me on my back in the shallows with the pebbles rolling under my wet head.
	<You’ll get sand in your hair,> Istria said, looking down at me.
	<I don’t care,> I answered.
	She took a breath, and was about to lower her head. And then she suddenly sat up.
	<This isn’t smart, Theamh. We’re not safe here.>
	<But it could be weeks before there’s anywhere safe for us to...>
	<I know, Theamh, but we’ll just have to be patient. Think of what would happen if someone came upon us...>
	I propped myself up on my elbows, disappointed. <No, you’re right.>
	<And anyhow you can’t undo until nightfall...>
	<True enough.>
	I stood up in the shallows, water pouring off my hreapa. Istria got to her feet and waded out with me to where the pail was sitting. She twisted her dark hair into a coil, wringing the water out of it. I picked up the rose that was lying on the beach, shook off a few grains of sand and handed it to her.
	<I’d forgotten about it,> she said, lifting her arms to tuck it into the wet knot of her hair. <I’m glad I didn’t lose it. There’s yours, in the water.>
	I splashed in to get it. When I turned around she was shivering.
	<Your shirt’s soaked,> I said.
	<I’ll be all right,> she answered. <It’s this cheap Cretid material, it just wilts like lettuce when it’s wet...>
	<Here, let me dry it for you.> I popped flame out of my hands.
	She sat on her heels near the pail, shaking her hair back. My hands hovered a few inches away from her, moving the heat and the glow along her arms, around her back, over the plane of her breast and shoulders. It was low fire, light more than heat, gentle and just warm enough to be comforting. She moved with it and not away, letting the yellow light fall across her closed eyelids as she turned her face toward my flame.
	<Are you getting any drier?>
	<Yes and no,> she said, as she raised her arms to the back of her head. I ran the flame along the curves of her lifted breasts.
	<This is no good,> I finally said, drawing my hands back. <I’m going to forget, and then you’ll get burnt.>
	She sighed, and opened her eyes. <I bet it wouldn’t hurt me,> she said, getting to her feet all the same. <It’s your fire. I can tell it’s your fire, just by how it feels.>
	I picked up the pail. <I am a little drier, anyhow,> she said, pulling the fabric of her shirt away from her skin to inspect it. <You’ve got that wet-shift thing, though. I always hated that>
	I shrugged. <I’m used to it, there’ve been a lot of babies to name since you left, and...what is it?>
	She was staring at me--startled, but with horror not fear.
	<The pail,> she said. <I just...you and the pail...>
	I put it back down on the sand. She ran to me, grabbing me as hard as I grabbed her and returning the sudden pressure of my mouth. <Do you believe it, Theamh, we’re out, we never have to do any of that fnaa ever again...>
	<I know, chara...>
	<Fire or no fire, just to know I’ll never have to touch another dead body...>
	<Well, except in departures or-->
	<You know what I mean-->
	<Oh, I do-->
	<We’re out of it,> she repeated, holding me so close it was hard to breathe. <Idair’s mercy, we’re out of it, the river’s clean and there’s nothing in the pail but sand...>
	<Thank Idair and everything...>
	And we had both just about decided we didn’t care what was smart or wasn’t, grappled together and kissing with an urgent hunger that was a hundred miles distant from our horseplay in the river. Except that just as my head dipped toward the breast that rose up against mine I felt something run through her body that wasn’t a good kind of shiver.
	<Theamh.>
	<What is it?>
	<I hear people coming.>
	She let go of me and backed away, sitting down awkwardly to put her shoes on. I got into my ropesoles and was standing on the shore lifting the pail before I could hear them too. But once I could, the fear beating my heart slowed down, because they weren’t trying too hard to take anyone by surprise. In fact, they were singing. 
	“...they’ve got fire and blood and the walking undead,
	Every bad spell that could ever be said,
	And a mess of arani the size of Port Bleahrs--
	But one thing they don’t have’s the Dairc Volunteers!”
	“Well,” I said, as Istria craned her neck to see who they were and how many, “at least we know they’re on our side.”
	We walked toward the noise. When we reached the open rock we saw them ranged in ranks with a woman at the head leading the song. They were marching back toward Fleatha and the camp, and they seemed to be in a good mood.
	“Vrila can intrigue as long as she wants,
	Tifni can burn up the bracken she haunts,
	Idair will knock them all onto their ears--
	Idair’s got Filim and the Dairc Volunteers!”
	<Look,> Istria said. <They’ve got captives.>
	Inside the ranks, surrounded on all sides and chained at the hands, were five men wearing the green and gray Amstian Army uniform. They were all disarmed. And one of them was the sword-wielder who’d given Istria so much trouble the day before.
	“I guess your unthralling them made a difference,” Istria said.
	They were getting closer, and louder. I thought they would pass us by, but one of the men near the front happened to turn his head.
	“Shriia!” he called. “Learfeicann, it’s Theamh ni hUlnach.”
	The woman at the head of the phalanx halted it. “Where?”
	“Over there.” The man pointing looked vaguely familiar--probably someone I’d cured or helped cure, but men look alike to me even when they’re not in formation and I couldn’t place him. The woman at the head looked more familiar--Fleatha, I was thinking, and not her but her man who had been affected. The name was still gone, however.
	She followed his line, and fixed on me. “Shriia!” she called out across the rock. “What brought you out here?”
	I held up the pail, sheepishly. “Looking for sand to make showdust with,” I said, glad she’d asked me what had brought me out and not what I’d been doing.
	“Will you walk back with us?” said the woman, deferential while still a little insistent. “We’re joining Filim in Fleatha, for the ceremony.”
	“What ceremony?”
	“The surrender,” she called back. “The Grey Hawk’s Three Hundred have given up their position.”
	Istria was hurrying forward now, so I felt I’d better follow. “What do you mean?” she demanded. “You defeated an Amstian company?”
	“You don’t have to look so surprised,” said the woman, noting with a trace of irritation Istria’s Amstian features. “They’re good, but they’re only mortals.”
	“Still,” Istria said.
	I was afraid the woman would get angry, but instead she laughed. “Come on with us to Fleatha, you’ll see what’s happened.”
	She wanted me to march with her at the front, but that didn’t sit well with me. Instead we trailed at the back, where we found Taric, marching with the rest of them although he was making it known that he wasn’t trying for proper carriage or cadence.
	“Taric, what happened?” I asked.
	“Oh, there you are,” he said, unsurprised to see me turning up. 
	“Yes, here I am. What happened?”
	“You’re wet,” he said to Istria.
	“You’re a genius, farmer man,” Istria said. “What happened?”
	“It’s not for her manners you love her, then,” Taric said, turning to me.
	<He’s teasing, Istri,> I said, before she could explode at him. <Don’t yell at him; it’s the closest I’ve seen him get to a sense of humor and he must be encouraged.>
	She looked away to hide the laugh in her eyes. <All right, for your sake.>
	“Seriously,” I said. 
	“About three hours after sunrise we made a push over the river,” Taric finally said. “There was practically nobody there. All the cohorts told the same story,” he went on, turning to Istria as if to apologize for having toyed with her. “Nobody in it but the Aivs. We captured all of ours; I think Filim’s cohort had to kill some of theirs.”
	“What about the ordinary soldiers?” I said.
	“Didn’t see them till the battle was over,” Taric said.
	“What?” Istria demanded.
	“We had the Aivs all tied up and tied down, and then someone saw them--coming down out of the hills. They’d been up there the whole time, hiding.”
	“What?” Istria gaped.
	“And is she hard of hearing, on top of rude?” Taric asked, turning back to me.
	“Taric, don’t tease her, you know she’s from Amst.”
	“I didn’t,” he said, suddenly altering. “I’m sorry, friend.” Istria shook her head to dismiss it. “Of course if they’re your people it’s different. But isn’t it a comfort to know we’ve won the day and not had to kill any of them?”
	“What I’m trying to understand is how,” Istria said, patiently.
	“Don’t know how they did it,” Taric said. “But they’d cleared off, all three hundred of them, and left the Aivs to our mercy. Ambushed us once we had the Aivs licked and then sent someone to parley with Filim.”
	“But they let you capture the Aivs first?”
	Taric nodded. 
	“I see.”
	She closed her mouth, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of another question.
	<I don’t,> I finally said.
	<It’s a twist on a regular tactic,> she answered. <Set out a small force to engage the enemy and once you’ve drawn them into open battle the rest of the force ambushes them. Except usually they don’t wait for the enemy to capture the advance force first.>
	<So the Aivs set up the ambush...>
	<And the rank and file let them bleed in their own trap,> Istria answered. <Smart. If they’d risen up against the Aivs there would have been a lot of blood shed.>
	<But how did they coordinate it all without the Aivs knowing?>
	<Every company has a group link,> she said. <So they can coordinate maneuvers. The Aivs transmit orders to the link, but they can’t receive over it.>
	<Well, that’s kind of stupid,> I said.
	She shook her head. <It would distract the Aivs if they were getting three hundred ‘Sin e, Aiv’s back from the link every time they gave an order.>
	<That must be why they went for the Amstian Army,> I answered. <That group link would make them all vulnerable, if you could get to one.>
	Istria nodded, although it seemed like this had not occurred to her yet. <Well, yes--of course they’re the army you’d want, too, if you were going to thrall one.>
	<Yes, but regional pride aside...>
	<Of course, you’re right,> she admitted. <I hadn’t thought of it...I bet it was Gwilna gave them the idea. Little fnaahead.>
	By the time we got to Fleatha the news was there ahead of us. Fleathans lined the cobble road, women and men and children and babies hoisted onto shoulders to see us passing. The soldiers were still singing away, to a different tune.
	“...and down in the City, Barant’s cute and witty,
	She’ll tell you shri business is not your concern.
	Sure it’ll concern us when they start to burn us,
	And that you can go to the Back Three to learn.
	It’s not for the glory, the fame of the story,
	It’s just to keep death clean and keep our lives free--
	That’s why I left quiet to brawl in the riot,
	And why you should come fight with Morat and me.”
	I wasn’t sure Morat would have liked to know her name was being worked into a soldiers’ marching song. I was feeling bad enough about being part of this parade. Even though we were trying not to look connected to them, I could hear the people on the sides of the road identifying me, pointing me out to their children and neighbors even though their neighbors all knew who I was too, because Fleatha was a small place and almost every family’d had someone affected.
	I remembered the town square well--I’d held siuilin there every day for a week, checking up on people I’d healed, looking for the signs in people who hadn’t shown any before, making sure everything stayed settled. It looked different now, with a heap of boulders piled in a circle as a makeshift dais, on top of which Fleatha’s town leader stood in his blue jacket next to Filim, some of her people, and a few boys and men in Amstian Army uniforms. They were disarmed, and they sat nervously on the cushions spread out for them, running their apprehensive eyes over the ranks of Volunteers that started filling the square. Our company joined another one that had evidently come down the northern road--another thirty soldiers with six Amstian Aivs bound in their midst. 
	In answer to some wordless command I didn’t get, the Volunteers sat down cross-legged on the ground in front of the dais, leaving Istria and me standing up in some confusion, as obvious to the assembled crowd as if we’d been painted blue.
	The town leader, who recognized me immediately, hurried to the edge of the dais. 
	“Shriia!” he called out. “You should be up here with us!”
	“If you don’t mind, Piaras--” I began in some confusion.	
	“But I do mind,” he said, with that affable overbearing manner that had so flummoxed me four years ago. “Now’s no time for modesty, after saving us all a second time. Now come up and sit with us or I’ll come out there and fetch you.”
	<You better go, or he’ll never leave you alone,> Istria said.
	I picked my way through the seated Volunteers and climbed awkwardly on to the dais. The cheer that followed me didn’t make me feel any better. 
	“Theamh abu!”
	I looked at Istria, hoping that would help. She looked back at me, serious, too far away to read now except by the look on my face. But I knew she understood why I didn’t want to be up there. And to know that whatever happened I could look at her and know she was with me...when four years ago it had burnt my heart out to be standing on the bridge in Daircri and see everyone out there but her, it was enough to get me through this.
	When the cheer died down, the town leader stood up to address the villagers.
	“Women and men, we’re here this afternoon to pay tribute to our brave Volunteers--”
	“Filim abu!”
	From voice to voice they took up the cry, chanting it several times until Filim stood to acknowledge it. Then it broadened into a roar, which tapered off as she sat down.
	“--who have today, as Filim ni Sheonin tells me, liberated Slieve and the western corridor!”
	Another cheer, while I leaned over to Filim. “Liberated?”
	She shook her head. “His word, not mine.”
	“Not since the dark days when we defended Daircri against the Cretid Encroachment has Dairc had such good reason to be proud of its sons and daughters,” Piaras went on, striking a pose that suggested he was going to keep talking for a while. “And dark as these days are, the one bright thing that shines out is the strength and bravery of our fighting children, who have kept the Amstian scourge confined to Amst’s borders and kept Dairc free for the Daircri!”
	While the crowd gave him the applause he wanted, Istria vented her irritation to me. <Dairc for the Daircri.>
	<No one of sense likes the sound of that,> I agreed.
	“We are witnessing the birth of a new Dairc,” Piaras went on, his voice rising. “Conceived in our hearts and delivered in battle, at the hands of our Volunteers. A Dairc that stands up for freedom and the right. A Dairc that fights. A Dairc that says no!”
	The shout at this was so loud it had to have been a catch-phrase--something they’d heard before. I looked at Piaras and disliked him more than I ever had.
	“No to the tyranny of the City! No to the apathy of Kengda! No to the aggression of Amst!” The crowd was working along with him now, but I could feel Filim’s irritation rising. “A Dairc that stands alone against the tide of darkness sweeping the rest of this island. And so I ask you to welcome Filim here so she can help celebrate the victory that will keep Dairc proud and free with the words we are all ready to fight and die for--”
	They got there before he prompted them. “FREE DAIRC FOREVER!”
	In the roar of the applause Piaras stepped down and motioned for Filim to take his place. I looked around at the crowd of villagers around the Volunteers and wondered if maybe putting things right wasn’t going to put just as many things wrong.
	Filim stood, looking out over the Volunteers sitting on the ground, broken a little out of their ranks now, almost as if they had come to a picnic or a concert, except for the men who were bound in their midst and looking up at Filim with stone faces that must have been hiding a lot. The solemnity on her face killed the cheer that might have risen, especially once she raised her level eyes to rake the ranks of villagers.
	“I want this understood,” she said. “I’m not here to celebrate.”
	The crowd was silent, not understanding but hoping maybe she would explain.
	“It is true that the Grey Hawk’s Three Hundred have surrendered their position. It is also true that the Volunteers have occupied the territory they formerly held, and that we hope this will soon allow the Slievans who are living among us now to return to their homes in peace.” She was still holding them well enough that they knew not to applaud this either. “And I am proud of our Volunteers, and proud to have been given the gift of leading them in this fight.” I saw the seated Volunteers nodding at her as if they understood her better than those ranged around them.
	“What did we discover, when we went out to do battle?” she went on. “A small band of men, scattered up and down the Ubh, trying to hold the line without an army. No matter how good you are, ten on two hundred is no kind of odds. Of course we captured them. I want no credit for that.”
	Piaras was still beaming; he was expecting a rhetorical turn soon that would lead her into the more traditional victory speech. But looking at her, I was pretty sure it wasn’t coming, and the Volunteers didn’t seem to be expecting it either.
	“The credit goes elsewhere,” Filim said. “First of all, to Theamh ni hUlnach, Dahern ni Linn, and Aine ni hEmer, who sent home the arani that was thralling the Grey Hawk Three Hundred.”
	“Theamh abu!” someone shouted, backed up by the rest.
	Filim waited for it to die out. “Second,” she said, “the credit goes to the brave men of the Grey Hawk Three Hundred, who once freed from thrall had the courage and strength to see the right and to do it, at grave risk to themselves.”
	Nobody said anything.
	“Ah, you won’t cheer them, will you,” Filim said, letting them feel the weight of her disappointment. “You won’t, because they’re the enemy. They’re the ones we had to push out of our streets and back over our river, they’re the ones the town leaders have been ranting against, they’re the ones the songs have been made about.” She paused, and I thought I saw her looking at Istria although I wasn’t sure.
	“They’re not the enemy,” Filim said. “If they were, I would have lost men and women today, and there would be a corpse lying in every dell along the western corridor. It’s because they’re not the enemy that I could bring all the Volunteers back here safe. It’s because they’re not the enemy that we can all be here with high hearts and no sorrow. It’s because they’re not the enemy that five hundred people from Slieve can go home tomorrow and start living like human beings again. I want that understood,” she repeated. “If the evil is going to stop spreading, we have to understand who the enemy is.”
	Piaras settled back, as if she had now gotten onto terrain he understood.
	“Our enemy is the Dark One,” she said. “That’s it, and that’s all. The Dark One doesn’t run under one standard, it doesn’t lurk inside one uniform. It’s in every one of us. It’s in me, it’s in Piaras, it’s in every one of my Volunteers, it’s in every one of you. And it’s in those poor sons of bitches you see sitting there before you, tied up so they can’t harm themselves or others.” The weight of scrutiny fastened onto the Aivs in front of us. “I want you all with me in this fight. And that’s why I say, you have to know the enemy.”
	The Volunteers were nodding again. I had the sense that maybe they had heard speeches like this from her. “I walk through town and I hear people talking against Amst,” she said. “There’ve always been the jokes and those little thoughtless slights we all make on people who aren’t wise enough to live in Dairc where all good things gather.” There was a little ripple of uncertain laughter that followed her smile. “What I’ve heard is different. I’m a soldier,” she said. “A hard woman leading a body of the hardest women and men on these mountains. Nothing scares me,” she said, while the Volunteers laughed and shouted scattered affirmations. “Nothing scares me. Except us.”
	There was a long silence while Piaras looked uncomfortable and the crowd waited to be released from its anxiety by what she said next.
	“If we make the mistake,” she said. “If we let ourselves think that Amst is the enemy because they’re the ones the Dark One has in thrall, or think that Kengda is the enemy because they sit there and do nothing, or that the City is the enemy because that happens to be where all the Dark One’s bitches have gathered...” She paused, and when she resumed the iron was in her voice. “If we believe that, then this battle won’t matter. Because once we believe that, we’ve lost the war.”
	After a minute, she went on. “I would never have thought I would have to stand here and tell Daircri their own history. Perhaps I don’t. Perhaps it’s only Piaras who’s forgotten.” She turned to fix him in a gaze that seemed to make him uncomfortable. “When we fought at Daircri, we did not fight alone. The Nauchtian Fleet was there to keep the Cretid reinforcements off the coast. The Kengdan Swamp Raiders were there to harry the Cretid supply camps and munitions dumps. Without the help of Kengda, Naucht, and yes, that same Amstian Army we’re fighting, Daricri would right now be nothing but a blackened ruin. That is the lesson of the defense of Daircri. That if we fight alone, we fall.”
	Her eyes moved away from Piaras to rake the crowd. “Nor do we fight alone today,” she went on. “I remind you. The Amstian soldier who gave our shriias the chance to lift the thrall was captured by a farmer from the Vicinity.” I glanced at Taric, who seemed more than anything relieved that she hadn’t mentioned his name. “Theamh ni hUlnach may be honorary Daircri and she certainly deserves the honor, but remember she was raised by the City. Dahern ni Linn, who has been working herself to nothing to take care of her displaced people, and who administered the final blow to that thing that had been working against us all, comes from Naucht. And Aine ni hEmer, the young shriia in the middle of the fight, is Jiprani. And if any one of those people had not been fighting with us, this would not have been a victory. Dairc stands proud, Dairc stands free, and I will give the last of my blood to keep it so. But Dairc cannot stand alone.”
	She waited for the silence to help it sink in, and then went on.
	“We’re not fighting the Cretids now,” she said. “When this war is over we all have to live with each other.” She put heavy emphasis on each word, moving her head to fix a different segment of the audience. “So I don’t want you going home and inspiring the children with stories of the Dairc Volunteers and the defense of Daircri and all the battles we fought to get the Cretids out and over the mountains. I don’t want you telling them to live out that old story. I don’t want you teaching them the rhymes about dying to keep Dairc free.” The Volunteers were with her now, at least; I couldn’t tell about the crowd. 
	“I want you to tell them the story of Dunta,” she said, knowing I suppose how they would react to the name of an Amstian town. “I want you to tell them the story the Duntani wrote when they turned back from revenge and forbore to inflict the incurable wound of hatred. I want you to tell your children, when you tell them how this war was won, that it was three months, one week and four days before this day, on a dock by the river Tsraid, that Theamh ni hUlnach showed us all how to fight this war.” I looked up at her, startled, as she glanced back at me. “When we speak of the massacre at Dunta, we say that there were people who saw the snare spread for them,” she said. “Who closed their gates on the Dark One, and kept their hearts clean until the siege was lifted. Who with the loss and the grief still bleeding inside them fought on anyway--the way I need you all to fight.” It was still hard to be sure, but I thought maybe she was getting them with her. At the least they weren’t against her, the way you’d think maybe they would be, having come for a party and met up with this. “And when they tell the story of the battle of Slieve, I want them to say the same of you. That you saw pride and glory spread out before you like a snare, and you turned from it. And that it was here, when you made the sacrifice that had to be made to bring love and compassion alive through this evil time, that the tide turned, and the long slow victory began.”
	Istria’s brows were drawn now in thought. I had told her the story of Dunta but I had never bothered repeating my speech. But from the look on her face she was confused--as if she felt she had heard this speech before, even though she knew she hadn’t.
	“My daughter died a week after the battle at Dunta,” Filim said, tearless as always. “She died because nothing mattered more to her than telling the truth and doing the right.” I saw some people out in the crowd nodding. “I don’t fight for the glory of Dairc or the confusion of Amst. I fight for Daire. Because she was my daughter--but more than that, because she was a daughter of Idair.” More nodding. “This is not our victory. It belongs to Idair. That means it belongs to all of our people--in Dairc and out of it. Recognize that Idair’s the one who gave it to us. And make it part of the story you know she wants told.”
	She sat down in silence. Piaras looked like he had swallowed an acorn. 
	“Filim abu!”
	I couldn’t see who’d given the shout but it sounded like it might have been Taric.
	The rest of the Volunteers repeated it in unison. Repeated it often enough that finally the villagers around them started repeating it, even if it might have been a little against their will. It broke up finally into a disorganized cheer, during which I took the opportunity to lean over to Filim.
	“That was a hell of a speech,” I said.
	“I stole the best part off you.”
	Piaras was standing now. “Thank you, Filim ni Sheonin, for your words,” he said, still sounding cheerful even though he wasn’t. “And now, before we return to our work--”
	“Here, what about Theamh?” shouted a voice from the crowd.
	Someone else took up the cry, and in a few minutes the square was echoing to my name. I wished mightily that I had the power to become invisible--or at least that I had the power to do it competently and quickly.
	“Better stand up,” Filim said.
	“I’m supposed to follow that?” I demanded.
	“It won’t matter what you say, listen to them.”
	I stood. The roar eventually died down, and they sat looking at me, expectant.
	“I don’t have much to say,” I said. “Except--that I didn’t want to be up here,” I said, looking at Piaras. “Shri and soldiering can have nothing to do with each other. Much as I respect the courage and the integrity of the men and women of the Volunteers--and, I should say, the men of the Amstian Army, excepting of course those Aivs who went over to the dark side--I have a hard time reconciling that with my hatred of death.” Another silence. “I didn’t want to be up here. I can’t say that I look forward to the months ahead, or to hearing about more battles and more victories, because even if the side of right wins blood is sure to be spilled and death is sure to be done.” I looked out at Istria, who nodded to encourage me. “I’m not here to celebrate either. I can’t celebrate something like this. I can tell you,” I said, turning back to Filim, “that Idair loved your daughter, and was proud of her, just like you are. And that Idair and your daughter are proud of you now. And for what you’ve said, I’m proud and honored to be up here with you.”
	I sat down. The applause was not thunderous, but it was polite enough. Piaras stood up, and I hoped it would all soon be over.
	“Thank you both for your words,” he said. “Even though it seems like neither of you feels like celebrating, you’re still invited to the feast we’ve laid on.” There was a burst of relieved laughter. “Sing out for the Volunteers and victory!”
	I saw the irritation on Filim’s face as the crowd broke into their cheer. Piaras got down from the dais; Filim helped me down and we found Istria standing at the back talking to Taric.
	“So that stuff about Dunta,” she said, as Filim approached. 
	“Mostly Theamh’s,” she said. “With some paraphrasing. You know Piaras has been trying to get to the Daircri Seat for the past three years, don’t you, Theamh?”
	“Oh so that’s what that was about,” I said. “I mean--after a victory there’s always some boasting, but--”
	“But nothing,” she said, watching him head toward the food. “With popinjays like him you can never nip the bud too early. The last thing we want is Dairc fighting Amst.”
	“What happened to the three hundred?” I asked.
	“They’re holding the line with the rest of the Volunteers,” Filim said. “Under supervision, of course, but we’ll work on integrating them. We’ll have to preserve their group identity, but they’ll have to wear something that’ll mark them as allies...”
	She went on, while Istria, Taric and I walked toward the gates of the town. “Is that really true, about bringing people back to Slieve?” Istria cut in.
	“Yes,” she nodded. “I wish we could resettle them all, but I don’t think we can push in any farther.”
	We left her at the gate and made our way back to the camp, picking up the pail where I’d dropped it by the entrance. Taric glanced into the pail.
	“What’s in it, shriia?”
	“Sand,” I said, with a glance at Istria. “Just sand and some water.”
	“Are you sure you’re dismissed?” Istria said to him, with a smirk.
	“I’m a volunteer,” Taric answered. “I can leave when I like, and I’m leaving now.”
	“To do what?”
	“To come with you to Amranth,” he said, matter of fact. “You might need me.”
	Istria was silent, looking at him. <Don’t tell me.>
	<I think he does have it,> I said.
	<Does he know what he’s wasting?>
	<I offered to help him develop it; he didn’t want that.>
	<Aftersight, I can understand not wanting to develop that. But foresight...>
	<Who’s to say it’s any different?> And, as it occurred to me, <Aine did say she wants to develop her ability...>
	<I’ll work with her on it when we have the time,> she said. <But to tell you the truth, I don’t think she’ll need much. I’ve been talking to her about it.> We reached the outside of the gate. <You don’t know what kind of talent she’s got. The clarity and the detail she’s getting without even trying for it--she’s much more sensitive than I am.>
	<That must be why it bothers her so much,> I said.
	<Probably.> I called Dahern on the new link we’d set up. We waited for her to finish whatever she was doing and make the valley appear.
	<You know Theamh,> Istria said. <I love you for a lot of things. Things I knew already, things I’m learning now.> I felt myself coloring, even though I knew Taric couldn’t hear her. <The way you are with her is a beautiful thing. I might have known you’d be a good diaoc but I couldn’t have imagined what it would look like.>
	Dahern poked her head out the doorway. “There you are,” she said. “I know the stream is a favorite spot for lovers but really, this is rid--oh, you’ve brought company.”
	Taric didn’t seem to pick up on Dahern’s sudden nervousness. “They’ve been with me to Fleatha,” he said. “That’s what took the time, all the speechifying.”
	“I heard,” Dahern said. “Come on in. Wriana and I have a proposition for you.”	
	Aine was scooping out the evening meal into wooden bowls, which she passed around to Dahern, Istria and me. Taric, who gave us to understand that the Volunteers had already provided him with rations, sat by while we ate. NightQueen sulked in a corner, having not quite understood before that we were serious about enforcing the camp’s rules.
	“So as soon as the people are back in Slieve, Wriana’s going to start tending to them,” Dahern said. “She’s been in the wild since Daire died--High Winds is right between Tifni’s territory and Hern’s, and they’ve taken it over.” I shook my head; Dahern sighed. “On the run and in fear for your life; it’s no way to live, but she’s a strong woman. Anyhow, now that Slieve’s secure she can help them get back to their regular lives, and I’ll stay here with the rest until they can be brought home.” I nodded. 
	“Wriana’s plan had been to get to Amranth,” Dahern went on. “We think the shriias there are true--”
	“They were when we left, anyhow,” I said.
	“They must still be, or the army wouldn’t be so dead-set on getting in there,” Istria added.
	Dahern was glad to hear confirmation. “There’s a provincial link that joins us all, but of course we can’t use that, with Tifni and Hern and who knows who else on the line. Wriana’s linked to me; if she could link to the Amranth shriias we could start organizing something. I’m already linked with the Daircri shriias--the ones still alive and still true, anyhow, there’s a few have gone missing in recent times.” She laughed hollowly. “So if we connect to Amranth, we’ll be able to plan maneuvers across the entire north.” She set her bowl down by the fire. “Listen to me. Maneuvers. Talking like an Amstian Army Aiv.”
	“But anyhow,” I prompted. “I’m linked to you, I can link to Wriana when I meet up with her, and then if I can get to Amranth...”
	“Exactly,” Dahern said. “Now I wouldn’t have suggested this as a plan two days ago, but after the results with that arani, Wriana thinks that--”
	Istria was already there. “She’s right. The Amstian Army does have discipline like a dog has fleas,” she said, a little distasteful of Filim’s simile. “But they obey their Aivs because they trust them. To have led them into battle on the wrong side--and worse, to have put them under the power of a big, nasty, hairy spirit--that’s a violation of that trust, and no Amstian is going to let that go by.”
	“I hope you’re right,” Dahern said, not quite trusting Istria’s partiality. “Because the plan hinges on the assumption that if you can send a few more of these arani home, that will significantly weaken the force that’s holding Amranth--weaken it enough, at least, that you can make your way into the city. If that’s not true, then to put it bluntly, you’re thurked. Even shri can’t beat the Amstian Army.”
	“I know Istria’s not an objective source,” I said, “but I think she’s right.”
	Aine nodded. “Look how fast that first company came around.”
	Dahern nodded. “So the proposition is that you return with the displaced to Slieve--they’ll need someone to protect them on the way, they’ll have a Volunteer escort but I’ll feel better knowing there’s a shriia with them--link with Wriana, and proceed to Amranth, taking out as many arani as you can get to. Of course capturing people will be difficult--”
	“No it won’t,” Taric said.
	“Taric?” I queried.
	“That’ll be my job,” he answered, as if it were already decided. “I have a turn for this, I’ve discovered.”
	“Well, that’s handy,” I said, still a little unconvinced.
	“So the question is, are you willing to do it?” Dahern asked me.
	“Of course,” I said. “That’s not the question. The question is...” I didn’t look back at her, figuring I could be at least that subtle. What do we do with NightQueen?
	I’ll stay with her, Aine volunteered.
	No you won’t, I answered. I need you with me.
	But I don’t mind, Aine insisted. She doesn’t bug me as much as she bugs you--
	That’s not the point, I answered. You saw the size of that thing. I can’t handle a monster like that all by myself. 
	She’s right, Istria put in as Aine was about to go on arguing. She needs another shriia. Aine sat back, as if still getting used to the idea that this meant her. I’ll stay with NightQueen, that makes the most sense.
	Tarbhfnaa, I said. You’re coming with us.
	But I’ll be no use with the arani, Istria said.
	No, but you’ll be a serious help with the Amstian Army, I answered. And anyhow, you want to find your family, and I think if I left you here alone with NightQueen for who knows how long there might be blood drawn before it was all settled.
	Well, she can’t come with us, Istria said. She’ll bring every patrol in the country down on us.
	I could not deny the truth of this statement. I sat for a moment considering, until Aine said, But isn’t that what we want? If we’re trying to unthrall them...it’d be easier to get to them if they come to us.
	Dahern finally said, That’s a dangerous way to play it.
	Well, you know in Jipran...we say that when the stakes are high, there’s only one way to play.
	Istria finally said, It would work...if we could use a little strategy. She turned to me. I don’t suppose you’ve gotten any handier with a shield.
	Sadly.
	Istria patted me consolingly on the knee, and turned back to Dahern. Of course I can’t create a shield now, but I could work with one someone else made. Have you a turn for this sort of thing at all?
	Dahern stretched her hands out and cracked her knuckles. Practical magic was my specialty. Out here, we all become generalists...but I keep my hand in.
	If you could make us a bunch of portable shields...
	“What are you saying about me?”
	NightQueen had approached the fire while we were talking, and hunger hadn’t mellowed her any. “I know you’re talking about me, what are you saying?”
	“Right now, we’re not talking about you,” I said. “We’re talking about our plans to go west.”
	“But you were talking about me,” she said.
	“Yes, we were,” I answered.
	She was a little taken aback to hear me admit it. “What were you saying?”
	“Well,” I began, “the three of us are going west, and we were wondering what to do about you, because you’re not as used to traveling on foot through the woods as we are and you would make us more conspicuous to enemy patrols. However, as Aine pointed out, there are ways in which it would be useful to become conspicuous to enemy patrols, so we thought we’d maybe bring you along after all, that is if you’re willing.”
	NightQueen looked as if she were trying to decide which of these many insults she would take offense at first.
	“So if it weren’t ‘useful to become conspicuous,’ you were just going to ditch me?” she demanded.
	I took a deep breath and willed myself to sound calm and patient.
	“Try to understand our position,” I said. “We all wish you well, and we want to help. But these are not normal conditions. Our country is at war with itself. Between here and where we want to get to there is an entire army, less about 300 people, of the best soldiers our country has to offer, and they’re all working for evil. If we were thinking maybe of ‘ditching’ you it’s not because we don’t like you. Aine there likes you, and I like you too even if you get on my nerves sometimes, and Istria--Istria?”
	Istria considered, and said, “I like you too, but don’t let it go to your head.”
	“I don’t like her,” Taric put in, “but I don’t like many people on first meeting.”
	“There you are then,” I said. “But the way for us to express that would not be to drag you into danger you had no prayer of surviving. However, if Dahern and Istria can work out this deal with the shielding that will give us a stealth advantage, then maybe we can make it safe enough to justify taking you along. If, that is, you want to come.”
	NightQueen was not immediately ready to respond.
	“You see,” Aine said, “you asked the question and she gave you the true answer, even though it’s embarrassing to us and maybe hurtful to you. That’s how this works.”
	NightQueen finally said, “I’ll come with you then.”
	“All right,” I said. “Istria and Dahern can get started on their business and Aine, you come with me and we’ll make this showdust.” And seeing NightQueen looking a little forlorn and hungry, I added, “You can come help if you want.”
	“Really?”
	“Sure,” I said. “I’ll go find a couple grindstones. NightQueen, get the bucket and meet me out back.”
	I found two flat rocks suitable for the purpose; Aine borrowed a bottle of uisce from Dahern. I sprinkled the water on the grindstones and started teaching Aine the spells to it. NightQueen finally arrived with the pail, which she put down next to me. 
	“All right, now we just...” I reached into the pail. It was empty.
	“NightQueen,” I said, as I peered into the bucket, “was there anything in this pail when you found it?”
	“Just some sand,” she said. “I dumped it out by the doorway. Why?”
	I made sure I counted to ten before I spoke.
	“Is it still where you dumped it?” I asked quietly.
	“I think so,” she said.
	“Put the sand back in the bucket and bring it back.” She blinked at me. “Please.”
	NightQueen picked up the bucket and left.
	Aine looked at me across the grindstone, the open bottle of uisce in one hand. She had cleaned off the charring from the armholes in what was now a vest, and her brown hair was growing out now, almost to her shoulders. She shook her head.
	“Tell me I was never that bad?” she said.
	“You were never that bad,” I answered. “Of course, I will have to remember, if they ever give me another scoilin, that not everybody is you.”
	She looked down, embarrassed still to hear herself praised but starting to realize that she wasn’t a scoilin any more, that she really had reached the next level.
	NightQueen returned with the bucket. “Here it is. I got most of it back up.”
	“Thanks, NightQueen.” I spread the sand on the grindstone. “Well, you may as well learn this now: being a shriia isn’t all fire and excitement. There are a lot of tasks that are as exciting as watching paint dry.” I picked up the stone. “This is one of them.”
	I started grinding as Aine and I said the words. NightQueen watched, obviously making an effort to pay attention. I was as doubtful as ever about her chances. But at least maybe she’d learn something that might help her live whatever life she made for herself. Meanwhile, if she had a lot to learn, then so did I--among other things, patience.

XII.
Idair’s Tears

	Dahern set the girl in the wagon, handing her a bundle that seemed to contain primarily a doll and its accoutrements. “Now you take good care of little Igrin, and see her safe home,” Dahern said, while the girl nodded. “And see yourself safe home too. I’ll see you all when I get there.”
	The Volunteer escort had herded them into a group--the adults walking, the children and the very old in horse-drawn carts along with the baggage. Dahern was glad to see them going, but sad that she couldn’t go with them.
	“You take care of yourself too, Theamh,” Dahern said. “Call me at nightfall to let me know you’re still alive. I’ll worry otherwise.”
	“I’ll try to remember,” I said.
	“I’ll remind you,” Istria answered.
	Dahern smiled. <Oh, Theamh...I told Wriana about your...recent experiences.>
	<Oh really.> I wasn’t sure I was happy about that. <What did she say?>
	<She said, ‘Theamh has all the luck.’>
	<Well-->
	<I pointed out to her about the plague, the starvation, the captivity and all that, and then she allowed as how maybe you didn’t.>
	“Thank you for everything, Dahern,” I said. “I hope to see you soon in a happy country ruled by light.”
	She gave me a parting hug. “Idair go with you, Theamh. You too, Istria, and Aine, and...what is it you’re calling yourself now?”
	“Sonnia,” NightQueen said. “I went back to that, it’s simplest.”
	“Sonnia then,” Dahern replied. “Safe there, and safe home--wherever home is.”
	And we were underway. The horses started off; the carts creaked; people began walking; and of course the Volunteers had to start singing.
	<I wish they wouldn’t,> I said.
	Istria laughed. <Come on,> she answered. <You can’t ask soldiers not to sing, it’s like telling them not to void.>
	<Singularly apt analogy, considering the quality of-->
	<Well, everyone’s not a poet, Theamh.> She looked at Aine and Sonnia, walking together while Aine tried to teach her mindstrength. <Water in a sieve, I’m afraid.>
	<If anyone can do it it’s Aine,> I answered. <If.>
	Istria shook her head. <Oh look--you’re in this one.>
	<What do you mean?>
	<Listen.>
	Up at the front I heard the leader starting a new verse.
	“...and Daire, our daughter, who foully was slaughtered
	By Tifni and Hern at the Second of Three--
	Idair won’t forget her, for sure we won’t let her;
	She’s fighting with Theamh and Morat and me.”
	I sighed. Istria laughed.
	<Accept fame gracefully,> she said. 
	<You try it sometime,> I answered.
	Gulon was with his family, out of his uniform and into ordinary clothes. He looked relieved, even if he was still a little scared of the Volunteers and of us. A good sign for the future. Taric, although he kept saying he wasn’t in the Volunteers any more, was nevertheless walking with them. He seemed to have become something of a favorite in the army; even Doher, the leader of this detachment, treated him with a mixture of amusement and indulgence. He was, people told me, a good fighter, if a little unpredictable.
	A crowd moves slowly; we had to stop and camp for the night near a little lake in the mountains on the far side of the Ubh. In the morning we’d have about a morning’s walk to the valley where Slieve was waiting with Wriana and whoever’d been left to greet us. For tonight, there was enough to do making camp, and then having Istria try to help me wrestle with the portable shields Dahern had made for her.
	“You’ve almost got the hang of it,” Istria was saying, for the fifteenth time.
	“Get in the habit,” I said, grabbing the invisible corner and flapping it around in the air. “It still won’t unfold, dammit.”
	“It’s in the wrist,” Aine said. “Here.”
	She took it from me, snapped her wrist up into the air, and disappeared from view.
	“You see?” I said, turning to Istria. “It can’t be taught. If it could be, she wouldn’t know how.”
	I was getting pretty irritated with this, although Sonnia appeared to be endlessly enthralled by watching Aine appear and disappear, or watching me partially disappear, curse, and reappear. So I was glad when Taric hove into view.
	“Taric! Sit down, we were just--”
	“I’m sorry, shriia, I’m here to bother you,” he said. “I...the lake we’re near...”
	“Yes?” I asked.
	“I’ve...I’ve seen it before.”
	Istria stopped talking to Sonnia. Aine folded up the shield and reappeared.
	“Ah, there you are,” Taric said, unsurprised. 
	“And what have you seen?” I asked.
	He scratched the back of his neck with a nervous hand. “I think there’ll be murder done there,” he said. “Seems to me like...I saw a woman dumped into it. She didn’t float.”
	Istria and I looked at each other. “Could you see who it was?”
	He shook his head. “It happened...or it’ll happen...at night...the woman being dumped, she was wearing something white. The other was in black.”
	“Wriana,” Istria said, suddenly alarmed.
	We got to our feet. “Taric, find Doher and tell her to bring a couple Volunteers down to the beach. We’re on our way.” 

	This lake wasn’t big enough to have a name; just one of the many fissures that had filled in and become a home for frogs and fish. And for something else that was lying on the bank, flat on its back with the five of us and two Volunteers looking down at it.
	“Well, your man may have foresight, or he may have aftersight,” Doher said. “She was dumped all right, weighted down with something--you can see where the rope broke.”
	Lying on its side in the wet muck was a bedraggled thing the size and shape of a woman. A band of twisted fabric around one wrist trailed a frayed tail; the broken end of an improvised rope. The rest was probably attached to a  rock on the bottom of that lake. The body had dark hair, and was dressed in a sodden wool garment that had been white.
	“Please don’t be Wriana...”
	“You’ll have to tell us, shriia,” Doher said. “We don’t know her by sight, and even if we did...”
	Sick with apprehension and disappointment, I took the light globe with me to the body. Istria crouched down with me as we examined it in the yellow light.
	“It’s not Wriana,” I said, with a sigh of relief. “Her hreapa had round sleeves, I remember envying them.”
	“But if she was weighted down...” Aine said.
	“Happens all the time,” Doher said. “They threw her in the lake, but the lake didn’t want her. Fish, or turtles, or something chewed through the rope, and now here she is. She’s still wet, which makes it look recent; but probably she was dumped a while before she washed up, so we can’t really go by that.”
	“How long ago was the vision, Taric?” Aine asked.
	He shrugged. “Three, four days. I didn’t pay it mind until I recognized the lake.”
	Istria was looking at the face. Blood had pooled grotesquely in the cheek resting on the sand--and around a gash in the neck, right under the jaw. 
	<She must be one of them,> Istria said.
	<Why?>
	<It’s the feicann dubh cut,> she answered, exhaling. <The chain protects everything below the head--to get them you have to go close up under the jaw like this.>
	I looked back at the face. It was an effort of imagination to put it back the way it would have looked in life, with those dark brows gathering over eyes that if they weren’t glassy might well have been sharp and cutting. A hard face, thin, lined in a way that did not suggest laughter.
	“Vrila,” I said.
	Istria nodded. “That’s what I thought.”
	“Not one of yours?” said Doher.
	“No,” Istria answered. “She was one of Barant’s.”
	Starting at about the waist, Vrila’s hreapa was stained with the trails of her own blood. It hadn’t stained at the top because it had taken her a little while to die.
	“Well, if she’s not one of ours, then who killed her?” Doher asked.
	There wasn’t much on her to tell who had held the blade that had opened her throat right under the jaw. Istria wasn’t looking at her, but out at the surface of the lake.
	 “Not everyone believes aftersight, friends,” Istria said,  “but--”
	“Say what you saw,” said Doher quickly.
	“Well, I can’t say for sure who killed her, but it was Lythril who dumped the body,” Istria said. “I see her out there--”
	“But it’s dark,” Taric put in.
	“I know, but think about it, Taric--you didn’t see a boat, did you?”
	This question seemed to clarify something for him. “Ah, that’s why I said nothing...I thought it had to be a dream, you can’t walk on water.”
	“Lythril can,” Istria said. “It’s one of her tricks...I have to admit it’s impressive.”
	“But...why kill her own people?” whispered one of the others. 
	“Probably Vrila wasn’t really her own people,” Istria said. “You must remember there are three sides in this war.” 
	Doher nodded. “Now Lythril’s set herself against Barant.”
	“That’s right,” I said. “She’s obviously decided that it’s more important to hurt Barant than it is to destroy the resistance.”
	“It fits, after all,” Istria said. “She hates betrayal worst. After that she hates incompetence. Barant, as far as she can tell, is now guilty of both.”
	“That means Lythril’s on this mountain, then,” murmured one of the others.
	“It means she was,” I answered. “We can hope she’s moved on to do more harm...but you’re right, it’ll be as well to be cautious.”
	“But why dump the body?” Aine asked. “Why not just burn it?”
	Istria suddenly dropped to a crouch and began undoing the brooches on Vrila’s hreapa. “She must have had it on her somewhere.”
	We didn’t find it until one of the Volunteers noticed a bulge under her sleeve. If the sleeves hadn’t been soaked through--as they never could have been, while she was alive--they would have hid the silver chain she had looped around her upper arm and clasped there. Istria reached for it, but snatched her hand back with a cry of pain.
	“Fantastic,” she said sourly, shaking the pain out of her hand. “It works even after you’re dead. That’s just perfect.”
	“Well...should we give her her departure?” I looked up at the hard studded sky. “She was a shriia, once, there must have been some good in her.”
	“It wouldn’t work, Theamh,” Istria said. “The chain’s still working on her. She wouldn’t take the fire; you’d just end up with a headless corpse.”
	We looked down at her, soaked in water, streaked with her own blood. A woman of sixty, who might have died true and left a good story behind her. And now she would be left on this hillside to be eaten by the birds, beasts and beagi who would not care what she had been in life, who would not know if she had been dark or bright, who would only know she was a meal.
	“So what now?” Doher asked.
	“Better alert the rest of the Volunteers,” I said. “No need to alarm the people just yet; they’ll have the sense to stay out of the woods.” Doher nodded. “Meanwhile, we’ll see if we can find out any more about what Lythril was up to or where she might be now.”
	“We’ll look around and tell you what we find,” Istria said. “Meanwhile you may as well go back to look after the others; we’ll be all right here.”
	“Thanks for coming to us, Taric,” I said. “We might not have found her otherwise.”
	Taric had been about to follow Doher out, but hung back a moment. “Shriia...”
	“Yes, Taric?”
	“I have a feeling...that something bad is going to happen at Slieve.”
	I laughed. “Well, Taric, I have the same feeling, and I don’t have foresight.” He nodded, not seeming to realize I was joking. “Go on back with your new friends, Taric, we’ll let you know what we turn up down here.”
	Taric headed with the other Volunteers up to the camp. Sonnia took the opportunity to take a closer look at the body. Aine was looking out over the lake.
	“You see it,” Istria said, looking at Aine’s fixed eyes.
	Aine nodded, with a curdling expression of disgust and horror.
	“Now try to hold it.”
	Aine’s brows furrowed. Then she shook her head and her eyes changed.
	“I lost it,” she said, half disappointed but half relieved.
	Istria nodded. “You have a hard time sustaining?”
	“It only lasts when I want it to go away,” Aine said.
	“That’s the way of it, at first,” Istria said. “Comes sudden, goes just as quick. What you don’t know is that you do have warning.”
	“What?” Aine asked.
	“It’s nebulous and hard to define. In an unexpected vision it passes so fast you don’t even remember it happened. But there’s a sense you get, when a memory comes on you. Controlling this gift is all about finding that signal, recognizing the moment when it’s about to happen. Get yourself there and you can make it stay as long as you want--make it go backward or forward too, with practice.”
	Aine shook her head. “But there’s no warning. Never. It just--it just--”
	Istria nodded, walking forward. “I know, Aine.”
	Istria’s not me; and she was trained by Morat. So she didn’t say it. But Aine was better at reading, and she got it anyway--recognition, compassion, empathy. And it meant more to Aine than either Istria or I would have been prepared to realize. Because hard as I’d tried I couldn’t help her deal with what she saw, or protect her from these sudden terrible visits from past evil. Istria could, and she would; and more than that, she would be glad to do it, because Aine was growing into her heart too now and because she was glad to have found someone else who understood what aftersight does to the universe.
	“So how do I recognize it?” Aine said.
	“Well, that’s the big question,” Istria said. “Come on, I’ll find you a fresh one to practice on--something a little easier.”
	Istria squinted into the trees, then started walking purposefully off into them.
	“All right, Aine,” she called when she’d gone about fifty yards into the forest. “It’s all about anticipation. You know there’s something between you and where I am that you’re going to see. Come toward me, slowly, and be ready for it.”
	Aine started, taking her directions very literally. I looked back at Sonnia, who had walked away from Vrila’s body and was squatting on the sand cradling her stomach in her arms and trying not to be sick.
	“You all right?” I put a hand on her back; she didn’t shake it off. “I’m sorry; I didn’t think how young you are, or that you probably haven’t seen this before. I’ve gotten too damn used to it.”
	Sonnia groaned, and flopped over on her side, curling up around her sick stomach.
	“I’m fine,” she said. 
	“Get in the habit,” I answered.
	“What does that mean?”
	“It means tell the truth.”
	“You all are big on that, aren’t you.”
	I knelt down on the sand to look into her white face. “Yes, we are.”
	“Why?”
	“Because that’s where power comes from,” I said. “From knowing the truth and speaking it. The closer you are to truth, the more power you have.”
	“Then how come Lythril has power?”
	I shook my head. “That’s a different kind of power, Sonnia.”
	“Well then where does it come from?”
	“From the Dark One.”
	“Who’s the Dark One?”
	“Nobody really knows--at least nobody on our side.”
	“Does Istria know?”
	“Maybe,” I said, looking off into the trees where she and Aine were working.
	“Well then why don’t you ask her?”
	“She’ll tell me what she knows when she’s ready to do it.”
	Sonnia was starting to be her usual color, although she was avoiding the sight of Vrila’s body. “Did she really beat my father up?”
	I nodded.
	“How did she find him?”
	“He turned up at a strip joint we were hiding in. She read the story off him. Then she decoyed him into the parking lot and started whipping him with his own belt.”
	I wasn’t sure exactly how she was taking the news. Mostly she was just watching me, puzzled by my expression. Finally she said, “What was he doing in a strip joint?”
	“What does any man do in a place like that?” I said.
	Sonnia sat up, suddenly outraged. “You mean...he was a customer?”
	“He was paying a woman dressed up as a she-devil to dance on his table. I guess that makes him a customer.” 
	This seemed to be making her sick all over again. 
	“For Idair’s sake, Sonnia, a man who could treat his own child the way he’s treated you should certainly be capable of far worse. Why does it surprise you?”
	She picked at some threads on her shirt. She was still wearing the clothes she must have absconded in--black as usual, but less outlandish, ordinary denim trousers and a shirt with long sleeves and a high collar. For a moment, as she looked down at her hands, I caught a very short glimpse of that blonde child with the ringlets and the anxious smile.
	“He said,” she finally told me, not looking up. “He said that if I didn’t...then he would have to go to other women.” And I read the rest of his reason as it rose in her mind. That would hurt your mother. You don’t want to hurt Mommy, do you?
	I sat silent for a few moments, surprised once again by the subtlety of evil. Wondering whether Istria maybe wasn’t better off with a father who took without asking and never wanted her to feel that she had a choice. And deciding finally not to choose between brute force and cunning, the wolf and the snake.
	“Whatever is wrong with your father,” I said, “it went wrong long before you were born. He had the question and the answer ready before he ever went in to you.”
	“She wouldn’t,” Sonnia said, going on although her eyes looked dead in her face as she thought about it. “After me there were problems in her and they took her womb. She wouldn’t...take him, after that, because it couldn’t make children.”
	Now I was getting sick. Because this much I could picture. Him being gentle, saying Ustine I understand, if you think it’s offensive to God then of course we shouldn’t, I still love you...and after she fell asleep going down the hall to her daughter and locking the door behind him...
	“Are you all right?”
	She was concerned, I suppose, because I had suddenly leaned forward and was hanging there expectantly. But the heave never came. The queasiness stayed in my gut.
	“Looks like it’s not coming up,” I said.
	“Is it something you ate?”
	I shook my head, mastered it, and sat back.
	“Sonnia...” I looked out over the lake, listening to Aine and Istria’s voices off in the woods. “Do you understand, I mean really have you learned this, that your father is as cunning and twisted a piece of evil as the world can make, and that his whole stinking life he was never true to anyone or anything, least of all to Ustine or to you?”
	“I’m trying to learn it,” she said.
	At that moment, for the first time, it seemed like maybe something was happening in her. That underneath the shell she still wore things were changing and she was developing the ability to take things seriously.
	“You were asking about the truth thing,” I said, watching Istria and Aine come back. “We use the power of truth. The power of the lie--that belongs to the Dark One, and to your father.” 
	Sonnia didn’t answer because Istria was calling. “Did Dahern give you any candles?”
	“Why?” I called back, standing up.
	“I think you need to take a look around,” Istria said, her face as grave and drawn as Aine’s. 
	“We saw them in there,” Aine followed up, just as serious but eager to show off what she had learned. “Tifni and Vrila. Istria thinks it was about a day ago. Vrila looked like she was traveling.”
	In the ether, she meant. “Could you tell anything about where she was going?”
	Istria and Aine both shook their heads. “I don’t know, Theamh,” Istria said. “But they’re probably in touch with whoever is directing these arani; they must know what’s happening. I think they’re planning some kind of retaliation.”
	“But why do it where they knew you’d be looking?” I said.
	Istria shook her head. “I would never have seen that--it’s not important enough. All I found was the murder. It was Aine here found the traveling.”
	Aine colored, embarrassed and proud at the same time. “I...Istria thinks they killed her partly to cover up that memory. The struggle and the death is what you see first. I only found the other by accident, because I was trying to practice.”
	“So who killed her?”
	“Lythril,” Istria and Aine said at the same time. They looked at each other, and Aine nodded for Istria to go on. 
	“Before Vrila got back to her body, Lythril gave her the cut.”
	“But...so what was Tifni doing all this time?”
	“Nothing,” Aine said. “She sat there and watched. I think...I think Vrila made it back in time to realize. Because she looked mad, right before she died.”
	“So...she kills Vrila while Vrila’s in the ether...and Tifni does what, afterward?”
	“Tifni went into the woods and Lythril dragged the body to the lake,” Istria said.
	I put a hand up to my head. This three-sided war was starting to get hard to follow. “So...what does this mean?”
	“Here’s what I think,” Istria said. “All the turned shriias are caught now between two possible rulers. Nobody knows who’ll win that end of the battle; but whoever does win will wipe out the minions of the other, for sure. So the smart money is to have it both ways--work for both but not let either find out they’re working both sides. Lythril has to know that. Now my guess,” she went on, “since we know that Tifni is exceptionally devious and ruthless, is that she tried to prove her loyalty to Lythril by delivering Vrila to her. Meanwhile she’ll tell Barant she tried to defend Vrila but was too late.”
	I was still trying to work all this out. Aine, who had followed faster than I had, said, “Then whatever Vrila was in the ether for, it must have been an errand for Barant.”
	Istria nodded. “Tifni would have made Vrila believe that the two of them were a team, playing Barant and Lythril against each other. So Tifni would have decoyed Vrila to a ‘secret’ location where they could do Barant’s work without Lythril knowing...and told Lythril where she could find proof that Vrila was working for the competition.”
	“I’m glad you have a head for this, Aine, because I’m still confused,” I said. 
	Istria patted Aine on the back. “She’s coming along,” she said, while Aine looked down with that shyness I’d seen so often. “Or, let me not be Morat about it--she’s going to be better than Dalen, once we train her up to it.”
	The genuine pride Istria was taking in having helped Aine find that memory went right to my heart. But I only had a moment to stand and think about the many new things I would find to love her for as the years passed, because Istria returned very quickly to the business at hand. “So can you go, do you think? Do we have candles?”
	“I’ll try to scrounge some up,” I said. “And Aine, you should come with me--you need to learn how.”
	We left the place, Aine almost bouncing with enthusiasm. She’d been wanting to get into the ether for a long time. Istria was happy too, that Aine was making progress with her help, and Sonnia was if not happy at least thoughtful. Strange moods, really, for women walking away from a corpse and a murder and a bloodstained hreapa. There was a lot we’d gotten used to. I hoped we would be able to unuse ourselves after it all was over, if it ever was.

	By discreetly appealing to the Volunteers we managed to collect enough candles to make the circle. We used shri fire so they wouldn’t burn down--we’d had to raid a few lanterns, and they would be wanting them back. The vigils held their places outside the circle, there because without a roof and walls around us I felt the need for their protection. They were sticking by me bravely, despite the extremely meager meals they’d been getting. I suppose my feeding them often but not much might have struck some of them as an improvement over my usual routine, which was to forget about it for about three and a half weeks and then suddenly gorge them. At any rate, they were hovering around the circle along with Istria and Sonnia, making sure nothing happened to us.
	“This is it then,” I said, looking at Aine. “No--keep your eyes open.” Aine nodded. “Now,” I said. “You’ve done this linked to me, but that is a whole different fish. You can’t prepare yourself for this, so don’t try.” Istria laughed. “Ready?”
	Aine looked at me. “But you just said--”
	“I did, didn’t I. All right, no more stupid questions...say what I told you, and follow me out there.”
	I’ve done it often enough now that it was almost hard to explain to her the steps involved. So I had to wait for what seemed like a long time before she joined me, and I had to go over and do the equivalent of taking her by the wrist.
	<Dhiaoc?>
	Her specter looked much like her, only of course the shape was less fixed. Floating in the interstices she looked like a ghost of herself, warping and rippling with the strange currents of that non-space. <I’m right here, Aine.>
	<How do we move?>
	<It’s sort of like swimming, and sort of like flying, and sort of like mindstrength. Here, hold onto me, you’ll soon get the hang of it.>
	She took my hand--how you do this in the ether is different, of course, but think of it as a metaphor--and I started moving us through the planes.
	<Just like in the models in scoil,> I said. <Of course it all looks different once you get in here. But for instance...you know where we are?>
	<We’re with the rappari,> she said, watching them go hurtling past us. 
	<So then how do we get to the lurers’ plane from here?>
	<Why do we want to go there?>
	<Just to rule out the most horrible option first.>
	Aine was nervous, but when she struck out it was in the right direction. I had to talk her through the hard parts--moving from one plane into another, going against the current, cross-cutting instead of following the flow. But finally we saw them spread out before us--round balls of yellow spiked light spinning as they always did.
	<So we’re here,> Aine said. <What do we look for?>
	I wanted to shake my head although of course I didn’t strictly speaking have one at that moment. <There’s something not right here.>
	<How can you tell?>
	For a while I couldn’t answer. Then I said, <Someone’s been through here. Recently.>
	With some practice she was able to finally tune herself to hear the displacements I was listening to, the echo of passage. <It’s like a wake,> she said.
	I hadn’t thought of it that way but when she said it it made sense. Maybe having been a sailor would come in handy for her here.
	<So if we follow the wake...>
	Whoever had made it was gone now; and in the ether there is no aftersight. The lurers spun angrily as we picked our way between them, saying nothing. It would be hard to know exactly what had happened, if we couldn’t find some other kind of evidence.
	<You again.>
	One of the balls had moved from its position, wobbling as it spun over. Lurers, of course, look much alike, except perhaps to other lurers. But the way it accosted me reminded me of something.
	<No more trouble with those guuns, I hope?> I said, hoping I had recognized it.
	<No,> it answered. <They’ve disappeared.>
	<Any other visitors?>
	<Why do you want to know?>
	So it wasn’t going to volunteer help, even if I had saved its non-life. <You know the woman who was commanding those guuns.>
	<Yes--the one chasing you.>
	<Well, a woman she’s working with has been into the ether lately, and-->
	<One of her friends?>
	<Lythril doesn’t really have friends...>
	<The one who made the bargain, that was a friend of hers?>
	It was really irritating this thing to think that they might have been dealing with Lythril’s associates. Those guuns must have wreaked a serious lot of havoc. Lurers don’t care about good or evil. We don’t know what they care about, besides feeding.
	<Which bargain are we talking about?>
	<One for fifteen.>
	The bargain for Dunta--one victim for Gwilna, fifteen for them. <Yes...Gwilna was one of her associates.>
	<We did not know.>
	<Dhiaoc,> Aine said. <You think maybe this is an old trail--that we’re following Gwilna?>
	<It’s possible,> I answered. <It seemed more recent, but time does strange things here.> And as I thought about it, it seemed unlikely they would resort to the same trick twice. <Don’t worry, friend, she won’t be coming back.>
	The lurer appeared to be glad to hear this. <What about the other?>
	I had been about to head out of the plane, but that stopped me. <What other?>
	<The other bargain.>
	<You mean you’ve made another?>
	<Not yet.>
	<Considering an offer then?>
	<Yes. But is it from another...friend...of hers?>
	<Tell me first what the offer is.>
	<One for each of us.>
	I looked around at the plane and it seemed like there were millions of them.
	<Spirit almighty, there are not enough people in the world for-->
	<I mean in my body. One for each of us in my body.>
	I had no idea what to make of this, but Aine did. <You know how they form, dhiaoc--a whole bunch of them taking one human shape. That must be what it means.>
	It could overhear us, and it corrected her. <Body of bodies, I mean.>
	<And...how many of you are there, in this body of bodies?>
	<Seven seventies.>
	Four hundred and ninety people? Where in the name of anything...
	<Dhiaoc.>
	<Aine?>
	<Do we...do we know how many refugees are traveling with us?>
	<Idair’s mercy,> I said.
	<You say this woman is...her friend?> the thing repeated. That was evidently all it cared about.
	<She was once an associate of Lythril’s,> I answered. <If the woman you dealt with is who I think it is, she’s dead now.>
	<What does that mean, ‘dead’?>
	Entire courses are taught at the scoil that do nothing but try to answer that question. I didn’t feel like getting into it. <The point is, friend, she won’t be coming back. She won’t be able to give the signal.>
	<That was in the bargain already.>
	<It was?>
	<Someone else will give the signal.> Well, that was prudent of Tifni. <This someone else...>
	<Yes, if I’m right, friend, she is yet another associate of the woman who commanded those guuns.>
	<If you’re right? You are not certain sure?>
	I would have given a lot to be able to say yes. <No, friend, I am not certain sure.>
	<You do not want this bargain made,> the thing said.
	<I do not.>
	<We must eat.>
	<I know.>
	There was a long pause.
	<We are considering,> said the lurer. <I will work against it.>
	<Thank you, friend. You know that I cannot offer to repay you.>
	<I know.>
	<Farewell then.>
	When we got back to our plane, Aine was white as a sheet.
	“Well? So?” Sonnia asked, evidently having grown impatient.
	Aine shook her head violently, trying to get all the way back.
	“Sorry,” I said, my voice unwontedly sonorous. “That was one hell of a first trip.”
	“What happened, Theamh?” Istria pressed.
	I looked at her, and it took me a long time to find the voice for this news.
	“I think they’re repeating Dunta,” I said. “But on a bigger scale.”
	“What do you mean?”
	“I think they’re going to attack the refugees. All of them.” My throat constricted. “If I was interpreting that thing right...they offered them four hundred and ninety victims.”
	Istria went white with horror. “Why?”
	“Once is an accident, twice is design,” I said bitterly. “Lurers massacred people in one town I stopped in--if they get the Slievans while I’m in charge of their safety, people are going to start thinking thoughts about me, aren’t they?”
	“Seven seventies,” Aine repeated. “Four hundred and ninety lurers.”	
	“You think they’ll come tonight?” Istria said, her voice low.
	“My informant said they were still considering the offer,” I said. “Of course time is so strange in the ether...”
	“We have to get them to Slieve,” Aine said. “There must be enough protected buildings there, they can shelter till it’s over--”
	“Protections,” I suddenly shouted.
	“What?” Aine asked.
	“Hang on, I’m going to call Dahern.”
	“What for?”
	I held up a hand. <Dahern?>
	<Theamh? Is that you?>
	<Yes, it’s me--we’re all right so far and the refugees are camped for the night. Listen, how many Slievans do we have in this convoy, anyhow?>
	She reckoned it up. <About five hundred, Theamh. Slieve’s got about five hundred people, not including the hinterland; and almost everyone evacuated.>
	My stomach twisted. <Can you call Wriana for me?>
	<Sure, Theamh...what’s this about?>
	<Just call her, I’ll explain later...>
	There was a pause. <She says hello, Theamh. What do you want me to ask her?>
	<Ask her is she already in Slieve.>
	<She is, she just got there tonight.>
	<So...do you remember which houses have protections on them?>
	<Of course I do.>
	<Ask her to search a couple and tell you what she finds. Call when she’s done.>
	<Theamh, what is this-->
	<It may be nothing, I just--tell her to do it quick, because...just tell her to hurry.>
	<All right, Theamh.>
	“What are you asking, Theamh?” Istria said.
	“I was thinking,” I answered. “If this really is a Barant project...it can’t just be about me. She’s not obsessed with me like Lythril is. It must have a strategic purpose.”
	“What is the strategic purpose of wiping out five hundred people?” Aine demanded.
	I sighed, looking at their anxious faces and worrying about what was to come.
	“There will come a point,” I said, “when it will be obvious that Barant and her minions are dark. All they will have to trade on then is power and fear.” Istria nodded; Aine still didn’t understand. “Don’t you see, it’s a warning. We clear their army off part of Amst, and then as soon as we get the village re-settled it gets destroyed by the spirits.”
	“Intimidation,” Aine said.
	I nodded. “Most people follow the strongest. Whether she’s bright or dark.”
	There was a heavy pause while even Sonnia refrained from asking questions.
	“This can’t happen,” Aine said. “If we let this get started--”
	 <Theamh.>
	I held up a hand. <Dahern?>
	<How did you know?>
	<Know what?>
	<There has been a dead animal in every house she’s gone into,> Dahern said, alarmed. <She’s still doing the search, but so far none of them are clean.>
	<That settles it then,> I said. 
	<Settles what?>
	<Tell Wriana we’ll be there in a few hours,> I said. <Have her meet us in the square. We’ve got to get those houses burned out and redone before people get to them.>
	<So they won’t be slaughtered in their beds,> Dahern said bitterly.
	<Or out of them.>
	<Be careful, Theamh.>
	<And yourself.>
	“They’ve been to Slieve and they’ve polluted the houses,” I said. “They must be planning to attack there. It’s too much work to do just for a ruse.”
	Istria nodded grimly. “Traveling alone we can probably make it in two hours,” she said. “A couple to sleep, and then if we...I mean, if you three start at dawn...at least there’ll be someplace for them to hide.”
	We were already gathering up the shields and the rest of the stuff I had borrowed from Dahern. I looked at the bottle of uisce.
	“I hope Wriana’s got some,” I said. “Because this isn’t going to be enough.”
	“We’ll do what we can with what we’ve got,” Aine said. 
	The three of us looked at each other, aware now of the dangers we ran, but all glad, now, to be running them together.
	“All right then,” I said. “Istria, find the town leader and Doher; I’ll find Taric. We need to tell them what’s happening before we go.”
	
	“You are not serious,” Doher said.
	“I won’t say I’m always serious, but I’m serious when I talk about lurers,” I answered.
	“It’s true, she is,” Taric said.
	“How do you know they won’t strike after you’ve left us?” put in Kevan, Slieve’s town leader. “What if they’re trying to decoy you away so we’ll be unprotected?”
	“With this many lurers it won’t matter a damn whether we’re with you or not,” I said. “So they wouldn’t need to do that. Besides, they want us to be with you when it happens because they know we’ll die trying to defend you.”
	Sonnia gulped. Kevan seemed persuaded by this line of argument, but still wanted assurance. “Are you certain sure that they plan to attack at Slieve and not here?”
	I looked at him and gave the answer.
	“I am not certain sure, Kevan,” I said. “I can’t tell you that. I can only say that based on the evidence, it seems a lot more likely that they’ll do it there than here.”
	Doher, who had been wrestling with this for a while, finally filled the silence.
	“This is Theamh ni hUlnach. My money says she knows what she’s doing.”
	“Mine too,” Taric added.
	It is unsettling to realize that the fate of four hundred and ninety people hinges in large part on whether or not you are right about something. At least in this case I had Aine and Istria to agree with me, even if their names didn’t ring as loud in Doher’s ears.
	“All right then,” Kevan said, with a heavy sigh as the weight of responsibility settled on him. “What...what must we do?”
	“The three of us will go ahead to Slieve tonight,” I said.
	“Three?” Sonnia demanded.
	“Don’t start,” Istria said. “We need to be fast and quiet. And you’ll be safer here.”
	“But--” Sonnia protested.
	“Don’t worry, shriia,” Taric said to me. “I’ll make sure she stays out of trouble.”
	“Thanks, Taric,” I said. “Tomorrow at dawn we’ll get started. We need to protect a building or buildings large enough to hold, what, five and a half hundred people, counting the Volunteers. Do you have anyplace big enough for that kind of a crowd?”
	Kevan thought, but his mind was still in shock and it worked slowly. “There’s...five hundred people...that’s a lot of space.”
	“Do you have a meeting hall or a ballroom at all, or...”
	Kevan laughed, mirthlessly. “It’s easy seen you’re from the City, shriia...well, there’s the inn in the town square. We could maybe get a hundred in there.”
	I nodded. “Good...what else?”
	“I...” He looked up, at a loss, and then remembered. “There’s a big house, up on the hill overlooking...belongs to the na Suibhnes.”
	Istria looked surprised. “I’ve never heard of them,” she said. 
	“They’re not old money,” Kevan said. “Buile--the man of the house--he married money and made a second fortune in the silver trade. Built himself a mountain home near the scenery and moved there now he’s got lackeys running the mines for him.”
	“And you think it could hold five hundred?” I asked. “Or four, anyway?”
	Kevan shrugged. “I’d think so, if you packed ‘em in. I don’t know for sure, I’ve never been in there.”
	Istria was very mistrustful about all this. It would be strange for there to be a big house family in that part of Amst that she hadn’t at least heard of. But then she had grown up in the hinterlands where things changed slowly and the phrase “get rich quick” was an unthinkable absurdity. Living in the City I’d seen it happen often enough. To my own father, for instance. 
	“We’ll try it,” I said. “Your job is to get your people all back to Slieve and inside the protected houses before nightfall tomorrow. We’ll see you at noon in the town square and please Idair we’ll have some safe houses for you by then.”
	Kevan nodded, still looking dazed. Finally, Istria said, “Are you all right, friend?”
	It was a little while before he answered. “I...you know, being town leader...the worst thing I had dealt with, before this year, was a land dispute.”
	I tried to look gentle and encouraging.
	“You’ll rise to the occasion,” I said. “We’ve all had to. Idair will help you.”
	He nodded. “I hope so, shriia.”
	“So do we all.”

	“So this is a ghost town,” I said.
	Slieve’s town square was absolutely quiet. No one in the streets, no lights in the apartments above the shops, no horses, no cats or dogs even, nothing but shuttered windows and silence. The Two Swans Inn, identifiable by the painted swans on the signboard that banged against the eaves in the slight breeze, was empty and dark; same with the weaver’s shop, the blacksmith’s, the victuallers’, the miller’s. Everywhere we looked, it was as still as a frozen lake and as vacant as a corpse. It reminded me of Dunta on that evil morning. This was a feeling that, for many reasons, I really wanted to shake.
	“Where’s Wriana?” Aine asked, looking around the empty streets.
	“Good question.” <Wriana’s not here, Dahern...can you raise her for us?>
	Dahern was alarmed to hear it. <Last I talked to her she was on her way; she was just going to stop by the inn and clean it out. They serve meat, you know.>
	<We’ll go have a look,> I said, leading Istria and Aine over. 
	<Tell me when you find her.>
	<She probably just got involved in what she was doing. Burning out is attention-consuming.>
	I expected Dahern to nod and sign off, but she didn’t. <Theamh...>
	<What is it?>
	We reached the inn. The door swung open easily when I pushed on it.
	“Well, let’s hope she’s in here,” Istria said. “Otherwise something else is.”
	The hall of the inn was dark when we stepped into it. I hung a light globe and we pressed on in search of the kitchen. <Theamh...>
	<Dahern?>
	<I’m worried about her.>
	<What do you mean, worried?>
	Aine sneezed, loudly, as she pushed on the half-door into the kitchen. “Dust,” she said apologetically. “It’s been empty a while.”
	From the dark room on the other side of the door we heard a feeble moan and the sound of someone trying to get up from a fall.
	I stepped in carefully, bringing the globe with me. “Wriana?”
	The figure on the floor was wearing a hreapa with round sleeves, so it was a good bet. But even after we’d turned her over to look at the face it was an effort to recognize her. She had lost almost as much weight as I had, and her hair was matted with the same dirt that was browning her face and hands. Her eyes were open but not sharp, and she seemed to be trying to speak but was too weak to do it.
	<We found her, Dahern,> I said, while Aine crouched down near her.
	“Wriana? Can you hear us? What’s happened to you?”
	<Is she all right?>
	<No,> I answered. <She’s collapsed and she can’t seem to speak.>
	Wriana made another effort, but it didn’t work very well.
	Dahern’s alarm sharpened. <Theamh, you’ve got to get her undone.>
	<Undone? Why?>
	It took her barely a second to get over her reluctance to say this. <She’s been sleeping in hreapa. For more than two weeks.>
	“Idair’s teeth,” I said, out loud.
	“Theamh?” Istria queried.
	“Wriana!” I crouched by her. “This is Theamh ni hUlnach. You remember me?”
	She made a noise that I thought was more or less affirmative.
	“We’re going to undo you. Say the words, I’ll take care of the rest.”
	Aine watched with a combination of compassion for Wriana and interest in learning as my hands went from one brooch to the next while Wriana’s mouth moved as she mumbled the words. Istria could tell I was in a terrible hurry, and guessed why. Aine was still puzzled, but trusted that she would get the explanation once the crisis was over. So when the hreapa finally fell away, and Wriana lay back with a sigh of relief different from her exhausted and anxious moaning, Aine just folded it up and stuck the brooches into it, wrinkling her nose at the smell that rose up from Wriana’s soiled shift and unwashed body.
	“Let’s get her into the tub,” I said. “They must have one. We can put a little uisce into the water, it’ll help.”
	Istria gathered Wriana and lifted her, knees bending a little with the weight. Aine tucked the hreapa under one arm and ran ahead to scout out where the washroom was.
	<We got it off her, Dahern.>
	<Is she still alive?>
	<More or less. For Idair’s sake, what was she thinking?>
	<I know. Just...take good care of her, Theamh, she’s had a hard life these last months.>
	“It’s up here,” Aine called from the head of the staircase. “They’ve got one of those circulating tank things, the water runs right in.”
	We heard the water pouring into the tub as Aine turned the tap. Most inns like this go in for fancy plumbing; it’s one of their attractions. So by the time we got Wriana up the stairs and into the washroom the tub was already full, and Aine, bless her heart, was in the final stages of trying to ring it with fire to heat up the water. The circle was irregular and had gaps, but it would do the job. Istria set Wriana down on a chair by the tub. She was starting to look a little better, even if she was still in the last stages of exhaustion.
	“Wriana, can you hear us?” I asked.
	Yes. 
	She was saving energy. “We’re going to get you into the tub. We’ll have to get you undressed, all right? We’re all your friends here, and we’ll take care of you.”
	Wriana nodded, weakly. I took off her ropesoles; Istria disentangled her from her shift and we lifted her into the tub, which was now warm enough. I unstoppered the bottle of uisce and poured a little into it. The sparkle whorled through the tub, diffusing as the uisce mingled with the ordinary water. Istria arranged her arms along the edge so that her head would be kept out of the water.
	Aine lifted the dirty shift. “They must have a laundry here, I’ll go wash this.”
	“You know you don’t have to do chores like that any more,” I said.
	“I know,” she answered. “I never had to do them in the first place.”
	She went off in search of buckbaskets and other such implements. Istria and I sat and watched Wriana for signs of restoration.
	“Dahern says she’s been sleeping in her hreapa,” I said.
	Istria shook her head. 
	“At the worst of it I never did that.”
	“Something has to have happened to her,” Istria said, her eyes darkening as she watched Wriana’s face.
	I couldn’t imagine what it could be. But what mattered was that she was starting to revive, and to look around at us as if she knew who she was and what was happening.
	“Theamh,” she said feebly. “I was on my way...”
	“Oh please, Wriana,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. We found you after all...”
	“I know it was stupid,” she said, closing her eyes and sinking deeper into the tub. “I just kept thinking, well, all right so far, I’ll leave it another day...and I just forgot how much burning out takes out of you...”
	She was trying to sound normal, but there was nothing normal about her. Now that she was coming back to life a little bit I could tell how profoundly disturbed her mind was. It wasn’t just the nervous glitter in her eyes or the hollow-looking face--she was unquiet on all kinds of levels. And not understanding anything about why, I still found my throat constricting in some kind of unbidden sympathy.
	Aine returned. “It’s soaking,” she said, sitting down a little farther from the tub than we were. I realized that after all Wriana was sitting there naked in the water while the three of us gawked at her, and pushed back on my heels. “Wriana, I don’t know if you remember me, I’m Aine ni hEmer...”
	“Of course I remember you,” Wriana said. “Dahern says you have your fire. I’m glad for you.” 
	“Thank you,” Aine said.
	“And you must be Istria,” Wriana went on, looking out at her with a mixture of fascination and apprehension.
	“I must be,” Istria answered. 
	“You’re safe with her,” I said. “I’ll give you my word on it.”
	“I know,” Wriana said, nodding half in agreement and half in sleep. “I know, Theamh. Don’t...take offense, it’s just...”
	“Hard,” Istria said. “To get your mind around it. I know.”
	“I got the blood out of here, and some of the other houses,” Wriana said. “The rest...you can leave me and work on them if you want...I’ll be all right...”
	“Wriana--”
	“She’s right, Theamh,” Istria said. “You and Aine get started, I’ll stay with her. I’ll call you if anything happens.”
	I looked at her. <You think you know.>
	<I have a guess. I’ll try to talk to her about it, but I don’t think she’ll want to with you two here.>
	“All right then,” I said, standing. “Come on, Aine. Wriana, if you need us for anything, just tell Istria and she’ll call us.”
	“Of course,” she said, embarrassed to be reduced to this. “I’ll...I’ll be all right soon enough, I hope...”
	“We’ll be back in an hour or so,” I told Istria. “After all, we need sleep too, no sense ruining ourselves for tomorrow.”
	“Theamh...” Wriana looked up at me. “What’s going to happen, tomorrow?”
	I decided that four hundred and ninety lurers were not something she needed to hear about at the moment.
	“I’ll tell you after sunrise,” I said.
	She didn’t press me. Her eyes closed with a sigh, and we left her there with Istria.
	
	Burning blood out is hard work, but at least it gave Aine the chance to practice her fire control. Within an hour she was working with much more finesse, even if she was still frustrated by what seemed to her like slow progress. But as far as I was concerned, having cleaned out about five good-sized shops in one hour was as much as we could reasonably hope for. With the inn, I figured we now had clean space for about two hundred people, assuming we had enough uisce to protect them all. But that last stage couldn’t be done until sunrise, and we were already dead tired, so we dragged ourselves back to the inn.
	We were deep in conversation about some technical details that Aine was still struggling with, so it was a while before I realized voices were now coming from one of the guest rooms. Istria must have moved her out of the tub and into a bed. My mind was only half on what they were saying as we approached.
	“...of course,” Istria was saying, “except Theamh. You understand I have to tell her.”
	“Why?” was Wriana’s somewhat petulant answer.
	“Because I do,” Istria answered. “But she’ll keep it for you if you want it kept.”
	Aine pretended not to be hearing this. We chose a pause in the conversation to make our entrance.
	“We’re back,” I announced, somewhat unnecessarily. Wriana was tucked up in one of the feather beds with the quilt pulled around her chin. Her hair was still a mess, but otherwise she looked a lot better. Uisce makes a difference; it’s hard to believe how something so invisible does that much work. 
	“All right,” Wriana said, to Istria rather than to me.
	“Aine, I think Wriana would feel better if someone stayed with her,” Istria said.
	She could spot a hint when she saw one. “Of course. You won’t go far, though?”
	Still young, and still hanging onto the knowledge of the battle ahead. “Not far. We’ll be right next door. Call if you need me.” Aine nodded, and I felt a need to say this. “You know...you can always call--no matter what it interrupts.”
	Aine colored a little bit. “I--I understand, dhiaoc.”
	“And don’t forget to go get your fire back,” I said.
	Aine suddenly ran out to find the washroom.
	Istria smiled. “She’s picked up the absent mindedness, somehow.”
	I sighed. “We do damage as we do good,” I said. “At least she hasn’t picked up the cursing.”
	Wriana looked over at me, wishing she could laugh at the joke but knowing it was beyond her power. Aine returned and plumped up the pillow on the bed next to Wriana’s.
	“My compliments to the landlord,” she said, flopping down on the bed. “I don’t think I’ve ever slept on anything like this.”
	“Good rest to you both,” I said, closing the door behind us.
	I knew as soon as we left that Istria had talked to her about whatever it was, and that it was weighing on her greatly. We got into the next room and I started undoing. Istria sat on the bed, staring as I thought into space until I realized, turning around, that she was watching me.
	“Istri?”
	“If I’m not in the mood,” she said, heavily, “it isn’t because you’re not beautiful.”
	I sat next to her in my shift. Istria lay down on her side, head in my lap, knees tucked under her elbows as she curled up on the coverlet.
	“Tell me what you want to tell me,” I said, stroking her dark head.
	“I guessed right,” Istria said. “Even though I was sure I had to be wrong.”
	“About what happened to her.”
	Her head moved in my lap as she nodded, and tears started coming from her eyes.
	“If I never get my fire back,” she said, “it’s enough that I’m not part of this evil any more.”
	I just kept stroking her hair and waiting for her to be done with it.
	“I was thinking about what we could do to them, if we caught them,” she said. “And then I realized...we don’t even have a punishment for this. It would not occur to anyone that any man, no matter how evil, would even think of raping a shriia.”
	She started crying, really, with voice as well as tears.
	“Oh spirit and body, that can’t be it,” I said.
	“I can’t believe it either,” Istria said. “I don’t think even Wriana can believe it, on one level.” One of her fists started hitting the feather mattress. “With all the evil I’ve seen I cannot believe there are seven men in the Amstian Army capable of doing this to any woman, let alone--”
	“Seven?”
	My voice had risen loud enough to be audible next door. I went to the link, even though it would have been immensely more satisfying to speak. <Name of the spirit, Istria...seven?>
	<Seven,> Istria answered, even the head voice loaded with despairing anger. <I don’t know whether they intended an irony, or whether they thought six wouldn’t be enough to subdue her.>
	It started coming together. <They came on her when she was out of hreapa?>
	Istria nodded. <So you can see...>
	<Oh no thurking wonder,> I returned bitterly, as Istria’s arms went around my knees and drew her closer to me. <I...in the name of anything why?>
	<Can there be a reason?> Istria returned, crying harder now. <Haven’t I tortured myself twenty years with that same question...>
	<Oh chara.>
	She pulled herself up so she could put her arms around me. I held onto her, rocking a little bit in some futile effort to bring safety into a world with none.
	<She hasn’t told anyone but me,> Istria finally said, still crying. 
	<I think Dahern might have her suspicions,> I answered.
	<She says...> The grief was starting to abate, probably on its way to becoming anger. <She says she thinks from what they said that they thought she would be shrimarbh after.>
	My arms dropped. “That’s insane!”
	Istria sat up. “I know, Theamh, but--”
	“What kind of monster do they think Idair is?”
	<Theamh-->
	I was on my feet now; since I couldn’t shout I might as well pace. <Were they possessed, you think? Even for the kraikk this would be brazen, I admit, but-->
	<Idair’s hair don’t I want to believe it,> Istria said, standing up and watching me cross the space of that floor. <It’s possible, Theamh, anything’s possible.>
	<I guess anything is,> I said bitterly.
	<She’d been doing what she could to frustrate them--setting fire to weapons, capturing food stores, that kind of thing. This was...their retaliation.> She sighed. <The real question I guess is why they didn’t just kill her.>
	<Because if they had tried to kill her she could have burned them,> I answered. <But she couldn’t burn them to stop them from doing this.> I found I was glancing around the room looking for something fragile. <Istri, I think I need to break something.>
	Instead of breaking something I fell into her arms. I started crying like she had. <Idair, tell me why people do this, what makes this possible, I don’t understand...>
	<Chara...> Istria stroked my hair with one hand, holding me around the waist with the other. <We can’t understand, we won’t, it’s better for us that way.> I nodded, although I was still crying. <Truth be told, I don’t think Idair understands it either. If she did she’d find some way to stop it.>
	I knew she was right. And I knew that if Wriana had the courage to keep doing her work after this had happened I shouldn’t let myself be so upset by it. But even though we say all things are possible, this was something that I had never thought could happen. 
	<I understand now,> I said, as we sat back down on the bed and I took off my shift. <Why this counts as ‘permanent harm.’ She can’t be the same.>
	<No,> Istria said, getting undressed. <Neither can we. Neither will the country.>
	We slid under the covers and wrapped ourselves around each other. There was nothing to be done, but to go on with the work and save what we could save. And hold onto each other, and wait for things to be different.
	<So you told her you would tell me,> I said, pushing her hair back and looking into her serious face before beginning to kiss her. <But I’m to tell nobody.>
	<Not for now.> Istria’s hands moved around my shoulders, staying there while she hid her head between my neck and shoulder. <Theamh...you know how it was, with me. Once I told you, it got easier...> She drew back to look at me. <I think she does want to talk about it, I think it’s been killing her to be alone with it. But she has to get there.>
	<I know, Istri.>
	She settled down for sleep. <I wouldn’t...without you...I wouldn’t have been able to talk about it at all,> Istri said. <I thank you for that. One of the million things.>
	<I feel I can do so little,> I said, as the tears came back.
	Istria stroked my hair. <Damage is damage,> she said. <It heals slow or fast, nobody can do much about that. Good rest to you, chara, we should close the link now.>
	I closed it. Take care in there, I said, holding her.
	You too.

	Sunrise found the three of us up in the washroom, all doing haons linn together. Wriana looked much restored even after her short sleep, and back almost to her usual demeanor. Almost. Aine was very quiet, after we got done with the ritual, and was still quiet when we were eating the breakfast Istria had improvised from the dried goods left behind in the innkeeper’s kitchen.
	<You all right, Aine?>
	She glanced guiltily up at me as she finished with her plate. <I can’t help wondering, dhiaoc...I know you must have promised not to tell.>
	<I have.>
	We went to rinse the plates in the sink, Wriana scrubbing along with us. <There is something you can tell me, though.>
	<The reason you can’t sleep in hreapa,> I said, anticipating it, <is that it drains you. When you put it on during haons linn, you set up the protections against spirits. Those take energy to maintain. That’s why we have to take them off at night. If you don’t...the drain keeps up, and you end up collapsing suddenly in the middle of something. If we hadn’t gotten it off her she might easily just have died from exhaustion.>
	Wriana glanced in my direction, furtively.
	“She was asking why we can’t sleep in hreapa,” I said.
	Wriana nodded, ranging the dishes on the dry shelf. “I suppose we can start here,” she said. “I cut some branches last night.”
	We decanted uisce into three bowls and went about spritzing the interior. Then I did the outside, and looked to see how much we had left.
	“It’s a little disconcerting,” I said. “I think we’ve got enough to do the big house; and I guess that would hold everyone.”
	“What, the Siubhne house?” Wriana asked. I nodded. “Some bloody hope--I don’t think the bastard will let us near it.”
	“You mean he’s still there?”
	She nodded. “Him and his wife; the servants cleared out with everyone else. It doesn’t surprise me. He’s a stubborn man who can be told nothing and his wife is too accustomed to the finer things to rough it with the refugees. Dahern says it’s his wife has most of the money--she’s a na Cleath, from Mypril.”
	“Ah,” Istria said, as if this now finally made sense. “So it’s married money. I wondered why I’d never heard the name.”
	Wriana nodded. “She was past childbearing when they married, so I don’t know why they changed the line name, unless he wanted his to be known...anyhow, Dahern says they never come to readings, never asked for protections, basically don’t mix much with the people, except through the servants. I think it’ll be a hard sell.”
	“We’ve got to do it,” I said. “We need a safe house and it needs to be a big one.”
	Wriana sighed. “I’ll take you there, but I’m not hopeful.”
	We started up the hill in the growing sunlight. She hadn’t asked me exactly what was going to happen, but I’m sure she could form a guess. And I would tell her eventually, but it seemed like she probably had enough on her mind.
	She was used to walking this territory, so that even after a night like last night Wriana was well ahead of us for most of the trip. I was still amazed that she was able to function at all. Istria was less surprised, but then that was natural. I had asked her once, “How did you live through it?” and she had just looked at me as if she hadn’t quite understood the question. “I didn’t have a choice,” is what she had finally said.
	Wriana stopped in front of the door, looking up at the huge bell-pull with a sigh of futility. “I’m telling you we’re in for a hard welcome,” she said, pulling on it all the same.
	“If it comes to that,” I answered, “I’m not sure that in this case obtaining his consent is the most important thing.”
	Aine nodded. “If he won’t save his own people, we should--”
	Wriana held up her hand suddenly and leant an ear toward the door. Listen.
	From behind the door we could hear feet scraping, sliding carpet, the muffled sounds of a struggle. 
	I rattled the door; it was massive, and the lock was heavy. If we burnt it down that would make it useless as a safe house. Istria, understanding what was needed without being told, knelt down to look through the keyhole. Metal slid back and forth inside the lock, and finally the latch clicked open.
	You’re good at this, Wriana observed.
	Istria shrugged, and pushed the door open.
	What we saw, as it swung in, was a man of about forty, hanging barely onto what must at one point have been rugged good looks--black waving hair, dark eyes, and a body still covered in muscle and strength. And also hanging onto a woman about fifteen years older, whose white dressing gown puddled on the flagstone floor of the entrance hall as his hands closed around her narrow neck.
	My fireball and Wriana’s left at the same time; Aine’s followed a second later, about twice the size and probably twice as hot. And he did jump back, opening his hands and letting the woman’s body crumple to the floor. But from the way her neck was bent as she lay there, and in those other ways you can tell, we knew we’ d entered too late.
	“Buile!” Wriana shouted, drawing her fire back with one hand. “What--what--what could possess you to do this?”
	Buile looked at the four of us, and started laughing.
	I knew that laugh.
	“Tabhair, mo sielnai!” I said, whipping out the cieridh.
	The four of them crackled into the air. I locked eyes and began the wrap.
	“Oh, I think not, Theamh,” said the man, his mouth curling in a cruel half-smile. And it was true, the wrap wasn’t working very well, even with Aine and Istria helping. “Anyhow, I was just leaving.”
	His eyes closed. I shot a beam with showdust at his head, but I only caught the tail end of a wisp of black and red as Lythril’s specter flashed through the air above our heads.
	“The door!” I shouted.
	Wriana went to it, but the wisp was quicker, and the door closed with Lythril outside it.
	“What...” Wriana began, looking at the lifeless body of the gray-haired woman.
	“Lythril,” I said.
	A cry from behind us let us know that Buile was back in control of his body, and disturbed by what he was looking at.
	“Buile?” Wriana said, trying to go from angry to gentle.
	Buile was now down on his hands and knees near the body of what I assumed was his wife. “Eble? Eble, are you all right? Chara?”
	His arms were shaking, his voice higher than it had been with a note of pleading. Istria crouched down by her to verify what we knew.
	“She’s gone,” Istria said, looking at him. And something suddenly fell into place.
	“You’re on the list,” she said, her voice cold.
	“What list?” Aine asked, Buile being too shattered to understand.
	“I didn’t recognize the used name,” Istria said. “Because it was all done through your wife.”
	“What was?” Wriana demanded.
	“One of the joint deals. Two at once, within one year and to neighboring families. And we couldn’t predict when that would be possible, so you’d have to be ready to go at any time.”
	Buile was looking at Istria with a horror that seemed to be entirely separate from whatever he was feeling about his murdered wife.
	“Oh no,” I said, suddenly getting it. “That’s why she knew his name.”
	“Hers too, of course,” Istria said. “But it was easier to kill her through you; and probably more fun for her.”
	“Someone explain this to me,” Wriana said, a warning note of anger in her voice.
	I sat down, unable to really believe this was happening. “Lythril overtook him in order to kill the woman,” I said. “She could easy have done it the other way round. The point was to kill somebody in this house.”
	This much Wriana understood. And Aine.
	“We can’t protect it now,” Aine said.
	“Not till a week’s gone by. And that’ll be too late.”
	“But how--” Wriana put in.
	“She--well, both of them, but as I said it was done through her--was one of Lythril’s clients,” Istria said. “You can see she’s getting older; she wanted them to come back, born at the same time. It was a complicated order, but Lythril likes a challenge; and she got a huge advance deposit on this particular commission.”
	Buile didn’t bother contradicting Istria. He sat like a stone block looking ahead of him and seeing nothing. 
	“Buile, did you know about this?” Wriana demanded. “Buile?”
	Buile nodded, still lost to us.
	Wriana shook her head. “Unbelievable,” she said. “You gave your names to a dark user.”
	Buile didn’t appear to be listening. Finally, he said, “Lythril breached her contract. Eble will be very angry, when she finds out.”
	“Buile...” Wriana began, but Buile was talking again.
	“I think it’s enforceable,” he was saying. “It’s not a blood bargain, after all. We’ll sue her for compliance. She’ll put it right.” He was saying this to the woman, who was paying no more heed than the dead usually do. “She’ll have to put it right, chara. Don’t worry. We’ll see to it.”
	<He’s stone cold crazy,> Aine said, looking at him in horror.
	Istria sat back on her haunches, disgusted with the world. “What are we going to do about him? Or her?”
	“More to the point,” I said, putting my hands through my hair, “what are we going to do when five hundred refugees show up at noon and there’s no safe house?”
	“There’s the inn...” Aine suggested.
	“We can’t fit them all in there even if we stack them,” I answered. “Idair’s teeth, I don’t believe it...after all our planning we’re still stuck here naked on the mountains while four hundred and ninety lurers come roaring out from the beyond--”
	“Four hundred and ninety lurers?”
	I remembered, as I looked at Wriana’s stricken face and heard her shriek echoing in the stone hall, that I had forgotten to tell her exactly what we were up against.
	“Seven seventies,” I said. “That’s what my informant told me.”
	Wriana went white, then started shaking, then sank to the floor whimpering.
	“Come on, Wriana.” I went to her to try to quell what was clearly a full-blown panic. “I know the odds aren’t good, but we’ll have to cleanse what we can and then--”
	“Four hundred?”
	“Closer to five, really,” Aine observed, meaning to be helpful. Wriana wailed, bringing  her fisted hands up to her chin and shuddering.
	“I can’t do it,” she whispered, her eyes white and terrified. “I can’t do it, I just can’t, it’s too damn much, I’ve had it--”
	“I know it’s a horrible thing to think about, but--”
	“I didn’t train for this,” she shouted, her voice quivering with anger, fear, panic. “You two deal with these creatures all the time, it’s all well for you, I’m not in possessions, I never wanted to be, I’m just a rainmaker, I can’t do this, I can’t do this!”
	“It’s suicide, I agree,” Istria said, “but all the same we have to--”
	“Wriana!” I interrupted, taking her by the shoulders. “You’re a rainmaker?”
	She was still rattling on. “I’m a rainmaker for Idair’s sake, I can’t fight these things, they’ll rip me to shreds, I’ll be a lamb at the shambles, I can’t fight four hundred and ninety thurking--”
	“Wriana,” I said, looking at her and trying to get through. “You won’t have to.”
	She blinked. “I won’t?”
	“You’re a rainmaker,” I repeated.
	“I am,” she said, her voice sounding small and frightened.
	“So make it rain.”
	She looked at me, still panicking but ready to stop if she had a reason.
	“Lurers hate water,” I said. 
	Wriana swallowed, and started slowly to get a grip on herself.
	“We need it by nightfall?”
	“Yes.”
	“I’ll need help,” she said.
	“Take Aine with you, it’ll do her good to see how it’s done.” Aine nodded. “You think you can do it, Wriana?”
	Wriana waited a minute, snuffled some tears back, and finally said, “Yes.”
	My sigh of relief was echoed by Istria and Aine. Wriana got unsteadily to her feet.
	“We need to get to the peak,” Wriana said to Aine.
	“I’m ready,” Aine answered.
	“Will you see to Eble?” Wriana said.
	“I will,” I answered. “And Buile, Idair help him.”
	Wriana left, Aine following. I looked at Istria across Eble’s dead body.
	“She’s shattered, Theamh,” Istria sighed. “No matter how normal she can seem.”
	“I know,” I said.
	“You take the woman out to the yard,” Istria said. “I’ll see what can be done with the madman.”
	
	I felt bad for not feeling more compassion toward Buile; after all, he had been through something as traumatic as what had happened to Keanrih. But then he had asked for it, in his way, and anyhow there were four hundred and ninety people to think about. 
	“I don’t get it,” I said. “I thought this lurer thing was Barant’s project.”
	“It probably is,” Istria said. “That doesn’t mean Lythril doesn’t want to see it completed. She’d like nothing better than to have us both ripped limb from limb; and if the plan goes through, Tifni will think she’s getting away with playing both sides. Whereas in reality Lythril is helping things along, thinking she can use this against Barant later. Because this is a whole lot worse than anything Lythril’s ever done. And if it were known, and the people had to choose between them...they’d pick Lythril. Idair knows I would.”
	Much as I hated to give Lythril credit, I realized Istria was right. “So Tifni is out here giving the word...thinking she’s subverting Lythril...and Lythril is out here killing people to make Tifni think she’s getting away with it...when all the while she’s probably planning to give Tifni the cut when she’s done with her...” I shook my head. “You see, this is why I stank at dubh solus. I’m no good with this moves-ahead thing.”
	Istria shook her head. “There’s more to victory than strategy,” she said. “And anyhow you know what you need to know to get the job done. The rest...this gameboard tarbhfnaa...well, Lythril loves it to death, but I got tired of it real fast.”
	We trudged back to the town square with Buile bawling all the way.
	“We may as well leave him in the inn,” I said. “It’s the one place where we know for sure it’s safe, and if we keep him wrapped he won’t get up to mischief.”
	Istria nodded, pushing the door open. “May as well; I’ll stay with him, you can go protect the other...oh, taim thurcte leis an forca na pioll!”
	They tell me that until I met Istria I was really rather temperate in my speech. “What is it?”
	She bent down. When she stood and turned to me, a freshly-killed mouse was dangling from her left hand.
	“Idair’s teeth,” I said.
	“It’s that bitch Tifni,” Istria said, throwing the mouse savagely through the doorway. “Taking care of business in her own inimitable way. She’s got a bunch of cats suborned and they’re going to kill mice in every house we go to until the sun goes down.” 
	“Just like my poor Eble,” mourned Buile.
	“Oh, you get in there and shut to hell up,” Istria said, pushing him through the doorway and propelling him into one of the chairs in the common room. “If you’d been content with one life like the rest of the world we wouldn’t be in this fix. Keep your mouth shut and your hands quiet or you’ll wish she’d taken you instead.”
	Istria shut the door. <Don’t worry, I’ve got a wrap on him. Won’t be hard to keep it up; he’s weak.>
	She leaned against the wall, facing me, and I imagine we both looked pretty depressed.
	“What are we going to do, Theamh? There could be ten, twelve cats in action around here and they can undo the work faster than we can do it.”
	She’d slipped into the second person plural again, but I didn’t want to correct her. “Nothing,” I said. And then, as something occurred to me, <Nothing. Let her keep at it.>
	<What do you mean?>
	<When it rains, as please Idair it will,> I said, <the lurers will want to get out of it. If the buildings are open, they’ll go in there because they’ll be dry. And as long as they’re inside, and we’re safe in the rain...it’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel.>
	Her eyes finally lit. <That’s it. That’s it, by Idair you’re a genius.>
	<Genuises live in the water, Istri.>
	She laughed. <Well, so will we. As long as Wriana comes through.>

	“All right, everyone,” Kevan said. “Are the runners to the hillsides back yet?”
	The clouds that were now massing in the late afternoon sky looked promising--dark, heavy, serious. Aine and Wriana were still on the peak. The refugees and the Volunteers were massed in the town square around a few old crates that had been upended into a platform from which Kevan could address the crowd.
	“We’re here,” a voice called out. “The word’s out to the few who stayed; everyone knows to come down here.”
	“So then,” he said. “I’m going to ask you to listen very carefully to Theamh ni hUlnach, because what she has to say will save all of your lives tonight.”
	He stepped down. I stepped up, swallowed, and wished my throat weren’t so dry.
	“Women and men,” I said. “I think Kevan has told you that we are expecting some trouble from the spirit world tonight.”
	There was a murmur of assent, with a current of anger running in it. These were all people who were tired of running from whatever the latest threat was. If gumption alone could do the job they would have beaten the lurers home through sheer force of will.
	“What he may not have told you,” I said, “is that all the protected houses have been polluted by minions of the Dark One. We’ve been trying to redo them but with them out there working against us it’s been impossible.” Before the dismay could crest into panic I went on. “We have a plan that we think will keep us all safe. I just want to explain because it’s a little counterintuitive...I mean, it goes against what we’re used to.”
	They waited for me to go on. Sonnia was the only one showing no signs of fear. Taric, who was sitting near her, was considerably more perturbed.
	“When I say trouble...I mean that we expect a large number of lurers.”
	I had braced myself for the reaction but it still swamped me. Kevan ended up having to stand up and holler for quiet. They obeyed him, though, which was a hopeful sign. People who have really lost it won’t be quiet for anyone.
	“I learned something on my trip north,” I said. “I learned it the hard way, but then that’s good because I know for sure it’s true. Lurers hate water. They’ll avoid it at all costs--even if it means releasing their prey.” I paused. <Aine, how’s it coming up there?>
	<Wriana says we’re done here. We’re coming down to you now.>
	“Wriana and Aine have been working all day to make rain,” I said. “If you look at the cloud cover above you you’ll see the results.” Their heads craned; and the sight of the darkening storm clouds seemed to appease them. “What I need you all to do...and this will be hard...but I need you to stay outside, where the rain is. Don’t run for cover, no matter what happens. Stay where the rain is heaviest. And stay there until we tell you the place is clear.” I saw people explaining this to their children, to people hard of hearing, to people who might not have gotten it the first time. “Are we all right? Any questions?”
	I shouldn’t have asked. I pointed to someone whose hand was up. “Yes?”
	“What do you mean, till the place is clear?”
	“What we hope is that when the rain breaks, the lurers will go into the buildings,” I said. “Aine and I will fire at them through windows and doors and we’ll get rid of them that way. It’ll take a while, but it should work.”
	Another hand. “What if it doesn’t rain?”
	“It better,” I said.
	“But if it doesn’t?”
	“Well,” I answered, “if it doesn’t, we can hope that I’m wrong about all this and actually there is no lurer attack planned.”
	“But if it doesn’t, and you are right after all?” the man pressed.
	“Then we’ll die trying to protect you,” I said.
	“And what happens after that?” he insisted.
	“Oh, leave it alone, Swon!” a woman near him shouted. “Shriia, never mind him, he’s only happy when everything’s miserable. We’ll do what you say,” she said. “It’s simple enough, isn’t it? Even Swon has enough sense not to come in out of the rain.”
	It was a laugh that was needed, and I was grateful to this woman for providing it. “Amuse yourselves however you want till sunset, but remember, when night falls you need to be outside on open ground where you’ll get rained on good and proper. Idair with us.”
	I made the sign of protection over them and clambered off the crates. The crowd began dispersing slowly, stopping for talk and clumping in groups. I took Kevan aside.
	“Kevan, while you were gone...Buile’s killed his wife. He was possessed by Lythril at the time...do something with him; we can’t be bothering. He’s in the inn.”
	Kevan, now no longer bothered so much by trifles like possession and murder, walked wearily off with some of the local gardai to attend to him. Sonnia came running to me and Istria. “Where’s Aine?”
	“She’s coming,” I said. “Listen, Sonnia...I know that in your heart you don’t believe that these things are really going to show up or that they’re really dangerous. I want you to promise me that you’ll follow my instructions anyway. All right?”
	Sonnia looked from my face to Istria, and deduced that we were serious.
	“All right,” she huffed. “But when I get pneumonia you better take care of me.”
	Whatever pneumonia was. “Sure,” I said.
	She wandered off back to Taric, who I was afraid she was starting to develop a crush on. Ah well, at least she was safe with him.
	“We’re back, dhiaoc,” Aine said, trotting into the square.
	She was covered in dust, splotched here and there with dirt, and had leaves sticking out of her hair, but she was happy as a child who’s been allowed to play in the mud. “This is fun, dhiaoc, I see why people go into it.”
	“It’s a lot of pressure,” I said. “If you don’t do it right...”
	Wriana, who had walked up after her, sighed. “Tell me about it.”
	“So,” I said. “Everything ready?”
	“It’s right at the burst point,” Wriana said, looking up critically at the darkening sky. “I’ll hold it off till it’s dark, like you said. But Theamh you have to understand...the timing cannot be exact.”
	“I know,” I answered. “But if we can wait until we see them in the distance...it’s better if they make the attempt and it fails. Then the bargain’s broken. If we start the rain now, they might not come, and then come again tomorrow when no one’s prepared.”
	We sat on the crates, facing different directions. The sun was sinking, slow but fast enough. In the twilight the clouds turned black-purple, and the light faded swiftly.
	Theamh...
	Wriana?
	I wanted to apologize for my...for breaking down like that, at the big house.
	Wriana, with what you’ve been through--
	She shifted, and her head voice sharpened. I don’t want pity.
	It’s not pity, it’s compassion, Istria answered. There is a difference.
	 Wriana was unconvinced. This is why I don’t want people to know.
	One reason, anyhow. Istria sighed and leaned back on the crate, propping herself up against me. I wish they would just come and get it over with, she said.
	It was dark enough now. Be careful what you wish for, I answered.
	“Dhiaoc,” Aine said, nervously.
	I swerved to see what she was pointing at. Off in the distance, where the road out of town disappeared behind a hill in the west, there was starting to be a faint yellow glow.
	“Fnaa,” I said, quietly. “Wriana, bring that rain down here.”
	Wriana jumped off the crates, ran to an open patch and began marking the star. Istria and I began walking, with Aine, toward the west, hoping that glow would move slowly.
	Behind us I heard Wriana start the song. The villagers were gathering around the star, watching her, their hopes bearing down on the clouds along with Wriana’s invocation. I supposed it couldn’t hurt.
	“Come on,” I said to myself as the glow ascended to the crest of the hill. “Come on, Idair, send it down...”
	The glow was coming toward us. Seven forms, each distinct but all with the faint nimbus of yellow. Dressed in white, walking toward us. And their feet were moving slowly, as if they were sleepwalking. But it seemed like they were moving awfully fast.
	“Just out of curiosity,” I said, as they got nearer and I crossed my arms in preparation, “who do they look like to you?”
	“My family,” Aine said.
	“Sinal, Mathi, Dohem, Larc, Merth...” Istria said, looking down the row. “And...Iandar’s trousers, there’s one looks like Morat.”
	“You think that’s a surprise,” I said. “The one on the left looks to me like Ulnach.”
	“Who’d have thought it,” Istria observed, wetting her dry lips and hoping for rain.
	“Mom!”
	This cry was from Sonnia, who had come up to see what we were looking at.
	“NO! No, Sonnia, get back here!”
	She had run past us, out toward whichever one it was that looked to her like Ustine. Taric ran after her, grabbing her by one arm and towing her back.
	“Let me go, damn it!”
	“That’s not your mother, Sonnia!” I shouted.
	“Let me go!”
	In a few minutes it wouldn’t matter whether he let her go or not. “Come on, Wriana, this is too thurking close...”
	We started recoiling as they advanced, Aine and I crouching with our hands on our shoulders ready to reveal. Taric was hauling Sonnia back, although moving more slowly than he might have. He was looking at them too. And I knew who he was seeing.
	“It’s not him, Taric...” I said.
	“Don’t I know it,” he answered, jerking Sonnia finally behind the line of defense that Aine, Istria and I were trying to set up.
	“My seanmathi, and Athi, and there’s Ethir,” I said, as the one on the right resolved itself into his shape. “Poor Ethir, he must have a lot of work on his hands...”
	We had backed into the square, and the things were on the road coming toward us. The townspeople behind us stared in fascination, knowing what they were but still fighting their pull.
	The one that looked like Ethir paused; the others stopped behind it.
	“I did try to work against it,” the thing said to me. 
	“For Idair’s sake, Wriana!” I shouted, as the wind rose.
	There was a rattling crack overhead.
	Wind lashed the falling rain into curtains that spun and slashed across the seven forms that had stopped in front of us. Before our eyes they began breaking up, shattering into uncountable fragments. But they weren’t flying at me, as they had that first time. They went streaming in a horde toward the inn, whose doors and windows we had left open.
	“YES!” I shouted, raising my fists to the sky. “THANK YOU!”
	Aine’s hands were up too, and Istria’s, as the long shout of relief rose from our throats. Wriana, still inside the star she’d drawn, was shouting along with us, face raised to the clouds above. Water streamed over her features, disappeared into her matted hair, rivered over her hreapa to puddle at her feet. And I saw that this was more than just relief at their passage and the knowledge that death wouldn’t take us all tonight. It was the rain itself. It was running for her, through her, pouring into her like strength, like love, like the milk of a mother. Warming her, nursing her, cold as it was.
	“Idair’s mercy,” Istria shouted. “I have never been this happy to see rain.”
	“All right, Aine!” I shouted, over the noise of falling drops. “Target practice!”
	We stationed ourselves at different windows, working from the same side of the building. “Keep count,” I said. “We need to account for four hundred and ninety.”
	Aine nodded. “I’ll keep track, you just make sure you don’t lose your place.”
	“Funny,” I said, and fired through the open window.
	It was, indeed, almost exactly like shooting fish in a barrel--if the fish had an unfortunate propensity to swim toward the arrows. I’d fire, and the lurer would make a rush for me, but the rain would stop it; I’d get in the second shot and he would be gone. This was a whole lot easier than doing it on the deck of that boat in the Tsraid--I almost felt bad for them all. They had come out expecting to bloat themselves at the kind of feast no lurer had ever had. And instead, they were just being hammered by me and Aine.
	“Don’t forget to pace yourself,” Istria said, watching as Aine started flinging bolts from both hands. “This is going to be a long job.”
	“Everyone’s a diaoc,” Aine murmured, firing away anyhow.
	“She’s right, Aine,” I said.
	Aine was reluctant to slow down, but she did. It was all right, because within about half an hour we had a hundred and twelve of them gone. The townspeople stayed far from the inn, most of them huddled in the square where the rain beat down on them hard and fast. Sonnia along with them, cowering now as if she really believed in danger.
	“I see the Cretid’s learning sense,” said Wriana, as she appeared behind me.
	“Fantastic job, Wriana,” I said. “You’ve saved this entire community from extinction.”
	She didn’t answer, except to say, “Can you move over? I’m out of practice and I need a wide berth.”
	“With pleasure.” I shifted down to one end of the window. “Let ‘em have it.”
	It moved faster with three of us. I was worried that they would flee the inn, but the rain kept up heavy and none of them felt like venturing into it. It was true, however, that after a while they figured out that in the second story they had better cover. By then we’d got rid of about three hundred, but a hundred and ninety is still a hell of a lot of lurer.
	I stepped back into the shower, looking up at the second-story windows. “They’ve figured out now to stay away from them,” I said. “I hate to say it, friends, but I think we’re going to have to go in after them.”
	Aine gulped, but she was ready. “Too bad we can’t take the rain in with us.”
	“Oh, we can,” Wriana answered.
	“What?” I asked.
	“I’ll just bring down a piece of the cloud and get it to hover over us. It’s no trouble.” I gaped at her. “Come on, Theamh, you think it takes two years of apprenticeship to learn how to remind Idair to change the seasons? We’ve got a bag of tricks too.” She raised her hands and began working. “Actually, this one was developed by your friend Harani, down in the Vicinity. She had some time on her hands one year...”
	I couldn’t believe it. There was an actual, honest-to-Idair, tiny little storm cloud dropping down from the sky toward us.
	Wriana laughed. “If you all keep gaping like that, you’ll drown.”
	It was a joke, but it was the truth, because now that the cloud was this close the rain fell so hard I could hardly see through it. “It’ll follow us?” I shouted.
	“It’ll follow me, anyhow,” Wriana said. “Come on, before it runs out.”
	Istria followed us to the door. <You don’t need to come,> I said.
	<I’m coming anyhow.>
	<Istri, you can’t protect yourself.>
	<So what. Either you’ll get rid of them, in which case I’ll be perfectly safe, or they’ll kill you, in which case I want to go with you.>
	<Istri-->
	<Get used to this now,> she said, as Wriana led us into the hallway. <If you’re in danger, I’m going to share it. Try to argue and you know where you’ll get.>
	I did indeed. The cloud ducked under the lintel and, amazingly, followed us up the steps, shedding water all the way. Whoever owned the inn was probably going to be unhappy about all the water damage; but property’s one thing and life’s another.
	When we got to the second story we saw them buzzing around like a hive full of unhappy bees. “All right, Aine, we have to stick by Wriana,” I shouted. “I know it seems easy now, but believe me if they get you in the open you’ll be dead in ten minutes. So we move together.” Aine nodded. “All right then. Fire at will.”
	Volleys burst forth, and lurers started disappearing. Since our cloud stored a limited amount of rain, speed was suddenly important, and we were all three dealing it out with both hands. I didn’t have time to watch what Istria was up to, but I could tell, in the moments when I could spare the energy to pay attention, that she was angry at being reduced to spectating. It bothered her, a lot, not to have her fire at a time like this.
	And it would have been handy, because even with three of us it took a while. We couldn’t split up, which meant we had to do a lot of fruitless chasing from room to room as the lurers fled before us. But after nailing twenty-three in the first guest room, thirty-two in the second, a further sixty-one in the remaining rooms, and fifty-nine in the upstairs common room, we treed the last twenty-four in the washroom.
	We were all soaked, even me and Wriana--at this range, the hreapa didn’t keep the water from running inside and drenching the shift and everything under it. And tiring out, even though none of us had had to reveal yet. Fifteen were dispatched with relative ease, but that left a lot more room for the remaining ten, which bobbed and weaved maddeningly as we shot at them. Finally all ten of them ducked out of the washroom into the hallway, something that made Aine practically weep with frustration.
	“Dhiaoc, they’re running off again...”
	I looked up at the cloud. It was a lot thinner now, and I had the idea that the rain was falling more softly.
	“Wriana is it my imagination or...”
	“No,” Wriana said, looking up too. “We have five minutes left, if that.”
	“Fnaa,” I answered.
	Istria suddenly leapt into the tub, which was empty now; Aine must have remembered to drain it.
	“Istri--” I shouted, running toward her and bringing Wriana.
	“No!” she said. “You stand by the tap.”
	Realizing what she was up to, I brought Wriana around to where the tap was. The lurers, finally noticing that Istria was out in the open unprotected, streamed in from their hiding places and fastened onto her.
	Istria has been through a lot, but even she couldn’t sit quiet with ten lurers biting into her. “FNAA! Turn the tap, turn the thurking tap!”
	I was already on it. A torrent of water gushed out over Istria’s writhing form. The lurers shot into the air above the tub, where Aine and Wriana began picking them off.
	“Ten...nine...eight seven six...” Aine was counting down for us as they disappeared. Istria poked her head cautiously out of the tub, keeping the rest of her submerged. I took out the next one that dove for her. “Five...four...three two...” A bolt from me sizzled against the last one, sending it home. “One...and none.”
	The last drops fell out of our cloud, which was now nothing but a memory and a huge puddle. I switched the tap off. We listened. There was nothing around us--nothing but the sound of water sloshing as a soaked Istria stood up and splashed out of the tub.
	“Four hundred and ninety,” Aine said, leaning on the tub and breathing hard. “Four hundred and ninety...Idair’s mercy, they’re gone.”
	We slogged down the steps, which were slippery with the water. And over the flooded hallway and out the door, where we faced a crowd of huddled, wet, anxious people waiting for the word. Waiting from as far away as they could get.
	As soon as we were through the door I raised my hands in victory. The hopeful gasp from the crowd was audible even from this distance and through the rain, which out here was falling as hard and fast as ever.
	“They’re gone!” I shouted. “They’re back in the ether! It’s all right!”
	Relief rose up from them like a sigh, like a shout, like any number of things. We were closer now, and I could see Sonnia, huddled under a blanket with the boy who’d insulted her. And Kevan, standing there with his thinning hair plastered over his head, looking like a death sentence had been lifted off him. Which, I guess, it had.
	“We can go home now, shriia?” he asked.
	“Yes, Kevan,” I said. “Yes. You can go home.”
	“People!” he shouted, hopping up on the crates. “We can go home!”
	Shouting, laughing, giddy with the relief they felt, people began breaking up, streaming in hurried steps down the roads that led home. Kevan came over to thank us, standing there inarticulate with gratitude until Wriana finally said, “Tell you what, Kevan, I’ll see you and whoever wants to do this with you out here at noon tomorrow and you can make the formal speech. Will you like that?”
	“Yes, shriia,” he said, nodding gratefully. “I--my family’s wet and cold, and--”
	“I know,” Wriana said, with a smile. “Go on home, Kevan, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
	It was amazing to me that the square had emptied out as fast as it did. But there it was, just the four of us and the rain. Still pounding down on the earth.
	“Idair’s hair and eyebrows,” I said, beginning to feel the elation. “We did it, we stood against them. Four of us and Idair against four hundred and ninety lurers.”
	“Three,” Istria said, a little gloomy.
	“Four, damn it,” I said, putting an arm around her shoulders. “You fought with us. It’s your victory too.” Aine nodded, as fierce now in her loyalty to Istria as she had been in her anger against her. “And yours too, Aine. Your first firefight! Idair’s really throwing you in at the deep end.”
	“And why not?” Istria reached out to grapple Aine. “Be proud of it, Aine, it shows you’re something special to her. At least that’s the color we always tried to put on it.”
	Aine let herself be drawn in, her pleasure at having done good and done well breaking down her shyness. Wriana was still looking up at the rain, and her face was lightening into something almost like rapture.
	“Wriana!” We slipped through the mud toward her. “And here you were saying you couldn’t do it!”
	She looked back at us with eyes that seemed like those of a woman ten years younger. “I did all right against them, didn’t I?”
	“Not bad for a rainmaker,” Istria said with a smile.
	“Understatement?” Aine queried.
	“You bet your gleacha,” I said, throwing an arm around Wriana.
	And there we were, laughing and crying at the same time while the rain streamed over us, shivering with cold but not minding it, not even really wanting to come in out of it, glad the rain was falling and the night was clean and we were all still alive.
	“Name of the spirit,” Wriana cried, standing back from the rest of us and throwing her arms out. “Idair be thanked for it...” She raised her face to the rain, her body seeming to vibrate and merge with it. “Thank Idair, thank Idair for a good storm and strong friends, for fire and water...” It seemed maybe like she was crying, although with all that water who could tell. “Idair, mo hIdair, thank you, for the land and the rain and the work!”
	We stood around her, a little distance away now, watching Wriana and the rain.
	When she turned to us it was with a laugh that was more than a laugh--a language, almost, something spoken from the heart through the whole body.
	“I’m going to make it,” she said, now for sure adding tears to the water running down her face. “I’ll be all right. Idair and the world are still with us, and someday...someday...I’ll be whole again.”
	Istria went to her and hugged her with more emotion than I’d seen her show to anyone but me.
	“You will,” she said. “You will, we all will.”
	“You know what I just thought,” I said, when I felt like someone had to break the mood.
	“What?” Istria asked, releasing Wriana.
	“Tifni had to be out here, somewhere, to give the signal,” I said. “Which means that wherever she is, she’s really, really wet.”
	“Good!” Istria’s laugh rang out. “I hope she gets sick.”
	“Speaking of which,” Aine ventured. “How about finding Dahern’s house?”
	“Come on then,” Wriana said. 
	
	Dahern’s house was in the woods, protected by a shield that still seemed to be whole and unbreached. It would of course have been safe from the lurers, but it was far too small for five hundred people. But it was dry, and had a fireplace we could put some flame into. We got Wriana undone again, with a little coaxing, and installed in front of the fire with Aine, wrapped in blankets and drying their clothes by the fire.
	“You’ll remember to take it back before you go to bed,” I said.
	“I will, Theamh,” Aine answered, turning her wet head. “You go on. I’ll stay by Wriana...that is...unless you object,” she said, glancing back at her with a little of that diffidence. Wriana was, after all, older than me, and looked a little more severe.
	“No objections,” Wriana said, looking from Aine’s face to the fire. “It’s kind of you to look after me...”
	Seeing that it pained Wriana to be looked after, Aine said, “The favor is for me...Theamh’s taught me nothing about rainmaking, and you must know so much.”
	Wriana looked at her a little skeptically. “Are you really interested in it?”
	“Of course you are right,” Aine said, looking down. “I am trying to make you feel better. But all the same I am interested. I’m from Jipran, you know.”
	Wriana seemed to perk up. “Ah, that would explain it. I have to tell you, the history of shri is littered with the bones of women who have faced the monster that is Jiprani weather. It’s the most intractable stuff in the country, unless you count the mess that hovers over the Kengdan bogs. I had a colleague out in north Jipran, she’s dead now, but she spent years trying to work on those offshore storms you lose so many people in...”
	Aine drew closer to listen. I watched her for a little while, choking up some.
	<I’m just so proud of her, Istri,> I said.
	<And well you should be,> Istria answered, putting an arm around my waist. <I’m proud of you too, chara. And...>
	We looked at each other, and we left the room. 
	Istria and I went upstairs a little faster maybe than we might have, and found Dahern’s room. Wriana and Aine had already called the guest room, which had two separate beds and a second little fireplace.
	Istria shut the door. I went to the western window and started undoing.
	“Listen,” I said, as I undid the last brooch. “You can still--”
	Istria’s arms took me from behind. I felt her cheek next to mine and her breath in my ear as she said it for me. “You can still hear the rain.”
	It was coming down on the roof now, not as hard as before but just as steady. It was a rustle, a kind of pattering sigh, gently troubled like the one I gave as her mouth roamed over my neck and the warmth of her arms and the body pressed against mine began to soak through my clammy wet shift.
	I turned in her arms and brought her mouth to mine. I’m wet through, I said.
	So am I.
	I reached blindly for her shirt as we stumbled backward. The buttons were slippery with the moisture and my hands were trying to work them too fast. Istria was making more progress, hiking the skirt of my shift up over my hips. Having her hands moving over my shivering gleacha didn’t help my concentration or dexterity.
	Istri
	spirit and body
	how attached are you to these buttons
	what do you
	for instance if I just rip this open, will you miss them
	here, let me
	I drew back and pulled my wet shift over my head. Istria went to work on her own buttons, smiling a little.
	You look good wet, I said.
	Because she did. Water made her dark hair darker, sleek and hugging the shape of her head and neck; her shirt clung to her and now even her trousers were so thoroughly soaked that I could practically see her through them. Her bare feet glistened with the water dripping from the cuffs at her ankles. As she opened the two halves of her shirt little rivulets ran from the mass of her wet hair over her white shoulders and spread into tiny silent tributaries over the slopes of her breasts.
	My head bent and I was drinking the water she ran with, tracing the rivers up, around, over and under the changing contours of her breast, following them up to her shoulders and the sides of her neck. The rose shook out of her wet hair as her neck arched to open new angles to my still-seeking mouth. 
	it’s a gift isn’t it
	what is
	the rain
	for them and
	for us too
	Her mouth went to mine as she drew me closer, her breast warming mine. I backed abruptly into the bed, sitting down on it rather suddenly. We laughed for a moment at this unexpected shift in position, but before I stood up again she had followed me, straddling my hips as she knelt on the bed, holding my head just under the curve of her breast where her breath spoke through skin bone and flesh to me.
	it’s a bed, Istri
	I know
	what is this, the first time
	first time together, anyhow
	there was that
	in the Cretid hotel but
	you weren’t sleeping then
	well I’m not sleeping now
	I’m glad
	and I won’t be
	it’s funny how
	not for a while anyway
	I’m not tired
	it’s one long miracle, is what it is
	Wet denim wrapped around my legs as we fell backward, leaving odd-shaped watermarks on the coverlet everywhere we went--the back of her wet head, the back of mine, the double triangle of my damp breast, surrounded by the elliptical impressions of her wet knees and the heels of her hands as she crouched over me, brushing my bare back with her warm mouth and the cool soft touch of her breasts.
	one long miracle
	I love you Istri
	not more than I love you
	I took one of her hands in my mouth. The other slid between me and the bed, under my breasts and my trembling stomach to the triangle.
	your hands
	your mouth
	everywhere
	everywhere
	Then the sheets took the forked imprint of her sodden trousers as I waged one more battle with Cretid fastenings, shaking my hair over her naked chest as my mouth traveled up to the soft circle around her nipple and one hand finally dragged down the handle attached to the toothed thing that kept her trousers together, running under the damp cloth to a warmer wet beneath.
	my heart
	my breath
	my love
	my name
	The rain was still shaking the house and we shook with it, hearts beating hard and fast against each other, riding the current of passion, need, desire, love, running with rain, from chill to warmth, over the falls into the whirlpool, straining against each other on a borrowed bed with Istria’s wet trousers still clinging to her legs and the rain covering we hoped the sounds we couldn’t help voicing.
	Theamh
	Istri
	you were beautiful out there
	you too
	what was it you said
	when
	about standing there, with tears in your eyes
	it’s true, I did that
	so did I
	And then somehow she worked herself loose from the denim and I tugged the trousers off her, tossing them onto the floor somewhere. I slid up over her bare legs to wrap my arms around her naked hips, nosing against the gentle swell of her belly, ready to cry just with amazement.
	I meant what I said to her
	Theamh
	I mean to you
	really
	beauty that would stop your heart
	is it me
	yes it is
	Her legs were moving slowly, opening a furrow into which I dropped, running my mouth along the inside of one of thigh, keeping my grip on her gleacha. I was a little frightened at being so close to what was still a new smell and a strange warmth, breathing almost on her other heart. 
	Her knees rose and fell; my arms tightened around her thighs. A shuddering voiced sigh from above got me over the last bit of nerves.
	you are beautiful, Istri
	Theamh
	is it all right if
	yes
	There were ways in which the place was still unfamiliar, and a little daunting. But I knew the instant my tongue found her. Knew she was there at the red heart I was reaching into, knew we were both there, getting past skin, past sight, into a language beyond language. And knew I wanted to be there, forever was too much maybe but at least for a good long while. 
	The taste was like nothing else, hard to place or even describe--independent from all the smells that came with it. Then as now it was so definite, so unmistakable when I had my mouth on it...and yet it fades so quick into nothing when I sit here trying to tell you, whoever you are, whoever Idair wants this to go out to, what it was. I can say it was unlike anything, unless you could say it was the taste of well water--clean, bright, elusive and unseizable but with a hint of the earth in it. But then that’s not right either, well water tastes different, that’s more like a picture of it than a true sense of the taste. I don’t think there is a way to tell it really, Idair could maybe do it but then of course she never tried, and who am I, still stumbling along through a landscape that’s new to me, learning more than anything else how much my senses still have to learn.
	Istri
	yes
	are you all right
	yes	Theamh
	yes
	are you   do you
	yes
	like it too
	oh yes
	To be speaking that way, wet to wet, mouth to heart, my mind making words out of what my mouth was doing, trying to do anyhow, down there where her pulse ran warm tender wet...I could never have asked for it, I could never have imagined myself into this.
	ainm na ghaist
	you all right Istri
	yes
	I wouldn’t have kept asking, only her body breath and voice were shuddering in ways they hadn’t before, and much as I thought I knew why I needed to be sure. 
	I just don’t want to
	I know
	I’ll stop 
	no don’t
	I mean asking you if it’s
	no I know
	what do you mean
	keep asking
	really
	I like saying yes
	so do I
	Theamh
	yes
	can I
	yes
	The story of sex, told by someone honest. And because I am honest, I have to say that there was a certain amount of fumbling, and confusion, and muttered consultation about who would go where. And I have also to say that by that time I was starting to be aware of the damp sheets around me and the cold air and the water drops splashing from her hair onto my thighs. But I also have to say that once her mouth got to me I pretty much stopped noticing all that.
	Theamh
	yes
	all right
	yes
	More than all right. Something I couldn’t have imagined, an unexpected gift out of the mysterious nowhere, this sudden warm world bathing me, loosening what was left to loosen--dissolution, melt, somewhere finally I could run into as a river...
	Theamh
	chara
	you’re crying
	so what if I am
	all right then let’s talk about the weather
	And I wanted to laugh, brought back to that memory of meeting her, sitting by her bedside talking her out of nightmare and never imagining what would come of it, that so many years later I would be unlearning embarrassment and diffidence and the fear of desire here among these damp rumpling sheets...but my breath was being used other ways, and anyhow this was not a thing to laugh at, at least it wasn’t at that moment, finding out as I was how I would come to love this hard-won long moment of release.
	I can’t believe it
	I know
	to think it took me
	Istri
	a whole month of scoil before 
	chara
	I spoke to you and
	mo ghra
	even then if you hadn’t
	Istri, I would have
	spoken first I don’t know if I’d have had the nerve
	I’d noticed you
	I love you
	not more than I love you
	The rain kept up steady on the roof. And I thought maybe we would outrun it, our river carrying us all the way through night and rain into the dripping cold dawn, one after the other of us, now her and now me flowing out, saying yes, tumbling in the current. But Wriana had set her mind on an all-night storm, and when finally we were lying still except for our hearts and lungs as our bodies sank toward sleep, the rain, finer now and softer, still ran in its whisper around us.
	“Ah Theamh,” she said. “Spirits and mortals, who knew.”
	“I know,” I answered.
	“And it’s so...” Her arms tightened around me. “It’s...I don’t want you to misunderstand, I just feel like I have to say...”
	“Say it,” I said, a little alarmed. “If you didn’t--”
	“No, Theamh, wait and listen,” she said, gentle but still anxious. “I loved it...there are so many reasons but one of them’s...one of them’s that...” Finally she got to it. “It’s so...the exact opposite of...of what...”
	She was still ashamed speaking of it. I tried to bring her in even closer so she would know she didn’t have to be.
	“I’m glad for it,” I said.
	“I don’t want you to think that anything else, with you is--any way like it--only--”
	“I know, chara.”
	“You know?”
	“I know.”
	I knew that context is everything and that to have my hand there was three million kinds of different from those old memories of being grabbed and groped and held against her will. I also knew that it was a great thing for her to realize that there was so much that he could never have thought to do, that we would find ways of being that bore not even the resemblance of coincidence to all that history, that love knows what power doesn’t and that in the end love beats anger, hatred, cruelty.
	We lay like that until we weren’t thinking of such heavy things any more.
	“It is a good thing we never did this, before,” Istria said. “The Council would have had to kill me to get me away from you.”
	“Let’s never go away from each other any more,” I said, holding onto her.
	“All right, let’s.”
	“Beds are good,” I said.
	“Except now the bed’s wet,” Istria said, still happy as she nestled against me.
	“Ah, I’ll take care of it.” I got up on my hands and knees and ran some fire above the sheets, watching the damp steam out of them.
	Istria watched the firelight playing over me without a word. And then, just as I was taking it back, she let out a sob.
	“Istri?” I drew back to her, pulling the covers over us. “Istri, chara, what is it?”
	“I want it back,” she cried, shutting her eyes as her head came to rest on my shoulder. “Theamh, I want it back.”
	I hugged her to me. “If you want it, then I bet you can have it,” I said.
	“But with what I’ve done...”
	“It’s what you’ll do that matters to her,” I said. “She said, all that matters is if you really want to be a shriia again.”
	“I do,” she wept. “I can’t stand not being able to help...and I miss fire, and...and...” she went on. “And I miss her.”
	I pulled her in closer. “Oh Istri,” I said, on the point of crying myself. “She’s good to us, Istri, she won’t let you miss her long.”
	“You think so?”
	“I think so.”
	She settled back onto the bed, still snuffling a little. “Well, you’re the shriia,” she said, closing her eyes. “You must know.”
	“We’ll hope I do,” I said.
	I closed my eyes, giving myself up to the dark and the touch of her body on mine and the gentle fall of the rain.
	“Idair’s tears,” Istria murmured.
	“What?”
	“This kind of rain...Idair’s tears...we call it...”
	She had reasons enough to shed them. Tears of anger, tears of compassion, tears of love, maybe even the tears of joy, for the saved of Slieve, for the confusion of Lythril and Barant, for Aine, for Wriana, for Istria, for me.

XIII.
Strange Fruit

	 “Look, Kevan, not to make much of myself or little of you, but I’ve saved towns before. I don’t think Wriana ever has. You can do us both a great service by thanking her instead of me. Idair knows she’s earned it.”
	Kevan  looked disappointed. “But you were the one who discovered the plot...”
	“Which does not change the fact,” I said, “that I cannot make rain. And if Wriana hadn’t been able to, we would all probably be dead. Take that as your text, friend.”
	“All right, shriia,” he said. “But you will stay, won’t you?”
	I looked up at the sun, which was rising toward the noon point. We were in an awful hurry...but someday things would be back to normal, and then I would regret having offended all of these people by skipping out on their gratitude ceremony.
	“We’ll stay,” I said. “After all we need to do some thanking too.”
	Kevan seemed happy with this. I left him there with the town’s elders and went back to interrupt whatever altercation had now broken out between Taric and Sonnia.
	“So it is the simplest job,” Taric insisted, while Istria gritted her teeth and Aine sighed. “I don’t see what you have to complain of. Every trap needs bait.”
	“Well I don’t like being the bait!” Sonnia snapped.
	“I know it’s dangerous,” Aine said. “But we explained this all to you before we came out here. You knew it would be dangerous. You agreed to come along.”
	Sonnia appealed to me as I sat down. “I don’t want to be the bait!”
	“Taric’s turn of phrase aside,” I said, “you would be in danger under any circumstances on this journey. Even if we gave you a shield you’d stand out like an ox in clover. You will actually be safer this way.”
	“You’re not going to tell me this is safe,” Sonnia insisted.
	“I didn’t say safe. I said saf-er.”
	Istria sighed. “Sonnia, at least this way we can help when you’re attacked. If we were traveling together they’d ambush us all at once and we’d end up captive or dead.” Sonnia shook her head. “We’re all running the risk with you, and the three of us are pledged to save life or die trying. You’ll be as safe as you can be in a situation like this.”
	Sonnia looked around at us and evidently decided to concede the point. “But...I mean...this projection stuff...does it hurt?”
	“It doesn’t hurt if it’s done right,” I said. “And Istria does it right. I’ve had her in me a hundred times and...all right, get your mind out of the gutter.”
	“I didn’t say a thing!” Sonnia protested.
	Aine had gone bright red again, and even Istria was blushing. Taric didn’t seem to have picked up on the overtones. Well enough.
	“What I mean is,” I said, “we used to practice projection on each other in scoil. She is good at it. Besides, she’s the only one who knows how to get there from here; and you won’t be able to follow her because she’ll be invisible.”
	“It’s perfectly all right, Sonnia,” Aine assured her. “It’s not like possession. You can take control back whenever you want.”
	“But will you be able to link with her?” Taric said. “Since she’s a Cretid and all?”
	Istria nodded. “I’ve done it before. You can make the link and project through it; somehow the body responds better than the mind does. Even after you link they still can’t use the damn thing, or make head or tail of what you send them.”
	Our attention was diverted by raised voices over by the entrance to the inn. Swon, the village innkeeper, was arguing vociferously with Kevan.
	“...which we just had redone not two months ago!” Swon was shouting. “The stairs are warped--rugs ruined--and the bedding--feathers don’t dry out, ever--”
	“I’m sorry for your losses, Swon,” Kevan said. “I’m sure that if you take up a collection from the townspeople--”
	“Collection nothing! This is negligence, that’s all it is--they knew what they were planning, they could have chosen another building--”
	Wriana, who had been chatting with the small children of a family that had stopped to thank her, approached the two of them. “So, Swon, you’re the innkeeper?”
	Swon was momentarily abashed, but recovered. “It’s not fair. Why my inn?”
	“Because it was roomy and we left the windows open,” Wriana said.
	“You left the windows open?” Swon demanded.
	“Of course we left the windows open,” Wriana said. “Otherwise they wouldn’t have gone in there.”
	Swon gaped at her in outrage. Finally, he said, “I want my rights and I’ll have them. I’m owed compensation.”
	“Mac na mhada,” I said walking over to them.
	“Swon, be reasonable,” Kevan said. “A building can be repaired. Life--”
	“I’m owed compensation! This is negligence, if not downright tortious--”
	“I’m so sorry, shriia,” Kevan interposed, turning to Wriana, who looked more amused than angry. “Every town has one of these litigious people--Swon’s ours--”
	“I’ve been injured and I’m owed remedy!” Swon insisted, his voice rising. “Negligent infliction of emotional distress--I could get double compensation--”
	“From who?” I was no longer able to restrain myself. “We’re shriias. We have no assets. And you can’t get double compensation for property damage, that was established in Leiks versus--”
	“Someone’s going to pay for all this!” Swon cried, his voice almost at a shriek.
	I heard a hiss behind me, and turned around to discover that Istria had followed me over, and was angrier than three of me put together.
	“Listen here, you little fusspot,” Istria said, through some miracle of intimidation managing to shut him up just by staring at him. “Four hundred and ninety people are not dead who might have been, and your inn has sustained some water damage. Now we think that’s a good bargain, because shri values life and despises property. If you value property that highly, then throw in with the Dark One’s minions if you haven’t already.”
	 “Now, Istri--” I said, feeling she was going too far.
	“Don’t now Istri me,” she went on, working herself up into her high anger. “The hand of death passes over this valley without crushing us and this unutterable capallgleach is worried about his rugs. Oh sure, you laugh, but it’s little ratbastards like him that keep Lythril in business,” she said, turning a pair of burning eyes back from me to Swon. “You mean-minded, shrunken-hearted, gall-veined, dishrag-zazbed goldeating son of a dragon’s bitch--thinking you’re the cat’s tailtip when you’re nothing but a greedbloated snake dragging its purulent gleacha through the sulphurous morass of your own stinking--”
	“Istri--”
	“Please, shriia,” Kevan put in. “Let her finish.”
	Emboldened, Istria shifted to Amstic. By now a small crowd had gathered around us, and were getting the story from Kevan. And I could see they were settling back with delighted pleasure to watch her go. Aine had now come over to see what the fuss was.
	<I understand she’s angry,> Aine finally said, as a minute or two went by without any letup in the fluent stream of cursing. <But really-->
	I shook my head. <Cursing is kind of an Amstian art form,> I said. <It’s hard to understand, but they really seem to enjoy and appreciate it, the way other people appreciate a well-turned poem. Look at them--this is the most fun they’ve had in weeks.>
	It was true--if they’d been watching tumblers or a traveling player troupe they couldn’t have been any better entertained. Especially when Swon finally got his tongue back and started sparring back in Amstic.
	<What’s he saying?> Aine finally asked me, drawn in in spite of herself.
	<I think he’s saying that a woman with a bitter tongue is like a...I don’t know, some kind of animal I think, only when it’s insane.>
	<What’s she saying now?>
	<She’s saying...sorry, I lost it...>
	<What’s he-->
	<I think that was something along the lines of ‘I vomit upon your bilious execrations...’>
	<Well, and what’s she-->
	<She says...> The crowd burst into laughter; I got it a second later. <She says she has no fear of that; he’s too cheap to waste a perfectly good meal.>
	This appeared to be the crowning blow; the audience cheered for it, and even Swon stopped for a moment, impressed.
	“Advantage to Istria,” Kevan said. “Come on and make it up then, Swon.”
	To my surprise, and to Aine’s utter bafflement, Swon advanced on Istria with what appeared to be a genuine smile, and bowed at her. “I surrender conditionally, daughter of Ancinte. I’ll undertake to learn gratitude if you’ll undertake to learn temperance.”
	She laughed. “You’ve little enough harm in you, after all,” Istria said, bowing. “Strike and be friends and let’s have no more lawyer talk.”
	Istria put out a hand, which he grasped for a moment. The crowd cheered for both of them, it seemed, and Swon went back to the work of cleaning out the inn, pausing on the way to bow at Wriana. “We are all grateful to you, shriia. Please forget what I said.”
	“I can’t promise to forget, but I’ll forgive,” she said.
	“Fair enough,” he answered, ducking into the building.
	“Well, Istri,” I said, watching him go. “You fixed his wagon right enough.”
	She looked at me, and I saw that this meant something. To be back in Amst where she could use this talent that she’d had to let rust on the shelf once she got to the city, and becoming part of this town for a little while anyway, in an idiom they understood--odd as it seemed to me and Aine, this was part of her coming home.
	“He was a good sport,” Istria said, pushing her hair back. “He knew he was in the wrong. Shaming people out of their small meannesses and into something better--that’s what cursing is all about,” she said, dusting her hands off.
	“Well...so what now?”
	“You better go over things with Taric and Aine,” she said. “Meanwhile I need to find someone’s hat so I can take up a collection for the little bastard’s repairs.”
	She trotted off. I watched her talking to some of the villagers.
	“Fish do better in water,” Aine finally said.
	I looked back at her, quietly amazed.
	Aine, not understanding why that affected me, said diffidently, “It’s just a Jiprani expression...”
	“It’s more,” I said.
	“Dhiaoc?”
	“I don’t know, Aine...do you think I could live in a place like this?”
	Aine considered it seriously, understanding now why I was asking. “It would stop you having to go any more dinner parties,” she finally said. “Beyond that...it’s hard to say.” She looked at me, her brow furrowing in that little frown of concentration she had. “You’ll always be City, dhiaoc...but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t belong to the country. I’ve thought sometimes, you know...that maybe Idair should have put you with some family out in Jipran, where you would have been poorer but you might have been happy.”
	“I take that for the compliment it is, Aine,” I said, seriously.
	She looked down, and then back up to break the moment. “Let’s go over it one more time with them, dhiaoc, Taric’s not a fast thinker.”
	We walked back to Taric and Sonnia, and to a bag full of nothing on which our future survival would depend.

	I had not wanted it to be afternoon by the time we left, but it was. What with the ceremony and linking with Wriana and saying goodbye to everyone, and then checking in with the Volunteers at the cordon, it was already late in the day when we put on the shields and started forward into enemy territory.
	Sonnia was the only one visible. Istria moved her feet, so she was able to keep her from making especially gratuitous noises; but Istria couldn’t afford to be finessing her entire body, and it was clear that we would have no trouble attracting attention.
	And truth be told I was not exactly silent as the wind myself, because I was not used to being invisible. It’s a handy skill to have and a lot of shriias avail themselves of it liberally, but I am hopeless with a shield and gave up on it early. It took a long time to get used to not being able to see my body. It disorients you more than you think it would. You look down and instead of your feet you see the ground, only it ripples like the air above a hot grill. That makes you nauseous, so you look out; but without those little peripheral clues you’re used to you lose your sense of where you are in relationship to the rest of the world. Never mind trying to make sure you know where your three invisible friends are. I had no idea where Taric was; he was ranging wide, as we had planned. Aine, Istria and I were behind Sonnia, deployed in an arc, waiting to see her ambushed.
	Istria had told us that it would probably be a single soldier. The army would be scattered throughout the landscape, in cover; every soldier would have four or five others within easy reach and about twenty that could be there in ten minutes. But if they didn’t think they needed more than one--and Sonnia was after all a fifteen-year-old Cretid--they wouldn’t send more. So taking the one who came for her might be easy enough. It was after that things would get complicated.
	<You don’t suppose they’d just...shoot to kill first, and-->
	<Oh no,> Istria answered. <They’ll want to see what they can find out from her. Especially her being as strange as she is--if they don’t know who she is, they’ll be mighty puzzled as to where she comes from, and if they do, they’ll know we’re around here somewhere. I don’t see them passing up the chance to interrogate her.>
	Sonnia picked her way nervously through the moss and needles carpeting the slope we were descending. We were still up in the mountains, where the trees were mostly pines. The forest was lively enough, with the birds talking about the nip in the air and mapping out routes to the south. I was trying to listen for other human minds, although Istria had told me not to bother; they teach the soldiers how to mask.
	<Dhiaoc!>
	It happened so fast I was at first not sure that what I was looking at was really happening. But suddenly instead of just Sonnia there was one of those tunic-clad silent soldiers there in front of her drawing his dagger.
	Sonnia froze in her tracks, raising her hands in surrender. “Please don’t hurt me...”
	The three of us were stalking forward, keeping silent as we could. The man with the dagger said, “Turn around.”
	Sonnia obeyed.
	“Drop your arms.”
	She seemed very puzzled by this command, but she did it anyway. He wrapped a rope around one of her wrists and tugged it behind her back, reaching for the other.
	“I’m not doing anyone harm...what do you want me for?”
	I don’t think he would have answered her, but in any case he didn’t have the chance. He careened backward suddenly, landing in the needles as Taric worked on him.
	The three of us ran forward. Aine and Istria dropped their shields in an instant; I got stuck in mine.
	<Istri, dammit-->
	<Don’t struggle, you’ll tear it. Here.>
	She got me out of it, but the delay hurt us. I could hear the others coming for us, and I hadn’t even got my vigils out.
	<Thurk it,> Istria said, looking into the distance. <Ring us.>
	I shot fire into a circle around us. The flames leapt scorching toward the branches above us, six feet high and blistering. 
	“Tabhair, mo sielnai!”
	They leapt into the air as if they understood the urgency. The boy was flat in the needles, arms pinned behind him, head twisted to one side. I ran toward him and collided with Taric.
	“Shriia--”
	“Damn, I’m sorry.” I knelt down near his head and went in.
	“God almighty!”
	This was from Sonnia. She had noticed that arrows were now flying over the circle above us. Prudently, she dropped to the ground, which brought her near the hottest part of the flame. But that was where it was safest; the arrowshafts would burn up on their way in, and the heads, once denuded, tended to plummet like the rocks they were. Where, unfortunately, they were hot enough to ignite the needles.
	By the time I found the arani there were a number of little fires burning inside the circle. Aine was doing her best to draw them, but she hadn’t had much practice yet and the best she could do was keep it from spreading.
	<Theamh, it’s getting away from her,> Istria warned.
	<All right, Istri, I’ve got it.>
	With the vigils’ help I ripped the thing out of his head. Phredi had the tentacle anchored. Now I had to get the others.
	“Dhiaoc!” Aine shouted over the noise of flame. “I can’t--it’s going all over--”
	“Pine needles,” I muttered. “It would have to be them. Aine, you’ll have to take this damn thing on, I’ll take care of the fire.”
	“I don’t know, Theamh, that’s a pretty big arani,” said Istria’s voice.
	“Yes, but at least it’s not four hundred and ninety lurers,” I said, drawing off the flames as fast as I could. “Do your best, Aine, I’ll be with you as soon as it’s safe.”
	For me, it was easy enough--the fires were small and I could shoot them into the wall of flame around us. I left the char because it would prevent them from igniting again. But they must have figured out that the arrows weren’t finding their targets, because they stopped shooting. I fired showdust at the tentacles Phredi was clinging to.
	“What the hell is that?” Sonnia shrieked.
	It was an arani. With, probably, three hundred legs, most of them still engaged. But there were several flailing about inside our circle, and Aine couldn’t hold them all.
	“I’ll take care of it now,” I said, throwing flame out to bring them under control.
	“Theamh!”
	There was a note of alarm in Istria’s voice that I hadn’t heard much outside of nightmares. I turned around and saw her swatting at a long gray coil of arani that was playing about her head.
	“Come here, you son of a bitch,” I shouted, grabbing onto it with fire and pulling it away from her. “And you too, Dark One starve you...”
	The damn thing must have been smarter than its colleague--it had identified the unprotected minds, and that it could plague and distract me by striking at them. As many as I could tie down to Phredi and Zott, there were always more lashing around. 
	“How many, Aine?” I shouted, grappling one that was lashing at Sonnia.
	“Sixty-eight,” she called back.
	“And how many legs on this thurking thing?”
	Istria squinted into the sky. “Got to be at least two hundred, Theamh.”
	I did some cursing of my own. But I kept at it, and once Aine had had some time to watch she was able to help more effectively. 
	“We’re going to die,” Sonnia wailed.
	“Come on, have a spine,” Istria shouted back at her.
	“Oh God!”
	This time Istria didn’t chastise her. The flames had finally ignited the branches above us, and were spreading.
	“Dhiaoc,” Aine panted, sending out another stream. “We have to send it down.”
	“We’re only half-done,” I argued.
	“This is about to be a fire we can’t stop, Theamh,” Istria agreed.
	I had to admit it was getting dicey. <All right, Wriana, make it happen.>
	I was up to about eighty-one when the cloud that had followed us from Slieve split open and dumped its burden on us in a circumscribed but violent shower. The fire in the branches above us and the needles around us quenched into smoke and smell. The firewall sputtered as its fuel wilted in the rain, and we could see out between gaps in the flame.
	In the heat their faces rippled at first, but by the time I hit the hundred mark they were clear through the ending rain. The Amstian Army, surrounding us.
	Scanning them in the brief moment before an order could be given, I saw that some of them were attached to the arani--but some of them weren’t. And I had a hope maybe of playing to them.
	“Men of the Amstian Army!” I shouted. “You see this thing, and you see what it’s up to. You can kill us or help us free your comrades, it’s your choice!”
	The thralled remained unmoved, but there were a significant number of soldiers craning their necks up in amazement and horror at the arani above them--including the unfortunate that Taric had finally let stand up.
	“Aim for the head and neck,” said the rough voice of an aiv.
	Crossbows were raised. And hands were raised against those crossbows. And soon there was a battle going on inside the army.
	“Come on you longlegged pios na fnaa, come bother me, I’m the one that’s got you by the tail...”
	“It’s no good,” Istria cried. “We have to run for it now while we can.”
	“But--”
	“Theamh, we won’t live otherwise.”
	She was right, though it killed me to release the thing and bring the vigils back.
	Istria snatched up the shields--Idair knows how she was able to find them--and we began a speedy and undignified retreat. The battle between the thralled and the freed was fierce enough to give us some cover. But I knew that eventually those tentacles would find their way back into their victims, and we would be on the run with two hundred thralled Amstians on our heels. Even the two that were on our heels now were too many.
	“Split!” Istria shouted. “Aine, take Sonnia with you, we’ll find you later!”
	I followed Istria through pathways I wouldn’t have thought could admit humans, into thickets and out of them, up one slope and down the other and then up again--and our pursuer followed us, sending arrows whistling around our heads. And then suddenly he wasn’t behind us any more, or at least his arrows weren’t.
	<Istri, do you think we’ve lost him?>
	Istri turned around to look behind us, put a foot wrong, and was suddenly sliding down an exposed hillside in a shower of gravel.
	I tried to haul her back up, but instead I slipped and we both fell together, scraping along on the loose dirt and rock to land scratched and bruised at the bottom of a gully.
	<Are you all right?>
	<I think I’m...> Something changed on the edges of my vision and I looked up. There was someone at the top of the hill. A young man of about nineteen, slight of build with dark hair. Backlit as he was I couldn’t quite make out his face but something about the stance seemed familiar.
	<Istri, look and see is that who I think it is.>
	Istria looked up at the slight, dark-haired figure, and her face shone with joy.
	“Sinal!” she shouted. “Sinal, it’s me, Istri! You’ve got to help us!”
	Sinal said nothing. 
	“Sinal?” Istria asked, puzzled and hurt by his non-response.
	Sinal raised his crossbow. 
	“NO!”
	I knew her heart was making the same sound mine made when I collapsed in Lythril’s lab. I knew also that nothing I could do would stop that arrow from flying.
	It wasn’t me who tackled him from behind and sent him rolling down the gully toward us. It was Taric, still in his shield, who went running off with Sinal’s crossbow floating in front of him, apparently on thin air.
	Sinal was on his feet in an instant, but I got him wrapped and back down in the gravel, kneeling over him to get into his head.
	“Theamh, don’t hurt him.”
	More a command than a plea, really. And I knew the depth of feeling behind it, but I also knew I didn’t have time to be gentle.
	“There you are, you bastard!” I shouted as Jayla ripped the gray coil out of Sinal’s head. I tied it down to Phredi and started the dance all over again.
	<Aine?>
	<Dhiaoc, you’re all right?>
	<Where are you?>
	<Well...we’re sort of captured.>
	Fantastic. <Where?>
	<Wherever it is, I think they just sent a party out to bring you back here.>
	<I’ve got a hold of it again, Aine, I’m going to see if I can get it gone this time.>
	<Hurry, dhiaoc.>
	I hurried. About eighty of its legs were still free, so I wasn’t starting completely from scratch. That meant it would maybe be a while before the thralled got to us. At least the gully gave us cover, although anyone who wanted to find me could follow the arani.
	“Sinal...Sinal it’s me...can you hear me?”
	From behind me, I heard his voice, smaller than it had seemed to me the last time I’d met him. “Istri...I’m glad to see you, I was hoping it would be you.”
	I was too busy tying down more arani tentacles to wonder what he meant by that, until Istria finally said, gently, “You’re not dead. We’re still in life. Both of us.”
	More tentacles came flying at me. I was a while sorting them out, so that by the time I had part of a mind to pay attention with Sinal was lost in tears and exclamation and a flood of Amstic. One hundred sixty...one hundred sixty one, two, three...
	<Thanks, dhiaoc!>
	<For what?>
	<You’ve gotten to the group that’s holding us...I wish you could see their faces.>
	<Tell them who you are and what we’re doing here,> I replied.
	One hundred and eighty five, six, seven, and now suddenly they were all flying at me thick and fast, and it seemed like I wouldn’t be able to grab them but then I was somehow, and then when I revealed the body was bearing down on me so that one two-handed stream to the heart of it sent the thing boiling back into the ether.
	I took the fire back, staring into that empty space and the smell of its return, trying to catch my breath and hoping it was finally gone.
	“Sinal, are you all...”
	I turned back to them. Istria was sitting cross-legged on the ground with her arms wrapped around Sinal, who was curled up against her and crying his young eyes out.
	“Sssshh,” Istria whispered, rocking him gently back and forth. “Shhh, it’s all right, you’re free now and we’ll take you home. Ssssssh.”
	Sinal nodded, burrowing against her. Istria looked up at me with pain written so clear on her own face that I wished I could scoop her up too.
	<I’m sorry if I hurt him,> I said. <I--we didn’t have time for me to-->
	<He’s all right about the head,> Istria answered. <You did nothing to him. It’s those bastards and bitches behind all this that have torn his heart and mine. A gentle boy like him that never even liked shooting rabbits-->
	<I’m so sorry...>
	<Theamh, if we ever find out who did this do not let me near them.>
	I knew how fierce her love for him was, how tight was their bond, a chain forged by both love and hatred, taking its shape under their father’s blows. And I knew that if she did find the person who had invaded Sinal’s mind and set him to evil work that he would have to remember till the end of his days, she might very well take that person’s life. So it was a request I had no trouble agreeing to.
	<I won’t.>
	“Istri,” Sinal snuffled. “I’m sorry, it wouldn’t even let me see that it was you...”
	“Shhh,” Istria said. “It’s all right. No harm. I’m here, I’m alive and whole.”
	“I’m glad you’re not dead,” he burst out, with all the fervor of his young heart. “I missed you so much--even more, after the departure...”
	Istria’s eyes went to me. <What departure?>
	<Barant officiated,> I said. <I tried to get them not to, but I got there too late.>
	She was a little stunned by this. <They sent me home?>
	<Tried to. Of course Slythe was shrimarbh and Barant was dark; no wonder it didn’t work...>
	Istria was about to say something, but her ears pricked up.
	<Hell and death, they’re back.>
	“Dhiaoc!” Aine called. “Dhiaoc, it’s all right, it’s just us!”
	“Down here, Aine!” I shouted.
	Aine scrabbled into the gully, followed at a distance by a much slower-moving Sonnia. “What are you doing down here, dhiaoc?”
	“Nothing I planned on,” I answered. “Let me see if they hurt you.”
	She shook her head. “I got knocked around a little during the capture but nothing serious. They’re a lot more efficient than the Cretid Enforcers.”
	“That’s saying little,” Istria said.
	Aine looked from Sinal back to me. <Who’s he?>
	<He’s Istria’s younger brother,> I answered.
	<He looks like her,> was all Aine said.
	“Taric, you still with us?” I asked.
	“Right here,” said his floating voice.
	“Well all right then,” I said. “Let’s get gone from here, it can’t be safe.”
	“But where are we?” Aine asked.
	“I have no idea,” Istria answered.
	“I do,” Sinal said.
	We looked at him.
	“I do,” he answered. “We’ve been covering this piece of ground for a long time. Let me lead,” he said, to Istria. “I know the way, and I’m better at this than you are.”
	“Oh you are not,” Istria said.
	“I am,” he returned. “Since I started the Army--I got much better, before...”
	Before. We all fell silent watching him remember.
	“I want to lead,” he finally said. “I want to get us safe home.”
	Istria looked at him for a long time. Then she said, “All right. We’ll follow you.”
	
	“Do you remember how it happened?”
	The sun was beginning to set, and we had camped for the night in the shelter of a rock formation on the side of an unfriendly mountain. We were about two days’ march from Ancinte, if we put a move on. Aine was trying to teach Sonnia the proper use of a mind, a task for which I was sure I would not have had the patience. Taric had moved off by himself and I had the feeling he was talking to Mna. Which left the three of us sitting together, Sinal glancing at me a little warily as Istria tried to coax the story out of him.
	Sinal nodded.
	“How, then?” Istria asked. “Because...it’s important, it may help us to know.”
	His throat moved as he swallowed, dark hair falling over his eyes as he looked down. With his hands working in his lap, he said, “It was...it was just after they sealed the gates of Amranth. I wondered, even then, why we weren’t there with them. I...I was in the Cold Mountain Two, you know, under Siost mac Heol.”
	Istria nodded as if this meant something to her. I waited for him to go on.
	“You know, Istri,” he said, “Larc and Merth are in the Army too now.”	
	Istria was startled, and not at all pleased, to hear it. “What?”
	“We started all at the same time,” he said. “I had to, it was my time; but they volunteered to rejoin. They knew there was going to be trouble.”
	So they’d tried to help--and ended up hurting. Istria had not been home much after joining the scoil, and her relationship with them was cordial but not intimate. But it still made her angry to hear they had been used this way.
	“Which company?” she said.
	“They were returners, so they went into the Flying Hart Four. I think...I think they’re outside Amranth, now.”
	He hesitated, knowing he should say “siege” but not able to bring himself. Regional loyalty is not something I understand. Nobody’s ever died for the Vicinity. So it was a thing I had to learn, this sense of painful shame Sinal was heavy with as he talked about his part in this war. A traitor in spite of himself to the land that had raised him, these mountains and lakes and the rocky soil and the people who grew on it. 
	“They’re not supposed to take more than one son from each family,” Istria said to me, with her quiet cold anger.
	“They volunteered,” Sinal said quickly.
	“They shouldn’t have been let to,” Istria responded. “Varen and Dohem must be a cheerful couple, each with two children in action...”
	“Mathi thinks you’re dead, Istri. We...we all did.”
	As Istria contemplated all this, I said, “So how did they do it?”
	“Siost told us we’d been ordered to the east. We went. And...”
	He took his time and nobody rushed him. 
	“People got quiet. We moved out to the Dairc border. The orders started to be very strange. But I was like the others, I did what I was told. I never wondered why. I did what I did and it seemed like what I had to do.” Istria put a hand on his knee, gently. “I didn’t notice, in my mind, when it took me. I noticed, for sure, when you took it out.”
	Sinal’s dark eyes came back to me. “Once it lifted off it was like...it was like waking up. I knew where I was, and what had happened and...I was scared.”
	Istria gave him another pat, hoping I guess that it would reassure him. He was silent now, and it didn’t look like he was going to start talking again for a while.
	Istria and I looked at each other as he kept his eyes on the ground in front of him. She was probably reading all kinds of things off him; all I could tell was that he was in a bad place, and that would probably have been obvious even to Sonnia.
	It got darker as we sat there, waiting for him to say more. Finally, he said, “I told Aine I’d help with the dinner, Istri. Can I be excused?”
	Aine was walking over to the stone circle to make the fire; but that wasn’t why he wanted to end this conversation. “Of course, Sinal.”
	He walked over to Aine and Sonnia. Istria sighed. <He’s not all right, Theamh.>
	<I didn’t suppose he was.>
	<Aftershock, would you say?> she asked.
	I shook my head. <I think he’s all right on that score...he moves as he should, and his body isn’t strange to him. It’s more...well, Istri, I think you have to face it...>
	<More like he’s taken life,> she said. 
	I nodded.
	<I know he probably has.> Istria sat down near me with a sigh. <If it were in a clean fight for the right that would be one thing...but.>
	<But.>
	She looked up at the darkness gathering. <So they closed the book on me.>
	<They did.>
	It was a moment before she got over the embarrassment of having this curiosity. <What did you bring?>
	<Nothing,> I said. <They didn’t tell me they were closing the book on you. I found out by chance from Harani, while I was down in the City on business.>
	I remembered as I said it how angry and hurt I had been. But I hadn’t expected to see that mirrored and then some in her.
	<They didn’t tell you?>
	<They knew I didn’t think you were dead; they were afraid I’d disrupt it.>
	<Thurk them all!> she interjected. <What business did they have to keep you away?>
	<Well-->
	<When it should have--when--Theamh, they didn’t have mathi send me home?>
	<No, it was Sinal.>
	She was a little relieved, but still angry, which I understood, and upset, which I didn’t. <How could they send me home without you there?>
	I shrugged. <They didn’t seem to think it would matter.>
	<I couldn’t--if I had been dead--> She turned her head away from me. <I wouldn’t have gone home till you sent me.>
	It was a fearful thing to realize she had come, separately, to  believe in the same impossible thing. That death could not take one of us from the other--not without negotiation, not without consent, not without saying goodbye. 
	<Why didn’t you believe it?>
	She looked back at me as if she already knew the answer.
	<I thought that if you were dead, you would have told me. Somehow.>
	Her hands went to my face, tracing the shape of my jaw, tense with something almost like panic. <You were right. I wouldn’t leave you. Not without a word.>
	I clasped my hands behind her neck and we sat leaning against each other, foreheads touching, terrified at how close death had come and how often.
	<I’m glad you didn’t kill me when I asked you to,> I said, with a tearful laugh.
	<Oh Theamh.> She brought my mouth to hers. <I never, I never...I would have had to have fallen a lot lower, for that to even be possible.>
	Taric was looking over at us and maybe about to say something. But he didn’t, because suddenly there was the sound of moving feet around us and suddenly there was a rank of human forms standing up between us and the sight of the darkening twilight. It took only an instant for everyone--Sonnia included--to be on their feet, hands on shoulders or crossbows or in Sonnia’s case just fisted in front of her, ready to fight back.
	One of the men lifted his hand and the others lowered their bows and daggers, dropping them onto the ground by their feet. He stepped forward till the light of the fire threw his features into relief. “Sinal mac Varen, you know me,” he said, looking to where Sinal crouched against the rock with his bow back in his hands.
	“I do,” he answered.
	“Well then who is he?” Istria demanded.
	“Kealp mac Crobh,” Sinal said. “Under-Aiv for the Cold Mountain Two, leader of my cohort.”
	“And one of the thralled,” he said. Moving slowly, aware that we were watching him, he ungirt the sword he was wearing and dropped it at the feet of the man behind him. He walked toward me, Istria and Aine watching him like a pair of hawks, until he knelt before me with his hands behind his back.
	“My men will allow you to collect their weapons,” he said.
	Istria was there quickly, gathering them up and piling them near Sinal. Not satisfied, she went back to search them. They allowed her to do it--not, I had the feeling, without a certain number of crude remarks passed, to which she seemed to be responding as she felt around their waists and under their tunics.
	“If you are satisfied that you’re safe from us,” he said, “then maybe you’ll look in me for the traces. I’m sure you’ll find them. And then maybe we can talk.”
	He lifted his head. I put my hands on his temples.
	“So you consent to my scouring you,” I said.
	“Yes,” he answered.
	I went in, carefully. There was always the possibility that this was a stratagem, a way into my mind. But once I had been there a while I was satisfied that it wasn’t. He knew that because he was part of the command structure I would suspect him of having collaborated, unless I knew that he had been thralled. And by the time I backed out of his head, I was sure of that, as I was also sure that he was not harboring treachery against us.
	“He’s all right,” I said, as Istria and Aine looked over anxiously. “He’s telling the truth.” Kealp dropped his eyes, relieved. “So now tell me what you’re here for, Kealp.”
	“We need your help,” he said.
	“If it’s military I can’t hear of it or help with it,” I said. “You know how that is.”
	“I know that, shriia. This is a shri matter.” I looked at him, puzzled. “Elkam, will you bring in Fropp?”
	One of the other men left the rank and returned leading another man. “Leading” perhaps is inaccurate; the other man certainly didn’t want to be following. His arms were crossed over his head as if to protect it and his entire body was shaking with the wish to be elsewhere. When they brought him in under the outcropping he went right to the wall and huddled back against it, wrapping himself up as small as he could and flicking his fear-whitened eyes from me to Istria to Sonnia to Sinal to Kealp and back again.
	“We found him hiding in the pines afterward,” Kealp said, looking at him sadly. “I’m thinking maybe he didn’t get all the way cleansed. Can you do anything for him?”
	I went to him and crouched down to look. Istria came with me, trying to get him to look her in the eyes.
	<Aftershock,> she said.
	<Worse than usual,> I answered.
	I looked around inside a little, but I knew what I would find and I found it.
	“He’s clean,” I said, looking back at Kealp. “That’s not his problem.”
	“Then what is?”
	“It’s aftershock,” I said. “Sometimes people react like this, after being overtaken. But thralling usually doesn’t leave as bad a shock. It’s strange he should be so affected.”
	“Where is he from?” Istria asked, looking at him.
	“He grew up in Two Flocks,” Kealp said. “Poor kid, he’s too young to be in the army, really. One of those sixteen-year-olds who can’t wait the three years...”
	“Two Flocks,” I said. “Tifni’s territory.”
	“Oh no,” Aine said.
	“She’s at least forty,” I answered. “And you know how they are with Amst, they don’t shift people for anything except border duty and death. I bet she was.”
	“Was what?” Kealp said.
	“His naming shriia,” I answered.
	Istria shook her head. Aine sat near us, not sure what to do but wanting to share it.
	“What can we do, dhiaoc?” she said.
	“Here’s the thing, Kealp,” I said, turning back to him as he leant over my shoulder. “If it’s what I think it is...he’s like this because he’s known to a dark user, and he’s now gotten a taste of what that means. He’s...he doesn’t feel safe.”
	“Well how can we make him feel safe?” Kealp said, really concerned. 
	Nobody had an answer to that. Tifni was still alive and at large, and as long as she knew his name he would be in danger. 
	“The only way to protect him from her would be to block him,” I said. “I think--”
	“Yes,” said Fropp.
	It was the first time he’d spoken. I hadn’t been sure he was even aware of what was happening. But his mind had latched onto this, and the idea had emboldened him enough to drop his arms and look at me, even if he was still huddled up and shaking.
	“Friend,” I said, “I’ve been blocked, and I can tell you, it’s no--”
	“I would rather it than this,” he said.
	“But it will cut you off from--”
	He made an effort to keep his gaze on mine, even though his head still shook. “I cannot go back home like this.”
	“Maybe...do you think it would go away, in time?” Kealp suggested. “We could try to take care of him...”
	I sighed. “I had a client once in this very situation,” I said. “He went through eight months of this and never felt better. Maybe he’d have been over it in time, maybe he wouldn’t have. But I don’t think you have eight months to be this poor boy’s custodians.”
	“But Keanrih...it was partly what he’d done, wasn’t it?” Aine asked. “Maybe if he hadn’t done the rape, he would have overed it earlier...”
	She stopped, because Fropp had turned his head sharply away and stiffened.
	Aine looked at Kealp with a question in her eyes. Probably the same one I had.
	“He’s taken life,” Kealp said, heavily. “We all have.” It took him a minute, but then he said, “We carried out the Back Three attack.”
	Istria was too horrified and angry even to speak. Aine looked back at Sinal, who avoided her eyes. I was apparently the only one left with enough equanimity to say, “But why did they even need you? Fire they have.”
	“Without us,” he said, swallowing something in his throat but not changing the tone of his voice, “more survivors would have escaped.”
	So they had been stationed around the village, ready to mow down people as they ran panicking out of their kindling houses after Tifni or Vrila or whoever it was set the fire. Not the kind of work they had signed up for. Not something that people would easily forgive. Not something Istria could forgive, looking at Kealp with eyes like struck flint.
	“I don’t deserve help,” Fropp said, still speaking into the rock wall and not looking at me. “But if you ask me what I want, I want to be blocked. Blocked, or dead.”
	Because otherwise he couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t come back, and set him to the work of massacre and death. And until he was sure of that, he couldn’t go back to his family, return to his comrades, speak to or touch anyone or anything he cared about.
	“Well, Aine,” I said. “You have to learn how sometime, it’ll be easier with a willing subject.”
	Istria just shook her head, got up, and walked away.
	Sinal kept his eyes on her. I understood now why he hadn’t finished the conversation she’d convinced him to start. And why the Cold Mountain Two, once unthralled, had turned against their Aivs without hesitation. Waking up to that memory could hardly allow anyone much room for doubt.
	“Blocking fire is different from burning fire or ordinary fire,” I said. “The commands are different. Listen, and when I’m done repeat them. It’s very important that you get it right.”
	She nodded, and we began the work. After I was quite sure she knew it to the letter and she was too, I moved back and let her give it a try.
	The fire crawled white over Fropp’s trembling body, running over him and searching to make sure the seal was complete. Being inexperienced she had to be directed a little to find the spots that don’t come to mind immediately, under the arms and around the back. But finally he was covered, and she gave the command. The fire sank into him.
	“You’re blocked,” I said. “Nobody can get in, nothing can get out. You’re...safe.” 
	Fropp nodded, and got slowly to his feet as if he were learning to walk again.
	“It’s not permanent,” I said. “We can’t do that without knowing your name.”
	“That’s all right,” he said, nodding. “I thank you anyhow.”
	“As a courtesy to Aine,” I said, “please don’t try to send or receive while the block’s on you. The more you struggle the harder it will be for her to keep it up.”
	“How long can I hold it for, Theamh?” Aine asked.
	I shrugged. “If he doesn’t fight it, it shouldn’t be too big a strain on you. But you can’t do it forever.” I turned back to Fropp. “You’ll leave combat, and you’ll make your way back to Slieve. When you get there, find Wriana. She’ll take it up. We’ll take turns until we can find Tifni and block her. That’ll cure you of this.”
	“Thank you, shriia.”
	He was still extremely skittish and shy of himself and everyone, but he was starting to calm down. Kealp bowed at me. “Thank you, shriia.” He looked at the stone circle, where Aine’s fire was flaming under our makeshift tripod, from which dangled a pot and some water in which we were getting ready to boil up some of Taric’s beans.
	“Shriia, we’ve still got rations,” he said. “It’s not dining-out stuff, but it’s better than what you’ve got. Please let us share it with you.”
	“Thank you, Kealp, anything that will help us stretch what we’ve got is welcome.”
	“I’ll send the boys back for some,” he said. “And...I know you don’t want to know what we’re up to or what we’re planning and I don’t want you to know that either. But I know there are a lot of my men would like to talk to you, shriia,” he said, his voice finally getting something like emotion in it. “If only just to have you tell them for sure they’re clean. Will you speak to them, if I bring them back?”
	I looked at Istria, who was staring into the purple-black night and saying nothing.
	“Yes,” I said. 
	“Thank you.” Kealp led Fromm and the others out from under the sheltering rock, picking up their weapons and girding them back on as they left. “We will give you warning, when we return.”
	After they left we sat for a long time, nobody saying a thing.
	“How are they going to live with it?” Aine finally said, her voice low.
	“I don’t know, Aine,” I answered. “I have no thurking idea.”
	“I will,” Istria said, facing into the night. “If I get my hands on Tifni I will kill her.”
	“We don’t know for sure it was her who--”
	Istria swung around on us, savage with anger. “You were there at Second of Three,” she demanded, focusing on Sinal.
	Sinal nodded.
	“Who were the women with you?” she pushed. “Whose work was that?”
	He didn’t want to but he couldn’t refuse her. “I...don’t know their names...”
	“Show me,” she insisted, walking back toward him. “Show me.”
	Sinal shook his head and shrank against the wall.
	“Istri--”
	“I want to know!”
	Aine stepped between them. “Stop it, Istria!”
	“Get out of my--”
	“To show you, he has to remember!” Aine shouted.
	Istria stopped. Sinal looked back at her with his chest heaving but his eyes dry, hardened against her anger.
	“We’ll ask Kealp when he gets back,” I said, finally, walking up and putting a hand on her shoulder. “Any one of them can tell us. It doesn’t have to be Sinal. Leave him be.”
	His breath caught, and he finally shouted, “It wasn’t my fault, Istri!”
	“Ainm na ghaist,” was all she said.
	“It wasn’t! I was--I wasn’t free!”
	“Come away,” I said. “Talk to him later when you can do it kindly. Come away.”
	She was still full of anger, but she allowed me to lead her out from under the shelter of the ledge into the darkness and away from the camp, where her anger suddenly burst out of her with such force that I had to step back and let her rant.
	For a while it was just curses, flowing with a venom that hadn’t been there in her match with Swon at Slieve. When she went back to a language I spoke better, she was close to tears. “How could he do it, Theamh? How could he let himself be part of that?”
	“He didn’t,” I said. “He was thralled, Istri, he couldn’t help it.”
	“I know he was--I know--” For a while she couldn’t get anything more out. “I know he was, and I know how that works, so why do I still blame him?”
	“People often do, Istri, you know that.”
	“But I should know better, I did this for a living.”
	“You’re human.”
	She turned back to me. “But you don’t blame him.”
	I shrugged. “I’m not close to him like you are, it’s easier maybe--”
	“No, that’s not it.” She walked closer. “You don’t blame him, like you didn’t blame Keanrih for what that kraikk had him do. You’re better at forgiving than I am.”
	“Morat probably would argue with you about that,” I said.
	Istria shook her head. “You’ve forgiven me, that’s enough of a miracle, but--”
	I wouldn’t let that one get past me. “You forgave me too, Istri. We do that for each other, that’s different.”
	Her eyes changed subtly as she looked at me. She was reading something new, and she was as surprised as I was that there was anything in me she hadn’t already read.
	“Theamh,” she said, quietly. 
	“I...” I began.
	“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
	“Tell you what?”
	Her brow furrowed. “About being overtaken.”
	I shook my head in refusal, turning away.
	“Theamh--”
	“I’ve never...” Realizing that I did want to have this conversation, painful as it was liable to be, I turned back. “I’ve never been...sure...that that was what really happened.”
	“How old were you?”
	I sat down on a rock, pulling my knees up and my chin into my hands.
	Istria sat next to me, putting an arm around my hunched shoulders. “When did it happen, Theamh?”
	I didn’t answer right away. I just sat there, going back, feeling almost again as if I were eight years old, small and scared, trapped and knowing it.
	“It was in my eighth year,” I said, keeping my eyes fixed on the ground.
	Istria’s hand traveled over my shoulder blades, trying to stroke me into some kind of comfort. “Chara, you never told me.”
	I shook my head. “Because I can’t be sure, Istri,” I said. “That’s...if I could go back, as I am now, and look at me then, I would know. But I was eight years old, and all I knew about spirits was from the stories Iela and seanmathi told me...”
	“But what happened to you, chara, what makes you remember it that way?”
	She was probably reading what was coming up now. The bird bleeding on the steps in front of me, its breast shattered by a stone I’d thrown. My face in the mirror, looking back at me with a kind of smile that frightened me terribly even though I wouldn’t have known what name to put on it. The sound of my laughter, bright and hard and clearer than it should have been, as I ran across the grounds at the Craoibh Oir while mathi drank her soup in her chair on the back balcony and watched me without any idea in her head that there was anything wrong. I hoped.
	“I would do things and not know why,” I said. “Iela would catch me right after doing some kind of mischief and ask me who it was had strangled the pullet or broken the window or whatever and I would say, ‘It wasn’t me, it was the bad girl.’”
	“Chara,” she said, leaning me against her so my head was on her shoulder.
	After I had finally begun to cry, she said gently, “Why do you doubt it, Theamh? It sounds to me like...”
	I shook my head, turning my forehead against her shoulder. “I just don’t know, Istri, it was so long ago and...”
	“But someone must have cast it,” Istria said. “Who did you go to? What was it?”
	“My mother never seemed to notice anything wrong,” I said. “She found out about some of the things I’d done, but she just punished me and went on with it. Iela pressed her on it; and then I started doing things to torment Iela...”
	“Theamh...”
	“I know, I know, I showed all of the symptoms and I know that--that--that’s what it felt like,” I said. “I’ve just...never been sure.”
	“But when you were cleansed...”
	“You see that’s the thing,” I said, looking back at her finally. “When the shriia went in after it, the thing had already gone. And after Iela took me home...whatever it was, it never came back. If it was ever there.”
	“That happens all the time, Theamh,” Istria said, trying to impress it on me. “You know that, I know you know that.”
	“I know I do, I just...” I drew closer to her, putting one arm around her. “I wish I had seen it cast.”
	“You weren’t named then,” Istria said, holding onto me. “It would be strange if you’d grown to sixteen without having it happen. No name and no protections.”
	“I still...was never sure...”
	“Well, I am, Theamh,” Istria said fiercely. “Iela was too, that’s why she took you down to the Pharc. And...”
	I knew what she was thinking. “It has to have been part of it,” I said, nodding. “I guess...even not being sure, I must have believed it. I must have believed it was really a spirit and that the shriia had cured me of it.”
	“And that’s why you went into this,” she said.
	I nodded.
	“Good out of evil, anyhow,” Istria said. “I wonder what was it.”
	“I don’t know,” I said. “I do remember things...but it’s confused. I thought sometimes maybe it would have been a kraikk, but it wasn’t doing much very bad.”
	“You know what, Theamh,” Istria said. “It could have been Lythril.”
	I shook my head violently. “If it was I don’t want to believe it.”
	“Being intermittent like that...if it was her, she would have to do it in spurts...”
	“Istri, please, I don’t want to think about it.”
	But she was thinking about it. And getting a lot closer to that conclusion.
	“Istri...”
	“It could have been a lot of things,” she said. “I know. It’s all right, Theamh, what matters is you got back to you.”
	Her arms tightened suddenly around me. “I’m...oh, I’m just glad you’re safe now, chara. That must have been horrible.”
	“You see,” I said, as I started crying harder, “why maybe I’m different about...you know, because it never happened to you...”
	She nodded. “You know how it is, and I don’t,” she said. “It makes sense.”
	“He really couldn’t help it, Istri,” I said, surprised at how much I wanted her to believe it. “You have to understand that. If no one’s taught you how to fight, it doesn’t matter how much you hate what the thing is doing with you.”
	“I know, chara,” she said. “I know.” And then, “Thank you.”
	“What for?”
	“For telling me.”
	“You asked me.”
	“You showed me how to ask.” I wiped my eyes, and my nose. “For you, but for him too. Thank you.”
	
	It’s no wonder the spirits don’t understand us. One moment we’re at each other’s throats; the next we’re sitting around a fire sharing talk, food and warmth with the same people we were fighting that afternoon. But there it was--Kealp, Fropp, and about fifteen other members of Sinal’s cohort gathered there with us, and all of us acting as if we’d met up on purpose for a pleasure party. Sinal had shown off Istria to his friends in the ranks with a pride that touched me, and with him there to break ice it wasn’t long before even Aine was at home with them all. Sonnia was chatting up the younger members with an interest that rather perturbed me; I couldn’t get past worrying about her even though I knew that she was old enough to make her own bed and that if she wanted to be flirting with soldiers that was her affair. And Taric was sitting there with his dinner, responding when spoken to, and otherwise looking around silently at them all like...well, like...
	<Like a child in a pastry shop.>
	Istria had come back to sit with me, leaving Sinal talking to Fropp and Aine. 
	<Sonnia too. I don’t know what it is about soldiers...>
	<They keep in shape and spend a lot of time going without,> she suggested. <I’m happy they’re happy, but if either one of them touches Sinal it’s going to get ugly.>
	<Come on, Istri, he’s nineteen...>
	She sighed, settling back. <So he is.> Her head shook. <I’ve been gone a long time. I forget things will have changed.>
	<I can’t believe they can get over it,> I said. <After what they’ve been through-->
	<Don’t be fooled, Theamh,> she said. <It’s...> Her head leant against my shoulder. <You can act normal, you can even feel normal. But that doesn’t mean you’re over it. Took me a long time to learn that. Speaking of which...how’s Wriana?>
	<All right, considering, I guess,> I said. <She’s told Dahern now; I think that helps her. Dahern knows her better, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s just...better with this stuff than I am. Most people are.>
	<Oh, I don’t know about that, Theamh.> In front of the others we were trying to observe some kind of restraint, although at some moments it got hard to remember. <It was you came up with the seanstiobhi, remember...>
	The seanstiobhi--Song for Old Wounds--was the name for the song I’d taught Aine to use on Lara and Sonnia after their battles. <It wasn’t me, it was us, Istri.>
	<I know, but the words were mostly yours...>
	<That’s not really accurate-->
	<Anyhow, chara, the point is: you’re not Lilea, we can’t all be. But you do all right for yourself.> I sighed. <But to return to the point: she’s undone, and everything?>
	I nodded. <She called up Dahern and Dahern talked her through it. I have the feeling they’ll be doing it that way for a while. Istri, when this is over, Comings and Goings is going to have to start working overtime. I don’t think we’ve got anything on the books powerful enough to deal with some of this pain.>
	<I know.>
	We sat quiet for a while. Some of the soldiers had started a song in Amstic, which the others were listening to with a lot of laughter and raillery. Sonnia had no idea what it meant, but she was still laughing along with them. Aine had perhaps a vague idea, which perhaps accounted for her blushing. Istria wasn’t particularly in the mood to pay attention to bawdy ballads, so she closed her eyes and shifted her position against my shoulder. The song finally ended with a burst of applause, and someone else started another.
	This one was faster, but it seemed to command a different kind of attention. I could follow it well enough; the words “mountains,” “Amst,” and “homeland” figured pretty prominently. The singer--a young lad who had been sitting a little nervously between Sonnia and Sinal as if he wasn’t sure which to begin moving on--stood with his eyes raised to the overhanging rock ceiling as he cast his mind back to find the words and the tune. But after the first verse, his nervousness fell away, and the song grew into something else. And Aine was paying attention now because it was something she understood. Homesickness, yearning, a love that couldn’t be defined or pinned down but had something to do with land and sky and a certain look of the light at sunset. Something I recognized too, even if I was realizing I would never really share it.
	The singer continued, not skipping a beat when the silhouette of another young man appeared in the entrance to the shelter. Kealp appeared to know him; he waved the man in, and bent to listen to him as he whispered something.
	All right then, I heard him answer. I’ll be there.
	The song ended to more prolonged if less boisterous applause, and for a moment there was a pause as the listeners looked around embarrassed at their own reactions. Before they could slip into raillery, however, Kealp called out, “Well done Elkam--I’ve heard it done louder, but never done better.” Elkam bowed sheepishly and sat down again, pleased if embarrassed by the attention. “Come on, who’s next? Who’s got another one?”
	“Anyone remember ‘Three Days in Mypril’?” someone asked.
	“Fropp does!” one of them called out. 
	Fropp shook his head, and Kealp seemed to realize this wasn’t just the conventional waiting to be urged. “Fropp’s not in voice tonight, and who can blame him...how about you, Sinal?” Sinal looked up, and gulped. 
	“Sinal!” seconded someone else.
	“I don’t know ‘Three Days in Mypril,’ it’s a hundred years long--” he began.
	“Well give us another then,” someone else called back. “Give us one from Ancinte, if Ancinte has anything worth singing...”
	There was some unkind laughter at this; but I saw it was strategic. Now that the honor of his homeplace was at stake, Sinal got a lot less reluctant. “All right, I know one but I can’t do it alone.” He looked over at Istria. “Will you take the woman’s part?”
	“In what?” Istria demanded.
	“I mean, just in the song...you know, the one about the relievers...”
	“Yes!” shouted one of the other soldiers. “I haven’t heard that one in years.”
	“All right, now you’ve gotten Jiral excited, you’ll have to go through with it,” Kealp said. “Come on, Sinal, don’t make the poor man beg for it.”
	“Will you?” Sinal asked, taking no notice of Kealp’s sally or of Jiral’s annoyed swipe at the back of Kealp’s head. “Sing it with me?”
	Istria stood up. “All right, Sinal.”
	She walked to stand by him, her arms hanging awkward by her sides until she clasped her hands and looked down, waiting for Sinal to start. 
	“This is a very old song,” Sinal said, addressing himself to Aine, who nodded. “It’s called ‘The Reliever’s Farewell.’ It dates back from the siege of Amranth, when--”
	“SING, DAMMIT!”
	So many of them shouted this at once that I had the feeling maybe Sinal was one of those people who had a preface problem. Sinal appeared to take the rebuke good-naturedly; he smiled, raised his head, and began when the silence had fallen.
	“I know the banquet is ready, chara mine;
	And the shriia is waiting with the staff and the vine,
	And I know that tomorrow should be
	Our joining day...

	My heart wants to be here to join and be glad;
	But the news came from Amranth today, and it’s bad--
	And you know it’s not lightly I say
	What I have to say...”

	The tune for it was slower than the others, and his uncertain tenor slid mournful and minor over the intervals. His voice, thin at first, got stronger as he reached the chorus.

	“You know I love you,
	But I’m a true believer...
	I’m off to Amranth,
	To go for a reliever.”

	Istria took it up now, looking straight out but at nothing, staying inside with the words and the music and what memories they went with.

	“Amranth is far from here, chara mine;
	And the shriia is here with the staff and the vine,
	And the siege has been bitter and long now
	For many a day...

	There’s so many in Amranth in such distress,
	Will the battle be lost for one more or less?
	Would it matter if you left tomorrow
	Instead of today?”

	By now the others were swaying gently with the tune, their eyes on Istria as she moved into chorus, her voice swelling, fuller and more fraught than her younger brother’s.
	
	“You know I love you--
	And I know you won’t leave me;
	You’ll stay and join me,
	Not run off and bereave me.”

	She wasn’t looking at me; it was an old song and I had no reason to take it personally. And couldn’t it just as well have been me saying that to her, four years ago when she got on her horse and rode away from me to start a quest she didn’t expect to see the end of. But in any case Sinal was back now with his part of the verse, and whatever she was thinking about it wasn’t me.

	“My heart hears what you’re saying, chara mine;
	It’s said the same thing to me many times.
	And so often I’ve said to myself I might just
	Delay...

	But no season’s convenient for leaving you;
	And the decision I know that I’m coming to
	Would be harder tomorrow than even it is 
	Today...

	You know I love you, 
	But I’m a true believer,
	Forgive me, chara,
	I’m gone for a reliever.”

	This time there were some of them singing with him, uncertain about some of the words but confident with the tune, and in time with the emotion that stretched Sinal’s voice over the high notes. Istria took a step closer, putting an arm around his shoulders as his voice wavered. She took up her part, looking out now at the others and seeing them, their eyes, their answer to what the two of them were bringing out.

	“I love you for fighting, chara mine;
	For Idair and right till the end of time;
	I would not have the battle be lost
	By your staying away...

	And I want you to be there to carry the fight,
	But I’m damned if I’ll stay behind lonely tonight--
	Let me pack my few things and together
	We’ll leave today...”

	This seemed to be a turn that was both unexpected and expected; there was a change in the audience as they recognized this new determination, and silently applauding the courage and love of this unnamed long-dead or perhaps never-alive woman as she found a different answer to what might easily have been a foregone question.

	“You know I love you,
	And I’m a true believer--
	I’m coming with you
	To go for a reliever.”

There was a murmur of appreciation and approval as Sinal and Istria took up the chorus together, breaking out of the song’s emotion into their own happiness at finally being together again after so much time and having the chance to be there among friends reliving one of the few happy memories they had from a dark and lonely childhood.

	“You know I love you,
	And I’m a true believer--
	We’ll go together
	To Amranth and relieve her.”

The applause started before they had really ended, and broke over them as they stood there not sure what to do with it. Istria, looking around in embarrassment, found me, and showed a kind of touched surprise to see me applauding along with the rest of them.
	“I can’t believe they’ve let that one be buried in Ancinte for eight hundred years,” said Elkam. “Come on, let’s have it again so that when it goes out to the rest of the world it’s with the right lyrics.”
	As the others echoed him, I saw Kealp coming back out of the darkness and into the camp. He must have slipped out while the song was going on. The other soldiers didn’t seem to notice his entrance, any more than any of them had noticed his exit. He took his seat by the stone wall as if nothing had happened.
	“Other people must have songs,” Sinal protested.
	“Yes, and we’ll get them later,” Kealp responded. “Come on, the world loves a brother-sister act. Let’s hear it again.”
	After Elkam had been seconded and thirded and fourth fifth sixthed, they agreed to go through it again. This time it was less charged; people were paying a different kind of attention, working to commit it to memory. But left over in the air was the reason for wanting to do that--that this song had hit all of them where it mattered, and they wanted to be able to sing it again, at a time when it would matter. And when they were done, and it was clear they were not to be pressed into a third rendition, they were allowed to retire gracefully. Istria returned to sit by me as another of the soldiers was prevailed upon.
	“It’s a beautiful song,” I said. <And a beautiful singer.>
	<It’s been a long time since we sang it,> she said. <Mathi used to like hearing us do it.>
	I watched Sinal introducing Sonnia to his friends. <Is he still linked to Varen?>
	Istria looked at me. <Still? Theamh, Varen’s never been linked to either of us.>
	I should have guessed, I suppose; but even I had been linked to my mother.
	<She wanted it that way,> Istria went on. <I don’t know why. If she was the sort to talk about things like that, we probably would be linked.>
	So there was no way to find out how she was doing, or let her know that her children were safe. <Is she linked to Dohem?>
	Istria shook her head. <They do without it. He doesn’t seem to mind.>
	Her eyes were still on Sinal, watching him move around, laughing as if he were at home, free from constraint, a young man in his prime having a good time with his friends.
	<You did it, Istri,> I said. <You saved him.>
	<Not from this.>
	<Nobody could have.>
	Before I could ask Kealp where he had been, he came over to accost me. “Shriia, about the rest of your journey...”
	“What about it?”
	“Do you really intend going to Ancinte?”
	“We surely do.”
	“Then we’ll come with you,” he said. “The Owlfoot Three is deployed between here and there. On your own you won’t make it through.”
	“We made it through you all,” I said, with a bit of a smile.
	He shook his head. “Siost will have told their Aivs what you’re up to. They’ll be ready for you. You need help.”
	“I can’t ask you to come with me,” I said. 
	“We’re prepared to play by shriia’s rules,” he said.
	“Look me in the eye,” I said.
	He did.
	“Are you telling me,” I said, “that you and your men are prepared to accompany us through enemy territory without using force, except to defend an immediate threat to your life or another’s, and by immediate I don’t just mean that the adversary is an enemy, but that if he lives for another second someone else is surely going to die?”
	I was doing my best to read him, but he was doing his best to mask.
	“Don’t lie to me, Kealp.”
	As he was still hesitating, Istria suddenly said, “Wait a minute--where’s Sonnia?”
	Kealp, glad to have the excuse to break the tension, laughed. “Wherever Cruit is, that’s where you’ll find her. They slipped out together a little while ago.”
	“And you let them go?” I demanded.
	“Don’t worry, shriia,” he said. “The rest of the Two is holding his area. The Volunteers are sending a detachment to help us. They’re perfectly safe out there.”
	As I was trying to decide whether he was justified in being this confident, the silence was broken by a long and bloodcurdling scream.
	“My gleacha,” I muttered, charging out into the darkness. 
	Aine and Istria were right behind me. I was puzzled as to how to find the source, but conveniently there was another scream. We clattered around the hillside as fast as we could, pulling up short as Sonnia and one of the Amstian soldiers exploded out of the shadow under another outcropping, terrified out of their wits.
	“Sonnia, are you all right?” Aine demanded.
	“They’re back!” Sonnia shouted, clinging to me. “God help us--”
	“What, you mean...”
	“Those--yellow things--they’re back--”
	“Where?” I shouted, detaching her and trying to stare her into some kind of sanity. “Where did you see them?”
	She pointed into the distance. “Out there--you see the yellow--and the screams--”
	“There goes another one,” Istria said grimly.
	The three of us set off toward that stand of mountain pines and the diffused yellow glow contained within it. “Theamh!” Sonnia shouted after me. “What about me?”
	“Go back to the camp!” I shouted, hurrying on.
	Even with the light globe it was tough going at night. It was several minutes before we reached the plateau where all of this was going on. And by then I was getting worried not because of the screams, but because of the lack of them.
	“It’s getting fainter,” Aine said.
	She was right. By the time we reached the trees the yellow light was more of a vague haze. When we broke through the curtain of branches, the last of it had faded.
	I raised the light globe above us, looking around in its flickering and red-yellow light. Shadows lurched and danced around us, shapes leapt into nightmare, and I wasn’t seeing anything that wasn’t part of the forest. But Aine and Istria were seeing plenty.
	I looked at them, and understood from their faces that we were way, way too late.
	“So what happened?” I said.
	Aine pulled out a light globe, with a little wrestling. She went hunting between the narrow trunks, bent on finding some particular thing.
	“Istri?”
	Istria was watching her and not me. “It won’t be there,” she called. “You know how things get flung around.”
	“Istri, will you let me in on this before--”
	“It is so here,” Aine called back, in a voice that was just a little unsteady.
	When we got there, she was looking down a little ways from her feet. I would have thought it was a boulder maybe that had gotten dislodged, but even the tinge of firelight wouldn’t have turned mud or water that red.
	Istria squatted down to examine this object. “Whoever she was, she had dark hair that was going gray,” she said. “And,” she added, lifting something shiny and glittering into the lit space, “she was one of them.”
	The chain was covered in blood, but parts of it still glinted silver. 
	Sickened as I was by all of this, I crouched down to look. The hair was indeed dark and grizzled, matted with blood and gore. But the features I recognized.
	“Tifni,” I said.
	 Istria nodded. “Looks like her.”
	I lifted the globe higher to flash the light around the trees.
	“Ainm na ghaist,” Aine whispered.
	The rest of Tifni was in the trees. Bloody scraps of her hreapa, broken detached limbs, half her trunk wedged into the fork between two tree limbs...she had been spread all over the grove. Now we were looking for it, streaks of blood and bits of mangled body jumped out at us from every tree we could see.
	“This is horrible, dhiaoc,” Aine murmured.
	“Four hundred and ninety disappointed lurers,” I said. “That’s a lot of mad.”
	“Why didn’t they come for us?” she said.
	“To give the word Tifni would have had to set up a connection with them,” I said. “I don’t know how that’s done--”
	“I do, but it doesn’t matter,” Istria answered. “Point is, they knew how to find her. They don’t necessarily know how to find us.”
	“Well thank Idair for that,” Aine said, with feeling.
	“Should we...I mean...the chain’s off her, we could give her a departure...”
	“Come on, Theamh,” Istria said. “It’d take half the night to scrape her together.”
	I swung around on her, appalled. Before I said anything, she mounted the defense. “I was in there two years, Theamh, if you have enough of an incentive you can start to find anything funny.” Her eyes went around the circuit of the bloodied tree branches. “Doesn’t mean I’m not sick to my stomach. You of all people should know that.” 
	It bothered me to see her taking it so much in stride. But then, I was a lot less disturbed by this than I had been by the massacre at Dunta. We were all starting to lose the edge of our outrage. And I could see what would happen, if this went on long. For every massacre, for every atrocity, there would be witnesses who went forth into the world with less disgust and less pity, less horror in the face of the greatest crime. 
	“Leave her,” Istria finally said. “Nobody deserves death, but Tifni got about as close as people come.”
	She dropped the chain onto Tifni’s severed head. I looked down and decided that even if there were only one piece of this death I could burn out I would do that much.
	“Stand back from it,” I said. “I’m sending her home. Part of her, anyhow.”
	Istria sighed and withdrew. Since nobody else would, I had to give the word.
	“Idair touched you once,” I said. “I grieve for the woman you were, before you became the woman you died. I know that even though this was really your second death, it was more painful and terrifying than the first. Slan abhaile, Tifni ni hEude.”
	Flame enveloped the thing at our feet, and the chain lying across it. We watched the flame burn itself out, as the skull blackened inside the fire and crumbled to nothing.
	“She was probably head-seated anyhow,” Aine observed. “Maybe this will matter.”
	“Maybe,” I answered. “Even if it doesn’t...”
	The fire was out. Now there was nothing there but a pile of ash with a silver chain snaking through it. It hadn’t altered, even though the fire had been plenty hot enough.
	“Dark spirits of everywhere,” Istria spat. “What the hell am I going to do with it?”
	She meant the chain that was curled up in her trouser pocket, sitting there pregnant with the evil she’d forged into it, which looked as if it might outlast all of us.
	“Maybe it’s not the same, for you,” I said. “Since you went shrimarbh? I’m sure Tifni and Vrila never did.”
	“Maybe,” Istria muttered darkly. “I doubt it.”
	“Dhiaoc, I want to get out of here,” Aine said.
	I looked up at the wind rifling the trees above us, setting the bloodied and festooned branches in gentle motion.
	“You’re right, Aine,” I said. “Nothing more we can do.”
	Istria nodded, and was ready to go. But Aine had changed her mind. Her head swung around like a dog’s when it finds scent, and she was suddenly off into the darkness.
	“Wait for us, Aine,” I warned, running after her.
	We didn’t have to go far. She brought herself up short with a little cry, and by the time we had found the other stand of trees she was standing still, panting a little with the surprise. “I almost walked right into it.”
	She said it in shock. And why not, since what she had almost walked right into was a pair of booted feet dangling in midair. I lifted the globe. The feet, sure enough, belonged to a man who was dangling from a noose fixed to one of the upper limbs of the tree. 
	“And that’s not the only one,” I said.
	There were four of them in that little glade, all wearing the Amstian Army uniform. All with their hands bound, all dangling from their broken necks. All dead.
	“Well,” Istria said, peering at the buckle on one of their belts. “As I thought. This is Siost mac Heol. He’s the Aiv, the others are his under-Aivs. There ought to be four of them, for a company this size; but of course there’s Kealp.”
	“You mean...is Kealp...” I began. “But--he can’t be. I’ve scoured him. He really was thralled, and the vigils would have warned me if he were an enemy.”
	“No, you’re right, dhiaoc,” Aine said. “Kealp wasn’t with them.”
	“How do you know?”
	“Because I saw him here,” she said. “Giving the order.”
	“Ah,” I said.
	Istria sighed. “Probably the Aivs had him thralled because they couldn’t turn him,” she said. “It must happen--all the aivs in every company can’t be corruptible.”
	Their hands were bound; they must have been captured and brought here. Where they were executed by Kealp, with the help and approval of the men they had betrayed. 	
	“Well,” I said. “Let’s get back to camp. You may as well give Fropp the good news--he’s safe now.”
	Sonnia and her young suitor were being tended by some of the other soldiers and Sinal, who was trying to act brave although I could see he was scared. Taric, who made no secret of his fear and loathing as regarded the spirit world, was as close to the fire as he could get and looking out at the night with a suspicious and anxious glare.
	“You’re back then,” he said, relief colored with anger at having been left alone.
	I’m afraid I didn’t stop for him, instead going straight to Kealp and crouching down in front of him where he sat with his back to the wall.
	“You’re not coming to Ancinte with us,” I said.
	“Shriia, I tell you we’re committed to playing by--”
	“Tell me another,” I spat, keeping my voice down but getting the anger into it. “We’ve been to the forest. The trees of Amst are bearing strange fruit this year.” His eyes changed as he realized what I knew. “A nice bit of work. Keeping us busy here while your men captured your Aivs and you slipped out to dispense your version of justice.”
	I said the word bitterly, having learned to really dislike the concept since that massacre at Dunta. And sure enough, Kealp was armored in his idea of justice and proof against my outrage, hardening his eyes and his voice as he came back at me.
	“We killed eighty-seven people at the Back Three,” he said, speaking in the same tense register. “That doesn’t include those burned in their beds. If it weren’t for the four of them at least those eighty-seven would be alive and my men wouldn’t be murderers.”
	“And what is this if not murder?” I demanded.
	“Justice,” he answered.
	I looked back at him from the other side of an impasse.
	“Shriia’s rules my gleacha,” I finally said. “You’ve chosen your road and it’s not ours. I thank you for your help and hospitality, and I respectfully request that in future you stay the hell away from us.”
	He looked as if he had expected this. “You have to be that way, shriia. I’m not angry.”
	“I am,” I said.
	“I know,” he answered. “But it’s for your own safety. Without us you’ll get nowhere. If everyone on the side of right had to play by shriia’s rules evil would always win. Don’t worry,” he went on, oblivious apparently to my mounting anger. “We’ll fight for you, whether you want us to or not.”
	“Do me no favors, Kealp,” I said, trying to impress this as deeply upon his mind as I could. “I’m pledged to protect life at all costs. All life. That means their lives too. That means that if I see you about to kill someone on the other side who is not immediately threatening your life, then I am bound to kill you. And I will. Do you understand that?”
	He stared back at me a moment, then said, “I do, shriia.”
	“Stay away from us,” I repeated.
	“If that’s how you’ll have it,” he said.
	“It is.”
	Kealp stood up, and walked toward the fire.
	“Men of the Cold Mountain Two,” he said, “it’s late, and we’ve work to do. Say your goodbyes, and maybe another time you’ll have the leisure to get lucky.” They got to their feet, embarrassed. “Thank you for your hospitality, shriia,” he said, bowing formally at me. “We thank you for freeing us, and we want you to know that we are with you.” This was clearly for me. “Wherever we are.” He turned to Sinal. “Sinal mac Varen, consider yourself on leave. It’s not every day a sister comes back from the dead.” Sinal nodded. “Idair keep all of you safe. Good rest to you.”
	They left. I waited for Istria to get into it.
	“He has a point,” she said. “And we could use the help.”
	“I am not going to be Barant!” I shouted. “I’ll see myself dead first.”
	“Nobody said you were, dhiaoc,” Aine said, a little timidly.
	“We do evil so they can go on doing good,” I said. “That’s her line, that’s how she got Slythe, Idair help her.” Istria opened her mouth. “No. I’m sorry. It’s a war and things are going to get muddled and that happens. But about this we must draw the line. We cannot allow people to kill for us. So if you’re going to let your brother keep that crossbow of his you better explain shriia’s rules to him.”
	“Theamh--”
	“There can be no compromise,” I said, meeting her exasperated stare. “That’s how it starts. That’s the future of evil.”
	“She’s right,” Aine said in the silence.
	“I know you are,” Istria finally said, with a little gesture of defeat. “I just--”
	She looked at me, and decided not to go on.
	“Come here, Sinal,” she said, walking over to him.
	“It does seem unfair, in a way,” Aine observed tentatively. 
	“I know it, Aine. But we can’t forget why we’re in this. We want less death and less suffering. That’s why we want Idair to win. Not just because she’s on our side.”
	“Tifni must have suffered greatly,” Aine said.
	“Are you glad about it?” I asked, my voice drained.
	She didn’t answer.
	“Tell the truth,” I said.
	“Are you?” she asked. 
	I sighed. 
	“Tell the truth.”
	I shook my head. “I am, for sure, not sorry,” I said. “But...I’m not glad either.”
	Aine nodded. “If she had been killed by Lythril in one stroke, maybe, it would even be different,” she said. “Or maybe it wouldn’t. But there’s just...too much horror.”
	“Entirely too much,” I said.
	We began bedding down for the night. There were now six of us and four shields; it worked out well enough. Aine and Sonnia got themselves and their gear under one; Taric and Sinal each had one. And then finally it was just the two of us and the last shield.
	We looked around. The fire was back in Aine; and with the shields now tented over them the others were invisible to us. It was like we had never camped here, as if we were alone on the mountain. Although we knew we were anything but.
	“You know I understand how it works,” Istria said, turning to me. “I just...got out of the habit of thinking like a shriia.”
	“I’m in the habit and I was still tempted,” I said, passing a hand over my head and sighing wearily. “Even though a lot of me knew, even before we found them out there, that if he gave me his pledge it couldn’t be trusted.” I looked out at the darkness. “We’re vulnerable, Istri, we’re like rabbits trying to make it through a wolves’ den. If none of us die it’ll be a miracle.”
	“Miracles happen,” she said. “We both know that.”
	I looked at her, and started being able to forget what I’d just seen. I started undoing. 
	<Theamh...>
	<What, Istri?>
	<You remember she said to you that...the Dark One is part of her too, and so is Lythril?>
	<I remember.>
	<What do you think she meant by that?>
	I folded up my hreapa and stuck the brooches in it. <I don’t know, Istri.>
	<I wonder if...>
	She was taking off her own clothes now, matter of fact, the way I got out of my shift and folded it up to be small. <She forgave a lot of people for a lot,> she said, pulling the shield out of our bag. <And then again she never forgave Anron’s father, or the Cretid king. And look how she punished the Cretids for not wanting her.>
	<Well, it wasn’t just that, you know, they were tyrants even back then...>
	I lay down on the makeshift bedding. <I know, Theamh, but...> She lay back, pulling the shield over us. <What if...you come from the part of her that forgives...and Lythril comes from the part of her that doesn’t?>
	<Maybe,> I said. <I’m just glad--if that’s it--that I come from the other part.>
	<Oh, me too.>
	And so there we were, under our shield, naked but invisible to everyone but each other. And...
	But no, I won’t. Imagine it for yourself. It’ll do you good, and save me time. There’s a lot of story left; with a lot of long days and long nights. And I can’t be telling you everything.

XIV.
Haunted

	“Istri, I’m losing it, I’m going to lose my hold--”
	“Hang on,” Istria shouted, as Aine and I kept throwing fire at the tentacles that were reaching for her head. “You’ve almost got it--there’s only about another thirty left--”
	“Come on,” Aine muttered, wrapping another one and turning it over to Phredi. “Come on, come to me, you big ugly hairy monstrosity...”
	We had picked a bare spot to do this, so there was nothing but rock for the fire to catch. Which meant that keeping the firewall up drained me like nobody’s business. 
	“You’d tell me if I was about to drop dead of exhaustion, wouldn’t you?”
	“Keep at it, you’re so close--”
	“Holy crap!”	
	Sonnia recoiled as a body burst through the wall of flame, dropping to the ground and rolling to put the fire out. He was on his feet in an instant, drawing his dagger.
	Aine, without being told, whipped around and sent a fireball out at him. The blade took the flame, becoming suddenly too hot to hold. He might be an Amstian Army Aiv, but he was still made of flesh. The blade clattered onto the rock. Taric kicked it outside the circle, and made it his business to grapple with the intruder.
	Sinal went to help him. We got the rest of the legs nailed and I lifted the firewall.
	“Men of the Amstian Army!” I shouted.
	But they weren’t there. Or, be more accurate, the thralled weren’t there. It was just the Aivs. Five of them. 
	“Fnaa on a hot shingle,” Istria said.
	Aine and I fired into the arani and it went home.
	“RUN!” I shouted.
	Covering our retreat with fire, I was able to keep them off our tails for a short time. Long enough to get into the valley and down where there was enough cover to screen us from their sight, even if we could still hear them coming after us.
	“God almighty,” Sonnia gasped. “Where the hell are we going?”
	“Anywhere they’re not,” I called back.
	We came to a narrow ravine and ran down into it, figuring that at least we’d have a chance to fire at them as they tumbled down after us. And as I helped Sonnia back up after her undignified descent, I had a moment to look around.
	“Istri, do you recognize this place?” I said.
	“No,” she answered. 
	“You know what’s weird,” I said. “I do.”
	“What, are you developing foresight?”
	“No...no...” I ran along the ravine, examining the rock walls that sloped down to meet under our feet. “Istri, does it not...if you think back...”
	“Idair’s hair and eyebrows,” she said. “Theamh, I think you’re right.”
	“Oh God!”
	Sonnia was right; it was no time to reminisce. Aine and I fired in their direction. But they knew we couldn’t shoot to kill, and flight soon became our only option.
	<Where are we?> Aine asked as we sped as fast as we could up the ravine.
	<I think this is where we faced off with Lythril,> I answered. <In the cave--you know, where we got our fire.>
	Istria interrupted. <Follow me, Theamh, I know where we are now.>
	I did too, to my sorrow. Down into a valley forested with twisted old pine, over the broken teeth of boulders still mourning the loss of whatever glacier dropped them there, across the beginning of a level plateau to...nothing.
	<It’s not here,> I said, as we brought ourselves up short.
	Istria spent a few minutes running about as if she had lost her head, and then leaned on the air. A narrow slit opened up. She poked her head into the nothing, and it momentarily disappeared.
	<It is too,> she said, withdrawing it. <I don’t like it either, Theamh, but-->
	Sonnia’s scream made us jump in our skins. “God, God, I’m shot, they shot me!”
	One arrow in the back, wedged under the shoulderblade, the shaft visible as she fell forward into Aine’s arms.
	Come on, get her in here.
	There was no time to argue. We dragged a weeping, screaming Sonnia through the door and Istria closed it.
	“Idair’s hair and eyebrows,” I said.
	It was still there. Half big house and half walled city, impressive by our standards but about a quarter the size of Greenhaven. Crowned at the top with stone towers starting to fall into ruin, ringed by crenellated ramparts on which ravens were still perching. One door, six inches thick, hanging open with the ends of its broken and trailing chain and padlock dissolving in rust. Offering us a good look down that long flagstoned corridor, the damp paved gullet of the beast I had been fighting in dreams for the past six years.
	“Come on, let’s get her inside where we can work on her in peace,” she said. “We’ll deal with them later. The shield will keep them out.”
	Istria turned a corner and led us into a room off the hallway. There was nothing in it now but a large oak table and some decaying chairs, along with some motheaten hangings on the walls. It had been a common room for her clients, where they could lounge about eating, drinking, or gratifying whatever other lusts they had brought with them. The books that had once been ranged along the niches in the walls had been burned, of course; not that there was anything much important in them. Lythril had either sent the important stuff on ahead with Istria and Maerin or burned it herself.
	We laid Sonnia face down on the table.
	“I’m gonna die...”
	“You don’t know that,” I said, as Istria produced her knife and cut the back of Sonnia’s sleeveless shirt open. “Try to lie still, and let Aine take the pain for you.”
	She was already up at that end of the table, her hands on Sonnia’s head, starting the chant. Her breathing slowed down a bit, although even when she was no longer in quite so much pain she was still terribly frightened.
	Taric and Sinal appeared, out of their shields. “Can we do anything, shriia?”
	I was examining the wound. “There’s a bag on the floor,” I said. “Get out the bottle of water and see if you can find a relatively clean scrap of fabric we can use as a swab.” Taric went to get the bottle. And then you and Sinal might step outside...she’s now minus a shirt, and I’m not sure she’d want you two watching.
	Damn, it’s in deep, Istria said. Right between the blade and the rib.
	“I’m gonna die,” Sonnia whimpered.
	“Sonnia--”
	“It’s deep, it’s in deep, I can feel it!”
	“Hush,” Aine said, stroking her head. “Hush now, they’ll take care of you. Hush.”
	Sonnia seemed to find this a little comforting. Can you get your mind on it?
	Istria squinted down the shaft. See if you can hold the wound open a little. 
	“Don’t touch it, don’t touch it, it hurts!”
	I hadn’t touched it. I looked back at Istria.
	You think...
	If she’s already receiving, she’s a thurking miracle, Istria responded, as I began gently easing the lips of the wound open. She could see down to where the stone edge of the arrowhead appeared between the red oozing sides of the cleft it had made in her.
	“I’m gonna die,” Sonnia whimpered. “It’d take a thurking miracle...”
	“Hush now,” Aine repeated, running one hand lightly over the back of her neck.
	I think I’ve got it, Istria said. Hold it steady.
	“I am holding still!” Sonnia snapped, still crying.
	 Istria didn’t have the time and leisure to comment on this, because she was busy trying to ease the blade back out through the wound without tearing her further. But it sure seemed to me like she was at least picking up what we were saying, even if she didn’t realize that it wasn’t coming from her own head. Which is the first step, even if it’s a step most of our children go through at around age two.
	“Ah!” 
	Istria got the blade to the edge of the wound. She took the shaft carefully between her fingers and eased it out of Sonnia’s shoulder, dropping it finally onto the table.
	“It’s out,” she said. “In with the uisce then.”
	I trickled the uisce into the wound, watching the sparkle disappear as it sank into her. <You want to wrap it or should I?> I said.
	<If you promise not to be offended...>
	<Please, I’ll feel much better if you do it.>
	Istria leaned down to Sonnia’s ear. “We have to get you sitting up. Come on.”
	Istria guided her gently into a sitting position on the table. Sonnia’s fingers were clenched around her hand, her lip white as she bit into it and the tears ran down her face.
	She was better at this than I was; I had never had trouble admitting that. She got the wound closed and had the wrap going around and around her back and shoulder like a bandage, holding the wound closed so tight the only thing you could tell it by was the thin red line where the edges met.
	“The pressure will stop the bleeding and keep the wound shut and clean,” Istria said. “But you need to find somewhere to lie quiet for a while and let it heal. Lie back on your stomach now and Aine will take care of you while see what we can find upstairs.”
	Sonnia nodded, doing as she was bid.
	“You’ve been very brave, Sonnia,” Istria said, gently. “It’ll be all right. I hope.”
	We went back to the corridor, looking at the great staircase that swept to the upper story. And at the doors on either side of it that led to the underground level.
	“I cannot believe we’re back here,” I said.
	Istria shook her head. 
	“Well let’s go upstairs then,” I said, “because for damn sure it’d take some fast talking to get me down to the cellar.”
	It didn’t take us long to find one of the guest rooms. The bedding was of course moldering, infested, and falling into tatters, but once we got it stripped off the mattress itself seemed like it was probably all right, if somewhat flattened. What had at one time been a canopy dangled in rags from the four bedposts. Looking up at the carved heads atop those poles gnashing their teeth over our heads, I had a hard time repressing a shiver.
	“I came in here all the time to take blood,” I said, unnecessarily perhaps. “First stop, closest to the staircase.”
	“It was bad policy,” Istria said, looking out the dirt-filmed window through which the afternoon light was barely struggling. “Having clients on the premises like that. Distracting, and dangerous. But while she was here, she wouldn’t hear of changing it.”
	I looked at her across the bare mattress, waiting for her to go on.
	“She was never going to have a family,” Istria said. “Maerin’s not much in terms of conversation or company. So who else was she going to show off her wealth and power to, if she cleared the clients out?”
	I was about to say something, but Aine broke in on me, loud and in panic.
	<Dhiaoc, get down here, right away, something’s wrong.>
	Istria followed me as I rocketed back to the staircase. “What is it, Theamh?”
	I didn’t really have anything to tell her; and anyway we saw it soon enough. Sonnia was flat on her stomach, but her arms were clutched and quivering as she shivered uncontrollably, and her eyes fluttered as she moaned in a kind of interrupted wail.
	“She just...got like this.” Aine was greatly distressed. “I don’t know what to do.”
	I didn’t either. <Infected?> I asked, as we looked over the wound.
	<Not this early,> Istria answered, inspecting the wrap just in case. <No, this is something else...if it were infection the wound would be warm or purulent. This...unless it got to her heart or lungs and we just didn’t notice...>
	I felt for her pulse. It was rapid, unsteady, under skin cooler than it should be. <Istri, this is not right, infection doesn’t do this...>
	Istria looked into Sonnia’s face in puzzlement and anxiety. Her mouth moved as she whimpered, and a kind of whitish slime was starting to form around her tongue.
	<Oh spirits of hell, Istri, it’s ebrane.>
	Her eyes suddenly opened wider. <You’re right, it is.>
	<How the hell...?>
	Istria picked up the arrow. She looked closely at the blade, then flung it into a corner with a curse that could have raised boils on a cat’s back.
	“Quick, think, Istri, is this one of the ones there’s an antidote for...”
	“Yes, there is...”
	While Istria was frowning in desperate concentration, Taric and Sinal wandered back in. “Shriia, are you all right?”
	“Shut up and let me think!” Istria shouted.
	“We’re not all right, Taric,” I said quietly. “Sonnia’s been poisoned--they’re dipping their arrows in something.”
	Taric looked at Sonnia in concern. Istria exploded from concentration into activity.
	“I have it! Fielhu, retweed, yellowtooth stems, and lacegrass. That’s all we need.”
	“But where do we find it?” I said. “Look where she is--we don’t have time to go gathering herbs on the hillside, with five Amstian Aivs out there with more of these poisoned arrows.”
	Istria looked back at Sonnia, who was bluish about the lips. She stood for a moment in agonized paralysis.
	“Shriia?” Taric said. 
	I turned around. Taric had withdrawn a bunch of wildflowers from his pocket and was holding them toward me, tentatively and with a kind of shy self-doubt.
	“Would these be any...”
	I found myself choked up looking at them, and his earnest but futile hope. “Thank you, Taric, but I doubt those are the ones we’re--”
	“No!” Istria shouted, in sudden excitement. “I mean yes--Idair’s hair--” She grabbed the flowers and began separating them, muttering the names. “I do not thurking believe it, you’ve got them all. Aine, we need water, but I mean nasty, smelly, stagnant--”
	“Brackish,” Aine nodded.
	“That’s it! Brackish. Exactly. Grab a vessel and get us about a quart of brackish water from outside--I think there’s a birdbath out there, it should be perfect.” Aine disappeared. “Theamh, the mortar and pestle should be where she left ‘em.”
	I was too focused on getting the stuff back to the room quickly to pay attention to the memories of that kitchen and its pantry that flooded the edges of my mind as I ran through the back passage into the kitchen, threw a lot of crockery onto the floor as I combed back through the shelf to get the stone cup with the stone wand inside it.
	By the time I reached the table Istria had already started tearing up the flowers and setting them out in piles. “Your man Taric is an underrated genius,” Istria said, eyes on her work and not on me. “I don’t know how he did it, but he’s got everything we need.”
	“Taric?” I queried, as Istria began putting the ingredients into the mortar.
	Taric looked frightened of himself. “I was...just...walking through a meadow, that first day we walked into Amst, and I was looking around at the flowers, and I thought, ‘We don’t have these in the Vicinity, and they’re...’” He looked away, embarrassed. Over six feet tall with arms like a blacksmith and he was ashamed to say the word “pretty.”
	I couldn’t help smiling. “So you picked yourself a nosegay?”
	Poor man, he was turning red. “You know, how people press flowers, and keep them in...in paper...”
	“You collect flowers, Taric?” I said, deeply touched and at the same time amused.
	Aine came running back with an old jug full of water that certainly smelled brackish enough. “Great, Aine, pour some of that in here--stop when I say--”
	Taric returned to the defensive. “Other men must press flowers!”
	“Not any I know,” Sinal said.
	“Pipe down!” Istria snapped. “He’s saving Sonnia’s life, so you just let him press flowers if he wants and don’t give him any grief about it. Stop!”
	Aine stopped. Istria went to work with the pestle, pounding furiously. “We need to get it into her,” she finally said. “I’ve been in there once, I’ll get her to swallow. Theamh, just pour some of it into her mouth, it doesn’t matter how much really.”
	We turned Sonnia’s head to the side and Istria projected into her. When her mouth opened it looked an unhealthy place, whitening in patches along the gums and the insides of her cheeks. I dribbled it into her mouth, which closed. Sonnia’s throat moved and the stuff went down. Istria sighed, and backed out.
	“Now what?”
	“It’ll take a while to work,” Istria said, keeping her eyes on Sonnia. “I wish we could inject it. But making something injectable is work for professionals.” 
	Sinal came to the table to watch. “Is she going to be all right?”
	“We can hope,” I said. 
	“I’m sorry to have made fun,” Sinal said to Taric, sincerely.
	“No harm done,” he said, although I could see he was still embarrassed.
	<So he presses flowers,> Istria said, as we watched Sonnia for signs of improvement. <That doesn’t explain why he gathered the exact ingredients we needed.>
	<Foresight,> I said. <Working on him without his knowledge.>
	<It’s a crime and a shame that he won’t train this,> Istria said.
	<I think he has the idea that it doesn’t help.>
	<Well, we ought to disabuse him.>
	“I think her color’s a little better,” Aine said. “Or am I just imagining?”
	Istria went to look. “No...I think you’re right.” She sighed. “Thank you, Taric, you’ve saved her life.” 
	“They’re just flowers,” he said diffidently.
	“Nothing in the world is just itself,” Istria said quietly, looking at Sonnia. “It’s all about what you see.”
	Sonnia was breathing normally, and her lips were no longer blue. Her eyes were closed, but she looked a lot more comfortable, if still weak.
	“So they’re poisoning their arrows,” I said.
	Something suddenly occurred to Istria.
	“Sinal, get me your quiver.”
	Sinal handed it to her. Istria drew some of the shafts out and looked at the heads.
	“They look all right to me,” she said, puzzled. “Theamh, do you see anything?”
	I looked, but I wasn’t sure. “Here, put one in water, that’ll show us...”
	Istria dashed some water into a cracked goblet and dipped the arrowhead in it. We stirred, but the water didn’t turn blue-purple, and there was no smoke.
	“Nope,” I said.
	Istria took it out and watched the water drip down the sharp iron edges. 
	“How come some of them are iron and some of them are stone?” I asked.
	Istria blinked.
	“I mean, I guess it’s a stupid question, I don’t know anything about weapons...”
	She shook her head. “It’s not a stupid question. It’s a damn good question.”
	“Nobody uses stone any more,” Sinal said. “Stone doesn’t go in as deep.”
	Istria turned the poisoned arrow over, frowning at it. The poison had dried at the tip and along the sides. Underneath the dried gook, the arrowhead was a strange shiny black stone, edged sharp as ground glass. 
	“There’s only one thing stone arrows are good for that iron can’t do better,” she said, still looking at the blade. “The chain protects against metallic weapons. Not stone.”
	“So these men with these arrows,” I said, beginning to get it.
	Istria nodded. “They’re looking to kill a dark user.”
	The only sound for a while was Sonnia breathing, easier now and almost regular.
	“So is this three-sided war now four-sided?” I ventured, hoping she’d say no.
	“It could mean anything,” Istria said. “They could be in Barant’s pay trying to get Lythril, or Lythril’s pay trying to get Barant’s flunkies, or they could be arming themselves against both sides in preparation for killing them all and inaugurating army rule.” She tossed the arrow back onto the table. “They would have to get the ebrane from a dark user, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to use it for the purpose she had in mind.”
	Sonnia’s eyes blinked. “Guys?”
	“How are you, Sonnia?” Aine asked.
	“Is there any water? My mouth tastes like a dead rat.”
	“You know what a dead rat tastes like, do you?” I said.
	“Here, I’ll see if I can find you some that’s not brackish,” Aine said.
	“There’s a pump in the kitchen,” I said. “I’ll go. You get Sonnia into bed--Istria will show you where.”
	The kitchen was much as I remembered it. Damp, dark, and dirty, with an old encrusted kettle sitting on a rusting tripod over a hearth that hadn’t seen a fire in a long time. A cold wind blew through the broken pane of the one small window, sending a draft across the back of my neck that almost made me jump. I hadn’t liked it much when it was in good repair; now that the doors and windows were all breached and the place was a sieve, I liked it even less. And the carpet of dust, dirt and dead bits of leaf and twig that had drifted in corners after blowing through that window didn’t do much for it either.
	“Is it still working, Theamh?”
	I turned around a little faster than I wanted to. “Istri...please, while we’re here, give me warning before you sneak up on me.”
	“I’m sorry.” She took the cup of water, and the hand I was holding it in, in hers to steady it. “I’m sorry. I will.” She sniffed at the cup. “Clean and clear enough. I’ll take it up; you see if you can find a bigger vessel and fill that. She should drink a lot.”
	I started sorting through the crockery. The difficulty was finding something I could be sure was clean. If it was dirty, as most of them were, there was no telling what would dissolve into the water. Finally I decided that the only way to set my mind at ease would be to give one of the clay pippins a good scouring, first with fire and then with water.
	This place hadn’t been here when they went out to look for it after we got our orders. It had been out in Kengda, in the middle of a bog. That was what it took Dalen so long to figure out--that her lair didn’t stay in one place all the time. Somehow she had worked out a way of transporting the thing lock stock and barrel across two provinces through the thin air of an instant and setting it down shield and all as if it had grown there. Which kept Dalen one step behind her. Until she had the idea that, evidently, she never told the Council until after the fact. 
	A dark user has to have clients, and no matter how crafty she is she does leave traces. Dalen would get reports from various parts of the country suggesting Lythril’s presence, and go there, and find nothing. But after a few years she realized that there was a pattern. Lythril seemed to appear all over the place with no special system, except that for one month in the cold season she was always in Amst, near where we had been found.
	So Dalen had shared this with Morat, and as soon as that month began they moved on her. Knowing what I now knew I could piece it together. Barant had warned Lythril. But Lythril could do nothing about her schedule--this magic absolutely required her to return to this spot once a year. Probably this was where she had first built the place, and the laws of space and time forced her, as payment for breaking them eleven months of the year, to abide by them exactly for one. All she could do was get her associates ready for flight. Send Maerin and Istria over the border, then stay and face the fire.
	<Theamh, I’m coming down to you.>
	<Thanks, Istri.>
	I turned toward the low doorway and waited. They had taken her, and they’d destroyed her shield and burned what they could burn. But now somehow the shield was back up. Reactivated--by Lythril? By Barant? By accident?
	“It’s just me,” Istria said, walking toward me slowly.
	I got impatient, and ran up and held onto her, hard.
	“Ah Theamh,” she said, stroking my hair. “I hate it too.”
	I released her, trying to be braver. “Istri, who rebuilt the shield?”
	“Nobody. It was never destroyed--she just made it look that way. She wanted to be able to reactivate it when she came back.”
	“When?”
	Istria laughed bitterly. “Oh, that was something she wanted us to understand very clearly--she was coming back. No question.”
	“Well then who reactivated it?”
	“I did--before we got there. I know the command.”
	“Ah that’s lucky,” I said, not meaning anything by it.
	The light from the window was thin and gray. Istria’s eyes got a little darker and a little sadder. Finally she took my hand, and said, “I have something to show you.”
	It was meant to come out casually, but it was a whisper with hardly any voice in it, dry and choked.
	“There’s nothing you could show me that would make me not love you,” I said.
	She blinked, her throat rising in a tense gasp. “Theamh,” she said, grabbing one of my hands with the desperation of the sinking. “I don’t deserve you, Idair knows I don’t.”
	“She knows no such thing,” I said. 
	When she could, she said, “Do you think you can stand...to go back to the cellar?”
	“If you can stand it I can,” I said. “As long as you’re with me.”
	She nodded, swallowing the grief in her throat. I put an arm around her waist, pulling her hips next to mine. She wrapped her arm around my shoulders, and together we went back into that corridor and down the stairs.
	I had been there so often in my dreams, but in my dreams it looked as it had when I was first there. Now, mushrooms and toadstools were growing out of the cracks between the flagstones, and the doors of the rooms leading off the corridor were warped and rotting, the iron grates falling out of them like teeth out of an old man’s jaw. Istria stopped in front of one of them, and gave it a push.
	It took the two of us to get the thing open, and in the end we did it just by ripping it off its rotting hinges and tossing it behind us onto the corridor floor. I walked after Istria into a small room with a stone floor and stone walls. No window; no light except for the globe I had brought with me. And nothing in it, but an iron loop bolted into one of the walls and a length of iron chain dangling from it onto the stone floor.
	“This is where she held me,” Istria said, huskily.
	I held onto her while we looked at the empty corner and that rusting, unused chain. I could see nothing. But then in a way I could. See her, at least, stripped to her shift like I had been, blocked, weak, chained to the wall, left to shiver in the dark hours on end, hauled out for torture whenever it fit into Lythril’s schedule. Scared to death. Hoping for rescue. Sure of it at first, then gradually realizing that her days would end in this room.
	“Tell me what you want and nothing more,” I said.
	Istria shook her head. “You know the story,” she said. “You lived through it. Only she had no electroshock machine; she had to rely on cruder methods.” 
	“Ah, Istri.” I didn’t know what else to say.
	“That is, until I went shrimarbh,” Istria said. “Once she realized I’d lied about your name...she stopped torturing me. Physically, anyhow.”
	Because once she’d been broken, Lythril had to rebuild her. And if cruelty works for the breaking, it’s kindness that does the damage later. Reward, leniency, special favor. 
	“She told me...” Istria shook her head. “Too many lies to count. I knew most of them were lies. There was only one that I believed.” She looked back at me. “She told me...that I hadn’t come out after her to bring her down. That I had come out, really, to join her. Because working with her had taught me that this was who I really was. And that I had been drawn back here to finish what I’d started. Turning.”
	“And you believed her,” I said.
	“Yes.”
	I looked at the thick, corrupted links of that dangling iron chain.
	“You know now it was a lie, don’t you?” I said.
	She was silent for a little while.
	“That day in the padded cell up in Greenhaven,” she said. “When you were explaining--as you thought--to Aine about why I had turned.”
	I nodded.
	“It was the first time, ever, that what I had done made any kind of sense to me.” Her hand found mine and tightened on it fiercely. “You know me.” I almost wanted to shrink from the intensity of her gaze. “I know myself because you know me.” 
	“Istri...”
	“All my life people have told me lies about who I am,” she went on. “I love you for telling me the truth.”
	“You make the truth, Istri,” I said, frightened of all this responsibility. “I just...I can see a tree by daylight, that’s all.”
	She smiled, but it turned sad in only half an instant. “Theamh, I...” She shook her head. “No, I don’t want to show you this. But I feel like...I have to.”
	“Then show me,” I said.
	We continued down the corridor, until we came to the door of the round room.
	I had seen it only once or twice, in real life, but it was a permanent fixture of the nightmares. It was in there that Lythril did all the really important magic. For instance, if she were going to bring a new dark user into her version of the Order, that would be where she would hold the initiation rite.
	The hinges on the stone door were so far gone that they snapped easily. We scrambled back as the door fell forward and landed at our feet with a startling crack.
	I lifted the light globe above us. “So who gets to go first?” I said.
	She looked so white and paralyzed that I finally said, “Put your arm around me and we’ll go together.”
	Nodding in silent terror, she clasped my waist and we walked over the prostrated stone slab of the door into the round room.
	It was empty now. The big kettle that sat on the dais in the center had been transported over the border to the Erysin plant. But the dais was still there, stained with use, crusted with the dried scum of potions, streaked with brown trails of dried blood and ash. Lythril was fanatical about keeping herself clean, and she extended that to the pantry. But here and in the kitchen, she let the layers build up. I had thought it was just slatternliness, but walking slowly toward that dais I thought no, she does nothing by accident. Filth is history. Building on itself, day by day, the thickening crust of evil tightening its dry choking grip on that disc of polished stone.
	“This is where it happened,” Istria said, her voice sounding hollow under the cavernous dome that my light rebounded from. “This is where I turned.”
	I wasn’t sure she wanted me to say anything so I didn’t.
	“I want you to know what happened. But I can’t--my voice won’t tell this story.” She turned to me. “I can show it to you, through aftersight. Let you see what I’m seeing.”
	I ran my tongue over my dry lips to wet them. “But I won’t hear the words.”
	“You will, because I remember them. You’ll get it all, one way or another.” I swallowed. “If you’re willing.”
	I was as frightened as I had ever been of anything. But I knew this had to be faced. And I trusted that Idair would not force me to face anything too terrible to live with.
	“I am,” I said.
	“Ah Theamh,” she said, her eyes moistening. “Idair help me.” She dropped her arm from my waist, bringing her hand instead up to my head as I turned to face her. “My darkest hour. The worst I have in me. You’re about to see it.”
	“I know your worst,” I said. “I love you all the way through. That’s my truth and this foul place isn’t going to shake me from it, no matter what you did in here.”
	She nodded, dropped her hand, and took one of mine. We stepped back against the wall. “I’ll...have to walk around a bit, maybe...walk with me.”
	“I will.”
	“You’ll see what it was like then,” she said. “And nothing else. It will go dark, at first. Just so you know.”
	“All right, Istri.”
	And it went dark. Pitch black. I felt her hand still in mine, but otherwise there was nothing to tell me where I was. Darker even than in the Snake’s Nest when we were running from Tifni and Hern. Darker than what you see when you close your eyes.
	Say who you are.
	Lythril’s voice, but because it was a memory it sounded like a head voice. And thank Idair I had never heard Lythril’s head voice, so it was strange. But it had to be her.
	Istria, daughter of Varen.
	It was still pitch black, and I could hear nothing but the movement of feet on the stone floor.
	Say where you are.
	In the dark.
	Neither of them apparently saw that as funny; and even I would have had a hard time making a joke of it. They were speaking Old Tongue, and in Old Tongue the most banal or vapid things acquire a weight and power that they don’t have in the vernacular. I render it in our tongue because translation mars magic. And if I have to preserve this magic in my story, I want it to be marred.
	Say what you want.
	I want power.
	Istria’s hand was sweating on mine. I clutched hers so hard my fingers shook.
	In the center of the room, there was the brief roar of flame. Dark fire bloomed like a red lily in one of Lythril’s hands, which she held up in front of her face. Just enough light to show where she was standing. So that Istria, vaguely distinguishable as a slightly less dark patch in the darkness, would be able to walk forward toward her.
	Ask.
	And Istria, her hands fisted tight at her sides, began moving out of that shadow toward the circle where the blood-red light throbbed around Lythril. And as she moved, I heard her chanting.

	Hawk whose steel-tipped talons mesh
	In the rabbit’s bleeding flesh,
	Wolf that tears the day-old lamb,
	Dark One, make this what I am

	Slide the blade, divide the skin
	Twist the knife once it’s gone in,
	Violate, lay waste, run through--
	Dark One, make this what I do

In the vernacular it can never have the same power that it had as I was listening to her say it, walking slowly toward that flickering globe of light and Lythril’s reddened face. Moving out of the black into the red, taking the color of Lythril’s fire. 

	Death inside my fisted hand
	Opened up upon the land,
	Red and reeking from the field,
	Dark One, make this what I wield

	Velvet robe and silver chain,
	Sated lust and pleasant pain,
	Sweetened poison, fist in glove,
	Dark One, make this what I love

It wasn’t until she got up close that I could see anything much in her face. And even then it was impassive, set like a statue’s. She had made up her mind that there would be no crack in the facade, nothing to indicate that a heart still beat in her. That she would convince Lythril, herself, the Dark One, that she was already dead.

	Be my breath, my drink, my food
	From my heart drain out the blood
	Find me ready for the task
	Dark One, give me what I ask.

And yet it was there, in her voice. Despair, as black as it got. And mixed with that, a strange brew of things I recognized. Determination, vehemence, ambition, pride. The desire to do whatever she did hard, right, and all the way to the wall. 
	The worst I have in me, she had said. She was right. But much as the hair stood upon my arms to hear these words spoken, much as my heart cried out to her as I saw the ruin that had been made of her, I knew I would live through and live with this memory. Because this woman standing in the pool of bloodied light was her. The worst she had in her--but her worst. Not the Dark One’s, not Lythril’s. Nothing I hadn’t seen before. 
	Welcome.
	Lythril increased the flame so that more of the room was visible. Lythril had stepped backward to the edge of the dais; Istria remained in the center. I saw for the first time that there was a cat near Lythril’s feet, walking back and forth over her boots, trailing its gray tail over the skirt of her black velvet robe. At a signal from Lythril, the cat trotted over to Istria, crouching at her feet and looking up expectantly.
	Pick her up.
	Istria stooped and collected the cat, holding it in her arms and stroking it automatically, one hand gently combing the gray fur as she looked back at Lythril, starting to feel maybe that she wouldn’t be able to keep the stone face she had.
	You’re wondering why she’s here.
	I am.
	Lythril began pacing the edge of the circle, forcing Istria to turn slowly to keep her in view.
	Surely it’s obvious, Lythril said. I see you with her, I know who she is to you. 
	She’s a cat, Lythril.
	Of course. Lythril started spiraling inward, slowly. But what’s a cat? Something you can touch, something living that loves you. Istria’s eyebrows lowered in anger, but Lythril went on. The only thing living that loves you. As far as you know.
	Istria said nothing, continuing to stroke the cat. And I saw, from the movement of Istria’s hands, Lythril was right about this. Except she might have said, something living that you love, something that unlike the other living things you love you can still touch. Something that has come to stand for other people who are lost to you forever, closed off on the other side of that fortress wall, gone for good. As far as you know.
	It’s all the people you’ve loved, she said. Varen. Sinal. Morat. Her boots clicked over the stone. Theamh.
	Istria self-consciously stilled her hands.
	All the people who have betrayed you, she went on. Varen, who let your father beat and thurk you.
	Istria looked into the darkness ahead of her and said nothing.
	Sinal, who made you fight his battles.
	The fur of the cat tufted between her fingers as her hand started to clench. The cat sat without moving. It must have been suborned.
	Morat, who sent you here to me.
	Istria’s chin was trembling just very slightly, the jaw clenched to make it stop.
	Theamh, who’s letting you rot here.
	There was a sound as if Istria had started to say something but choked it.
	Theamh, who spoiled you in the first place. Lythril was close up to her now, talking into her ear as Istria resolutely refused to look at her. Theamh, who woke the desire she wouldn’t satisfy. Theamh, who made you too weak for shri. Theamh, who let you go away from her. 
	The cat yowled as Istria’s fingers dug into its flanks.
	Theamh, who said she loved you but wouldn’t tell you her name.
	So that was how she had played it. Pretending that she had given a false name to Lythril just because she didn’t want the shame of admitting she’d never known it. 
	There was the shine of something in her eyes but it might just have been firelight.
	Theamh, who said she loved you but never came for you.
	With an annoyed howl, the cat finally sprang out of Istria’s arms. But it didn’t go far. It stayed near her in the center, prowling about between them.
	Theamh, who’s glad you’re gone.
	It’s a lie, Istria finally said, hating herself an instant later for having said it.
	Maybe it is, Lythril said, stepping backward to the edge. But it’s a lie you believe.
	Istria’s eyes were fixed on the cat. Lythril’s were fixed on Istria, and they were getting brighter. With anticipation, excitement, triumph.
	They’re all there, Lythril said, indicating the cat. All there because you put them there. All the ones you loved. All the ones that hurt you. All the ones you hate. Lythril put a hand out toward Istria, palm upward. Give me your chain.
	Istria unfolded one fist, dropping a silver chain into Lythril’s palm.
	Lythril crouched down near the cat, bringing the chain a few times around the cat’s neck and clasping it. She stood up and stepped back.
	Take the last step, Istria.
	Istria’s hands left her sides, slowly, wandering through the air as if they weren’t sure where they were going. Lythril held a breath.
	The secret to power is strength,  Lythril went on, as Istria’s hands stopped moving. The weak need love. The strong need nothing. 
	Istria was still staring at the cat, and her face was changing.
	That’s what you’ve wanted all your life, to be strong. You can have it now. Everything that’s ever hurt you is right in front of you. Waiting to be destroyed.
	Lythril now stood behind Istria, casting that red light over her shoulder and onto the cat, which blinked up at her now already awash in bloodied light.
	Your mother. Your brother. Your diaoc. Your lover. Faithless, worthless, worse than useless. Istria wasn’t breathing now. Your choice. Let them live, and hurt forever. Kill them, and never be hurt again.
	Istria set her teeth. I knew what she’d made up her mind to do.
	Stretch out your hands, Lythril said.
	Istria lifted her hands toward where the cat lay on the dais, flicking its tail idly as it licked one of its paws.
	Burn it.
	Red fire broke from Istria’s hands. In the same instant, a scream from the bottom of Istria’s heart twined with the scream of the cat caught in the fire. And with mine, as I recoiled from the sight that wasn’t really there, backing blindly into the real Istria.
	The cat went up so quickly it didn’t have time to run; it lay on the dais, spasming in convulsions as the muscles under the skin bubbled up off the bone. Istria, the then-Istria, watched it burn, her breath heavy in a troubled chest, eyes staring with something close to madness, hands still flickering with this red fire.
	“Istri, hold me, show me where you are.”
	My voice sounded strange to me, used as I was now to the sound of those remembered voices. I felt Istria’s arms go around my waist. She was standing behind me, chin on my shoulder, watching what I was watching.
	It took a long time for the cat to burn. The bones were last, crumbling into blackened carbon. I heard myself crying. I knew the Istria holding me was crying too. And squinting ahead through my tears I saw that then-Istria was not crying, but that she was gulping something down in her throat that would have been a cry if she let it go.
	The last of the flame flickered out, and Lythril was now standing on the other side of the dais, looking at Istria over a pile of smoking ash.
	Pick it up.
	Istria dropped heavily to her knees and began sifting through the ash, the fire still on her hands. She pulled out the silver chain, looped as it had been around the cat’s neck.
	Open it.
	Istria opened the clasp, looking down at the ash.
	Give it to me.
	Istria took a hissing breath, looked up, and handed the chain to Lythril.
	While Istria stared straight ahead, Lythril walked around to stand behind her. Istria was still on her knees, arms straight at her sides, the flames still flickering around her fingers as if she had forgotten they were there.
	Swear.
	Istria swallowed again, and then spoke.
	I dedicate
	the work of my hands
	the strength of my mind
	the wish of my heart
	the fate of my spirit
	to the uses
	the wishes
	the powers
	of darkness
	I swear
	to increase 
	in word
	in thought
	in deed
	the power
	of darkness
	Lythril draped the chain around Istria. The links lay glinting ruddy along her bare neck as Lythril stood behind her, one end in each hand, waiting to close the clasp. It was another few long moments before Istria’s voice finally resumed.
	I submit to the power
	whose fire I wield
	I pledge to remember
	who masters the field
	I take up my portion
	of punish and pain
	I bend my neck,
	I wear the chain.
	Lythril brought the ends of the chain together at the nape of Istria’s bowed neck. The clasp closed. A streak of red lightning leapt from the clasp and ran along the chain until it completed the circle. The spark died, and the chain gleamed in the light, closed now with Istria caught in its hoop.
	It looked as if Istria were choking on something, in a way that reminded me of how the dry heaves used to take me after a full afternoon of electroshock therapy. As if she were trying to cry, but there was a stone in her throat.
	Get up, Lythril said.
	Istria got heavily to her feet. But before she could turn around, Lythril pulled on the back of Istria’s chain, dragging Istria backward into her. With a twist of her hand she had the chain digging into Istria’s neck and Istria’s hands up pulling at it to break the hold.
	Lythril hissed into her ear. It’s done. Istria, realizing she could breathe, stopped clawing at the chain, although her eyes still betrayed the fear she felt. You’re everything you’ve ever called me. You’re a traitor. A liar. A whore of hell. One of the Dark One’s bitches. Lythril twisted the chain another fraction, making Istria gasp in panic. The Dark One’s bitch, and my bitch. I made you. I own you. Till death and after, Istria ni Vharen.
	Lythril let go of the chain and walked to the edge of the dais. Istria took one long gasping breath, putting a hand up to her breast, fingers resting on this new strange thing.
	Lythril turned around, and smiled when she saw her, standing there in center of the dais with the chain around her neck and hatred in her eyes.
	You can take it on and off at will, Lythril said, as casually as possible. The clasp can only be opened by you. If anyone finds it undone and tries it on, that person will die as soon as the clasp is closed. Take care of it, you can only make one.
	Istria didn’t answer, or move.
	Congratulations, Lythril said. You have your fire. Now get to work.
	Lythril walked back to the door, pulling it open and passing up through the corridor. Istria stood for a moment on the dais, her hands still flickering with that red light.
	Finally she shook her head and pulled the fire back into her hands. 
	There was another instant of complete darkness. And then I was back in the now. Standing at the edge of the round room looking toward that dais as Istria dropped her arms self-consciously from around my waist and moved out to face me.
	The tears were wet on her face and so were mine. She looked at me, and shook her head, with a little cry of futility and despair that flung me into action.
	“Listen to me.” I took her head in my hands and brought it toward mine, realizing that my hands were shaking and my voice was hoarse and rusty. “Listen to me.”
	She was listening, although it took me a while to find my voice. 
	“That was the worst,” I said, unable to bring my voice above a croaking whisper. “I’ve seen it now, and you have nothing more to be afraid of.” Her face twisted and she gagged on a stuttered sob. “I love you. I’ll always love you. The dark with the bright.”
	“Theamh,” she said, in a kind of broken wail.
	I held her up while she collapsed on me, sobbing out everything she couldn’t cry all those years ago when it had happened, her arms around my neck like mine had been around hers for that one second in that evil laboratory before the pain took me.
	“The poor cat,” was what I finally figured out she was saying. “The poor little cat.”
	I was crying for the cat too, but much more for Istria and the heart she had cut out and put on the pyre along with the sacrifice. And Istria was crying for herself too, but she couldn’t say that, she had it still in her mind that she wasn’t worth crying for, that she deserved everything that happened to her, that the biggest tragedy we’d witnessed here was the sudden death of a gray cat who had never done her harm and never saw it coming.
	“I don’t see...” Her arms tightened around me. “I don’t see how you can forgive me...” She pulled back now, her face red and twisted with the pain. “I burned you, I burned all of them, I burned--”
	“You didn’t burn me,” I said, hanging onto her. “I’m here, I’m alive, we’re all alive. It was only a cat.”
	“But if you’d been there--”
	“If I’d been there everything would have been different.” She didn’t come back with an answer, instead just looking on miserably at the reflection in my face of her anguish. “Istri, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry I didn’t come for you.”
	I was shaking with grief, remorse, anger at myself and Lythril and tell the truth at her too, for not believing in me, but more than anything fear at the sudden understanding of how deep in she had gotten and how close she had come to being lost forever.
	“You did come for me,” she said, trying to stop me from shaking by holding me. “You came for me in the end. If I’d been stronger I would have been able to wait.”
	“You were strong enough,” I said, tightening my grip on her. “You were strong enough to get us both out of there. That’s what matters.”
	She nodded, still crying, wanting to believe me.
	“Let’s get out of here,” I pleaded. “I hate this place.”
	We ran down the corridor as if something were still chasing us, up the stairs and into that flagstone-paved hallway, looking out through the door at the waning sunlight.
	“Ah Theamh,” she said, still breathing hard.
	“I said it and I meant it,” I answered. “I love you for everything you are. I love you knowing you have that in you. I love you knowing you have so much more in you than Lythril ever had a prayer of understanding. I love you because you’re Istria ni Vharen and you’re nobody’s bitch.”
	“I don’t deserve that,” she said, still troubled.
	“You do!” It came out with anger. “You do deserve it, Istri, you’re a good, brave, brilliant, beautiful woman. Learn that, damn it, and never betray yourself like that again!”
	She watched me struggle with the anger for a little while.
	“I’m sorry, Istri,” I finally said. “I just...” I sat down rather heavily on the staircase to the second story. “I wish I could have been there for you.”
	“Or that, since you couldn’t,” Istria said, sitting down next to me, “I had the guts to believe in me the way you believe in me.”
	I nodded. 
	She put an arm around my bowed shoulders. “It’s a hard thing to learn,” she said, in a soft, strangely distant voice. “But every day you’re with me it gets a little easier.”
	“Good,” I said.
	“You’re angry,” she said.
	“I just...” I shook my head. “I was never glad that you were gone, Istri.”
	“I know that now,” Istria said. “I knew it then only...” Her hair brushed her shoulders as she shook her head. “Think of what you went through in that month. Multiply it by twelve.”
	“I know,” I nodded.
	“In hell all kinds of unholy things become possible.”
	Anger finally drained out of me. I reached into her lap and took her hand.
	“You’re out of it now, Istri,” I said. “Forever.”
	She returned the pressure of my hand. “Part of me...because I can’t get rid of the chain...”
	“I know.”
	“I want rid of it, but I can’t just throw it away. You understand why now.”
	“I know.” I shook her clasped hand in mine.
	“Theamh...” Istria sighed. “I’m going to tell the others that story, when we find them. It might be useful.” I nodded. “You’ll stand with me, while I tell it?”
	“Of course, Istri.”
	“Thank you,” she said, heavily.
	I stood up. “Don’t worry. We’ll take care of you. We’ll get you all the way back.”
	“We?” Istria asked.
	“Me, Idair, and whoever else needs to help.” She stood up, keeping my hand in hers. “Let’s go see how Sonnia’s doing.”
	Sonnia was a lot better. Aine had installed her on the bed, prone on her stomach, with Aine’s robe draped over her as a coverlet. We would have to figure out something to do for a shirt for her; maybe we could find a piece of fabric somewhere about the place that wasn’t too foul and improvise. Taric and Sinal were sitting near her, chatting away. Or rather, Sinal was chatting, and Taric was nodding.
	“...been shot a whole bunch of times,” Sinal was saying. “Well, not a whole bunch, but at least twice. Look.” He lifted up his tunic, revealing two scars. 
	Istria cried out in alarm. “You never told me!”
	Sinal looked suddenly chagrined. “It’s all right...they’re just flesh wounds...”
	“You let me look at that right now,” she said, striding toward him. While poor Sinal’s attempt to impress Sonnia was foiled by his sister, I took Aine aside.
	“How’s she been?”
	“All right,” Aine said, nodding. “No relapse, and considering the pain she’s in, she’s been a lot less of a pain in everyone’s gleacha than I would have expected.”
	“What do you think about...”
	She knew what I was getting at. “I’ve tested her since we got her up here--there’s no sign she can hear what I’m sending.” Aine shook her head. “I think she was receiving--but for sure she isn’t now. Do you suppose maybe it was the effect of the poison?”
	This hadn’t occurred to me. “Ebrane works in the blood...but blood does go to the mind, and we know their minds are different. It’s possible.” I shrugged. “It could maybe just be that somehow being in that much pain, or terror, made it possible--you know, like how animals can do things they’re too weak for, at moments of great danger.”
	Aine nodded. “We know it’s possible, though. I bet we can get her there.”
	Seeing Aine so determined, and so confident of accomplishing this thing that had never been done before, reminded me of what I wanted to ask her.
	“Aine,” I said, sitting back against the wall and dropping my voice. “You’re not my scoilin now, you’re my colleague. I need to do a thing I know I can’t do alone, so I’m coming to you for help. Because I trust you, and because I think you can help me.”
	She looked back, startled, and I think a little choked up. “What is it, dhiaoc?”
	I smiled. “You keep forgetting, Aine.”
	“All right then. Please...Theamh...tell me how I can help you.”
	She said it eagerly, wanting to help and at the same time eager for something new, a problem to solve or a question to answer. I was glad to have helped make her.
	“Istria just showed me how...” I shook my head, wondering how on earth Istria was ever going to tell this story to Morat and whoever else was still alive. “She just showed me the rite Lythril used to turn her.” Aine gulped. “She’s come a long way back to the light, just on her own strength and the strength of love. But there was powerful, dark, deep evil done to her down there. We need to undo that.”
	Aine nodded, still not sure what exactly I was asking.
	“She still has that chain,” I said. “No normal physical force is ever going to destroy that thing. It’ll stand up to fire, metal, stone, mindstrength, anything we can bring to bear on it.” Aine nodded, agreeing. “The only thing that’s going to break that chain is magic. We need to do a rite for her.”
	“What rite, Theamh?” Aine asked.
	“That’s what I need your help for,” I said. “I’m good with words; I write good spells. But rites are different. I just don’t seem to have a turn for it.” 
	“Oh now, dhiaoc--” Aine began, refusing to believe me.
	“It’s the truth, Aine. I grew up alone; the only child of a big house family in the Sixth, which has nothing much in the way of community.” Aine nodded, remembering the debacle of my mother’s dinner party. “I have nothing to draw on, as far as rituals go. I’m thinking you might have the sense for these things.”
	“I suppose I might, if you think so,” she said, reluctantly.
	“This is a thing that has never been done. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be. If we just find the right way to do it. I need you to help me, Aine. Will you work with me on it?”
	She nodded, quickly. “Yes. I--of course, dhiaoc--Theamh--if I can help, I will.”
	I sighed. “Thanks, Aine.” I looked over at Sonnia now chaffing Sinal while Istria looked on, amused. 
	“I’ll need to know what happened, won’t I?” Aine said, her voice heavy.
	“Yes.”
	“Can you tell me?”
	“Yes.”
	She swallowed. “All right then.”

XV.
Freagair

	“Can’t sleep, can you.”
	“Sleep my gleacha--I can’t even bring myself to lie down.”
	I went over to where Istria stood by the window, the rotting curtain lifted in one hand. We had decided to all stay in one room. The tales will tell you that if you ever do end up in a lair like this that’s liable to be haunted by all manner of evil, the last thing to do, ever, is split up--especially after nightfall, especially when a thunderstorm is crackling overhead. So Sonnia was stretched out on the bed, with everyone else piled on the floor around her, on mattresses we’d dragged in from other rooms. 
	“What’s with the thunder?” I said, looking out into the dark courtyard and the rain pelting the flagstones.
	“Something about the shield,” Istria shrugged. “It’s all right in most places but for some reason here in the mountains the shield creates some kind of disturbance that makes it rain a lot--mostly at night. Another reason she liked to keep moving.”
	“You’re sure that’s not just Idair’s sense of humor,” I said.
	“I’m not sure at all.” Istria smiled. 
	“I told Aine what you showed me.”
	“Why?”
	“I want her to help me work on undoing it,” I said. “Breaking the chain.”
	Istria shook her head. “There’s no rite for that.”
	“Not now there isn’t.”
	Istria watched me for a while, and then finally said, “Thank you.”
	A flash of lightning brought the stone towers and battlements of the other walls into dark relief. We both jumped, startled to hear the crack. And laughed, at ourselves and each other for being so on edge.
	“If Lythril was working you up to rage and hatred, why didn’t she bring in your father?”
	Istria watched the rain fall through the darkness. “Maerin proposed Sonnia as an associate once,” she said. “He said, ‘She’s smart, she’s mad, and she hates her father.’ And Lythril said...” Istria’s head tilted slightly as she went into the archives for the exact words. “She said, ‘That’s not evil, that’s just intelligence. All these women hate their fathers. They’re no good to me until they start hating their mothers.’”
	She sighed. “You hate my father too, Theamh. I think even Varen hates my father. That was the seed; but she knew she couldn’t get anywhere till she made it blossom.”
	Another rattling shaft of lightning sent the shadows stone spires lurching around in the window. “This is getting on my nerves,” I said.
	“We did search the place,” Istria reminded me. “She’s not here.”
	“I’m not so sure about that.”
	“You want to search it again?”
	“What I want is to be a hundred miles away from here.” I sighed. “I know,  you’re right, I should just--”
	I didn’t finish, because suddenly there was a loud but muffled banging sound from far below--much as if that front door had blown back against the wall.
	“Damn it, the wind must have gotten it open,” Istria said, heading for the door.
	“Oh, you’re not going down there alone,” I said, following her out.
	We went onto the landing and padded quietly in our bare feet down to the head of the staircase, pausing at the railing to look down into the hall below.
	<Can you see it?>
	<Not from this angle--but look how the rain’s driving in.>
	Gusts of windy rain were snaking in through the open doorway,  glistening on the flagstones. We had put out all our lights, but there was enough coming in from the frequent lightning flashes to show us that the hall was starting to run in rain. 
	<Come on, let’s just get the damn door closed and go back to not being in bed.>
	I started forward, but Istria’s hand tightened on my arm. The lightning flashed again. And threw a long shadow down the hallway that had a woman’s shape.
	<Theamh, tell me what I’m looking at is aftersight,> Istria said.
	The door swung shut. There was a red glow in the air below us, and a figure separated itself from the darkness.
	<I’m a shriia, I can’t.>
	<You see her too, then.>
	Lythril, standing under a light globe, leaning against the wall and breathing hard.
	<I do.>
	<Fnaa.>
	We both just froze. I realized I was out of hreapa. Then I realized she wasn’t going to fire at us. She didn’t see us at all. It was an effort for her to push herself away from the wall. When she staggered down the hallway, she was looking down, and muttering. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but it sounded angry.
	Suddenly she collapsed back against the corridor wall. Her breath was rasping in her chest. And she might easily have seen us from where she was leaning--but she wasn’t looking at us. She was focused on something that seemed to be sticking out of her side.
	Her breath got louder as she pulled at what I realized was an arrowshaft. But she was convulsing, and all she could do with that arrow was cause herself more pain.
	But she was still trying. Tugging at it, jerking it by fits out of her flesh. Moaning, screaming, and then finally cursing at the top of her agitated lungs.
	“Bastard!” she shrieked, her voice breaking up into something that sounded an awful lot like crying. “Thurcte bi thu...” Her knees buckled and she slid into a heap at the base of the wall. “You and your thurking promises...” Her voice dropped into an exhausted and broken pant. “Stupid son of a bitch...can’t stop a thurking piece of rock... pathetic...just another man...self-deluded incompetent bosca na fnaa...”
	I had wondered who she was talking to, but I suddenly got an idea. 
	<Is she actually cursing the Dark One?>
	Istria nodded. <I think so.>
	<Well, you have to admire her balls,> I said grudgingly.
	<Look at her, Theamh, she’s dying.>
	It certainly did look that way. That shaft she’d given up pulling on wasn’t the only one sticking out of her. As she slumped forward I could see the jagged end of another sticking out of her back, and there was another gash in one thigh.
	<You know what this means.>
	<Theamh, it’s thurking Lythril.>
	<We’re bound to try,> I said, looking at her.
	It was a second, but she made the choice.
	<It sucks to be good,> she said, starting down the stairs.
	The light globe was flickering and close to quenched when we reached the bottom of the stairs. Lythril was pretty far gone, but not so far gone she couldn’t hear us coming. Or lift her head to squint in our direction, trying to bring her hands up in defense.
	Istria squatted down in front of her. “Welcome home, Lythril.”
	Her eyes went from Istria’s face to mine. What was meant to be a contemptuous laugh turned into a choking spasm. White slime was forming in the corners of her mouth.
	“How are you feeling, Lythril?” I said.
	With what was probably the last of her strength she rasped out, “Go to hell.”
	“Been there, done that,” Istria said. “Come on, Lythril, into the operating room.”
	Istria hauled her up, more roughly than necessary. I couldn’t touch her without making matters worse, so I let Istria drag her into the reading room and onto the table.
	“There’s some left in the jug,” Istria said. “Give it to her.”
	Istria went to work on the arrow in Lythril’s gut while I fetched the antidote. “Come on, Lythril, take your medicine.”
	She clamped her mouth shut.
	“Drink it.” Her bloodshot eyes fixed hatefully on mine. “I’m not going into your mind, so you can swallow this on your own or I can ram a funnel down your throat.”
	“Thurk you,” she slurred.
	Istria grabbed her by the hair and pulled her head back. When her mouth opened I poured the antidote in. She spluttered, but she got most of it. Istria managed to yank the arrow out of her gut. The one in her back proved to be superficial, and easily teased out. 
	<Aine.>
	<Theamh?>
	<Grab both hreapas and the uisce and get down here.>
	I heard the upstairs door close, and the pattering of bare feet. <Dhiaoc, what’s happening, has--FNAA!>
	Even after all her time around me Aine still wasn’t given much to cursing, so it really had an impact. But then so did the sight of Lythril, bleeding and twitching, lying on her side on that table under my light globe.
	<Don’t drop the bottle!>
	Aine recovered, and brought the uisce to Istria, who poured it into the wounds.
	“AAAAGH!”
	Lythril shrieked at the touch of it. I wrapped my hreapa around me and pinned it. 
	<Do the same with Istria’s,> I said to Aine. <You should be protected.>
	“Hold still, damn it,” Istria said, as Lythril struggled. “There’s leather in the wound--do you want to lose your leg, or what?”
	While Istria began picking the bits of cloth out of the wound in her thigh, Lythril brought her hands up, staring at them, willing them into steadiness.
	“Try it and I block your gleacha,” I said quickly. “Save it for healing, you need it.”
	A little bit of a red glow began outlining her hands.
	“Stand back, Istri,” I said with a sigh.
	It didn’t take long to block her; she was in no shape to fight. And by the end I’m not sure she was trying. She was exhausted, in pain, struggling against ebrane. Much as she hated us, she feared death more; and she knew that if she could be saved, we’d do it.
	“All right, Istri.”
	Istria went back to working on the wounds; I sat down in one of the chairs and devoted my energy to maintaining the block. Aine stood by in silent shock.
	<What can I do, dhiaoc?>
	I looked at her, unsteady  and scared but willing to stay and help, or fight, or whatever was called for.
	<Make sure the others are all right,> I said. <If you can keep them from finding out exactly what’s going on down here, that’d help them all get a good night’s sleep.>
	Aine left, gratefully. Istria started wrapping the wounds. It was complicated, because there were so many, and because Lythril still wouldn’t cooperate. She was staring furiously at Lythril as she sat truculently on the table when I heard the ruckus upstairs.
	“Taric, you can’t--”
	Aine’s voice was drowned out by the sound of a slamming door and a pair of boots trampling the steps. Taric exploded into the room, with some kind of weapon glinting just for an instant in the air as he flew at Lythril.
	He had her flat on the table with the knife across her throat before Istria started hauling him off. It took the two of us to drag him back away from the table. He stood there like a bear at bay, with us hanging onto him.
	“Will you get a grip on yourself!” Istria panted, annoyed. “Don’t go trying to avenge his death, that kind of thing only encourages her.”
	I wasn’t sure about that. Because I was looking at Lythril while we pulled him off her. And I’d never seen fear on Lythril before, so I wasn’t sure what it would look like. But there was something about the white of her eyes and the way she’d frozen that reminded me of a cornered animal. 
	She had probably tried to wrap him, or burn him, or something--but she couldn’t, because I’d blocked her. So there she was. Wounded, sick, blocked, easy prey for a man a foot taller and much heavier than she was. Realizing for the first time in maybe her adult life what it meant to be at someone’s mercy.
	“Let go of me, shriia.”
	“Taric, you’ve known me long enough to know better than that.” He tried to throw me off. “Look, even if you killed her, Keanrih would still be gone and Crann would still be who he is. Having broken her neck won’t really make you feel much better.”
	“I won’t know till I’ve tried, will I,” he said.
	“All right, now you’re just posturing.” I let go of him; Istria did too. “Come on, Taric, we all know how much you loved him. You don’t have anything to prove.”
	“You don’t know what it’s like,” he growled.
	“I’ve come close,” I said.
	He looked at me, then finally turned back to Lythril.
	He spat once.
	“Dark as you are you couldn’t change him,” he finally said. “He died himself. Tell that to his father next you see him.”
	We both sighed in relief when he left. Aine, who had been hovering behind him in the doorway, now advanced timidly into the room.
	“I’m sorry, dhiaoc--he asked a direct question--”
	“It’s all right, no harm done...”
	From the table there proceeded a dry, barking sound that was, apparently, Lythril trying to laugh.
	“Look at you,” she rasped. “If I weren’t dying already I’d kill myself laughing.”
	“Better not take any risks, then,” Istria snapped.
	“All these years you’ve wanted me dead,” she got out, her voice still gravelly and gasping. “And you’re stuck here nursing me back to health. By hell it’s priceless.”
	“We haven’t been formally introduced,” Aine suddenly said.
	Lythril glared at her.
	“I’m Aine ni hEmer na Ruadh. You know, Plan B.” She stepped in and took one of the chairs, pulling it around so she could watch her.
	I sat down in one of the other chairs. Istria waited to see what would happen.
	“I should thank you for helping me get my fire,” Aine said, keeping her tone sincere. “You’ve done Idair and me a great service.” She pulled her knees up, wrapping her arms around them.
	<So what now?> she asked.
	Istria took one of the other chairs. <She doesn’t sleep, so we’ll need to keep a watch on her round the clock.>
	I sat on the floor in front of Istria, leaning back against her legs. <There should always be two of us awake. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be alone with this woman.>
	<Agreed,> Istria said. <Aine, you’ve been sleeping, you can watch the rest of this night...I’ll stand it with you for half. Theamh, you try to get some rest.>
	<Some bloody hope.>
	Istria’s hands began stroking my hair, quietly, as I nestled back against her.
	<It’ll be all right, chara. I’m here.>
	<I know.>
	<Close your eyes.>
	I did, but my mind was unquiet.
	<Sing to me?>
	<All right...>
	It was a song from Amst, that her mother had sung to her when she was very small, on those nights where they had been able to preserve some scrap of quiet for themselves. I understood the words only because she had told me what they were. But even if I hadn’t I think it would have had the same effect, especially with her hands moving quietly down my neck, stroking me into safety.
	“Oh for thurk’s sake,” Lythril muttered, disgusted. 
	“Shut up and let her sleep,” Aine said.
	Her voice had an edge to it--cutting with that anger I had been surprised by at first, but which I was getting to know better.
	“Can you stand them without puking?” Lythril demanded.
	“Shut up or I’ll wrap your head.”
	I smiled to myself.
	<You know what, Istri?>
	She kept singing as she answered. <What?>
	<It’s really over.> I sighed and turned a little so I could feel her better. <We’re out of her power now. Forever.>
	<Never say never,> Istria answered.
	<That’s right,> I said, sleepily. <You keep watching, someone has to.>
	It was very strange. But it was something, to know that I could fall asleep here, with my arch-nemesis three yards away from me. Because despite the storm outside and the evil in these stones and Lythril lying there still breathing hatred and anger, I was safe.

	“Don’t you thurking touch me!”
	“Theamh, Theamh, it’s all right, it’s me.”
	For a minute I thought I was still in the dream. Because I was, after all, in Lythril’s lair, and Istria was there, holding onto me to calm me down. But as my breath slowed down I noticed the passage of time, and the light of Aine’s globe shining on us, and the fact that Lythril was lying on her side on the table watching me with those metallic lidded eyes but not moving or offering to hurt me.
	“Istri.” I got stiffly up from where I was crouched. She stood up so she could put her arms around me. “Is it my turn yet?”
	She moved her head to kiss me. <It may as well be; you don’t want another dream like that.>
	<Here.> I sat with my back against the wall; Istria lay down curled up with her head in my lap. <I’ll see if I can help from here.>
	<Thanks, Theamh.>
	<Take care in there.>
	<I love you, chara.>
	<Like I love you.>
	I put a hand on her shoulder and sighed, looking at Aine. <She seems quiet...>
	<I wrapped her head.>
	<Ah, so that’s why you look tired.>
	<It is taking a lot of effort.>
	<Drop it then; she’ll get tired of mouthing off eventually.>
	Aine shrugged, and dropped the wrap.
	Lythril was too cool to start talking right away. Istria had already fallen asleep by the time she made the first sally.
	“I’m surprised at you,” she croaked. “This golden opportunity, and you’re not even interrogating me.”
	I shrugged. “That’s more your line than mine, you know.”
	“You have questions,” she said. “You’re just scared to find out the answers.”
	“Ah well, you know what they say,” I said. “Curiosity killed the cat.”
	You learn to appreciate small victories. It only lasted an instant, but there it was in her face--surprise, and I thought dismay. She didn’t like my knowing that story.
	“If you think that’s the worst, you’re more naive than I think you are,” she said.
	“I doubt it,” I said. “You think I’m pretty naive, after all.”
	“Well, you must be,” she said. “You trust Istria.”
	“Really, I can wrap her again,” Aine said. “I’ll make the effort.”
	“Never mind,” I said, stroking Istria’s head as she shifted uneasily in my lap. “If she keeps baiting me, there’s the chance she’ll give something away; if she stays quiet, then at least we won’t have to listen to her. Either way I win.”
	Lythril paused. Then, finally, she said, “You have no idea what’s going on here, Theamh. And I’m not about to give it away. At least not without getting.”
	“And then there’s this tarbhfnaa,” I observed to Aine. “Basically, Aine, if a dark user makes you an offer, you can usually assume you’re better off declining.”
	“Oh isn’t that just typical,” Lythril spat. “Rulebound set of close-minded bitches--if I delivered Barant to you on a platter you’d throw her away just to spite me.”
	“Look who’s talking,” I said. “You can’t even tell whether you’d rather keep talking or shut up--because you can’t figure out which will piss me off more. Don’t you ever get tired of living that way?”
	She glared at me for a while. Then she tried a new tack.
	“You’re the one keeping this feud up, Theamh. We’re on the same side now, after all--since we both hate Barant, and she’s trying to kill both of us.”
	“Just because you’re my enemy’s enemy that does not make us friends,” I said.
	“A cliché for every occasion,” Lythril said.
	“Be that way,” I answered, adjusting my arms as Istria turned over on her back.
	There was some more silence. Then she said, “All right, I’ll prove it to you.”
	“Prove what?”
	“That I’m on your side.”
	“Even for a liar like you that’s a tall order,” I said.
	“I don’t mean by that that I wish you well, or that I don’t hate you from the soles of your feet to the hair on your head,” she said. “Or even that my interests, in general, coincide with yours.” She shifted painfully, sitting up with a wince. “And for sure, first chance I get, I’m going to kill your precious Istria--while you look on, if I can manage it. But till then, there’s no reason we shouldn’t work together on the little we agree on. Which is that Barant needs to be stopped.”
	I was aware that Aine was watching me, wondering if she should intervene, if maybe Lythril was working on me, using the old wounds and the old vulnerabilities. And Lythril was, certainly, trying to work me.
	“So I’ll prove it to you,” Lythril said. “A goodwill gesture.” She coughed up a cracked laugh. “Ask me one question, any question. I’ll answer it--truthfully.”
	I watched her, trying to think moves ahead. Whatever question I asked would reveal something about me or about what I knew. For instance, if I asked what it was that I really wanted to know, which was who was controlling the army and where they were located, Lythril would know that I didn’t know this. Then she would give me some tarbhfnaa answer--or maybe the real one, who knows--and use that part of my ignorance against me when she escaped from our custody, as she undoubtedly would.
	She smiled, looking almost like her old self, except for the deep circles under her eyes and the pallor of her skin. “You can’t tell me you don’t have questions,” she said.
	“No I can’t,” I answered.
	“Ask then,” she said. “One question. What harm can it do?”
	“All right,” I said. “There’s one question I can think of that I do want to ask you.”
	The smile deepened. Aine looked back at me, anxious.
	“Ask and I answer,” she said, turning my stomach.
	I waited for a moment, then came out with it.
	“Why did you stop Maerin from raping me?”
	She and Aine were about equally shocked, I think. I had never actually told Aine about this particular incident; Istria had told her about Lythril killing Maerin but I don’t think she had told her why. And this must certainly have been about the last thing Lythril had expected me to bring up. I was actually surprised that I could say the word to her. Istria shivered a little, taking on the disquiet she was sensing from me.	
	“What kind of question is that?” Lythril finally said.
	“It’s the one I want answered,” I said.
	For a minute I thought, damn, she’s going to actually give me the answer. Because for a minute, it looked as if something had cracked in her, and something real--not nice, but at least real--was visible. And then it was gone.
	“Because I didn’t want him to,” she said.
	True enough, if completely uninformative. Because of course the question was, why in the name of anything she should want to spare me any form of pain, violation or shame that might come my way. But that question she wouldn’t answer.
	“Stay on your side and I’ll stay on mine,” I finally said.
	Amazingly, this seemed to have cured her of trying to bait me. She lay down again, closing her eyes even if she wasn’t going to sleep, and saying nothing. For a long time.
	<Dhiaoc,> Aine finally said.
	<Theamh,> I answered.
	Aine didn’t bother replying to that. <You never told me.>
	<It never came up,> I said.
	<Why did she stop him?>
	<I don’t know, that’s why I asked.>
	<Does Istria know, do you think?>
	I shrugged. <I’m not sure.>
	<Why did you choose that question?>
	<Because asking it reveals nothing new about me; and answering it would have revealed a lot about her. And because I really am curious.>
	There was a long silence.
	<I’m glad she stopped him, since he’d started,> Aine finally said, uncomfortably.
	<Me too.>
	We went back to watching her in silence.
	“And a lot of thanks I got for it, too!” Lythril suddenly interjected.
	It was as if she had been doing nothing but brooding on my question since she’d stopped talking. I was surprised, and more than a little suspicious, to see her that affected.
	“Lythril, we’re saving your life,” I said. “That’s about all the thanks you can reasonably expect.”
	Muttering darkly, Lythril shifted painfully on the table so that her back was to us.
	<You must have hit a nerve,> Aine said.
	<Or else she really wants us to think so.>
	Aine and I settled back to wait for the night to end.

	I felt better once dawn broke and I could put my hreapa on properly. Sonnia watched me from the bed.
	“Well, let’s take a look at you.”
	Sonnia sat up. Her wound had begun to knit; I gave her a bit of uisce to drink to help it along. “I think you might try getting up, today,” I said. “Walking around a little. See how you feel. If you heal well, we could be on our way in another day or so.”
	“Or sooner,” she said, hopefully. “I’m sorry to have slowed you down--I know we’re in a hurry--”
	I shook my head. “Don’t rush yourself. We can’t go anywhere till Lythril’s out of danger, anyhow.”
	“How long will that be?”
	“Please Idair, another day. She’s still too sick and sore to fend for herself.”
	“What are you going to do with her when she gets better?” Sonnia said, getting cautiously out of bed, wincing as her back felt the pain from the wound.
	“That’s a whole new uafach freagair,” I said.
	Sinal and Taric went with Sonnia into the kitchen to see what could be done about food. There was of course nothing edible stored there, but Taric and Sinal still had the rations they’d been carrying. It all had of course gotten a lot lighter as we moved along, but there was still probably enough for a day.
	I returned to the sickroom, where Istria was watching Lythril like you watch a snake. Aine, I saw, had fallen asleep.
	<I didn’t like to wake her,> Istria said, as I sat down. <I can handle her well enough on my own--she’s been quiet, anyhow. What the hell did you say to her?>
	<I only asked why she stopped Maerin from raping me,> I said.
	Istria looked back at her. <I wonder it myself. Well, that’s the thing about Lythril--as soon as you think you’ve got her number she does something unexpected. Maybe she did it just to confuse you.>
	<Or because she was looking for an excuse to take Maerin out.>
	<That’s completely possible,> Istria said. <Idair knows he’d been pushing it.>
	<What is it that she did with all those notborns he scooped out, anyhow?>
	Istria shivered slightly. <What you’d expect.>
	<Youth potions?>
	<Exactly.>
	“All right,” Lythril said, turning over and picking up the conversation as if I had never left the room. “I will answer that question--if you promise to answer one of mine.”
	“I make no promise until I hear the question,” I said, surprised that she was still running her mind along these lines, and wondering if there would be a way to take advantage of what was apparently something of a pressure point in her.
	“I want to know why Maerin frightened you more than I do.”
	<What do you think, Istri?>
	Istria shrugged. <I don’t see there’s much risk for you in it--the man’s dead, after all. It might matter more for us to know the answer to your question. Anyhow, if she knows that Maerin frightened you, then she knows the dangerous part of your answer.>
	“If you answer my question first, and if I judge your answer to be truthful and complete, then I’ll answer yours,” I said.
	She looked at me from under those dark eyebrows, glittering and too intense. “Done.”
	“So answer then,” I said.
	Lythril shifted on her side, then spoke.
	“You think you survived captivity because you’re stronger,” Lythril said. “That’s tarbhfnaa. There’s a lot I could have done to you that I didn’t. If you don’t believe me, there are Cretid history books that will teach you different. They’ve made torture an art. Poor Maerin could never have played in that league, no matter how long he practiced.”
	She gave a little wistful sigh, as if she were mourning his passing.
	“I never mutilated you,” she said. “I never tried to destroy your mind. I never burned you, or amputated anything, or made you swallow a string of electrodes so I could shock you from the inside out...”
	“Are you trying to scare me, Lythril?” I said, stonily.
	“I’m giving you your answer,” Lythril returned. “There are things I did not do to you, even though they might have broken you. Because they’re not my way. They don’t belong properly to me, or to the Dark One. They belong to those thugs over the border, who rule the world because and only because they have the muscle to make stupidity a weapon instead of a weakness.” 
	Her eyes seemed to be getting both brighter and darker. I reminded myself that blocked as she was that still didn’t mean she couldn’t persuade.
	“Exile was bad for Maerin,” she finally said. “He was always easily impressionable, poor weak-minded thing. Being among Cretids gave him an exaggerated sense of his own strength and significance.”
	Although it hurt her a lot to do it, Lythril sat herself up on the table to deliver the last part with its full effect. “It is my duty to myself, and to dark magic, to disabuse the world of the disgusting Cretid idea that a weak man can break a strong woman just because he has a zazb. If in the process I happen to have spared you suffering, well, maybe you’re not the only woman who’s ever had to grit her teeth and help an enemy.”
	I couldn’t believe it. It was true she was blocked and I couldn’t read her, but by every skill I could bring to bear on her and every measure I could take of her, it looked like she was telling the truth. For once in her rotten life. I found that this frightened me.
	“So,” she said. “Do you judge that to be a complete and truthful answer?”
	I nodded, warily.
	She started to smile. “Your turn.”
	“First of all,” I said. “I’m not at all sure that Maerin frightened me more than you do. I think he just frightened me differently.”
	Lythril shrugged. “Semantics,” she said. “Tarbhfnaa. Answer the question.”
	“You didn’t see what he did to those women he was supposedly delivering,” I said. “If you had maybe you’d have realized that as much of a fool as Maerin was, he was groping toward a kind of power that should scare the fnaa out of all of us, dark or bright. Anyone with a womb--or with a body, really.”
	“I thurked with Maerin for years,” Lythril said. “If he was groping toward power, he never got a grip on it.”
	“Maerin was what I said he was,” I said. “Nothing but cruel and crazy. Until he got up north and found a place where men who were cruel and crazy had convinced the world that they were brilliant and noble, all because they were medicals. Medicine, or as close as he could get to it in his own addled brain, was his version of magic,” I said. “His path to power. And as little as I know about dark magic I understand that kind of power even less. And because this kind of power is even more powerful when wielded by someone cruel and crazy, I did and I do fear it in a way that I don’t fear your power.”
	Istria nodded. <True and complete, but it doesn’t give up much.>
	It gave up enough to satisfy Lythril. She settled back onto the table, carefully.
	“You’re a fool,” she said. “His power was nothing to mine, ever.”
	“Since you say it,” I said, shrugging.
	Aine jerked suddenly in her chair, her head twitching as she murmured in her sleep.
	“Oh dear, now she’s starting them,” I said.
	I went over to shake her awake. “It’s all right, Aine, it’s just a dream.”
	Aine looked around, taking in me, Istria, and finally Lythril.
	“I suppose that unfortunately she’s real,” she said.
	I nodded.
	“Ah well.” Aine stood. “Where’s Sonnia?”
	“In the kitchen, last I saw her.”
	“Ah, the Rytehouse brat,” she said. “Maerin took an unhealthy interest in her. I never understood why he was so keen to scavenge off other men’s leavings. It’s one thing if you don’t know where she’s been...but when you do, well, it’s just disgusting, battening on what the father’s already picked over.”
	I was going to answer, but Istria squeezed my hand to stop me.
	“You’re trying to get me to kill you, aren’t you?” Istria said quietly.
	Before Lythril could find the right answer, there was a clatter from one of the alcoves as Aine went rooting around in it.
	“I know there’s got to be one in here,” she said, pushing debris off shelves and out of cabinets. “You said it was a game room.”
	“What are you looking for?”
	“Aha.” Aine lifted up a heavy case that looked like it was made of granite, hinged and dusty. She hefted it over to the table and forced open the latch.
	It fell open to reveal a gameboard and a slew of black and white pieces jumbled around pell-mell, along with a pack of cards wrapped up in a grimy scrap of black cloth.
	Aine started setting the pieces onto the gameboard, the black ones near Lythril. “I heard you used to be the scoil champion,” she said casually, standing the white pieces up on her side of the board. “I won the title the last year I was living at the Pharc. Of course I’ll be a little rusty--Theamh doesn’t seem to like this game.”
	Lythril was trying to seem uninterested, but she was looking at the pieces. “And you think because you could beat a bunch of scoili you can beat me?”
	“No,” Aine said equably. “I’m sure you’ll paste me. I’m just thinking that if you’re playing a game, maybe you’ll shut the hell up.”
	Aine looked up at her with that frank stare she had. Lythril laughed, unpleasantly.
	“If you last twenty minutes I’ll be much surprised,” Lythril said.
	“So will I. Now deal.”
	Lythril picked up the cards.
	By the time they had the hands dealt and the pieces arranged, Taric, Sinal and Sonnia had come back in with the food. Aine ate while playing, bending all her attention on the pieces and the cards. She was enjoying herself, even the tension she was feeling as she sensed how much we wanted to see her win. Aine herself didn’t seem to care about winning, except inasmuch as doing better would make the game last longer and be more interesting. Lythril was smiling, but that didn’t mean she was having fun.
	I was never good at dubh solus. Something about the combination of geometry and strategy really made my brain hurt. You start with seven each of four different kinds of pieces, each associated with one of the four elements: fire (the spirits), water (the geniuses), earth (farmers), and air (sailors). The board is square, with a seven-pointed star inlaid in the center; the points stretch to the edges of the board, and each point is divided up into a number of different triangles. The space around the points, which is usually in darker wood than the star, is also divided into a number of different triangles, and that’s where everyone’s pieces start. The object is to get control of the central star, which you do by getting your pieces onto the star and the other player’s pieces either captured or blocked into a corner.
	Sounds simple enough--except that each kind of piece moves in a different way, and how far a piece can move on one turn is determined by the cards you’re dealt--if you have a three and eight in the fire suit, for instance, you can move your spirits either three spaces, eight spaces, five (eight minus three) or eleven (eight plus three). Then there are the questions. At three points you can interrupt play to ask your opponent one question. If she’s playing with the bright pieces, she has to answer truthfully; if she’s playing with the dark ones, she can lie. And there are all these rules about capturing and blocking and if you’re the bright player you can convert your sailors and farmers into spirits and geniuses which are more powerful but if you’re the dark player you can “turn” your opponents farmers and sailors if you get them cornered except they can be turned back under certain conditions and you can see how one might easily lose patience with this game.
	Aine didn’t, though. And I knew enough about the game, having seen my share of matches played in scoil, to appreciate her skill. Novices--and people like me who never learn from experience--often blow all their questions early in the game, or get impatient and try to rush the center star without setting up blocks to stand in the opponent’s way. Aine was patient, and although I couldn’t see her plan it was clear that she had one.
	Lythril had one too, though, and it became apparent after a certain point that she had figured out most of the important elements in Aine’s strategy. Her questions, when she asked them, tended to be confirmations rather than really inquisitive.
	It certainly took longer than twenty minutes. By the time it reached endstage, Sonnia and the boys had wandered off somewhere else, having lost interest. It was probably about three-quarters of an hour before Aine finally conceded.
	“Well, I lost,” she said cheerfully. “Then again, it kept you quiet for most of an hour, so I win too.”
	Lythril smiled, showing her teeth. “You’re very sure of yourself, aren’t you, child.”
	“No, not really,” Aine said. “I just don’t mind losing, when it doesn’t matter.”
	“You won’t mind playing again, then,” Lythril said.
	Aine shrugged. “What, you want to see if you can beat me in half an hour?”
	“Something like that.”
	Aine started setting up the pieces again. “Suit yourself. We’re none of us going anywhere at the moment.”
	They were at it again. I would have been disturbed to see her being drawn into conflict with Lythril if it had been less clear that she was treating it like the game it was, enjoying it because she was convinced there was no connection between what was happening on the board and what happened in the big world. Whereas for Lythril the enjoyment was altogether different. She was learning Aine’s weaknesses, or at least that’s what she thought--watching to see how her mind worked and what kind of strategies she employed, how she answered the questions, what kinds of evasions she used.
	Except Aine wasn’t using any. Often in dubh solus the bright player will strive to give answers that are literally correct but misleading. Aine simply shrugged and answered the question, blunt and unconcerned. Lythril seemed to find this both amusing and somewhat unsettling. Lythril’s answers were always cryptic, and usually half-true. But that didn’t seem to help her much, because after about an hour and a half it suddenly occurred to me, and to Istria, that Aine had her on the run.
	It was hard to say exactly how or why it happened. But there did come a point at which Lythril had definitively lost the advantage, despite the fact that she had put a lot of Aine’s spirits out of commission. The dark player can capture pieces permanently--if you’re bright and you lose one, you have seven turns to redeem it by landing in the center of the star; if you don’t, it’s gone. Dark pieces can be redeemed at any point. So Lythril had a lot of pieces Aine didn’t--but Aine’s were still blocking off a lot of that star.
	Aine was as surprised to see this as we were. Lythril remained impassive, although I knew she had to be angry. Lythril doesn’t like losing, no matter how trivial the contest is.
	<You think she’ll do it?> Istria asked.
	<Maybe,> I said. <In any case just getting her this worried is a victory in itself. Idair knows I couldn’t do it.>
	<Well, the game doesn’t hold everyone’s interest,> Istria said. <None of the others seem to have given a rat’s fnaa.> She looked out the doorway, but didn’t see anyone in the hallway. <I suppose they would let us know if anything had happened to them?>
	“I don’t believe it,” Aine said.
	We looked back at the board. My memory of the rules was fuzzy, but to me it looked very much as if Aine had her beat.
	Lythril was staring at the board, and at the cards in her hand, but she was coming to the same conclusion. There was nothing she could do to get out of this. And if she was angry about that, she was also very disturbed by the fact that she hadn’t seen this coming.
	“You win,” she finally forced out.
	Aine looked up, angry for some reason.
	“Are you hustling me?” she finally demanded.
	Istria burst out laughing.
	Lythril swept her pieces off the board. Aine picked them up.
	“All right, we’re doing this again,” she said firmly, “and this time I want you to try. It’s no fun otherwise.”
	Aine did seem very convinced that Lythril had thrown the game, but I wasn’t so sure. It was of course hard to tell; and she might have strategic reasons for doing so--thinking maybe it would allow her to learn more about Aine if she let her win, or that once Aine had beaten her she would start to get careless around her. But it looked to me like she’d really just lost--and that she found this somewhat unsettling.
	<Will you go see where they are, Theamh?> Istria said, as Aine dealt the cards. 
	<I’m sure Sinal’s virtue is safe, wherever they are,> I answered.
	<Very funny. Seriously, they don’t know how dangerous this place is-->
	<All right, I’ll take a look around.>
	I left the three of them and the dubh solus in there and took a stroll through the rest of the house. I was a little anxious not to find them, but then there was a lot of room out there on the grounds, and if I were them, I’d sure want to get some time in the sunshine, if only to remind myself that there was a sun.
	As soon as I got out the door I saw them. Sinal and Sonnia were off near the feral garden and its ruined birdbath, deep in conversation; Taric was wandering through the thicket that had at one time been the herb garden. I thought of going back in to alert Istria, but then I thought that maybe a little sun would do me good too.
	I headed over the hill toward the very edge of the grounds, drawn somehow to confront that horrible place. The birthing hut was still there, but it had crumbled into almost nothing. She’d made it out of sod and wattles, and that stuff doesn’t last well. The roof had disintegrated and the walls were fallen down and in. I stood there looking at its ruins, glad it was going back to the earth and losing its shape. Till I noticed that the trees around the edge of the grounds were starting to ripple and waver.
	<Oh FNAA.>
	<What is it?>
	<Istri, the thurking shield is disintegrating.>
	<What?>
	I was now running back up the hill and around the wall to try to alert the three of them. <It’s starting to buckle, I don’t know why.>
	<I’ll be right there-->
	<No,> I said, stopping in my tracks. 
	Because when I rounded the corner and could see over to the garden, I realized that in fact part of the shield was not only buckling but down, and that there was a small swarm of Amstian soldiers charging through the breach toward the three of them.
	<What do you mean-->
	<Get yourself into a shield first. We’re under attack.>
	<Damn it. By who?>
	<The Amstian Army.> Taric and Sinal were giving them some trouble, there was a limit to how long they could fight off superior numbers. And of course by the time I got close enough to see my way into the battle Sonnia was already on her face on the ground with a soldier kneeling on her and the point of an Amstian sword at the back of her neck.
	I fired off some warning shots, but nobody paid them mind; they must all still be thralled. Except for the Aiv who knocked Sinal to the ground and was pulling his head back by the hair while he got the knife in position at the front of Sinal’s exposed throat.
	“NO!” I shouted. 
	“Hold off, Stenn.”
	It was a woman’s voice, vaguely familiar. Coming, apparently, from nowhere. Until the air shivered and the figure of a woman in a hreapa appeared.
	“Drop your weapon and raise your hands,” she said to Taric. “Or else Stenn might cut your friend’s throat, and that would be a shame.”
	Taric dropped his knife and raised his hands. “Some shriia you are,” he growled.
	Hern smiled at him, but said nothing.
	<It’s Hern, Istri--one of Tifni’s little friends, I remember her from Two Flocks.>
	<She’s there with them?>
	<Yes.>
	<Fantastic. Can you block her?>
	<Well, see, they’ve got Sonnia and Sinal at knifepoint.>
	<Where are you?>
	<Out in the gardens.>
	<Right.>
	<What are you doing?>
	<Don’t ask me where I am, that way you won’t have to tell anyone.>
	“Theamh ni hUlnach, you’re under shriia’s arrest,” Hern said.
	I laughed bitterly. “The hell I am.”
	Hern didn’t turn a hair. “Please surrender before life is lost.”
	“Nice use of the passive voice, bitch.”  
	“Allow me to block you, or we kill the boy,” Hern said. “Your choice.”
	“If I were you I wouldn’t block me,” I said.
	“And why not?”
	“Because I’m the one blocking Lythril.”
	It was no loss to say this, because a detachment of Amstian soldiers had already dragged Lythril out of the house. Aine was still nowhere to be seen, which cheered me up.
	<Aine? Where are you?>
	<Don’t ask and you can’t tell, dhiaoc.>
	Hern looked from Lythril to me. “Fine,” she said. “Caron, will you take the prisoner into custody, please?”
	One of the soldiers stood and reached into his pack. He pulled out an iron contraption that looked to weigh about 20 pounds. My blood froze just looking at it.
	“I don’t thurking believe it,” I said.
	There’s an Old Tongue name for this thing, but it’s popularly known as “the mittens.” Made out of solid iron, it’s designed to be impervious to mindstrength. All the moving parts are too heavy to be snapped, and the lock can’t be forced without the key. Wristlets like that are in common use among the gardai. But this thing wasn’t just a pair of cuffs. Two hollow iron gloves were attached to those circlets, into which my hands were supposed to go. If I made fire while restrained in this thing, it would melt the iron; and backfiring is an imperfect protection against molten metal. All you can do, in the mittens, is burn yourself pretty badly. 
	It had been designed for dark users, of course; but in my lifetime I don’t think these things have been used in a legitimate dark magic trial. It was more humane to block the culprit; and most dark users are already blocked before they surrender. And this particular pair of mittens looked as if they had come straight out of the dark ages.
	“You’re not putting those things on me,” I said, as the soldier approached.
	“Very well,” Hern said. “Stenn, cut his throat.”
	“All right, enough!” I shouted. Stenn stopped moving the knife, although not before he’d drawn blood. 
	“Hands behind your back, please,” Hern replied.
	I obeyed. The soldier began stuffing my hands into the iron gloves.
	“Hey, Hern, can’t you move a little to the left,” I said. “You’re blocking Lythril’s view, and I’m sure she wants to see this.”
	Hern looked back at Lythril, but as it turned out Lythril was preoccupied. For one thing, being on her feet for the first time since her wounding she was in a lot of pain. For another, one of the other soldiers was already putting a pair of mittens on her.
	“You’re useless, Theamh,” Lythril shouted, venting on me since I was the weakest. “If this is how you stand guard--”
	“You shut up,” I hollered back. “I’m in no thurking mood.”
	Another Aiv ran out of the house. “There’s no sign of the apprentice, shriia--or of Istria ni Vharen.”
	“All right, where are they?” Hern demanded.
	“I don’t know,” I said.
	“They were in that house with you.”
	“They were. But they’re not now--at least that’s what your hired thug says.”
	Hern looked at the soldier who had mittened me. He drew his dagger and held it to my throat.
	“All right, listen to me, Aine ni hEmer!” Hern shouted. “And you, Istria ni Vharen. I’m giving you ten seconds to drop the shields and surrender, and then we kill her.”
	<Don’t,> I sent, to both of them. <She obviously wants me alive.>
	<But dhiaoc-->
	<I’m telling you, don’t.>
	“Five seconds.”
	I waited, tense. Hern ended the countdown, and looked around sourly.
	Suddenly the soldier behind me sprang to the right, and tumbled to the ground grappling with something unseen. But not unseen for long, because while the soldier wrestled with whoever it was, Hern got working, and it wasn’t many moments before she had gotten into the shield and started unraveling it.
	Aine, once she realized what was happening, fought like a cornered bobcat, but it was no use; she was already down. Someone produced another pair of those thurking mittens and snapped them onto her. When she stood up she was mad, and frustrated.
	“I’m sorry, dhiaoc.”
	“Don’t be,” I said. “We’ve been ambushed, there’s not much we can do about it.”
	“All right then, Istria,” Hern shouted. “Let’s see you here with your hands up, or Theamh gets it in the neck.”
	<Don’t,> I sent her. <Someone needs to be on the outside.>.
	Hern waited.
	“This Istria must be mighty cold-blooded,” Hern said, looking at me.
	“You don’t know her that well,” I answered.
	Hern kept waiting. Nothing continued to happen.
	“She might not be around here,” Stenn volunteered. “It’s possible she slipped through the breach and ran into the woods.”
	Hern laughed. “Not her. She’s here, somewhere.” She cast a baleful glance around, but nothing came to her eye. “It doesn’t matter. She’ll follow us up there, because we’ve got this one.” Hern took her stance in front of me, measuring me up. “Let’s get moving.”
	The soldier who had mittened Aine returned his attentions to me. “Should we strip off her hreapa, shriia?”
	Hern looked from him to me, and her face was hard.
	“No,” she said. “Leave it on.”
	I looked back at her, and I hated her almost as much as Lythril.
	“You cowardly backstabbing bitch.”
	“Get them into the cart,” Hern said, walking away.
	<I’m with you, chara.>
	<I know. Be careful, they’ll be watching for you.>
	<Hern would have to get a lot subtler before she could see me. Half a hundred men, that iron contraption and three hostages, and she’s congratulating herself on the capture--smug little bitch. Even Lythril would be ashamed of a victory this cheap.>
	There was an uncovered wagon tethered to two mules in one of the passes. Aine, Lythril and I were thrown into it; Stenn climbed in with us. 
	Cuffs were snapped onto Taric, Sinal and Sonnia. But they weren’t loaded onto the wagon. In fact, when Hern climbed onto her horse and three of the Aivs ranged their mounts alongside hers as we pulled out, they were left standing there on the road.
	“Here!” Aine shouted. “What about them?”
	“Let them shift for themselves,” Hern said, as they got smaller in the distance and our wagon went rattling over the open rock.
	<Istri...>
	<I see them, Theamh. Don’t worry, I’ll deal with it.>
	<How?>
	<There are tricks to these things. The wristlets aren’t foolproof.>
	<What about the mittens?>
	<Those...well, for you two there’s going to have to be a Plan B.>
	<You think you can come up with one?>
	<Theamh, for you I could go through the alphabet.> Even in her head voice I could hear grim determination. <No one’s taking you away from me, Theamh. Not now.>
	I was glad to hear it. Even if, as the mules clattered up the mountain toward who knew what, it was hard to see how she was going to stop what had been put in motion.

XVI.
The Infection

	It was night when we got to Mypril, which as I eventually determined was where we were headed. Once we got to a main road things went pretty fast. Mypril was further north but not as far west as Ancinte, right near the border. It was smaller than Amranth, but it had its own council. And who knew how many were bright and how many dark.
	I had never been to Mypril before, so I didn’t know what it normally looked like. However, it was a safe bet that there had been some recent changes. For one thing, a huge waterglobe had been set up over the town fountain, atop a tall and somewhat imperiled glass tower. There was a two-story building across from the fountain from whose roof a number of metal antennae projected, and whose windows were lit up with something that reminded me a lot of Cretid electric light.
	The streets were quiet--at least until someone came bursting out of that building and running up to the wagon, which slowed down so she could approach. 
	“Ah, Cyratha,” Hern said, as the woman reached the wagon. “Working late?”
	“The news never sleeps,” she answered, looking over us with eager and bright eyes. “At least not back home it doesn’t. Who are these people, Hern? What’s the story?”
	Hern seemed to have gotten friendly with this Cretid woman, who was wearing that jacket and had her hair as poufed and frozen as ever it could have been in one of those studios. Obviously the rules about proscribed materials were getting a little lax. Ah well. Mypril was where we’d made that treaty; why shouldn’t it be where it was broken.
	“Well may you ask,” Hern said. “This is Theamh ni hUlnach--wanted in both countries, as you know--”
	Cyratha became greatly excited. “Oh my God--let me go get--” She turned back, and saw the light in her building’s window winking out.
	“Never mind,” she said, disconsolate. “The generator’s down again.” She took out a pad and stylus. “How did you capture them?”
	“We ambushed them at Lythril’s lair,” Hern said, indicating Lythril. “The Amstian Army flushed them out. I expect some of them will get commended for the mission--it’s very dangerous to go up against dark users, very dangerous indeed.”
	Cyratha nodded sagely, although Hern must have been able to tell as well as I could that she didn’t believe in magic. “And now that you have them, what happens?”
	“We can finally start the trial,” Hern answered. “Cyratha, I must dash, we have to turn them over to the secular authorities--but come by the Raed tomorrow.”
	“Of course,” Cyratha said. “See you there then.”
	“Idair with you,” Hern said, waving as we drove off.
	<What do they mean, finally?>
	<Who knows.>
	And indeed, I didn’t know--at least not until they reached the Pharc and hauled us out of the cart. We were bundled into the Court, up the stairs, and into one of the holding rooms, where our captors locked us in after flinging us carelessly at the heaped-up mess in the corners. Which turned out to be partly straw and other detritus, but also partly human.
	“Ow!” Something I had landed on was moving. I got up, wobbling a little and unable to balance well pinioned as I was. “Will you watch where you go?”
	“I’m sorry,” I said, as one and then two women distinguished themselves from the darkness of that small-windowed room. “They just flung us in here, I didn’t see you.”
	“Who’s that?” the second woman demanded. “Introduce yourselves, friends, the light’s low in here and anyhow my sight’s not what it used to be.”
	“We’re not all friends,” I said, watching Lythril crawl into a separate corner.
	“How do you mean?”
	The first woman was now vaguely visible; I couldn’t tell much except that she was tall, thin, and older than I was, although not quite as grizzled as her friend. And she was also wearing a shift that was threadbare, which explained maybe why she was trying to keep herself warm under the straw. And, like me, she was wearing mittens, although they had at least done her the courtesy of pinioning her hands in front of her and not behind.
	“That over there is Lythril,” I said. 
	“Oh fnaa not really,” the woman answered, surprised and alarmed. “The Lythril?”
	“Thank the spirits there’s only one,” Aine muttered.
	“And that’s Aine ni hEmer, who used to be my scoilin. She has her fire now.”
	“Congratulations,” said the second woman. “I hope you got to use it a little before they put the mittens on you.”
	“I did,” she said. “Thank you.”
	“And I’m Theamh ni hUlnach.”
	They seemed perturbed to hear this.
	“Well, damn,” one of them finally said.
	“That’s sort of how I feel about it too right now,” I said.
	“I’m Umrin ni Dhocha, and this is Japthil ni Ghoti,” the first woman said. “Formerly of the Council of Mypril, before all of this happened.”
	“Umrin was head, until they cut her off. Set of ungrateful bitches.” 
	Umrin coughed. “I should have seen it coming, I know.”
	“How long have you been in here?”
	“I don’t know, what day is it?”
	I shrugged.
	“Anyhow, Theamh, we’re of course both honored to be sharing a cell with you,” Umrin said. “It’s just disappointing. We had been hoping you were carrying the fight, and we know they were waiting until they got you to start the trial. They want it to be a real showpiece, you know--the Cretids and their cameras will be broadcasting it everywhere.”
	“Even in Ideire?” Aine asked.
	“They’ve figured out somehow how to get the images from the cameras into waterglobes,” Japthil said. “And surprise surprise, one of the ‘initiatives’ that Barant’s pack of minions has started up in the City is home possession of waterglobes. They want one in every private house by the end of the year. The Vicinity appears to be full of them now, although it’s taking them longer to spread to the provinces.”
	“But why?” Aine said.
	“Obviously, so she can tell them lies,” Japthil snapped.
	“So,” I finally said. “We’re to be tried as dark users, is that it.”
	“Evidently,” said Umrin.
	Lythril started laughing.
	“Dark One’s anger, no Finders in their right minds would convict you,” she said. “Evil wouldn’t have you--you’ve none of you got the stomach.”
	“Did you know,” Japthil observed, “that the Seated Leaders, at least that portion of the Seat that is not now imprisoned, have passed legislation mandating that dark magic trials be decided by a Finders panel composed exclusively of shriias?”
	“Oh fnaa on a hot shingle,” I said.
	“And of course all the women left on the Council of Mypril are corrupt, or else they’d be in here with us,” Umrin said. “So you see how it is. We’re going down.”
	While I contemplated this, Japthil moved closer to me. So how does Lythril come to be here, and is she safe?
	I’m blocking her. It’s a long story...she was wounded, a bunch of Amstian army Aivs tried to assassinate her, and because we’re who we are we had to try to help her. And while we were doing it we all got taken.
	Japthil nodded. “From what I hear, you brought down her lair, up north?”
	“I did,” I said. “With Aine’s help, and Istria’s.”
	“Istria!” Umrin started. “You mean she’s still alive?”
	“She was an hour ago, anyhow.”
	“So where is she?”
	“Somewhere else,” I said. “Working to get us out of here.”
	Umrin nodded. “Better we not know more than that.”
	The door opened, and a rectangle of sickly light appeared, broken by the silhouette of a man in a blue robe.
	“Come on, Lythril,” he said. “Let’s talk.”
	Two gardai went past him to grab Lythril and half-drag, half-carry her out. She was still weak, much as she didn’t want it to show--too weak to even gloat much.
	“What do you suppose...?” Japthil ventured.
	“I try not to,” I said, grimly. 
	Now that Lythril was gone, we set about touch-testing each other. It was awkward, without the use of our hands; and of course nobody could make fire. But we did manage to establish that at least nobody was dark, and that was good enough for us. 
	The other two couldn’t tell us much. The night the Order split, there had been an emergency meeting of the Council called, but only Umrin, Japthil, and a woman named Inral had shown up. They were ambushed by Tifni and Hern; long story short, Inral was killed and the two of them were driven into the hinterlands, until a few weeks ago they had been captured by the Amstian Army and dragged back here. The four remaining members of the Council were now running the show, with the help of Hern, who while not officially on the Council appeared to be calling a lot of the shots.
	I called Wriana and Dahern, but they couldn’t offer much in the way of hope. Slieve was still secure, and thanks to our inroads they had even been able to repatriate more of the refugees. We had helped create a big swath of free territory in eastern Amst. But the freed Amstians were now doing battle with the thralled, and there was a lot of death being dealt without much territory changing hands. Dairc was still free, and all the shriias who weren’t in hiding or fled had been tried and found true. No news so far of what was going on with Amranth. They were both, of course, disappointed about the turn things had taken, and promised to see if there were anything they could do; but they were far from where we were being held, and as I told them, they had other commitments.
	I was tired, and settling down to try to sleep, by the time the door opened and Lythril was thrown in. Aine had dropped off, along with Japthil and Umrin. So when Lythril propped herself up against the wall, I was the only waking thing she had to look at.
	“Well,” she said. “This looks familiar.”
	“To you, maybe,” I said. “I see a huge difference between this place and that madhouse of yours. Plus, if I have to be talking to you, it cheers me up to see you’re as much a prisoner as I am.”
	“For now,” she insinuated. “Aren’t you curious as to why they wanted to see me?”
	“Of course, but you know me and pride,” I said.
	Lythril decided to give me the answer anyhow. “You can guess, I’m sure.” I waited. “They want to make sure of my testimony--that I’ll give them you and Aine.”
	“In return for?”
	“Amnesty.”
	I laughed.
	“I’ve agreed to the deal,” she finally said. “Just because it will amuse me. Whatever fiction I tell them, you can be sure it’ll be gripping.”
	“If you’re their witness now, how come you’re still in here?”
	“For some unfathomable reason,” Lythril said, “they don’t seem to trust me.”
	We sat there in the dark for a long time while I tried and failed to fall asleep. 
	“I didn’t throw that game,” Lythril finally said.
	“Says you.” I kept moving to see if I could find a more comfortable position.
	“You don’t think I did either, do you.”
	“No, I don’t guess I do.”
	The dark stayed quiet for a while, and then Lythril said, “What did I do wrong?”
	“Lythril, it’s just a thurking game. Shut up and let those of us who need it get some sleep.”
	“I want to know and I’m asking you a direct question.”
	“Which I don’t have to answer,” I said. “You know how stubborn I can be.”
	“About things that matter,” Lythril said. “But this is just a game, after all, isn’t it?”
	I sighed.
	“Will you shut up if I tell you?”
	“Yes.”
	I had no hope she would stick to the promise, but I was sick of hearing her ask the question; and it really didn’t matter. “You’re too predictable.”
	“Predictable?” she said, stung.
	“You mix truth with falsehood but it is always mixed,” I said. “You never once gave an actual straight answer. If someone always lies, that’s almost as easy to figure as if they always tell the truth. Plus, you spent too much time trying to take out her pieces, and get your own back into play. You’re better at setting traps and getting out of them, but she’s better at envisioning an overall strategy, and giving up what she’s lost. That one time, it was enough to tip the balance. Now be quiet and let the rest of us alone.”
	 It was impossible to get comfortable. Finally I gave up, feeling as low as ever I had since we’d broken out of that cell in Greenhaven.
	<Istri...>
	<Where are you, chara?>
	<Locked up somewhere in the Court in Mypril. They’re going to try us as dark users. Lythril’s turning poblacht’s evidence, if you can believe this.>
	<She’s crazy. They want her dead as bad as they want you dead.>
	<I don’t think she’s counting on them delivering on the promises,> I said. <She’s got some other plan in mind, I don’t know what it is.>
	<I’ve taken care of the others,> she said. <They’re freed, anyhow. Sinal and Taric are taking Sonnia back to Slieve where she can recuperate. And I’m coming after you.>
	<I hope you get here soon,> I said, plaintively. <I miss you.>
	<Don’t I too, Theamh.>
	<I didn’t even get to kiss you goodbye.>
	<Don’t start talking like this,> Istria said. <You’ll see me again. Idair promised you fifteen years and by the spirit we’ll hold her to it. All the powers of hell ranged in rows on Kengdan horses couldn’t keep me away from you.>
	I felt myself crying, knowing Lythril was watching me, but not particularly caring.
	<It’s not fair,> I said. <I was lonely so long, already...>
	<Oh Theamh...> There was a pause. <Here, will you project into me a little bit?>
	<Why?>
	<You’ll see.>
	<All right...>
	<There now,> Istria said. <You’ve got my hands. Touch me.>
	I kept my eyes closed so I wouldn’t be bothered by the clash between what I was seeing and what I felt. Her hands were lying clasped loose across her ribs--she’d lain down to go to sleep, with the shield over her as a tent and a blanket thrown over her. I felt the fabric of that shirt as I moved her hands up over the soft warm skin of her breast and neck.
	<There’s nothing like you,> I said. 
	<Or you.>
	My own hands were still in their mittens, but what her hands felt was going to them anyway. So even though I was still conscious of the pain in my wrists and the awkward wrench of my shoulders, I could also feel the contours of her face under her hand, and her lips when they closed soft and sudden on the fingers.
	<Ah Theamh, I miss you...>
	And there was the shape of her breast, swelling a little with her breath as the buttons opened. And the dip where her ribs ended and her belly began, and the shape of her jaw under the ear, and all the other places I had learned slowly and well on those happier nights, and had then been cruelly exiled from.
	<Istri...I want to be there...>
	<You are.>
	I was, and I wasn’t. It was a beautiful thing to be able to feel her shape, the warmth and the beat of the blood under her skin, to know she was alive and all right and waiting for my touch. But at the same time I would have given so much to be able to see her, to have my mouth on her, to smell and taste and feel her weight on me. 
	<Your poor hands,> Istria said. <I wish I could move them.>
	<So do I.>
	Hers were now traveling a lot faster; I was wishing for what couldn’t be, but I was hungry enough for the feel of her, if that was all I could have. I could feel her changing under my touch--the motion of her body, but also a thrill in the hands I was moving.
	<Ah Theamh...>
	<Istri... I should always be touching you...>
	<Come in further.>
	I bled through until the rest of me began answering the touch along with her. Breath, blood, the tremble in her thighs as her hand went between them.
	<Can you feel it?>
	<Oh yes.>
	Knowing that Lythril was still awake, and the others had to be sleeping lightly, I tried to keep it inside--which made me feel like my head was going to come off, or my ribs spring open. But I couldn’t stop or back out--I was in the teeth of need, and both her hands were there, moving her and moving me, hanging on as if she might slip away and leave me troubled and tight-jawed in this dark room with nothing but memory.
	<Theamh-->
	<Istri--you can take control-->
	<--no, keep-->
	<--if I’m being too-->
	<--stay there-->
	<--ah Istri stay with me-->
	<--I’m with you-->
	<--stay with me-->
	<--I’m here-->
	I let out a gasp that had Lythril staring at me. Aine stirred in the straw.
	<Istri, I have to stop-->
	<What is it, Theamh?>
	<I’m waking the neighbors,> I said. <Plus Lythril is in here--and you know the bitch never sleeps.>
	“You all right, dhiaoc?” Aine asked, groggily. 
	“As all right as I can be,” I said.
	She wasn’t convinced. “You sound like you’re not breathing right.”
	“I’m not sick, Aine. Trust me.”
	“All right then,” she said, turning over.
	Aine might have been fobbed off, but Lythril’s eyes were still on me, and they were glittering with conjecture.
	<I’m sorry, Istri...>
	<Don’t,> she said. <Just having you in me helps.>
	<Me too,> I answered. <It’s just...>
	<I know,> Istria said. <I want to be there too. And I will be. Till then...well at least we’re linked.>
	I felt the tears starting to fall. <It makes all the difference, Istri.>
	Even though I had backed out I thought I could still feel the answering tears. <You think maybe you can sleep now?>
	<I’ll try.>
	<I’ll stay with you.>
	I turned around to the best position I could find. It did make a difference having her there on the other end of the link, even when she wasn’t saying anything.
	<You’ll close it when I’m asleep?>
	<Yes, Theamh. Take care in there.>
	<I love you, Istri.>
	<Like I love you.>

	I had asked the others if they would be bothering to feed us. “Once in a while,” Umrin had said. “When someone remembers. Of course, eating is a real pain the gleacha, without hands--not worth the trouble, sometimes.”
	So I wasn’t really looking forward to it when the door opened; but as it turned out it wasn’t lunch. It was two gardai, and this time they were looking for me.
	“Get up,” they said. 
	“For what?”
	“Never mind.” They dragged me to my feet and down the hallway.
	Having spent the whole night in hreapa had made a difference. To stay in hreapa round the clock for as long as she had Wriana must have been made of strong stuff, or else she was very desperate. Maybe both. The fact that I was trying to block Lythril made it worse. I was hoping they would rush us to trial--the longer I stayed in the thing the more drained I would get. Even now, when they opened the door and flung me into a chair in one of those nondescript rooms, I didn’t have the energy to really resist.
	The gardai left me sitting there, the mittens clanking against the back of the chair as I stared across a cheap wood table at an empty chair. 
	There was a door on the other side. A silhouette appeared in it--male, tall and with curly hair. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but the voice was raised, and angry.
	The door opened on the end of a tirade. “...preposterous. Absolutely, and you know it. Even for a lousy restitution hearing you get a thurking pretrial order!”
	“You have half an hour,” snapped another man I couldn’t see. “Time’s wasting.”
	With a sharp sigh, Ethir pushed in through the door. It swung shut behind him.
	He was still with whatever argument he’d been having, and it was a moment before he really saw me.
	“Theamh,” he said, frozen suddenly in his tracks.
	“Hello, Ethir,” I said mournfully.  
	He looked the same as always--his blue robe was a little rumpled, and his dark hair curling just that little bit out of control. But instead of answering me, he stood there stricken, hands dangling at his sides.
	“Oh Theamh.”
	And he started to cry. Standing right there in front of me. His face crumpled and water started leaking out of his red eyes. He looked suddenly young, like a child who doesn’t understand why after falling something hurts.
	“Ethir, what’s the matter?” I was really worried. Outside of the courtroom, he was hardly ever serious--and I had never seen him cry, in one or out of one.
	He pulled the chair out and sat, not entirely paying attention to what he was doing. His watering eyes were bent on me.
	“What have they done to you?”
	I realized that it had been a long time since Ethir had seen me, and I probably wasn’t looking very well.
	“They’re keeping me in hreapa, they’ve got the mittens on me and they’ve locked me up,” I said. “But if it’s the weight that’s bothering you--that’s Lythril. She had me captive for a while, and I didn’t think I could escape, so I tried to starve myself to death.”
	Ethir looked at me in horror.
	“It’s all right, I’m eating again now,” I said, because he seemed to be so shattered.
	“Oh Idair’s mercy.” He pulled up to the table, leaning his elbows on it as he tried wiping his eyes dry with the heels of his hands.
	“Ethir.” I tried to sound gentle. “I’m still alive. I’m still true, I’m still clean, and I’m still me. It could have been a lot worse.”
	He lifted his head and tried to get a grip. But even though he was eventually able to get his face under control, his eyes were still red and watering, and his voice was raw.
	“How did you get out?”
	“It’s a long story--Istria and Aine helped me.”
	“Istria?” he repeated, stunned.
	“I--didn’t he say we only had half an hour?” Ethir nodded, absently. “Then we don’t have time for that story. Will you tell me what they’re planning to do with me, and what you’re doing all the way up in Mypril?”
	“When they arrested Umrin and Japthil I was assigned by the courts to defend them,” he said, his voice heavy and dull. “Seeing as I did such a good job with Slythe.”
	Bitterness, grief, and something else--an acid cynicism, sensible to me even from this distance, like a bile-green fog or a bad smell. Because he had loved the law for so long, and now it had been corrupted into nothing but power and punishment. And he was trapped inside a system he knew to be false, stuck doing his job knowing nothing could make a difference, driven to keep trying but doomed to failure by the rot around him.
	“Her dying wasn’t your fault,” I said.
	“It was,” he answered. “They killed her because it was going well.”
	“What?”
	It sounded crazy to me, but he seemed convinced. “I had them on the run, and they were scared it wouldn’t go the way they wanted. They were still trying these in front of lay finders, then. So instead of risking an acquittal, they killed her.”
	If he thought it was true, it probably was; I hadn’t been there. “I’m sorry, Ethir. But you have to understand it still isn’t your fault, even if what you say is true.”
	“Maybe not, but she’s just as dead,” he said. “And if I do a good job with you...”
	I was finally understanding part of where his anxiety came from. “Listen, Ethir, they want me dead one way or the other. What you do won’t make a difference.”
	“If we lose you’ll be blocked and exiled,” he said. “If it looks like we’re going to win you’ll be assassinated. Either way you’ll be destroyed and the fault will be mine.”
	He was crying again. I knew how hard this must all have been for him, but at the same time I was angry with him for letting it unbalance him this way.
	“Ethir,” I said, with an edge. “We can forget right now about getting me off. They’ve got a star witness who lies like she breathes, a Finders panel of dark users and a presider who’s probably corrupt. Under these conditions they could convict a bowl of soup. Even if the bowl of soup had a really good lawyer.”
	His dark head bent as he nodded, and the tears kept going.
	“Ethir, look at me.”
	He looked at me, miserably.
	“I don’t need you to get me acquitted,” I said. “I need you to make sure that when they convict me, everyone watching knows I’m innocent.”
	Ethir swallowed, and nodded.
	“You can do that, Ethir. I know you can.”
	“I’ll try.”
	“All right. Now pull yourself together, because I really need your help.”
	Ethir did his best. Even after he’d stopped crying there was something hollowed-out and wrecked about the way he looked. And even after his voice got level and calm, there was something very disturbed about what I was reading off him.
	“They’ll try you, Aine, and the Mypril councillors together,” he said. “The Cretid reporters are already calling you the Mypril Four. I’m representing all of you.”
	“What about Lythril?”
	He almost looked like he might crack a smile. “I told them to get Lythril independent counsel. There’s just the slightest risk of a conflict of interest.”
	I smiled. “And so you don’t know what she’s being charged with.”
	“She’s pleading guilty to proscription violation. They’ll keep her in custody until she’s given them the testimony they want and then they’ll put her back in the Zone.”
	“They’ll assassinate her first chance they get,” I said. “That’s obvious.”
	“She must know that?”
	“Of course she knows that. She’s not cooperating because she thinks they’ll let her go. It’s part of some other plan.”
	I had started trying to gesture, out of habit, but all that happened was a clank from the mittens as they banged against the chair.
	Ethir seemed to prick up his ears, and for an instant looked like his old self.
	“Why have they got the mittens on you instead of blocking you?”
	“Because I’m blocking Lythril,” I said. “If they block me, she’s free.”
	He shook his head. “All the others are mittened too.”
	“Well, it’s a lot of work to block someone,” I said. “And the mittens are humiliating, and awkward, and make life much more difficult.”
	Ethir was thinking something entirely different. But he just said, “So Lythril testifies against the four of you. It’ll be interesting to see what she comes up with.”
	“How will the trial work?”
	“That’s what they won’t tell me. To put four defendants on at once is not normal, and they haven’t worked out the order--or if they have, they refuse to tell me.”
	“So...what do we do, then?”
	Ethir sighed. “Lythril is testifying against you, and you can expect the worst. Now the lies will be easy enough to deal with. What I need to know is if there’s anything about you that she knows, that’s actually true, that she might be able to use against you.”
	I looked back at him, feeling very depressed.
	“I can only think of one thing,” I said, “but it’s a biggie.”
	“What is it?”
	I fidgeted for a while. The memory of Ethir standing there at the end of the gangplank and declaring his love for me surfaced, and as I considered it again it seemed to me like it might not have been a joke. Which only made this conversation more painful.
	“I told you Istria helped rescue me,” I said.
	“Yes.”
	I leaned forward. Whatever you do...
	What?
	Do not let them start asking me about sex.
	Ethir’s eyes got bigger. You mean...
	Yes, we’ve done it.
	He struggled not to show himself shocked. It’s not a crime to be shrimarbh...
	But I’m not shrimarbh, I said. That’s the awkward thing.
	How can that be?
	As it turns out, sex is not a loss violation.
	He was now staring out me in frank incredulity. But...
	I know, I know, it shocked the hell out of me. But Idair explained it to me. She made a mistake warning us against it, and now she wants to fix it.
	And, as I read the buzz in Ethir’s poor brain, I added, I am not insane, it really happened. She appeared to me and explained this. Now you can appreciate my position. You don’t even believe me--you can’t expect strangers to buy that story.
	After a minute his brow furrowed, and he said, I do believe you, Theamh.
	You don’t, but you’re trying. I give you credit.
	But this is a disaster, he answered. I mean--I’m--happy for you--but--this means we can’t put you on the stand, Theamh.  He looked very unhappy. Does Aine know?
	Yes.
	Then we can’t put her up there either.
	Can’t you keep it out on the hearsay rule?
	They’ll just say it’s not for the truth of the matter asserted. If they can establish that you told her you’d had sex...then you’re either lying or not celibate, and either way...
	He sighed heavily. I felt bad for him. It would have been hard enough to do this even if he could put us on the stand. Now, his hands were really tied.
	Well, it’s back to the old trinity then, he finally said, trying to be cheerful. Impeach, impair, impassion.
	Impeach the other side’s witnesses, impair their testimony by casting doubt, deliver an impassioned closing. The strategy for defending a client who’s guilty.
	I am still true, Ethir.
	I know that, Theamh. Believe me when I say that.
	I took a minute to suss him out. I believe you.
	“Do you know where Istria is now?” he finally said.
	“No.”
	“But we can still hope for an eleventh hour reprieve.”
	“We can hope.”
	The door behind me opened. Aine appeared in it, hanging from the grip of a garda.
	“Time’s up,” said the garda. “Here’s your next client.”
	The garda’s fellow grabbed me, and Aine was shoved in as I was dragged out. Ethir watched the exchange glumly, struck by the absurdity but in no mood to laugh.
	<How’s the rescue coming?> I asked Istria, as they opened the holding room door.
	<Don’t ask,> she said.
	<I won’t then,> I replied. <But Istri, I should tell you--I really hope it comes through, because I don’t think the law’s going to do it for me.>
	<I’ll get you out of there, Theamh. Somehow.>
	<I know.>
	When I sorted myself out Lythril was in the middle of baiting Umrin.
	“Of course I don’t know that much about you, your career having been nothing if not undistinguished. But I’ll think of something.”
	“Just tell her to shut up,” I said, easing back into a corner. 
	“Shut up, Lythril,” Umrin said, but without the proper conviction and authority.
	Lythril laughed, but cut herself off with a wet-sounding cough.
	I looked at her in the dim light. She was always pale, but now she was starting to look a little greenish. And she was sitting as if she were trying to favor her right side--the place where that arrow had gone into her gut.
	It hadn’t occurred to me at first, but now that Istria was in parts unknown, the wraps were off and Lythril’s wounds were exposed. And this wasn’t a clean environment.
	I found that contemplating this didn’t fill me with joy the way that it might have a few weeks earlier. If Lythril got burnt up in battle I don’t think it would bother me in the least. But somehow I didn’t like thinking of her slowly festering to death. Brought down the coward’s way, the way they were bringing me down. Passively, through neglect and privation. Not even losing the battle--because there was no way to fight.
	Aine was dragged back in finally. <So, how was your consultation?>
	Aine shook her head. <He’s very worried about you, Theamh,> she said. <Are you sure he’s not a little bit in love with you?>
	<No,> I answered.
	She nodded. <That’s what I thought. Maybe it’ll help.>
	<I don’t think it does,> I said. <It’s too upsetting to him--he burst into tears just looking at me.>
	Aine turned her eyes on me. <That I don’t blame him for, dhiaoc.> She looked me over sadly. <You don’t look good.>
	<Yeah, well, check out Lythril.>
	Lythril had stretched herself out on the ground, twisted awkwardly on her good side. That gut wound was bothering her, no question; and so was the one in her thigh. 
	<She’s getting bad,> Aine agreed. <I noticed last night--she was sort of limping on that one leg. I hope Sonnia’s doing all right.>
	<Me too.>
	<So they won’t put us on the stand.>
	She was very disappointed. Of course what she most wanted was the chance to stand up in court and tell everyone where to stick it. I wanted that too. But it was too risky. Two questions-- “Have you had sex since receiving your orders?” and then “Have you used magic since having sex?” That was all it would take. And knowing that Lythril was starting to have suspicions, it was a good bet they’d try it out. 
	<I’m sorry, Aine. I’ve made this all a lot more complicated.>
	<Dhiaoc...never apologize for that.> I looked at her face, lifted toward me in the half-light with her brown hair tumbled dusty around it. <I’m glad there are things like your love in the world.> She wasn’t going to cry, but the emotion was there. <I’m not sorry for it, and neither is Idair. Don’t you be. They would have got to us one way or another.>
	Time passed, slowly enough. A few hours of small talk with Umrin and Japthil about their lives up to now, an attempt to play dubh solus glas rules with an imaginary board and pieces, more talk a little bit larger this time about the state of the country and the order, and finally the attempt to go to sleep. 
	What worried me was that Lythril had been very quiet all afternoon. She lay with those bright eyes fixed on the ceiling, refusing to notice us, doing nothing but shifting from one position to a slightly different one, favoring that tender patch on her side. It was possible she was faking it. But it was also possible that she was getting the Infection.
	The women who had died in that birthing hut died of something too horrible to name. I just called it The Infection. It took them everywhere--the womb, at first, but it would spread through the guts to everything else. Watching a woman die from this was, as I knew, a horrifying and gut-churning experience. Even if that woman was Lythril.
	I had asked Darin about the Infection afterwards; he told me that with antibiotics you can nail almost anything of this type, if you catch it early enough. So if Maerin had been an actual doctor, those women might have survived. But of course he wasn’t.
	With Istri’s help, I managed to drop off to sleep. But it seemed like no time at all before I was jolted back awake.
	I didn’t realize at first by what. But once the darkness began to sort itself out, I saw Lythril had dragged herself over to the door.
	“Hey!” she shouted at it. “I need to talk to Hern!”
	“Oh put a rock in it, Lythril,” Japthil muttered, trying to go back to sleep.
	She didn’t give up. “You, bastard on the other side of this door! Go get Hern!”
	“Pipe down in there,” came a rough male voice from the other side. “Hern’s gone for the day. You can talk to her tomorrow.”
	Lythril’s voice rose to something like a shriek. “You wake the bitch up and you tell her that if she wants me alive to testify, she better get her gleacha and a doctor down here right thurking now!”	
	For a long time nothing happened. Lythril, with a clenched growl of pain and frustration, crawled to the door and dragged herself up against it.
	It was a while before I realized that the repeated loud thud was Lythril banging her head against the door.
	Finally there was the scrape of a key in the lock.
	Lythril backed off. The garda opened the door. Behind him I saw the flare of a light globe, held up by a woman in hreapa. One of the dark shriias on the Mypril council.
	“All right, let’s look at you.”
	Lythril allowed her to come in and squat down near her. The woman yanked the tails of Lythril’s shirt out of her trousers, unceremoniously, and put a hand on the sore spot. It looked like her whole gut was red and swollen, but that might just have been the light from the globe.
	Lythril struggled not to cry out as she pressed on it. This woman, whoever she was, was definitely dark. I tried to get a good look at her face so I could remember.
	“Well?” demanded the garda, as the woman stood up.
	“It’s not my area,” the woman said. “I’m practical magic, I don’t know fnaa about this stuff.” She looked around, and her baleful eyes fell on me.
	“You,” she said. “Theamh ni hUlnach, aren’t you?”
	“Unfortunately,” I said.
	“Come over here and look at her.”
	I scrambled over on my knees to where Lythril was stretched out under that reddish light globe.
	“What do you think?” she barked. “Is she faking it?”
	Without the use of my hands it was difficult, but I still had fire affinity, and it still worked for infection, which is a kind of fire--the first kind, other than rust, that we learned how to look for. And it was raging. Hottest at the site of the wound, which had begun to weep a nasty yellow kind of discharge; but it was spreading through her gut. Darin, in my conversations with him, had waxed eloquent in his descriptions of what these cases looked like on autopsy, and although I had made him stop after a short time I had an idea of what was going on inside Lythril’s belly.
	“She may or may not be exaggerating her pain to get your attention,” I said. “I’ve no way of knowing.”
	“But is she really sick,” the woman insisted.
	“She’s got, or is on the way to getting, what the medicals call peritonitis,” I said.
	“Is that serious?”
	I looked back up at this woman’s face. Now I was sure I would have no trouble remembering it. It was cold, without any trace of softness, tenderness, or feeling.
	“It can be very serious. People die of it.”
	She looked back down at Lythril. Lythril’s breathing was a little shallow now, as if she were working hard not to let anything get away from her.
	“But she’ll make it till morning, right?”
	I looked from Lythril’s burning body to this woman’s face red in the globe light.
	“I can’t say for sure,” I said.
	“Take your best guess.”
	Lythril groaned.
	“I won’t,” I said, looking back at her. “I’ve told you what I can tell. She’s sick, she’s in pain, and if she isn’t looked after she’ll probably die. If you had a scrap of anything in you that we call human, you’d take her somewhere she can be looked after.”
	She glared back at me, not appreciating my appeal to her brighter nature.
	“Fine,” I said. “You don’t know whether she’ll live till morning. But what you do know is that if she dies tonight, Hern’s lost her star witness. And if she asks me whose fault that was, you bet your gleacha I’ll answer that question.”
	“Is there really a chance she would die?” the woman insisted.
	“There’s a chance any of us could be dead by morning.”
	“You know what I mean.”
	“Look!” I finally shouted. “Lythril’s a tough old bitch and I wouldn’t like to make predictions. But I’ve seen three women die from fnaa like this and two of them died real quickly, once the symptoms started.” 
	The woman looked back at Lythril in indecision.
	“For thurk’s sake,” Lythril gasped. “She’s a shriia, you know that as well as those other bitches do. If she says I’m dying she’s thurking right.”
	“But she doesn’t say you’re dying,” the woman repeated. “Do you?”
	“You mean is she dying now?” I asked.
	“I mean, will she definitely die tonight, if she isn’t looked after.”
	I looked back at Lythril.
	“Is it possible, if I leave her overnight, that she will survive,” the woman repeated.
	“Anything’s possible,” I said, after a long time of wavering.
	“But is it likely?”
	“Listen!” Japthil finally shouted. “Theamh didn’t just fall off the turnip cart. If you want to badger her into lying you’re going to have to get up a lot earlier in the morning. Take some thurking responsibility for once in your putrid life, Coel, and make the decision so we can get some sleep!”
	The woman looked back at Lythril, who glared up at her with hatred.
	“We’ll leave her till morning,” Coel said to the garda. “I’ll send Hern down as soon as she gets in.”
	“All right, shriia,” the garda said.
	They left. The door shut. 
	“Dark One’s anger,” Lythril snarled through her gritted teeth. “I’m going to die in this filth because you won’t stretch a point.”
	Umrin and Japthil were now dragging themselves over to look at her. “I don’t know, Theamh,” Umrin said. “I think she’ll make it--bad luck to her.”
	Japthil nodded. “It’s touch and go. But she’ll probably survive till morning.”
	“Is there anything we can do?” Aine asked.
	Umrin shook her head. “Not mittened. She’ll just have to ride it out.”
	“Ah well,” Aine said. “It’s probably good for her to be tortured a little bit, just to know what it’s like.”
	“Go to hell!” Lythril shouted.
	She was savagely angry--but, as she was also terribly frightened. She wasn’t sure she would make it, not at all. And the one thing she had ever been afraid of was death. 
	“I think we’re there,” Umrin said.
	“No,” I answered. “It gets worse than this. Believe me.”
	Lythril turned onto her knees, leaned over, and began vomiting.
	The four of us drew back from the stink and the splatter. 
	“Ah good grief,” said Umrin. “We’ll be up all night with this.”
	Lythril hung over the puddle of fouled straw, with gobbets of bile and puke dripping from her open mouth. She was as sick with shame and fear as she was with the infection. Umrin looked at Japthil; I looked at Aine. Something changed in the room.
	“All right, Theamh, you’re still done,” Japthil said, with a sigh. “Probably your shift’s cleaner than ours.”
	It took a long time because we had to do it all with mindstrength, and linen is pretty tough. But we got a strip torn off it, and then in our no-handed clumsy fashion we managed to clean her face up a little bit.
	“Nobody happens to have secreted uisce about their person before arrest, I suppose,” Umrin said.
	“It might not help matters anyhow,” I said. “Uisce hurts her.”
	Lythril collapsed against the wall, crying out as the wound in her back made contact with the boards. “Thurk, thurk, THURK THIS!”
	“We could try wrapping the wounds,” Aine said.
	Umrin shook her head. “Now they’re infected, there’s no point--if we can’t actually wipe out the beagi, the best thing we can do is let them drain.”
	“Dark One’s testicles!” Lythril shouted. Her stomach churned and she began evacuating from another orifice entirely.
	“Oh Idair’s mercy,” Umrin muttered, glumly, as the stench spread.
	Aine looked around the cell. “We could wipe her down with straw, maybe? I know we can’t waste the drinking water.”
	“We’d have to get her trousers off first,” I said doubtfully. “I don’t know if mindstrength will do it--these Cretid fastenings are a nightmare.”
	“Nobody,” Lythril coughed as she laid back and closed her eyes, “is taking off my thurking pants.”
	“You’d rather sit in your own filth?” Japthil asked.
	“Thurk you,” Lythril wheezed.
	“All right,” I said. “The one thing we can do for her is get some water into her. That seemed to help the others a little.”
	Umrin went for the water bucket. “What others?”
	“It’s a long story,” I said, as Umrin gritted her teeth and levitated the bucket. We were at least all getting a good mindstrength workout. Restrained this way we had to use mindstrength just to get our skirts out of the way when we used the chamberpot. And Umrin and Japthil had to use both their minds to get the ladle in the bucket up to Lythril.
	Lythril leaned forward awkwardly, gulping at the water.
	“Take more,” I said. “All that evacuation is going to dry you out.”
	With a glowering look at me, she leaned into another ladleful.
	It was slow going, and we had to take turns with the ladle. Finally I figured we should save the rest; who knew how long it would be before anyone refilled the bucket.
	Dark as it was, we could tell Lythril was getting worse. If not from the way her mouth opened and closed as despite our efforts she continued to dry out, from the weakening croak of her voice as we wiped off the results of a second bout of vomiting.
	“Why in thurk’s sake are you doing this,” she hissed, as we finally sat back.
	It was a while before anyone answered. 
	“Because you’re sick,” Japthil said.
	Umrin nodded. She and Japthil were both in Comings and Goings. 
	“It’s not going to make a difference,” Lythril forced out. “If I’m dying you can’t save me. You’d be...within your rules...” She choked on some thickened spittle.
	“Maybe so,” Aine said, guessing the end of the sentence. “All we can do is make you more comfortable. And nothing says we have to do that, since it won’t save your life.”
	Lythril’s eyelids were flickering, but she tried to fix on me. “You still hate me.”
	“That’s right.”
	“Again I ask...why.”
	“Why do I hate you?”
	“Thurk you, Theamh.”
	“Oh, you mean why am I helping you.” She glared at me, irritated by my needling. But she looked more alert and like herself when she was sparring with me than at most other times. It was, in a weird way, touching. Because I did hate her, for what she had done to me and to Istria and to the rest of Idair’s children. And I hated her because I knew that as soon as she was well and free she would be as powerful and implacable an enemy as she had always been. I hated her because I knew gratitude, love, loyalty, and compassion were foreign emotions that could never take root in her. But at the same time I recognized, as she fixed me with the shattered remains of that angry stare, that she was in a bizarre way trusting and depending on me. Because I was a familiar face, a story she knew; because much as she hated me she knew I would see her through this if I could.
	“Well, Lythril,” I said, “I’d say there’s no easy answer to that question.”
	“That’s...” She coughed. “Illuminating.”
	“She’s helping you because she’s good, and she doesn’t like suffering,” Aine said.
	“Tarbhfnaa,” Lythril croaked.
	“No, she’s right,” I said. “That’s part of it. But you know what else?” Lythril didn’t want to acknowledge my pause. “You hate being dependent, or vulnerable, or weak, almost worse than you hate death. And I know it has got to be chafing your gleacha that you’re now dependent on me.” I smiled. “And that almost makes this worthwhile.”
	“First chance I get...” she hissed.
	“You’re going to kill Istria in front of me, yes, I know. You won’t get the chance. Now close your eyes and try to get some rest.”
	She looked back at me with hatred.
	“I will do it.”
	“I’m sure you’ll try,” Aine said. “It would be very like you.”
	“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lythril snapped.
	“It would be like you to go after Istria and Theamh first, even though they’re not a threat to you now,” Aine said. “It would be like you to take out all four of us the first moment you get your strength and fire back, just because we’ve done you a good turn. Instead of, for instance, striking out at the people who wounded you in the first place and then left you here to rot while your guts curdle. Settle the old score first. That’s you.” Aine looked back at her, clear-eyed and unafraid. “Predictable.”
	Lythril really wanted to abuse her, but she didn’t have the energy. We watched through the night as she got worse. After a while we stopped giving her water even because she just threw it back up. The stink of her emissions overpowered every other stink in the holding room, and we were so taken up with trying to keep her in the world through, if nothing else, sheer force of will, that we didn’t notice the morning coming.
	Nobody had suggested that we pray for her. We all knew without saying that we couldn’t do that and mean it. And Lythril had not asked the Dark One for help. It didn’t surprise me. The Dark One doesn’t seem to do a very good job of taking care of its own.
	So when the door opened again, we were all just sitting there around her, watching her difficult breath, Umrin and Japthil burning with the frustration at being able to do nothing, Aine watching with impersonal concern, and me wondering what would happen if she did die, if I should call Istria so she could be here with me as our worst enemy breathed her last, wondering what life would be like with Lythril out of the world and if maybe it would be us who had to send her home, since no one else belonged to her.
	Hern burst into the room, attended by Coel and the day gardai.
	As soon as the light from the door fell on Lythril Hern started cursing in Amstic.
	“Get her up and get her down to the hospital,” Hern barked, turning to the gardai. “Into the intensive care unit, she’s going to need it. MOVE!”
	The gardai hoisted Lythril and struggled out of the room. Coel looked after them.
	“So I was right, she made it after all.”
	Hern swung around on her. “You stupid bitch,” she snarled, low enough that it wouldn’t carry out the door into the hallway. “How could you let it get this bad, you know we need her alive.”
	Coel looked back at her, impassive.
	“They won’t be able to get the IV drip into her,” she said.
	I had seen enough Cretid television to know what she meant. In hospitals they hook people up to bags of clear water attached to hoses that hook into the person’s vein. They do it to hydrate people who are dried out from fever, vomiting, currfnaa, and so on. 
	“Not unless she takes off her chain,” Coel continued.
	Because the drip went into the vein through a needle. A metal needle.
	Hern’s face slowly changed.
	“Next time tell me what’s in your mind,” Hern said, “and save yourself a cursing.”
	The two of them withdrew and slammed the door behind them.

	This time they brought the four of us in to talk to Ethir at once; evidently he had requested that. We were glad to be out of the holding room, whose stink had only gotten riper since they removed Lythril. Ethir was more together than he had been the first time I’d seen him. I wondered if maybe he had made contact with Istria. He seemed to have some hope now--something he thought he could work at.
	“I’ve negotiated a deal,” he said. “A very small concession. I want to run it by you. I think it’s to your advantage, but if you don’t agree then I can call it off.”
	“Tell us what it is,” Japthil said.
	“I’ve gotten them to agree to take off the mittens,” he said.
	We looked at each other.
	“But,” he sighed, giving the condition he knew we were expecting, “only if you agree to be blocked.”
	“My gleacha!” I shouted.
	“Hear me out, Theamh,” Ethir said, his voice reclaiming some of that courtroom authority. I subsided, still fuming.
	“I don’t mean permanently,” he said. “Or that you promise to stay blocked for any particular duration. The agreement states only that you promise to allow the seal to set.”
	“Regardless,” Japthil began, “I don’t see that we’re better off.”
	Ethir had the arguments ready. “I’ve been wondering why they had you mittened,” he said. “I have a few theories. One--the mittens are there to make you look dangerous. This trial, as Theamh has pointed out to me, is not about justice; it’s about public opinion. If you walk in there wearing all that hardware it will predispose people against you.”
	That was probably true. Ethir sensed we were with him, and moved on.
	“Two,” he said. “They might have blocked you and mittened you both--Theamh’s still in hreapa but none of you are. Why haven’t they done this? Well, it’s a drain on them. But.” He looked at me. “You’re keeping Lythril blocked, weak as you are. There’s four of them plus Hern--one for each of you plus Lythril. My theory...” He gave us that “selling a point” look that Finders panels throughout the years had been favored with. “I think they’re not blocking you because they can’t.”
	“We know Hern’s dark,” I said.
	“And Coel,” Umrin answered.
	“But I don’t think the others are,” Ethir said. “Based on the negotiations...Hern made it a sticking point that the four Mypril councillors wouldn’t be able to help her block you, because they would be on the finders panel and would have to stay impartial.”
	“Oh, as if that’s been bothering her so far,” I said.
	Ethir nodded. “It’s her way of trying to cover the fact that some of those women can’t block you. It means she loses the help of Coel, who is also on the finders’ panel. But she’s determined not to let anyone find out that three of those women are shrimarbh.”
	“So wait,” Umrin said. “Hern is going to block all five of us? By herself?”
	Ethir nodded.
	“You see how this changes things,” he said. “One woman blocking five? When one of them is Theamh, and one of them’s Lythril.”
	“So what are we, chopped liver?” Japthil said.
	Ethir looked chagrined. 
	“I’m joking,” Japthil answered. “You’re right--Hern’s crazy if she thinks she can keep it up long. Which makes me wonder why she’s crazy enough to agree to this deal. What’s in it for them?”
	“Well,” Ethir said, “first of all, Hern has delusions of grandeur. She clearly thinks she can handle it. She’s dead wrong, but why argue. Second...I think it’s about communication. They know Istria is out there and they have a suspicion that she’s organizing a rescue. If you’re blocked she won’t be able to coordinate with you. Also, you won’t be able to communicate with each other.” I contemplated this prospect gloomily. “I think it’s also about control over Lythril. They can’t block her as long as Theamh’s blocking her. If they can block Theamh that lifts the block on Lythril, and allows Hern to do it herself. Hern wants to have Lythril by the short hairs--and you can’t blame her.”
	We thought about this for a while, while Ethir looked on.
	“So what do you think?” he said. “I think it makes sense, but I’m not a shriia.”
	“No you’re not,” Umrin said, her voice unsteady. “You can’t understand what it’s like for us.”
	Everyone else’s mind chimed in assent, especially mine.
	“But,” Japthil said, “I do think it makes sense. I think we’ve got a better chance of breaking out of a multiple block then we do of getting out of these damn things.”
	Aine nodded. “I’ve never been blocked and I’m sure I’ll hate it...but I’ll agree.”
	“Theamh?” Ethir said, gently because he saw I was crying.
	“I have to ask Istria,” I said.
	They waited while I opened the link and put the proposition to her.
	<What do you think, Istri?>
	Istria’s answer was unwilling, but clear. <I think it makes sense.>
	<But...>
	<I know you’ll hate it. I’ll hate it too.> Her head voice was now starting to carry the strain. <Being without you now...it’s a thousand times more painful than before.>
	<I’m sorry, Istri.>
	<I’ll miss being able to talk to you. But Theamh, link or no link I will not lose touch. I will be there with you. I will come for you.>
	<I know, Istri.>
	<Don’t break your links--just let the seal cut them off.>
	<All right. As soon as we break the block I’ll call you.>
	<You may see me before then.>
	<Ah, don’t get my hopes up, Istri.>
	<All right then I won’t.>
	I nodded. “I’ll agree,” I said. “Provided they take the mittens off first.”
	Ethir nodded. “I’ll contact the--”
	He didn’t have to. The door opened to admit Hern and a garda with the keys.
	“I’m glad you’ve decided to be reasonable,” Hern said. “You first, scoilin.”
	Aine stood, looking small in her sleeveless burnt shirt with her elbows awry. 
	“Do you promise that if we remove the restraints you are wearing, and undertake never to put them on you again, you will allow me to complete the process of sealing you off, reserving for yourself the right to fight the block after the seal is set?”
	Aine looked back at her, levelly, scared but unflinching.
	“I do.”
	The garda unlocked the mittens and took them off Aine’s hands. She stood rubbing her wrists and flexing her long-cramped fingers, looking down at her hands and turning them to see if they were all right.
	Finally she dropped them by her sides and looked out challengingly at Hern.
	“Go ahead then,” she said. 
	It didn’t take long, since Aine didn’t fight. The seal set around her, and Hern moved onto Umrin.
	While Umrin was making the promise, I watched Aine’s face register the shock. It brought tears up to her eyes, but they didn’t fall.
	“I’m still here, Aine,” I said. 
	“Oh dhiaoc,” she answered, her voice low. “You must have been so miserable.”
	Umrin and Japthil went through the same rigmarole. Now it was my turn.
	<Idair stay with you, Istri.>
	<Idair with you, and me with you. Always. Remember that.>
	Hern stood in front of me.
	<I love you, Istri.>
	<Like I love you.>
	“You’re coming with us,” she said.
	“Tarbhfnaa. We had a deal.”
	“I will honor it but later. We need you to come to the hospital.”
	That was the last place I wanted to be in the mood I was in. “What for?”
	“This isn’t freagair.” She nodded to the garda, who began hauling me out.
	“Where are you taking my client?” Ethir demanded, impotently.
	“Relax, we’ll bring her back,” Hern called.
	The hospital was a few blocks away, closer to the Pharc than the one in the City. And I realized as we entered the hallway that work was being done on it. They were bringing it up to date. Installing machines that depended on electricity, which since I wasn’t blocked yet I could sense running through the walls as they dragged me along the hallway, powered by some thing they had hooked up  outside. Running off generators, for the time being, waiting on electrification. Which was obviously part of their overall plan.
	The glass doors we pushed through led to a room full of machines that six months ago nobody could have brought into the country. Beeping, blipping, doing all kinds of electric things. In the VB, these machines were usually hooked up to the patient. But Lythril wasn’t hooked up to any of them.
	She had been undressed, washed, and put in a flimsy green paper dress; the only thing she was still wearing was her chain. A man in a white coat who I assumed was a doctor was conferring with a woman who seemed to be deferring to him. A nurse.
	“Dr. Steffin,” Hern said. “Here’s Theamh.”
	Lythril had been lying there pretty much inert, but when she heard that she opened her eyes to squint at me, lifting her head just barely. Her hair was spread all over the pillow and I could see bruises on the inside of one arm which was lying outside the blankets. They had been trying to get that needle in her for a long time.
	“Your colleague here--” Dr. Steffin began.
	“She’s not my colleague,” Hern and I both objected.
	Lythril’s mouth opened in a silent, aborted laugh.
	“--tells me that we need to convince the patient to remove her jewelry before we can set up the drip,” he said. “Is that true?”
	“While she’s wearing that chain, you won’t be able to break her skin with anything metal,” I said.
	He wanted to ask why not, but time was important. “Then will you please talk to her,” he said. “She can’t keep anything down; the only way we can administer the medication is intravenously, and we can’t rehydrate her without the saline drip. We’ve been unable to cut the chain off. She says she won’t remove it until she’s talked to you.”
	I walked slowly up to the head of that bed.
	“Lythril, do you know me?”
	The eyes she turned on me were unfocused and absent. But she nodded.
	“What do you want to know from me?”
	Her cracked mouth and thickened tongue moved painfully to frame the words.
	“This...bitch...says I’ll die if they can’t get the needles into me.” I waited, since there seemed to be more, for her to take another shot at speech. “I want...” She coughed, dry and barking, for a while. “Tell me...is that true. You tell me.”
	I looked at the doctor and the nurse and their arsenal, at Hern, and finally at Lythril’s sunken face.
	“Here’s what I think,” I said. “You suspect that this is just a ploy to get your chain off. In a way, you’re right--that’s why Coel left you so long. They want you vulnerable.” I sighed. “There’s a chance that if you take it off, they’ll just kill you outright. There’s also a chance--since anything is possible--that you might survive without the saline drip and the injections.” She was following me, making the effort. “But Lythril...nobody knows the future, but I think that it’s almost certain that if you don’t take the chain off and let them get the needles in you, the infection will kill you. And I also think that there’s a very good chance that Hern and Coel want you alive for the trial--enough to postpone killing you until you’re well enough to testify. I think...that you’re much, much more likely to survive--at least until the trial’s over--if you take your chain off than if you leave it on.”
	Lythril looked up at me silently. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
	Her head twisted away. She brought her hands up to her neck and undid the clasp.
	Lythril’s hand tightened around the chain but it was easy for Hern to pull it from her grip. The doctor stretched her arm out and the nurse swabbed it with a piece of wool.
	“I’ll be damned,” the doctor said, as the needle went into the vein.
	Hern balled the chain up in one hand, stuffing it into her hreapa.
	“You can take the mittens off now,” she said to the garda.
	He freed my hands. Hern sent out her fire.
	Having been through it didn’t make the second time any more pleasant. The seal set, and Hern then set a seal on Lythril. Lythril was too weak, or too angry, to even move. 
	“Take her back,” Hern said.
	The garda hauled me out. The glass doors swung closed on the image of Lythril, lying in bed, with that jellyfish bag and its plastic tentacle stinging her arm, and the doctor holding a syringe up to the light, tapping on the glass with one finger.
	It almost made me pity her. 
	Almost.

XVII.
Dubh Solus

	The trial had to be postponed while Lythril recovered her strength. Chainless and blocked it wouldn’t matter much how strong she got; Hern had her by the short hairs all right. But Istria would have more time to organize the rescue, and Ethir more time to work on our defense. Not that his time could really be put to any worthwhile use.
	Now that my hands were free I could undo as usual. But I got very little sleep. Once I got my hreapa off, I would become terrified that the gardai or Lythril would steal it. So by the time the trial started I was pretty strung out. And I didn’t like knowing that while I was getting weaker Lythril was getting stronger.
	Finally one day Ethir came to the cell to tell us that the trial would be starting.
	“I know you know this, but I want to go over it again,” he said. “There will be a lot of repeaters and Cretid reporters at the trial. We’ve talked about the sound bite thing.” 
	We nodded.
	“So remember,” he said. “Be very careful what you say. Avoid using pronouns where you can. Try to make it so no matter how short they cut your statement the meaning will be clear. Because you know they’ll try to distort what you say.” He looked at me. “Theamh, I know you, and I know I can’t actually prevent you from talking. But please, please try not to say anything that can be taken out of context.”
	“I’ll try, Ethir.”
	“Other than that,” he said, “all I can tell you is what you already know. Hold your heads up, look people in the eye, and tell the truth without blinking.” His blue glance moved from me to Aine to Umrin to Japthil. “You’re all brave women. I’m humbled and honored to be on your side in this fight. Be proud of who you are.”
	“We are,” I said.
	“Good.” He stood up. “The gardai will be here soon, and we’ll go down to the Courts. Be prepared for anything--it’s a madhouse.”
	He wasn’t kidding. Once we got down to the main floor the place was packed--with onlookers, repeaters, and Cretids elbowing their way through everyone, swinging their equipment around and shoving lights in everyone’s face. All of us quailed under the crush, shying away from the lenses and bulbs thrust at us. Questions were shouted from so many directions by so many people we couldn’t have answered them if we’d wanted to.
	I heard my name called by about ten different people, insistently, but I couldn’t fix on one to answer. Ethir tried to get us through the crowd, but finally it became so dense that we ended up backed up against one of the walls while the others ranged in a semicircle around us like a pack of slavering dogs, all clamoring at once.
	“Are you prepared to name names?”
	“Is it true you’ve been negotiating a plea bargain?”
	“Will you be taking the stand?”
	On and on, with Ethir fuming and the four of us huddling there, dazed after having spent so long in confinement and being set upon by this crowd of strangers. They seemed almost inhuman to me, open snapping mouths and insistent, intruding machines. 
	“Theamh!” shouted one of the voices. “How long have you been dark?”
	That I picked out. The voice and the face it went with were familiar. Swimming out of that confused mess was one person I knew, slightly. One human being I could identify--and on whom I swung with a stare that seemed to quiet most of the hubbub.
	“You’re Kleark mac Caille,” I said. “From True Stories.”
	He gulped, obviously nervous at being so identifiable to a woman as potentially dangerous as I was. “That’s right.”
	“You were there with us at Two Flocks, the night the Order split.”
	“Yes, I was.”
	As I said nothing, he repeated the question. “How long have you been dark?”
	Ethir was getting nervous. He could tell I was about to answer.
	“I have never been dark,” I said, starting quiet because I knew I wouldn’t be able to help getting louder. “I am a shriia. I serve the truth, I serve Idair, and I serve the right. Idair’s mercy!” Sure enough, the volume rose. “If I were dark, do you think I would let myself be used this way? It’s because I’m true that I’ve been persecuted, that I’ve been attacked by lurers, that I’ve been locked up, beaten, tortured, starved, humiliated, hunted down like an animal on both sides of the border. It would be a lot easier on all of us if we were dark,” I shouted, as Kleark seemed to quail in the teeth of my anger. “If I were dark I could just kill the bitches who are lining up to kick me while I’m down. But I’m not dark, and I never will be, because as much as I hate Lythril, Barant, Hern and the rest of the minions I love life, truth, and the right more.” Umrin, Japthil, and Aine shouted agreement. “I love shri, I love Idair, I love my people and I love the work. I’m proud to be a daughter of Idair and a servant of the truth. And in the name of Idair who gave me my fire, and in the name of all the daughters of Idair who have suffered at the hands of bitches like Hern and Barant, and in the name of all of Idair’s children who have died in this horrible war, I will fight until the truth prevails or until evil kills me where I stand!”
	“Ta se mo dhiaoc!”
	That came from Aine, who had leapt into the camera light behind me. The others had come forward, facing down Kleark, whose face showed a concern I couldn’t read, and the other repeaters.
	Aine took my hand. I took Umrin’s; she took Japthil’s. We raised our joined hands, looking out silent at the repeaters and reporters.
	“Take that home to Barant and her minions,” Aine said. “If you want us out of it, you’ll have to kill us. Because we won’t break, and we won’t turn, and we will fight to the death. For Idair, the right, and what we love.”
	Ethir had cleared a corridor and wedged one of the doors open. We walked through, hands still linked, ignoring the questions peppering us.
	“What do you think?” I whispered, as we took our seats in the box near the front. 
	Ethir leaned over. “I think they’ll have a hard time making that look bad. But don’t whisper to me like this.”
	I moved away from him and looked around the room. On the other side of the aisle was the table at which the prosecution team would sit. Which in this case consisted of a number of fresh-faced looking clerks and the balding, rotund form of Bric mac Chlos.
	Bric felt my stare on him and turned his head.
	It seemed to me that he had gotten a lot older since we last met in a courtroom. His face was mottled with brown age spots and his hands seemed to tremble a little as he brushed at his thinning hair. I couldn’t read him now; and his face gave nothing away. I wondered if he was still seeing Geraine, and if so whether she and Mielen both thought I was dark now. If maybe my mother and father believed it too.
	The gallery was full of people who were strange to me--ordinary Mypril citizens, I supposed, but also repeaters and reporters and reporters’ machines. And a waterglobe that would be transmitting it all into those hundreds of homes in the Vicinity.
	A door opened and the Finders filed in. Or, be more accurate, that portion of the Mypril council that was not yet dead or on trial. Four women in hreapa, including Coel.
	After them came Hern, hanging onto Lythril. She was looking much better--cleaned up, in her own clothes, and without that pallor and pain. And looking much more sure of herself, even without her chain, glancing around at the others. When they sat down on the bench at the front Lythril looked over at us with a maddening smile.
	“Ah, the accused’s box,” she said. “I remember it well.”
	“Shut up, Lythril,” I grumbled.
	“You set quite the standard,” she went on. “It’ll be hard to match you for drama. But I’ll do my best to make my testimony as...compelling, as yours was. And as damning.”
	I stared ahead and cursed to myself, wishing it would all just start so we could get it over with. I was tired, drained by weeks of their poor and scanty food and the sleep I hadn’t been able to get. When the presider walked in and we had to stand, my head hurt, my heart raced and the room swam for a moment. Then I collapsed gratefully onto my bench as the presider began the farce of instructing the Finders.
	Bric was the first; he had to set out the prosecution’s case. I tried not to let my anger show as he took the floor in front of the presider’s podium. Who knew who was watching me as I was watching Lythril’s lawyer begin the job of putting me away.
	“This is a painful moment for our country,” Bric said, passing a hand over his thinning hair. “A painful climax in a terribly tragic story. I hate knowing that things have come to such a pass that we are prosecuting shriias--or women who once were shriias--for the crime of dark magic. For the past few months, it’s fallen to me to try to convince people that these women, who to all appearances are dedicated, truthful, compassionate people, are the evil that is consuming our society.” He looked balefully at us. 
	“It’s not an easy job. And I have to say that sometimes I hate doing it. I know a lot of people hate me for doing it. I expect that. I don’t do this because I enjoy it.” He walked over to play to the Finders. “I don’t want to believe that the Mypril council was in such a state of disrepair that three of its members turned to the Dark One before anyone found out. I don’t want to believe that a woman as bright and promising as Aine ni hEmer could have been corrupted by the cynicism and greed of her elders. I don’t want to believe that Theamh ni hUlnach, who has done such good for the people of Dairc and of whom the people of the Vicinity still speak so highly, has been working for the Dark One since before she took her orders.” He looked at me. “I don’t want all this to be true. But it is.”
	He faced the spectators and let the pause drop heavy.
	“It is true. And because it is, it is my duty even if it is not my pleasure to stand up here and convince you to send these women blocked to the Zone before they do us any more damage. And you may hate me for telling you that all the things you want to believe are not true. But if you believe me, while you hate me, then I’ll be a happy man.”
	Bric strolled over to the finders’, figuring that for form’s sake he should pretend they were who he was trying to convince. “The state will prove, beyond any doubt, that Theamh and her confederates are responsible for much of the bloodshed with which our land has been plagued. You will hear from Hern ni hEglint how Theamh decoyed Daire ni Fhilim into undoing and burned her to death in front of her horrified people.”
	I couldn’t repress my cry of pain and outrage. The magnitude of the lie hit me as if it were a brick, registering in my gut with a physical shock.
	“You will hear from her also how Umrin and Japthil, realizing that the people of the Back Three had knowledge dangerous to them, burnt them in their beds before the story could get about.”
	Umrin and Japthil were so appalled they couldn’t even speak. Bric went on. 
	“And you will hear how Aine ni hEmer, defending the woman who initiated her into the Dark One’s mysteries, conjured up a pack of lurers to destroy Tifni ni hEude as she was on her way to apprehend Theamh after successfully driving her out of Slieve.”
	I had been lied about in public before, but Aine hadn’t, and she took it ill.
	“That’s a lie!”
	Ethir popped up to try to get Aine back down on the bench. She was pointing at Bric and looking as if her anger would burst her wide open.
	“That’s a blackhearted rotten lie and you know it, you snakebitten sea slug!”
	“Aine, SIT DOWN,” Ethir hissed, yanking her back onto the bench. “They’ll hold you in contempt if you keep interrupting.”
	“Them hold me in contempt!” Aine muttered, sitting down.
	I wished I could hear what she was saying to herself as Bric kept going. 
	“I know it will seem impossible,” he said. “Because Theamh is wearing a hreapa, because she’s done so much for shri. But you will hear from Iolys ni Nhalv--known to the world as Lythril--exactly how and why Theamh has been able to deceive you so long.”
	Lythril didn’t move, and I couldn’t read her. But something told me this was a shock to her system. Her used name had been public knowledge in her youth and was still easily discoverable through the scoil’s records. But nobody had used it much in the past thirty years. It was mentioned at the beginning of her trial, but after that everyone called her Lythril even in court. And there was no reason Bric had to drop it now.
	Except that as he locked eyes with her it became clear that this was a turning point in their history. He had worked for her before, during, after her trial. Now he had a new mistress. He had thrown that in to needle her, to show that he wasn’t afraid to make her angry. That he was following the strongest, and there was nothing she could do about it.
	I thought, looking at her, that this would probably turn out to have been a mistake.
	“I defended Lythril at her first trial, because everyone has the right to a defense. Just as Ethir is defending those women in the box, because he believes as I do in due process and the full extent of the law. But I’m glad to be on the other side now, and to be able to undo some of the damage my most famous client has done. And I believe,” he said, looking out to the spectators, “that you will be glad too, once you’re over the shock.”
	He walked out toward them  a little.
	“So hate me,” he said. “It’s easy. I’m old, I’m bald, I’m not a heartthrob. I’ve never been ashamed to work for hire and I’ve never scrupled to defend someone even when they had done great evil. And I’m taking on a woman who’s very popular at home and in the rest of the country. I don’t blame you. Hate me. But listen. And when you make the decision, don’t consider personalities. Look for the truth. You’ll see it.” 
	Idair’s teeth, did I want to hurt him. To stand up there and use words he had stolen from my closing against Lythril to twist his lies onto me--I had thought I could never be as angry with a man as I got with women. But Bric was earning my hatred fast.
	He sat down, and then it was Ethir’s turn. He stood when he was called, walking into the space between our box and the presider’s stand.
	He let the silence stay heavy on the room for a while. Looking at the presider, the finders, us, out at the audience and the cameras, as if he weren’t quite sure where to start.
	“Women and men,” he said, addressing himself to the finders. “Or--excuse me--women.” There was a slight, uncertain laugh; they knew it was ironic but weren’t sure how. “You’ll have to excuse me. This is the first time in my career that I’ve addressed a finders’ panel composed exclusively of shriias. It’s the first time I’ve seen a finders’ panel with even one shriia in it. Since until recently, as you know, your Order had a rule prohibiting you from serving as Finders. That always puzzled me until my friend Theamh--one of the defendants you see there in the accused’s box--explained it to me. She said...” He looked up, as if trying to remember. “She said, ‘A verdict is framed as a statement, but in reality, it is always and can only be a guess. A shriia cannot treat a guess like a fact, no matter how likely it may be.’” He turned his eyes back onto the finders. “So I want to say, you have my utmost sympathies. What a terrible position the Seat has put you in.”
	He walked forward, compassion in his face, leaning on the finders’ box and looking each of them in the eye as he moved along it. “How painful it must be for you, knowing that when this trial is over, you’ll have to come back here and give us a definite answer. That knowing as you will how uncertain the law is and must be, knowing as you will how much doubt and speculation goes into deciding any question of fact, and knowing the terrible price you must pay if you are forced to make a statement that you know is not fully true, you must--because the law now requires it--return to this court and tell us, definitely, yes, these women are innocent. Or yes, these women are guilty. With no qualifiers and no room to acknowledge the shadow of doubt that must, inevitably, exist.”
	He appeared to everyone--even to me, since I couldn’t read him--to be motivated by sincere respect and concern for them. But I knew that if he was hopeful now, this was why. He was right. The whole reason we got the exemption from court service in the first place is that until it was in place, every time the court put a shriia on the finders panel the case ended in a mistrial. No shriia was ever willing to put her name to something she couldn’t be absolutely sure of. So if these women were willing to do it...there had to be something wrong. And now Ethir had made sure everyone listening knew that.
	“I can’t help thinking,” he said, “that it is really you who are in the greatest danger here today. How will you ever be sure enough--of their guilt or of their innocence--to come in here and render a verdict that is not, in some sense, a lie?”
	I don’t think they had really thought this through, based on Coel’s facial expression. Ethir, having made his point, then moved into the middle of the floor, addressing himself to the spectators.
	“But then I’m forgetting,” Ethir said briskly. “I’m forgetting who’s on trial. I’m forgetting that my clients are shriias too. Shriias who have spent their lives in the service of Idair and her children, and whose innocence is written in every line of their faces and every word they say. Our Finders are in no danger. Because it will be easy, very easy, to be sure.” He looked back at us. “I always have been.”
	He kept his eyes on mine for as long as he thought he needed to.
	“My learned colleague tells you that I am defending these women for the same reasons he defended Lythril,” he said. “With all due respect, I must say that he’s dead wrong.” He put his hands behind his back, dropping into the friendly-banter range. “Lythril paid my learned colleague well for his services. These women cannot pay me at all. That’s because dark users are rich and shriias are poor.” He looked at Lythril. “He says he defended Lythril because everyone deserves a defense. And everyone does.” Ethir glanced back at us. “But that’s not why I’m here today.”
	When he resumed, his voice was stronger, without being harder; conviction but not belligerence. “I’m here for one reason and one reason only, and that is because these women are innocent. Please, do not think for a moment that I am standing up for them out of an abstract respect for the law. It’s much simpler. I’m here because I’m scared.”
	We were a little surprised to see him go there, but he gave us a moment to adjust.
	“I’m terrified. I’m terrified because I know that these women here in the accused’s box are true and bright. And that means that a whole lot of other shriias out there are dark.” His eyes ran over the ranks of listening people in the gallery. “And that’s terrifying. To think that things have gotten so bad that the Dark One’s minions are sitting in judgment over the last few true shriias we have left.”
	I wished I could read the spectators; blocked it was hard to tell if they were with him. Ethir seemed confident, but then he always seemed confident.
	“I’m not a brave man,” Ethir said. “It terrifies me to be standing here. Because I know that I am earning the hatred and enmity of powerful women--and powerful men--who will have no qualms about disposing of me once they have disposed of my clients. I look at Lythril, I look at Hern, and I see them marking me down. Next on the list. In the way. Troublemaker.” His boots clicked over the floor. “It terrifies me to know that the courts I have worked for and the law I have loved are given over to corruption and evil. And it terrifies me to see Theamh ni hUlnach sitting there in the box.” He looked back at me. “Because she’s a good, brave, true woman with the strength and power you need for this battle. And there she is. Blocked, trapped, caught in the web. And if she couldn’t break free, if she can’t set things right, then what hope do any of us have.”
	Thinking perhaps that he was getting too personal, he broke away to play to the spectators. “I have spent a lot of time with these women in the past few days, and I have come to respect and admire them deeply. So I do what they do. I put my trust in the truth. I believe because I have to that you will see it, and that you will set these women free to continue righting the wrongs being committed by the people who have corrupted the courts, split the Order and ended our country’s kyelrans-old tradition of democratic rule.”
	He went back to the finders. “The prosecution will try to tell you that Theamh ni hUlnach killed Daire ni Fhilim. They will try to tell you that because they believe that there are no witnesses left alive from that night. They believe this, of course, because their confederates massacred the inhabitants of the Back Three shortly after Daire’s death. They have forgotten something that apparently the Cretids have learned through history. Which is that in any massacre there are always survivors.”
	Ethir was staring Coel down now as he said this. “You will hear from some of those survivors. And what they tell you will be a very--very--different story.”
	After this little bombshell there was a lot of movement and murmuring in the gallery. Ethir went on. “They will try to tell you that it was Umrin and Japthil who carried out the massacre which, as they thought, so completely deprived the world of witnesses. They have forgotten that the people of the Back Three were not killed by fire alone. Without the help of the Amstian Army, there would have been many more survivors. And the soldiers who shot down the people who were running out of their burning houses did so because they were thralled by spirits that were being controlled by Hern or her confederates.” More consternation in the gallery. “But if they were thralled then, they’re not now. And you will hear the story they have to tell about that horrible night.”
	I was at my wits’ end trying to figure out where Ethir had found all of these witnesses, and then I realized. That was what Istria had been doing. If there were any survivors of the Back Three they were probably in the valley with Dahern. Sinal could testify to the massacre, and find comrades who would be willing to do it with him. She had probably also been working at rescue. But she knew that we wouldn’t survive, over the long haul, if we didn’t win in the court of public opinion. So she had managed to find ordinary people willing to risk terrible retribution to stand up and tell the truth for us.
	The knowledge cut through the bitterness that had been closing around my heart, and I was suddenly almost ready to weep with gratitude. Aine patted me consolingly on the shoulder.
	“The prosecution, in what I have to say is the shakiest piece of their case, will also try to prove that Aine ni hEmer used lurers to assassinate Tifni. I have prosecuted a few dark magic cases and I know how hard it is to prove a charge like that even when the defendant is in fact guilty. Since Aine is innocent, I’m not terribly worried.” He looked back at Aine. “She’s understandably upset. She’s young, and she hasn’t yet accepted the power of evil and the faithlessness of the human heart. She’s still surprised, and shocked, to see a grown man get up in front of a court of law and tell what he knows to be an outrageous lie.” He looked back from her to the spectators. “The others are used to it now. But that doesn’t mean they’re not just as angry, or just as hurt.”
	Ethir took his mark for the closing pitch, halfway between the finders and the spectators. “And the prosecution will try to prove that Theamh ni hUlnach has been dark ever since that first mission to Lythril. And in support of that, they will call Lythril.”
	Ethir looked at her, and laughed.
	“They will call Lythril,” he repeated. “Idair’s teeth, if it weren’t so tragic it would be hilarious. Lythril never took the stand at her own trial, and do you know why? Because she refused to deny being a dark user. At her own trial, to save her own hide, she wasn’t willing to pretend to be an ordinary woman--or even to pretend to be a true shriia. She’s dark, and she’s proud of it. Now the prosecution is going to try to tell you a story about Theamh that is nothing but a tissue of lies and as support they’re going to put a confessed dark user on the stand and ask you to take her word for it.”
	Ethir laughed again, once, then let fall a deathly pause.
	“Please,” he said, addressing the finders and the spectators. “Show them that you’re not as dumb as they think you are. Show them that you can see a tree by daylight. Show them that you know truth when you see it. Show them that you know, as I know, that these women are true to Idair, to shri, and to us.”
	Ethir walked back quickly to his seat by us. He was pleased I thought with how it went. But the anger and bitterness he’d closed with had not been feigned. And they did not dissipate when Bric rose to call his first witness.
	“An phoblacht ruit Hern ni hEglint.”
	It was painful enough listening to her lies once; I won’t repeat them in detail. She claimed to have seen me kill Daire; she claimed to have seen Umrin and Jipthal massacre the Back Three. She claimed all kinds of tarbhfnaa about the fight we put up at Lythril’s hideout. I started paying a little more attention when Bric produced Lythril’s chain and had it entered into evidence as having been found on my person when I was apprehended. 
	He didn’t ask Hern how she’d removed it. Ethir scribbled down notes as she was spewing this dreck. I didn’t even pay attention to his cross-examination of her, brilliant though I’m sure it was. I was tired and sick of all this, and it was an effort to follow the argument. I had warned him about the chain, so he didn’t suggest, for instance, that I try it on to see if it fit. He sat down satisfied that he had made the spectators far less than certain that it belonged to me. 
	My mind wasn’t fully engaged until I heard Bric’s second witness called.
	“An phoblacht ruit Iolys ny Nhalv.”
	Lythril got up, slowly and smooth because she knew she was being watched, and glided into the witness box like a snake glides through grass.
	“Can you state your used name for the record, please?” Bric asked.
	Lythril looked at him with a dangerous smile. “The name I use is Lythril.”
	Bric decided to leave it. “How long have you known the defendants?”
	Lythril looked us over.
	“Theamh ni hUlnach I first met six years ago when she contacted me about becoming my apprentice. Aine ni hEmer I met only recently, when Theamh brought her to Cretid City for her initiation. Umrin and Japthil have been working with me since shortly before my exile two years ago.”
	Such a cooperative witness, answering two questions in one. Because the next would have been “And what is your relationship to them?” But Bric could now skip to the next one.
	“And when Theamh contacted you, was she alone?”
	“No, Istria ni Vharen was with her.”
	“They had been in scoil together, had they not?”
	“Yes.”
	“So you must have been surprised to see them.”
	Lythril smiled.
	“I wasn’t,” she answered. “I had hoped I would.”
	Bric appeared to be puzzled. “Can you explain what you mean?”
	“Certainly.” She looked over at me. “I knew of Theamh through my friendship with her mother Ulnach, which dates back to before her birth. And I knew of Istria through my contacts at the scoil. I knew they were both thought of highly by their diaoci and by the other students, that both were bright and capable and with an enormous natural talent for magic. I had always hoped that I would one day be able to start recruiting colleagues right from scoil. I was very pleased when Morat referred them to me.”
	“Referred them,” Bric repeated.
	“That’s right.”
	“As I understand it,” he said, “Morat testified at your trial that she sent Theamh and Istria to you as part of an undercover mission, and that their goal was to bring you to justice.”
	Lythril’s smile deepened.
	“Well, if the past several months have taught us anything, surely, it’s that you can’t believe something just because it’s spoken by a woman in hreapa.”
	Bric let the hubbub subside slightly. “Are you saying that Morat deliberately sent them to you with the intention that you would make them into dark users?”
	“Yes,” Lythril said.
	I was so depressed I couldn’t even get angry. Lythril went on, prompted by Bric.
	“Morat and I had been collaborating for some little time, and she had been looking for young women that she thought might be suitable for me. Theamh and Istria were both interested in possessions, which is my main area of expertise; and they were both angry, damaged women with a well-developed capacity for bitterness and hatred.” Her gaze flicked momentarily to me, but seeing me too despondent to be worth baiting she returned it to Bric. “And they were lovers.”
	Bric went on when he was sure he could be heard. “You mean they were in love?”
	“I mean that they had already violated the rule against sexual activity, and so knew they hadn’t much of a future in shri.”
	Umrin leaned over to me. “Is that true?” she whispered.
	“Of COURSE it’s not true!”
	People around me heard, and so did Lythril. I didn’t care. 
	Umrin looked chagrined. “I know it’s not true about Morat, I just was wondering...”
	“Well, stop. We hadn’t. Anyhow I don’t see how it’s your business.”
	Lythril was still talking. “...became clear to me after a certain point that Istria was the one with real potential. Theamh, despite her enormous ability, doesn’t quite have the personality traits necessary to work closely with other users. I determined that it would be better for her to work on her own. By then, I’m afraid, my favoritism had led to some friction between her and Istria, and they were glad to separate.”
	I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, but it struck me as incredible that anyone could believe that Istria and I would split up. More incredible than their believing that I was dark. But then, as I was learning, not everyone saw the world the way I did.
	“So then what happened?” Bric prompted.
	I didn’t hear the beginning of Lythril’s answer because I felt two arms sliding around me from behind, slowly, until the hands joined at my waist. I couldn’t see them, any more than I could see the chin resting on my shoulder. But I felt the pressure, and I heard the whisper in my ear.
	“If there’s a blacker lie out there, I haven’t heard it.”
	I controlled myself and didn’t jump, or move. 
	“Istri?” I whispered.
	“Shhh,” she whispered. “I have to go. I love you. Look for me.”
	She was gone. Aine glanced at me, but knew without asking. We looked at Lythril.
	“...would work to undermine the Order from within, while Istria and I set up our base of operations in the Cretid Nation. The idea was for us to build up a solid power base and a lot of money, with which we could buy our way back into the country. Of course communication was difficult. When it became absolutely necessary for Theamh to visit the main base, she had to come up with an excuse that would convince the Order to give her a cross-border clearance. I have to hand it to her--selling the Council on a story as improbable and outlandish as the one she came up with can’t have been easy.”
	“So then?” Bric prompted. I was paying better attention; I felt less tired, knowing that Istria was moving invisibly among the spectators, making plans, watching out for us. 
	“Theamh traveled north with her apprentice Aine. When she reached the main base, Istria and I helped initiate Aine into the Dark Order, and made plans for the completion of our work. Unfortunately Barant had discovered many of our confederates and driven them out of the City. It was decided that Theamh, Istria and Aine should return and try to make contact with Morat and the others, and that I would follow later once the way had been prepared. Despite the good work the three of them were able to do in terms of disrupting the Order’s attempts to capture our confederates, we were finally ambushed and taken at my former residence in Amst, exactly as Hern ni hEglint has described.”
	Bric looked at her, and I thought he seemed more amused than anything. She had told one of her signature half-truths--a story that coincided with what was already known but at the same time was false at its rotten core. And although he was on the other side there was in him an almost professional respect for her skill with this kind of lie.
	“Is there anything else you can tell us about Theamh, that you think the court should know?”
	Lythril glanced at me.
	“She’s been a big help to me,” she said, smiling. “I’m grateful for all of her work, and I don’t hold it against her that we were defeated in spite of it.”
	“Thank you,” Bric said. “No further questions.”
	He sat down. Ethir rose.
	He seemed to be gathering silence around him as he walked toward her, approaching really closer to the box than I would have if I were him. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you in a courtroom, Lythril.”
	“So it has,” she said, with a smile.
	“Your testimony asks us to believe that the first time I saw you in a courtroom, you were there by your own choosing,” he said. “That you, in cooperation with Theamh and Morat and whoever else you claim to have suborned, staged the entire thing simply to give you the chance to go north, where you would be able to work without hindrance.” Lythril nodded. “And so your testimony is that you wanted to be sent into exile, is it?”
	Ethir asked the question to establish how lacking in credibility Lythril’s story was. Nobody in our country would be willing to believe that you could prefer the Cretid Nation to here. People emigrate sometimes under terrible pressure but they don’t do it willingly. But Lythril gave him what no lawyer wants--an answer different from the one he expected.
	“Oh no,” she said. “I fought that tooth and nail. Bric will tell you that. I made the best of it once I got up there, but I never stopped hating the place.”
	Ethir blinked, not sure he had heard right.
	“So you didn’t want to be put on trial.”
	“Oh thurk no.”
	There was a lot of consternation--not least among the prosecution team. They could tell the ground was shifting, although nobody knew exactly why or to where. Hern leaned forward from her bench to whisper to Bric.
	“Well...if you didn’t want to be put on trial or convicted...why did you allow Theamh ni hUlnach to testify against you?”
	“Allow?” Lythril demanded, laughing. “Dark One’s laughter--you try to stop that woman doing something she wants to do. Even when she was pretending to be my apprentice she was the most insubordinate, unbiddable thing you could imagine. If it weren’t for Istria I would probably have killed her within the first couple of days.”
	Ethir was now on fire with a combination of extreme anxiety and dawning excitement. He didn’t like the fact that he had no idea what was going to happen next. But he was starting to get the feeling that whatever it was would be good for us.
	“You say, pretending to be your apprentice,” he said.
	“That’s right.”
	“You don’t believe that when she told you she had come to you to learn dark magic, she was sincere.”
	“Not for a second I didn’t.”
	“Well then, why do you think she came to you?”
	“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” Lythril said. “She came to me for the same reason Istria came to me--because Morat and Barant sent them in there as spies to bring me down. And it took them six years, but they look to have finally succeeded.”
	“What on earth is she doing, dhiaoc?” Aine whispered, her mouth agape.
	I shook my head.
	Ethir finally seemed to have grasped something. “So you’re saying it really was what Morat and Barant said it was--an undercover operation.”
	“That’s what I’m saying.”
	Ethir looked at her with a kind of elated confusion. “Then why did you testify to the exact opposite a few minutes ago when my learned colleague was examining you?”
	“Oh, that,” Lythril said. “That was just a crock of fnaa Hern came up with. I added the more convincing details, but really that whole story is a lie from one end to the other.”
	I would have given a lot to know what Istria was thinking at that moment. Ethir was just looking at her as if he’d been hit with a large blunt object. Hern sat stunned in her chair, and Bric’s mouth hung partially open in dismay.
	“You understand that to say that is to open yourself up to perjury charges,” said the presider.
	Lythril looked up at him and laughed.
	“My poor little man,” she said. “I’ve been convicted of dark magic. If you think for one moment that I’m afraid of a charge like perjury, you’re dumber than you look.”
	“So it is your testimony, now,” Ethir said, looking as if he was starting to think maybe this was just a dream, “that Theamh is a shriia, and not a dark user at all?”
	“The Dark One would not take that woman at any price. Idair appears to be able to put up with her. Who knows why. All I know is, I was there when Idair gave her her fire and I’ve given up on sticking around to see her lose it. Theamh’s always been on the bright side, and she always will be. She hasn’t got what it takes to be anything else.”
	“And Aine ni hEmer?”
	Lythril spat. “That child would follow Theamh to hell. Sadly, that’s not where Theamh’s leading her.”
	The noise of a heated argument rose from the bench where Hern and Bric had their heads bent together in furious consultation.
	“And what about Umrin and Japthil?”
	Lythril shrugged. “I never met either until they threw me in that cell. I assume they’re bright. They can’t be dark.”
	“And what about you?”
	Lythril paused to look him in the eye, with something almost like affection.
	“I am what you said I was,” she said. “Dark and proud of it.”
	“Thank you,” Ethir said, after a long, dazed pause. “No further questions.”
	Ethir walked back to our bench in something of a trance. I’m not sure he fully believed in what had just happened. The courtroom was in an uproar. The presider was about to bang the alaive to dismiss the witness when Hern snatched the law star from around Bric’s neck and leapt onto the floor.
	“Hern, get back here!” Bric shouted, but she put the star around her neck.
	“I petition to be allowed to redirect,” Hern said, her chest heaving as she fought down her anger.
	“Very well,” the presider said, shaken. “Proceed.”
	I sat back. “This should be interesting.”
	Aine shook her head.
	Hern walked toward the box. Ethir leaned over to me.
	“Did you see that happen?”
	I nodded. 
	“Not that I mind, but...what the hell is she playing at?”
	“Dubh solus?” I ventured.
	Hern was up on the floor now, facing Lythril, and savagely angry. Her first question came out sharp. “Isn’t it true, Lythril, that when you were captured you were in the company of Theamh ni hUlnach and Aine ni hEmer?”
	“Yes, it is,” Lythril said, fastening her bright eyes onto Hern’s.
	“And isn’t it true,” Hern went on, raising her voice, “that you owe your life to Theamh ni hUlnach, without whose care you would have died from the wounds you received from the Amstian Army?”
	“I don’t deny it,” Lythril said. “But you know Idair, she has that thing about life.”
	Hern snorted in contempt. “And what would you know about Idair, Lythril?” Lythril just smiled. “Isn’t it true that you were expelled from scoil?”
	“Yes, it is.”
	Hern took a step closer, encouraged. “And isn’t it true that since then you’ve been a plague on this land for almost thirty years?”
	“I flatter myself that it is, yes.”
	Hern started homing in on her, trying to harass her like lawyers do. “So why should we believe anything you say?”
	“No reason,” Lythril said. “It was your idea to call me, remember?”
	Bric stood up. “Presider, the state requests the return of the law star to the appointed prosecutor. With all due respect to the Order--”
	“Denied,” said the Presider, as Hern shot him a venomous glare.
	Bric sat down, resigned. Hern moved in on the witness box, raising her voice.
	“Isn’t it true that for years all you’ve dreamed about is destroying the Order?”
	Lythril looked at her, amused. Hern was almost, but not quite, in her face. And I suddenly started to have a bad feeling about this.
	“I wouldn’t say it’s all I’ve dreamed about.”
	“And what else have you been dreaming about, then, hm?” Hern went on, leaning on the box to badger her. “All this time you’ve been in bed with the Dark One?”
	“Hern, don’t--” I said, standing up.
	Hern swung viciously on me. “You shut up!”
	I had no choice after that, since she wrapped my head and shoved me back down on the bench. I struggled to break the wrap while Hern returned to her so-called redirect.
	“Because that’s where you’ve been, really, isn’t it? In bed with the Dark One?”
	Lythril’s voice was soft and insinuating. “And who are you in bed with, Hern?”
	The shock with which Hern almost recoiled fell on the crowd and silenced it. Lythril went on in that soft, velvet, almost tender voice, while Hern stared at her, her hands on the edge of the box. The presider should have stopped her from getting so close to the witness. But obviously he wasn’t able to stand up to her, or he would have honored Bric’s demand.
	“Who is it you clutch and roll with on your own burning bed?” Lythril said. “Who’s on the other end of your chain? When the sweet stun splits you from the inside out, whose name do you call? Who or what does your flesh call master?”
	There wasn’t a sound. Nothing but a crushing silence and a sense that we were all caught, kept, hung suspended on wires she was moving. Spellbound. Maybe literally.
	Hern opened her mouth to reply.
	Lythril’s hand snaked around the back of Hern’s neck. And in one universe-shattering instant she brought Hern’s open mouth against hers.
	I remain convinced that time actually slowed down. Otherwise how would I have had time to notice how Lythril’s mouth worked--slow, deliberate, almost you would say gentle, but with definite purpose and pressure. Or the way Lythril’s fingers set like iron around the back of Hern’s neck, holding her there until Lythril finished what was a long, intimate, and--from a purely technical standpoint--pretty good kiss.
	I didn’t fully realize it was over until I saw that Hern’s face, dazed and almost stupefied, was hovering an inch from Lythril’s. 
	“Now we know, don’t we,” Lythril said, softly.
	Lythril’s arm jerked. Hern’s neck wrenched in a very wrong way, with the sickening crunch of snapping bone.
	The wrap broke, of course. And blocking fire leapt off all four of us and disappeared into the air as Hern’s lifeless body went flying across the courtroom to land on the evidence table. All four of us and Lythril.
	I clambered onto the railing of the accused’s box as Lythril stood up in the witness chair, now free to fire whatever she could reach. “All together!”
	It took a few moments to get to flashpoint. Long enough for me to see Lythril leap to the evidence table, from which the clerks had run screaming, and grab her chain.
	“Close your eyes!”
	Next to me I heard Aine giving the warning. And Umrin and Japthil. There was also a lot of screaming, and running, and terrible confusion. And a beam breaking from Lythril’s hands toward us.
	“Wall!”
	The four of us flashed out sideways into a screen that blocked the beam, sending it bouncing back at her. Lythril just took it back, turned around, and fired at Coel.
	Aine, who had seen it coming, had one of hers off to intercept. Lythril raised the other hand and sent one over Aine’s crossed beam, where it hit Coel square in the face.
	I shot a blocking burst out at Lythril, but she was able to beat it with one hand. And with the other, she threw a beam up at the light fixture--a large glass globe on a wide metal neck that went through the ceiling to the next floor above.
	“What the...” I muttered.
	The beam wrapped around the metal tube, and Lythril began hauling herself up it.
	To this day I do not know how she did it. I suppose it had something to do with all of that spirit-into-matter stuff she had been working on with the guuns. But she rose to the ceiling as the thing retracted like a fishing line, and there she was perched on the globe, raining fire down on the spectators with one hand.
	“Get back down here!” Umrin shouted, firing at the metal Lythril was clinging to.
	The globe fell. But when a hole opened up where the metal and plaster were ripped out of the ceiling, Lythril somehow got herself up and into it.
	<Istri!> I was whirling around looking for someone capable of doing something about any of this. <Where are you?>
	<I’m heading for the stairwell.>
	Umrin and Japthil were attending to Coel. Aine had gone to make sure Ethir was all right. None of the spectators appeared to be hurt, but a lot of the furniture was on fire.
	“Presider!” I shouted.
	He stuck his head cautiously out from behind the podium, where he was cowering.
	“Clear the court, you have to clear the court!”
	He reached a trembling hand onto the podium and hit a feeble tap with the alaive.
	“Clear the court,” he croaked.
	The gardai began shuffling people out. I ran for the stairwell.
	<Istri, talk to me.>
	<I’m looking...I’m not sure about this, Theamh, it seems like there’d be traces, but...>
	The stairwell let me onto the second floor. I went barreling down the corridor and into some air that turned out to be Istria.
	<Sorry.>
	<Don’t be, it’s a relief to touch you,> she said. <I found the hole she made but I don’t see her. Do you think she could have had a shield with her all that time?>
	<I don’t know what to think any more.>
	<I know what you mean,> she said, as we began poking our heads into rooms along the corridor. <I could have died happy without seeing that.>
	We looked into the holding cell. Nobody. 
	A sudden commotion at the end of the hall brought us back into the corridor with hands ready--mine, at least, I still couldn’t see Istria. But all it was was Aine, Umrin, and Japthil, running hard. And right behind them, three women in hreapa and a slew of gardai.
	“You’re still in custody!” one of the women shouted.
	“To hell with that!” I shouted. “For Idair’s sake if you’re not going to catch Lythril then at least go mourn your dead!”
	“Take them,” said the woman.
	Who must have been shrimarbh like her colleagues, because it was the gardai who responded, and the gardai who ended up gasping on the floor wrapped into a variety of positions as the five of us decided we just didn’t have time for this tarbhfnaa any more.
	<Out the second staircase, there’s a side entrance.>
	We ran for it. We were back down and out the side door before they could get to us, blinking around in a narrow, trash-filled alley that ran between the Seat and the Raed.
	“Now what?” Umrin asked.
	Istria whistled.
	I heard the sound of hooves and the rattle of wheels, but I saw nothing. It just got louder, seeming to near us, until it stopped.
	“All right, who’s good with horses?”
	“I used to train them,” Umrin said.
	Istria tugged at some blank space. Two horses harnessed to a coach which mostly still was in thin air appeared on the cobbles.
	“Get up on the box. Japthil, you ride with her. Sinal?”
	She called up to an invisible Sinal who, from the sound of his voice, appeared to be crouched on top of the cab where the luggage would go. “Here, Istri.”
	“He’ll tell you where to go. Aine, you me and Theamh are going inside.” She peeled up a strip of shield so we could open the door. Aine and I piled in.
	“But Istri, what about Ethir?”
	“Ethir’s made his own arrangements. He’ll be all right.” She threw the shields back around the horses, got into the coach and pulled the rest of it down around us like a window blind. The horses clopped the cart around, and we rocketed off down the street.
	Once we were sure nobody was chasing us, and we were out of the city, Istria finally dropped her shield.
	It was such a relief to see her that I burst immediately into tears.
	“It’s all right, Theamh,” she said, sliding next to me on the seat and putting an arm around me. “You came for me, now I’ve come for you.”
	“Didn’t you come for me too?” Aine asked, plaintively.
	Istria looked at her, and realized she was joking.
	“I came for the whole batch of you,” she said. “Why not. If I never get my fire back I can open a business. Istria ni Vharen’s Rescue Emporium--horses extra.”
	“Where did you find them?” I asked, fighting the urge to bat my eyelashes.
	“Amst is a small place, and Sinal knows a lot of people,” she said. “They belong to the man who owns the safe house.”
	“What safe house?”
	“The one we’re heading to. Some moron a couple hundred years ago decided he wanted to put a big house in the middle of the Sharptooth Mountains because he liked the view. The thing has been bought, renovated, abandoned, and bought again off and on ever since. The present owner is a would-be poet from an Amranth family with a lot of money who got sick enough of him to set him up there. He’s on our side.”
	“How do you know?”
	Istria reached under a cushion and pulled out a handwritten, hand-bound manuscript.
	“ ‘A Shriia’s Way,’ she read off the cover. “ ‘Being a Touching and Pathetic Story of the Tragic Struggle between Love and Duty. By Viecter mac hIrbirt.’” She tossed it across the coach to Aine. “Two hundred pages of closely-written verse, all about our undercover mission to Lythril. He seems to have fixed on Theamh as the main character, whereas I have been reduced more or less to the role of the exotic love interest. Have a look through, it’s hilarious. I find the sex scene particularly amusing.”
	“What sex scene?” I demanded.
	“It’s a dream sequence, based on your testimony at the trial.” I was starting to wonder about the wisdom of all this. “The man is a huge fan of yours, Theamh. And weird as it is, it’s made him loyal to Morat and active in the resistance. He’s supporting a whole tribe of relievers and giving shelter to some of the other true shriias.”
	“Which ones?” I asked, hope springing up.
	“Don’t get too excited,” she said. “It’s just Cualha, Eorna and Kelah.”
	“Oh, not Kelah,” I said, as Aine wrinkled her nose in sympathy.
	“Sorry,” Istria said. “Turns out she’s true. I have to say, of all the women on the council, she’s one I could have stood to see turn.”
	She looked back to see what I would answer, but I didn’t. I just looked up at her as my heart seemed to swell inside me.
	“You’re here,” I said.
	Istria bent down to kiss me. I clung to her, with my hands at first and then my arms and whole body as all that longing rushed out of my heart into my hands, my mouth, everywhere I could go to feel her there against me.
	It seemed like a long time before the coach lurched around a corner, and the bump shook me a little apart from her. If it hadn’t I’m not sure it would ever have occurred to me that Aine was still sitting on that other bench across from us.
	<Oh dear,> Istria said, following my glance.
	I slid self-consciously down to the other end of the bench. Aine looked up from the manuscript, which she had spread open on her lap.
	“Sorry, Aine,” I said sheepishly. “It’s just been a long time since I’ve seen her.”
	Aine shook her head.
	“I just saw Lythril and Hern make out in open court,” she said. “At this point, it would take an awful lot to disturb me.”
	I moved back up toward Istria. <I’ll try not to treat that as a challenge,> she said.
	<She is my scoilin.>
	<I know, Theamh.> She settled me up against her. <We’ll have time. Sometime.>
	“Why do you think she did it, dhiaoc?” Aine asked. “I understand her wanting to murder Hern. But why the kiss?”
	Istria gave it some thought.
	“Well,” she said. “You have to admit, it’s a lot more dramatic than a regular old touch-test.”
	We started laughing, and it was a long time before we stopped.
	“Oh Idair’s mercy,” I said. “Do you think maybe it’ll catch on? First thing you do when you meet another shriia is make the fire, next thing is you suck face--”
	“Stop it,” Istria said, laughing so hard she was jostling me.
	“Please Idair no,” Aine said, laughing too. “Because no way am I kissing Kelah...”
	After another group howl, Aine said, “Seriously. Do you think that’s all it was?”
	Istria shrugged. “It certainly was distracting.”
	“You’re not kidding.” I shuddered. “You don’t think they really...were...?”
	Istria shivered. “I hope not. No, they can’t have been. Lythril doesn’t thurk with women. She’s too scared of them.”
	Now that we were done laughing, the memory of the murder sobered us. Hern was dead, and Coel would be maimed for life, even after Umrin and Japthil’s efforts. There is a saying in Kengda that if you keep sending out evil it will eventually come back. I found it hard to weep for them. But it was still horrible.
	“Is Sonnia all right?”
	“She and Taric are waiting at the house. She’s right as rain--that wound healed up quick. She’s been a big help. She was the one who suggested looking for the survivors.”
	“The witnesses...will they be all right?”
	“Ethir’s in charge of them,” she said. “He hadn’t brought them to court yet, he expected the prosecution to take all day. Which they would have, if it weren’t for Lythril.”
	“She’d said she wanted her testimony to be as compelling as mine,” I said. “I think she accomplished that goal, at least.”
	Istria shook her head. “I don’t know, Viecter seems to have been mighty compelled by yours. How are you liking the poem, Aine?”
	She folded up the manuscript and put it away. “I better not finish it,” she said. “He might ask me what I think of it.”
	“Occupational hazards,” Istria sighed. “Ah, the memories.”
	She leaned against the side of the coach. I leaned on her. Aine looked at me.
	<I’ve been thinking about the rite, dhiaoc.>
	<Really?>
	<In prison, I had the time.>
	<Let’s talk when we get to the house.>
	<All right, dhiaoc.> She lay down on the seat. 
	<You did well in there, Aine,> I said. <You’re learning fast. I’m proud of you.>
	<Thank you, dhiaoc.> She curled up. <You know...don’t you...> She was still a little shy but she said it. <She was right about one thing. I would follow you to hell. Because I’d know you were going there for a good reason.>
	Lythril telling the truth. One of the wonders of the world. 
	<She took it to heart,> I said.
	<Took what?> Aine answered.
	<Losing to you,> I said. <She asked me about it one night. I think she really did lose. And I think--although who could have foreseen it--that’s one reason she told the truth in there.>
	<You think she’ll do it more often now?> Aine asked.
	<Only when it’s expedient,> I said.
	Which wouldn’t be that often. I didn’t feel good about it. I’d made her stronger by giving her real advice. And although that had been convenient just now, we were back to where things should be, with her on one side and me on the other and her gain my loss.
	But for now, I was next to Istria inside a comfortable and invisible horse-drawn coach, traveling in style for once over the mountains to someplace safe. It had been a hell of a game. But I was starting now to feel like we might really be on the winning side.

XVIII.
Something to Talk About

	“So I have to tell you,” Istria said, as the horses began slowing down. “I haven’t told them about me, and I haven’t told them about us.”
	“Ah,” I said.
	“It was important that they trust me,” she said. “They know I’m shrimarbh, obviously; but they don’t know I was dark, and they don’t know that we’ve...been...”
	“Having sex,” Aine put in.
	Before I could answer, the shield rolled up and a figure appeared in the window.
	“It’s Cualha,” Istria said. “We’re at the checkpoint.”
	Istria opened the door. Cualha’s dark head poked in through the opening.
	“Idair’s hair,” she said.
	I took the hand she extended and we did the fire test.
	“We’re still alive,” I answered.
	“And it is a miracle,” she said. “I can hardly believe I’m alive, some days. Come on and bring your scoilin. There are some people out here who’d like to talk to you.”
	I struggled out of the coach, followed by Aine. “Try her too,” I said, as Aine put out her hand.
	Cualha took it, and smiled as Aine popped fire out of her free hand.
	“Congratulations, Aine ni hEmer. It couldn’t have come at a better time.”
	“I’m glad to have it, especially now,” Aine said earnestly.
	Cualha suddenly hugged Aine. Aine let her do it, surprised.
	“I’m sorry,” Cualha finally said, releasing her. “It’s been so long since something good happened.” Ashamed of her emotion, she called up to the box. “Come on down then, and let me try you.”
	Umrin and Japthil climbed down. Sinal advanced to the driver’s seat and took the reins. The coach and horses went clattering up the mountain path we’d stopped on. 
	We were up pretty high in the Sharptooths, a section of the Amstian mountain range that is particularly barren and uninhabitable. There was only one good road, which we were on; it led to the big house Istria had described. The house was wedged precariously onto the only level ground available--a plateau jutting from a steep mountainside that had to be approached on a switchbacked trail that twisted like a sand snake’s trail. The sun was low in the sky and not doing much to take the chill off the wind.
	We followed Cualha to a gate that barred the way up the road, and closed it. Cualha sent out some kind of signal, and the shrubbery began moving.
	Or put it more literally, people began emerging from it. This was the guard; if Cualha hadn’t identified us they would have attacked with the interesting assortment of weapons they were packing. Men from Amst, not in uniform but still wearing the training they’d had. Except for one, who looked a little less sure and a little less Amstian.
	“Iandar’s trousers,” I said. “Abiard, is that you?”
	His face broke into a grin. “Last I checked it was, shriia.”
	I went up to him and took the grubby hand he offered me. “But...you’re still alive! What are you doing here? Is Ilean all right?”
	“What about the baby?” Aine demanded.
	Istria smiled as Abiard quailed under the barrage. Finally he began answering.
	“Ilean and the baby are fine,” he said. “They’re up to the house. As for what I’m doing here--well, that’s a long story.”
	“Regardless, I want to hear it.”
	“You will, from Ilean. I’m still on duty here.” He looked at Aine. “I’m glad to see both of you alive and well. Ilean will be glad too.”
	“It’s good to see you too,” I said. “Tell me this at least--have you lost many?”
	His face darkened. “Some. But it’s ended--for us--better than I could have hoped for. For the others, it’s not ended yet, nowhere near. But Ilean will tell you all about that.”
	Cualha herded us through the gate after we’d exchanged greetings with the guard, who all seemed very impressed with us. I wondered what Viecter had been telling them.
	The approach to the house was long, and we had time to talk. The night the order split, there had been an all-out battle in the Council chamber, which ended in a rout as the bright ones realized the dark ones were quite prepared to do murder and that shri couldn’t afford that many martyrs. It had been decided that the bright ones would split up to make capture and destruction harder. There had been no time to plan, however, and Cualha wasn’t able to tell us much about who had gone where. She had the idea that Morat had stuck with Dalen and Lilea, and that they too were somewhere in Amst. I linked with her and put her in touch with Dahern and Wriana. And by then we were at the house.
	The people who built it had at least made some smart decisions. For instance, that you had to work with the shape of the mountain. The house clung to the slope, spreading in a half-moon that hugged the rock wall. All the windows had views of the mountain range, and since the place faced west it probably had spectacular sunsets. We’d be doing haons linn facing into the rock, but then the place hadn’t been built with shriias in mind.
	Most big houses have a complex of outbuildings and grounds--gardens, stables, coach houses, storage buildings. Up here in the middle of nowhere that wasn’t practical; there was one carriage house where Sinal was unhitching the horses, and one shed with a forge for emergency blacksmithing, plus a granary for the food that must have had to be brought in at great expense. Not much in the way of gardens; not much soil to garden in.
	A strange place to build; no wonder the thing looked a little ruined. Istria had told me that the place was famous. When it was first built it had been wildly popular among the rich of Amst and Dairc, and for a few years it was the center of social life for that set in the north. But the family that owned it ran into money troubles. The place was too expensive to maintain as a pleasure spot, and it was completely unsuitable as a main residence; there was no way to keep track of tenants, crops, and trade from all the way out here. Then there were the stories about families who had bought it and eventually given up and sold it again. Now here was this Viecter living out here by himself, all year round, not apparently minding the isolation and the inconvenience as long as his peculiar muse was willing to smile on him through the burnished glass of those western windows.
	Standing on the ledge looking out over the mountains I could half sympathize. You have to see Amst to believe it. My people are from Kengda, which is nothing special; I lived most of my life in the Vicinity, which is even less so. Amst is a place that makes you pay attention. Thick forest in the south, an intricate system of hills, valleys, ravines and creekbeds in the center, and then up in the north this breathtaking ridge of gray-spined and pine-dusted mountains that flings itself violently at the sky. It’s a place that makes you think that maybe the world isn’t finished yet--that here at the ridge where the earth buckles and bristles, birth is still going on in all its pain and beauty.
	I was so engrossed with the view that I didn’t notice the side door opening. 
	“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” said a man’s voice.
	I turned. Viecter mac hIrbirt, or so I assumed he was, seemed an ordinary man enough--tall, a little on the slender side, with a small, neat beard and sandy hair that waved across his forehead. Cut off as he was, he’d managed to keep up with the fashion trends; his outfit was new and there was the unmistakable hint of the City’s influence.
	“It is,” I said, walking up. “You’re Viecter mac hIrbirt?”
	“I am.”
	“I’m Theamh ni hUlnach,” I said.
	His eyes were already looking sort of large and eager. “Yes, I know.”
	“What do you mean, you know?”
	“You’re the only redhead,” Istria said. “Or the only one-- ‘flaming-haired,’ is that how you put it, Viecter?”
	Viecter laughed. “Your friend doesn’t think much of my literary efforts,” he said, showing I thought a lot of good nature and generosity. “But she says she’s not much of a reader. I’m interested to know what you think. I think of the epic as my tribute to you.”
	This was making me a little uncomfortable, but I decided I would have to get used to taking this in stride. “I’m afraid I haven’t read it yet, Viecter.”
	“Will you, though?” he asked, clasping his hands in supplication.
	Cursing myself for an idiot, I said, “Yes.”
	<You’re going to regret that, Theamh.>
	<I regret it already.>
	And I did, because it obviously made him so happy to hear that I would be perusing his verses that he could barely pull himself together to greet the others. Istria smiled either to herself or at me as we walked into the entrance hall. Viecter, now that we were safe inside, gave himself over to the role of tour guide, as if we were Cretids.
	“This is the Great Hall,” he said, his words echoing across the polished marble floor. “The guests would have come here first, after sending their carriages around back, to be greeted by the steward and about ten waiting maids. Of course I don’t have a staff out here--you can’t get them to take work in a place like this nowadays. I’ve made up the beds, at least. I cook passably well, and I’m honored to do it for you--the men guarding the pass live mostly off game, but they cook it all on the grounds. This place is protected.”
	When we heard that we all relaxed visibly. Viecter saw this and was gratified. “We may as well move along to the north wing, where we have what I call the ‘living quarters.’ The south wing is mostly for formal entertaining--would you believe there’s a concert hall in here? Someday if maybe things go back to normal I plan to hold a series of concerts out here in the summer. I think we could get people from Amranth...”
	He went on in this manner for quite some time, not apparently that interested in hearing our story. It certainly was an impressive architectural achievement. Parquet floors, paneled walls, painted ceilings--as sumptuous as it could be. But there was little furniture outside the absolutely necessary. A desk and chair in the library, along with shelves full of books and a rug before the fireplace; a couch in the sitting room with an ottoman and two chairs. All good quality, but all too small and simple for the grand surroundings.
	“And here’s the kitchen, where of course everyone spends all their time despite all of these other beautiful rooms...”
	Because the kitchen was warm, with a shri fire in the grate and light globes hanging near the ceiling, and Eorna and Kelah sitting round the table with Sonnia.
	“Don’t get discouraged,” Eorna was saying, patting a somewhat crestfallen Sonnia on the shoulder. “Everyone has to try and fail before they learn. That’s normal.”
	“It’s not normal for a child her age to be this backward,” Kelah returned, looking over Sonnia’s head at Eorna. “And it’s not normal at all for you to be trying to teach mindstrength to a Cretid. It’s like teaching a cow to sing.”
	Sonnia lifted her head to start in on Kelah, but caught sight of us in the doorway.
	“You’re back!”
	She leapt to her feet with a cry of excitement. Eorna and Kelah turned, equally pleased to see us if a shade less enthusiastic in their expression of it.
	“We’re back,” I said. “In one piece.”
	While the rest of us went around trying each other, Sonnia ran up to Istria and decided, at the last minute, that after all she wouldn’t give her the hug. Instead she awkwardly stuck her hands in her pockets and said, “So did you do it like we planned?”
	“Sort of,” Istria said. “Lythril gave us an early opening, so we took it.”
	“Oh, we saw that in the globe,” Eorna said, having finished testing Aine. “Idair’s hair and eyebrows. Did you know she was going to do that?”
	“No idea,” I said. “I was as surprised as anyone--except maybe for Hern, she was pretty thurking surprised.”
	We all sat down around the table. Umrin, Jipthal, Eorna, Cualha, Kelah, Aine, Sonnia, Istria, and me. Seven shriias plus the two of them. 
	“What is it, Theamh?” Istria asked, as she saw my face change.
	“I was just remembering,” I said. “That night in my house, after the hearing, when I first heard about all this...how Lilea was excited when she realized that Slythe made seven of us. She thought it was a good omen.”
	After a heavy pause, Cualha said, “So you heard what happened to her.”
	I nodded. “They gave it out as suicide?”
	Cualha snorted. “I have very strong views on that and so does Harani--I should call Harani, she’ll want to talk to you. Hang on.”
	While Cualha opened the link I whispered to Kelah. “Is Harani up here?”
	Kelah shook her head. “She’s still back in the Pharc.”
	“As a prisoner, or what?”
	“Harani says hello, Theamh.”
	I looked back to Cualha. “Tell her I say hello back, and I want to know where she is and what’s happened to her.”
	Cualha’s eyes went abstract for a few moments. “She says--” She paused. “Ah, to hell with it--look, Harani’ll just project and you can talk to her direct. Hang on.”
	Cualha’s eyes changed again. Now instead of the sort of introspective brooding look that goes with a linked conversation, they had the straightforward blunt stare of someone who knows she can’t see you but wants you to think she’s trying.
	“Theamh?” said Cualha, in her own voice but with Harani’s inflections.
	“I’m glad you’re still alive, Harani.”
	Cualha blinked. “It’s good to hear your voice.”
	“How are you keeping yourself in one piece down there in the weasels’ cage?”
	A bitter laugh broke out of Cualha. “By doing what I always do, Theamh--keeping my ear to the ground, telling the truth, and knowing more than the next woman.”
	“But...Barant must know who’s side you’re on?”
	Eorna smiled; Cualha laughed. “That’s kind of a funny story, Theamh. Have you got time?”
	I glanced at Aine; she nodded. Viecter looked interested too, until Sonnia got up and took his arm.
	“I still haven’t seen the northern turret,” she said. “Will you take me up there? It looks so romantic from the ground...”
	And he walked out of the kitchen with her on his arm. Istria said, <Don’t worry...she’s just getting him out of the way. She flirts with him but he’s not her type.>
	<How does she know we want him out of the way?>
	Istria gave this some thought while I answered Harani. “We’ve got the time, and I certainly want to hear the story.”
	Cualha leaned back in her chair, looking way too much like Harani always did when retelling a specially juicy bit of gossip. “So of course not being on the Council I wasn’t there when it all went down. But I was listening in on the globe in the refectory with the scoili, who--well, that’s another story, never mind. Anyhow, I ran along to the Raed to see if I could help, along with some of the other diaoci who’d been watching. Well, it was too late by the time we got there; the rout had already started. So I just went back to my apartment and waited to see how it would all settle out.”
	I couldn’t believe her balls. “You mean you just made yourself a sitting duck?”
	“That’s right.”
	“But why?”
	“I’m coming to that. So after they drive the good ones out of the City, they come back to the Raed and start going room to room. Course hardly anyone’s left because everyone who’s true has had the sense to flee. Except for yours truly.”
	“So go on already,” I said, as she paused.
	“So there I am, hiding in my apartment--in, of course, the dark. And in comes that little bitch Riina. So before she can hang the globe, wham! I’m on her like a tick on a dog.”
	Because of course it being dark made no difference to Harani, whereas it made a big difference to Riina. We learn how to get by without light in scoil, but most people don’t keep it up once they get out unless they’re in tracking and do a lot of work at night.  
	“And then what happened?”
	“So she’s lying there blubbering because of the whole pain thing, which she wasn’t expecting since she didn’t see me coming so even though I can’t say I’m exactly singing hymns of praise I’ve got a few more wits about me, and I tell her, ‘All right Riina, I’ve got you wrapped. Now you’re going to take me to Barant.’ And she says, ‘What do you want to see Barant for?’ and I say, ‘You can figure it out on the way. And I can read you like a book, in fact better what with the sight thing, so don’t try to take me anywhere else.’”
	“What did you want to see Barant for?” Aine demanded.
	“Who’s that, your scoilin?” I nodded. “Theamh--”
	“Sorry--yes, that’s Aine. She’s got her fire now.”
	“Congratulations!” Cualha shouted, moving her head toward where Aine’s voice came from. “I knew Theamh would get you there. We’re all glad to have you.”
	“I’m glad to have you,” Aine answered.
	“You trained her to be polite,” Cualha said, surprised.
	“Her parents did that,” I answered. “Anyway--”
	“Anyway, so Riina leads me to the heart of the warren, you know, that office of Barant’s in the Raed, and of course I don’t know what the bitch looks like but in my mind she’s a big old spider sitting in the middle of a black, sticky web...”
	“Well, she’s only got two legs,” I said.
	“Otherwise it’s not a bad guess,” Istria added.
	“Ah, so you’re back from the rescue,” Cualha said. “I have to say, I still can’t believe you’re alive. How’d you come through four years of Lythril intact?”
	“I didn’t,” Istria said.
	Harani could tell she didn’t want to talk about it. “So I walk right up to the desk and stand there in front of Spider Woman, and she looks at the two of us or at least that’s what I assume she’s doing, and she says, ‘Well, Riina, is she ours or theirs?’ 
	“So before Riina can answer, I say, ‘Listen, Barant, I’m a true daughter of Idair and that means I’m as far from being on your side as you can imagine.’ And she says, with that great compassion voice that makes you want to kill her all the more, ‘If that’s really how you see things, Harani, there’s nothing I can do for you.’”
	Eorna was unable to suppress a noise of exasperation.
	“I know, Eorna, I know. Like I keep telling Cualha, I’ve never killed anyone, but there’s a first time for everything.”
	“But Harani--” I protested.
	“Don’t worry, Theamh, I wouldn’t give her or the bitches she works with the satisfaction. So where was--oh, right. So I say to her, ‘Well, Barant, we’re enemies and I know you’ll be wanting to get rid of me, but you’re not going to touch me and here’s why.’” Cualha paused for effect. “ ‘I’ve been doing the weather single-handedly in this whole region for five solid years. You’ve driven Cualha out of here and you’ve burnt Irpeth up, and that means I’m the only one left in this damn town who even knows what to ask for when and where. Never mind the fact that you all could scream till you were blue in the breasts before Idair would send you ungrateful bitches a drop.’ So I can tell she’s gearing up to argue with me, and I say, ‘I’m not going to let you waste my time. You need me and you know it. I’ll go on doing my job, because if I don’t there’s going to be famine and starvation and people killing each other for food. And while I’m doing it I’m going to work night and day to bring you and your minions down on your gleachas. And you’re going to leave me alive and free to do it because if you don’t all the plutocrats who are bribing you and your lackeys are going to be VERY upset with you. This is still an agrarian economy, and the Vicinity is still the country’s breadbasket, and crops still need rain. You think you’re such a big deal with your chain and your minions and your plants in the Seat and the Courts--well, Barant, you’re a big famous possessions specialist and I’m just a stupid little rainmaker, but I’ve still got you by the zazb you wish you had, and I’m still going to thurk you up just as bad as you’ve thurked Idair, the Order, and us. And a shriia just said it, so you know it’s true.’ And I turned around and walked out.”
	Aine and I broke into spontaneous applause. I think the others would have joined us, only they’d already heard the story.
	Cualha took control for a moment. “I’m very proud of her,” she said, beaming. “I can’t take credit for teaching her to rant, I think that must have been Theamh, but--”
	“Come on now, it could just as easily have been Istria,” I said. “I’m not the only woman in the Order with a mouth--”
	Harani took over. “Who says anyone taught me? I said what was in my heart, and what was in my heart was a seething cauldron of bilious anger. I know you hate Lythril a lot, Theamh, but I think I may hate Barant more.”
	“Congratulations,” I said. “Now you have an arch-nemesis.”
	Cualha laughed. “I have to say, I always sort of thought it might be fun. Now I realize what a nightmare it is. The woman has been dogging my tracks like you would not believe.”
	“She must certainly be watching you,” I said.
	“Of course she tries when she can. I can’t go find any of the shriias I know are out there in hiding because I know I’d lead her right to them. In a lot of ways she’s got me wrapped, but there’s one thing she can’t do, and that’s stop me from doing my job. Which requires me to be out in the field a lot in remote locations to which she doesn’t have the time or resources to follow me. I’m pretty cut off from the rest of the Order, but I’m in deep with the lay resistance.”
	“Oh, so there is a lay resistance,” I said, relieved to hear it.
	“Theamh, people are not stupid. They keep their mouths shut because they’re now being ‘ministered’ to by these traitors and they have to be careful--but the country people are deeply, deeply suspicious of all of this ‘Open Window’ stuff, and that goes double for the Order trying to take over the Courts. And then when they locked up half the Seat in the holding cells, well, we’ve lived under the rule of the people for a long time, people can tell the difference between that and despotism, even the ones who you wouldn’t think would be that bright. Like that farmer of yours--Taric--he and his girlfriend--”
	“Girlfriend?” I demanded.
	“You didn’t know about him and Mna? They moved in together after you left--”
	“But that was for the twins, Harani, it doesn’t mean they’re together.”
	Cualha’s face wore a look of extreme skepticism.
	“Look, I’m not going to argue with you over it--”
	“--well, anyway, I understand he’s up with you now, but Mna’s still here and she’s a one-woman spy network, you should see her in action. You’ve got yourself one satisfied customer there, Theamh. You could come back here wearing a chain and carrying ten severed heads and she’d still say you were framed.”
	Aine smiled, gruesome as the image was. “Listen, Theamh, I want to hear your story too, but Cualha says she’s getting tired. Talk to me soon, will you?”
	“After Cualha recovers her strength,” I said. And, after a pause, “It’s good to talk to you, Harani. I’ve missed you.”
	“I’ve missed you too,” Cualha said, as Harani descended to seriousness. “And you know who else I miss is Slythe.”
	“Me too,” I said.
	“Take care of yourself,” Cualha said. “And Istria, behave yourself, remember we need her. Congratulations on getting out, and may I see you all down here soon with all hands blazing.”
	Cualha’s eyes returned to sight and she sighed with relief. “It’s rough being the one linked to her,” she said. “That woman could talk the hind legs off a donkey.”
	She was looking at me, and I knew she was thinking of the last thing Harani had said to Istria. As Kelah surely was, from the glare she was regarding both of us with.
	“Don’t worry,” I finally said. “I’m not going shrimarbh at a time like this.”
	“Of course,” Cualha said, embarrassed to have been read but relieved to hear it. “I know you understand...well, never mind. We just...it’s so good to have you back.”
	“Listen, all of you,” I said, with a deep sigh. “There’s something I have to tell you, about what happened to me after we got back, and it’s a long story--”
	“Theamh!”
	I looked toward the door and there was Ilean, holding the baby in her arms.
	“Ilean, you’re safe!” I got up and took a look at the baby. She was still a little on the small side, but looking much healthier, and had put on quite a bit of flesh.
	“You did a good job with her,” Ilean said, smiling. “I have been meaning to ask you about naming. Mathi has explained to me about finding the real name...but I’d like her used name to have something to do with the two of you.”
	She nodded at Istria. Istria looked surprised; she’d thought Ilean was talking about Aine.
	“Well...we can think about it...” I said, a little embarrassed.
	Ilean laughed. “So Abiard says you’re all full of questions.”
	“Too true we are,” Aine said.
	Ilean sat down and began nursing the baby. “Well, just so you won’t be in suspense I’ll tell you the end first. We cut a deal with the authorities--they agreed to a truce on the condition that Abiard be deported for life. So they chucked him over the border and I went with him. The rest of us--them, now, I guess--are interned in a kind of camp down near the border while they decide what to do with us.”
	“How is that a deal?” Aine demanded. “You lose on every count.”
	“Except one,” Ilean said grimly. “We’re still alive. Most of us. That’s a miracle. You don’t know those people.”
	“I fear she does,” I said.
	Ilean nodded. “Of course you’d have gotten a taste of it. Frankly I don’t think we’d have gotten that much if it weren’t for the Insurrection.”
	“What Insurrection?”
	“That’s what we call what’s going on in about ten Cretid cities right now. The Cretids call it the Terror.”
	“You mean that’s all still going on?”
	Ilean nodded. “Last we heard. The South Corner has practically declared itself an independent republic. Most of Millton is on fire, and Haven is so choked off with barricades and gas even the VB reporters can’t get in there to do stories on it. Wheatlea is probably a little better off now that they’ve got the Ideiren Menace penned up safely.”
	She settled the baby against her breast. “It’s been a hard fight and I have to say if you measure it most ways it looks like we’ve lost. But I’m still not sorry we fought.”
	“I’m glad she’s all right, at least,” Aine said, looking at the baby.
	“You’re better than all right, aren’t you, little apple?” Ilean cooed. “You’re going to grow up big and strong and kick the fnaa out of those mean nasty Cretids, aren’t you?”
	“Hey!” shouted Sonnia, who had chosen that moment to appear in the doorway.
	“Present company excepted, of course,” Ilean said, chagrined.
	“Viecter says you should come to the parlor,” she said. “Says they’re about to do a story on your trial.”
	“What does she mean, ‘do a story’?” Umrin demanded.
	We began making the trek to the parlor. Viecter left it out on the tour, because it was on the other wing. So we hadn’t seen the waterglobe on its pedestal in the middle of that ornate rug.
	“Why the hell do you have a waterglobe?” I demanded.
	“I picked it up in Mypril,” Viecter answered, as we gathered around it. “I’m sure you know the new Council is pushing home possession--giving them out for free, with instructions and everything. I wanted to show I’m a good citizen,” he said, as the globe flickered. “Wouldn’t want them to think I was a rebel sympathizer, or something.”
	“Shhh,” Sonnia said, leaning forward to squint into the globe.
	Of course the picture wasn’t as clear as she was used to; but it was a lot clearer than usual. Maybe the influence of the cameras and their strange tape. But there it was, big as life, an image of Hern and Lythril locking lips over the edge of the witness box.
	“In Mypril they’re calling it ‘The Kiss of Death,’” said a male voice. “Tonight on True Stories, we take you to the trial of the Mypril Four, and its startling conclusion.”
	“It’s just like at home,” Sonnia said, nestling back against the couch cushions.
	“They’re learning fast,” I muttered.
	Because there was Kleark, standing out in front of the courtroom for all the world as if he were wearing a noose and jacket and putting stiff stuff in his hair.
	“It was a day of surprising reverses and shocking revelations. Hundreds of households in Ideire were glued to their waterglobes to watch the state try to convict three shriias and an apprentice of the worst crime on our books. Some predicted acquittal and most were predicting conviction; but nobody could have predicted what actually happened.”
	Kleark was now standing in a corridor talking to one of the gardai, a woman who he had pulled over as she ran down the hallway. I understood finally that this was an image that had been saved from earlier--right after the court had been cleared and the terrified spectators had been flushed into the hallways.
	“What happened in there?” Kleark asked.
	The woman didn’t answer for a moment.
	“I’m sorry,” she finally said, shaking her head a little. “I’ve just seen Lythril kill a woman with her bare hands. That’s something you don’t over right away.”
	“And where is Lythril now?” Kleark asked.
	The woman shot him a venomous look. “If I knew, I’d be there arresting her, wouldn’t I?”
	Sonnia burst out laughing. I didn’t understand why she thought it was so funny, except that from her mind it seemed like it was not the kind of response she expected.
	“So you haven’t apprehended her.”
	“No, we haven’t. And frankly, I don’t have time to stand here talking to you.” 
	The woman trotted off. Kleark turned back to whatever was making the image.
	“Indeed, nobody has time to talk. Because Lythril is at large, and Hern is dead, and of the four remaining shriias on the Mypril Council one has been so badly burned that she’s in the hospital.”
	“The hospital!” Japthil objected. “What the hell are they going to do for her?”
	Umrin shrugged. “Now we’re gone and Tegol is shrimarbh, there’s no one left to treat her,” she said.
	“...meanwhile the hunt is on for the Mypril Four. And the question on everyone’s mind is: are they dark or bright? I talked to Ethir mac Briobh, counsel for the defendants.”
	“Oh, Ethir, don’t tell me you let them know where you live--” I cried, but sat back relieved as she saw the image was set in the now-empty courtroom.
	“As far as I’m concerned,” Ethir said, “we can consider them acquitted. The prosecution’s star witness not only recanted her incriminating testimony, but established beyond doubt that Hern--on whose word the entire case rested--was a dark user.”
	“But the fact that Hern was a dark user does not necessarily mean that your clients are bright,” Kleark pointed out. “Suppose they really are confederates of Lythril, and this was all an elaborate assassination plot?”
	Ethir looked at him as if he would like to administer a good strong smack to the head.
	“I think the fact that Lythril’s first action after recovering her chain was to try to kill all four of them might tell against that,” he said. “Not to mention my clients’ long, unblemished record of good and faithful service to Idair and her children.”
	The image went to Kleark outside on the street. “Certainly Theamh ni hUlnach has a bright reputation, and certainly she is a powerful speaker. I learned as much when I had the chance to interview her outside the courtroom before the trial began.”
	And then there I was. 
	“Man,” Sonnia said. “You look like fnaa.”
	I was shocked at my own image. I avoid mirrors, so I’m not used to it anyway; but I hardly knew myself. I was still much thinner than I was used to being; and the signs of fatigue and exhaustion were legible. I had made an attempt to deal with my hair but many days of enforced neglect had taken their toll, and I looked like I was wearing a bush.
	“How long have you been dark?” came Kleark’s voice.
	My voice answered, as the little me inside the globe began working herself up. I felt a strange sympathy for this shadow me, feeling for her obvious distress and anger as if they belonged to someone else, someone I knew vaguely but liked enough to care about.
	“Wow,” Sonnia said, as the four of us stood there with our joined hands raised. “You rock.”
	“I beg your pardon?” I asked.
	“Never mind,” she answered.
	Kleark was on the street again. “We’re a culture to whom words matter,” he said. “Our friends north of the border, who will be watching this broadcast on their VBs thanks to Open Window, probably won’t realize how important talk is to us, or what kind of work a good speech can do.” He was walking now, the image following him. “And so they may not understand why suddenly now the same city that was baying for their blood during the weeks of their imprisonment is silent, wondering if perhaps they’ve backed the wrong horse. Because they know that if they have, it’s a very serious matter.”
	Kleark’s face had changed. He looked less like one of those noose-wearers, and more like a man who was troubled thinking about things he felt were beyond him. 
	“Riina ni hOalar, director of Public Relations for the City Council, has issued an official statement.” He paused to call it to mind. “Her words are, ‘The Order is of course shocked to discover further corruption in its ranks, and has ordered an immediate investigation into the remnant of the Mypril Council to determine if we can how and when Hern ni hEglint was lost to the Dark One. But we must not let our shock and dismay deter us from our greater goal. We must and we will track down the butchers of the Back Three and the murderers of Daire ni Fhilim and Tifni ni hEude and bring them to justice.’”
	Kleark’s dark eyes were now focused straight on whatever was transmitting the image, and he was not at all happy with the sound of that last speech.
	“The new Order has taken a somewhat one-way approach to Public Relations,” Kleark went on, “in that they talk, but do not listen. So I cannot ask Riina ni hOalar the questions we all still have. Why is Bric mac Chlos, the state’s appointed Dark User Prosecutor, suddenly unavailable for comment?”
	“Whoa, that’s not good,” I said.
	Istria shook her head. “Anyone want to bet on when and where he’ll turn up dead?”
	“Shriias don’t carry money,” Aine said. “Otherwise I’d be in.”
	“Why would the Council entrust the prosecution of these four supposedly dangerous women to a colleague they had not tested? How do they explain the fact that when they had the opportunity, the Mypril Four did not burn, maim or kill their adversaries?” 
	“Good thurking question,” Umrin muttered.
	“And most important...” Kleark took a long serious pause. “What if the story they tell in Slieve now is the true one? What if, as the resettled men and women of eastern Amst insist, the murderers of Daire ni Fhilim and the butchers of the Back Three have already been brought to a rougher justice than the law or shri can mete out?” He looked like he was nervous, but he stood his ground. “What if Ethir mac Briobh is right?”
	And there was Ethir, up in front of that courtroom.
	“I’m here because I’m scared,” he said.
	“Now he’s got a face for VB,” Sonnia said definitively.
	Ethir’s speech unrolled, as eloquent the second time as it had been the first.
	“Because if he’s right,” said Kleark, as the image returned to him, “then I’m scared too. Kleark mac Caille sending the sceal from the Mypril Pharc, the third day of the first week of the harvest season.”
	The image wavered, and changed.
	“AAAGH!”
	It had been a while since we’d seen Barant, but that gag reflex wasn’t getting any weaker.
	“Good evening,” she said, looking straight out of the globe so direct and frank it was hard to believe she couldn’t see me.
	“As you heard my colleague Riina ni hOalar say, we are beginning an investigation into the events of today. And we will be answering some of those questions our friend Kleark has raised. In particular, we will prove conclusively and to everyone’s satisfaction just who it was who has the blood of Amst on her hands.”
	“That’s a little rich for Barant’s rhetoric, isn’t it?” Kelah put in.
	Eorna nodded. “Look at her, though. She’s about ready to spit fire.”
	She was staying calm, but Eorna was right; she was angry. Evidently she hadn’t expected Kleark to be quite as circumspect in his reporting. And there was something else--an undercurrent of frustration that I couldn’t read, but which was visible nonetheless.
	“It’s not going well,” I murmured.
	“Not as well as she wants it,” Istria agreed.
	“Harani says there have already been severe crop failures in Kengda,” Cualha said. “That’s where Barant’s from, and I think it’s a pretty serious traitor’s nest.”
	“But dark users can make weather,” Aine said. “Gwilna did it.”
	Cualha shook her head. “They can make bad weather. But they can’t do the good stuff--the steady rains, days of sunshine, moderation. It’s all extremes with them--drought or flood, freeze or fry.”
	“...to justice,” Barant was concluding. “The Ideiren National Defense Force is ready to be deployed, and that will take care of the Amstian rebellion. Once Amranth has fallen, our shriias will be free to devote their full attention to hunting down the remaining renegades. And when we do, you will all see the truth. Idair with you all. Good night.”
	The globe flickered. And with a strange sense of familiarity, I recognized the opening images of “The Enforcer.”
	“What, they’re bringing this fnaa down to our country now?” Aine demanded.
	“Hey!” Ilean said. “I like this show!”
	“At least it’s not ‘Idair, Priestess of Power,’” I muttered.
	“What?” Viecter demanded.
	“Don’t ask,” Istria said, shaking her head.
	We left her and Sonnia staring rapt at the screen along with Viecter.
	“All right,” I said, as we sat in our circle. “Idair has brought us all together. Let’s see what we’ve got, and what we can do with it.”

	“So,” Kelah finally said. “You want me to come with you on this suicide mission.”
	“It’s not suicide, Kelah, we’re all still alive,” Istria pointed out.
	“Because you’re lucky.”
	“Well, who’s to say you won’t be lucky too.”
	“Who’s to say I will?”
	I was getting a little impatient with her. “Look, we’d ask Cualha or Eorna, but Cualha’s in rainmaking and Eorna’s practical magic. You’re possessions. You’re the best woman for the job. Now if you’re too scared to help us, just say that and be done with it.”
	Aine watched her without affection. She was young, and it was a shock to her to discover that not everyone was willing to risk death as blithely as we were.
	“I just think it’s insane. Walking into the middle of an army and trying to unthrall an entire company while they all attack you--”
	“Nobody’s pretending it’s easy, Kelah,” I said. “I’m just saying it’s necessary, and asking you to help. It’d be easier to tackle these things with three shriias instead of two.”
	“I suppose I must,” she finally muttered, ending with an aggrieved sigh.
	Instead of saying what was on my mind I just sent it to Istria, which was almost as gratifying. She turned to Eorna, repressing her smile. “And you really think you’ll be able to pull off that thing with the waterglobe?”
	“Viecter’s got a forge, there by the stables,” she said. “I should be able to build what I’ll need.”
	“Well then,” Cualha said. “We should give over, I think--start tomorrow after you’ve had some sleep.”
	As they made to get up, I interrupted. “There is--one thing I should tell you--”
	Cualha sat back down; she could tell I was nervous. “What is it, Theamh?”
	“After we got back into the country,” I began, while Istria settled back, resigned for the long haul. “It was just after Aine got her fire--”
	I was interrupted by a sudden explosion from the couch, where Ilean and Sonnia were still watching “The Enforcer.”
	“What are you talking about?” Ilean demanded, gesticulating at the globe. “How can he be the hero? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!”
	“Well you may think it’s ridiculous, but I’m telling you, you ask anyone in the Cretid Nation who’s the hero on this show and they’re going to tell you it’s the Enforcer.”
	“But he’s so evil--”
	“How is he evil?”
	“He’s constantly beating people up and killing them--”
	Sonnia let out a noise of exasperation that reminded me of how young she really was. “Those people are criminals, Ilean! Don’t you know what a criminal is?”
	Ilean looked at her and said, icily, “A criminal is a person like me.”
	It was instructive looking at Sonnia’s face. She knew that she had mortally offended Ilean, even though she didn’t really understand how. Half of her was ready to leap to her own defense. But half of her felt--really felt--the enormity of Ilean’s anger and hurt. I waited to see which half would win.
	Ilean didn’t. “I’m a criminal. My child’s father is a criminal. My mother is a criminal. I fought next to good men and women who were shot dead by people wearing that same thurking duckweed-colored uniform he wears. And they were all criminals too.”
	Before she could tear into what we were sure she was about to tear into, Viecter cried, “Shhhh, the sunset!”
	He threw out an excited hand toward the windows. I turned around.
	The bright disc of the sun was hovering over the peaks of the mountains, under a tumbled carpet of cloud that caught the light. The light licked brighter along the underside of the cloud, stretched and stroked into flame, burning liquid and strange through the middle air, brightening as the sun disappeared and night bled indigo into the sky.
	Nobody spoke. I found Istria’s hand as hers was looking for mine. Otherwise I was as motionless as the rest of them, watching this wordless unreadable scroll shake itself out in the impossible distance, caught and held in the unsaid spell of this great silent passion.
	 If Sonnia thought this strange she at least had the wit to say nothing. Maybe she was somehow, without knowing, learning to pick things up. Or maybe she was digesting what Ilean had said to her. But she let us sit until the last flames were out and the fiery lake had drained into nothing but ash and darkness.
	“I see why you like it out here,” I finally said.
	This threw Viecter so suddenly and drastically into happiness that it broke everyone’s mood. “I’m so glad you understand,” he sighed. “This is the thing about shriias, you understand about the sunsets.”
	He sprang off the couch. “I’m off to the kitchen,” he announced. “I hope the new guests will humor me...I do insist on people dressing for dinner. You don’t mind?”
	I think I might have been gaping. “Viecter, what I’m wearing is what I’ve got.”
	“Cualha, you’ll show her the wardrobe?”
	Cualha, who had apparently decided to see Viecter as a harmless lunatic and treat him accordingly, said, “Yes, yes, go on and do your magic in the kitchen.”
	“And the baths?”
	“Of course the baths, Idair knows they need it. Don’t you worry.”
	Viecter trotted off. Aine looked a little offended.
	“It’s true,” Cualha said, in defense. “You just got out of prison this morning, of course you need a bath. It’s not personal. Anyway, you have to see the baths, I’m dying to hear what you have to say about this all.”
	What I had to say was, “Holy fnaa.”
	I think I picked the expression up from Chandra, and I wasn’t entirely sure I was using it right. But what else can you say when you find out that the entire center section of the house, aside from the great entrance hall, is a courtyard enclosing a square pool filled by a natural spring that bubbles up from the bedrock floor. The pool was divided by ranks of marble benches into nine smaller square areas. The roof, which was perforated by glass skylights, rested on a number of columns that rose from the corners of the individual little baths. Aine craned her neck to follow the columns up the height of all three stories. 
	“So,” Cualha said, her voice echoing slightly in all this space and on all this marble. “I know your family’s big house--”
	“Oh no,” I said, shaking my head. “Not this kind of big house.”
	Aine was still looking. “If your parents have anything like this, I didn’t see it.”
	“No wonder the place was popular,” I said. “How in hell did they get all this built? It must have been horrendously expensive.”
	Istria shrugged. “The people who built this were in mining. There’s ways to get things done without paying full price, once you’ve got your workers by the zazb.”
	Aine nodded. Cualha sighed. “The place bothers me,” she said. “Maybe you’re stronger...but I started out appalled by the excess and uncomfortable and all the rest of that, and now I just kind of look forward to coming down here every morning.”
	“No, I’m not stronger,” I said, looking at it. “It’s true part of me is thinking, ‘what do you have to be to decide that you and your friends need all this,’ but it’s true enough that there’s another part thinking....”
	I trailed off. Istria was studiously not looking at me.
	“Well never mind what it’s thinking,” I said. “Wealth is sinister, it sneaks up on you. But,” I said, looking at Cualha, “it’s only because the place is deserted. If the people who built this thing were here, I bet it’d be real easy not to get comfortable with all this.”
	“Deft change of subject there, Theamh,” Cualha said. “Thinking what?”
	I swallowed. 
	“The people who built this thing are here,” Istria said, glancing around. “I’ll show you how to find them, Aine.”
	Aine looked at her, eager but surprised. “You can see back that far?”
	“The place is only two hundred years old, it should be possible,” she said. “Of course there’s no guarantee; they may have led exceptionally boring lives.” And, as she saw Aine getting excited, “Go, have your bath, we’ll work on it after dinner. Go go go.”
	Aine trotted off to the far corner and began trying to get out of her clothes without making herself conspicuous. Umrin and Jipthal were undoing in another area. Cualha was still looking at me.
	“Thinking what?” she asked.
	“Come on, Cualha,” Istria said, annoyed. “You know how obnoxious that is.”
	Cualha looked at the two of us, with much misgiving.
	“For thurk’s sake!” I burst out. “You can be easy about leaving us alone for half an hour, can’t you? How much trouble can we get into with my apprentice in the room?”
	Cualha went all red and blotchy. “The bath things are in that cabinet over there,” she said. “When you’re finished I’ll show you the wardrobe.”
	She pretty much fled the scene. 
	<You can’t blame them for worrying,> Istria said, as I started undoing. <They don’t know it’s safe, and they do know they can’t afford to lose you.>
	I finished undoing and bundled my hreapa up. <I know, Istri, but all the same it just really bothers me to know they’re talking about us...> I pulled the shift off. <...when they won’t even let us give them something to talk about.>
	I splashed ungracefully into the water. Istria opened the cabinet Cualha had indicated and began tossing sponges to the various sections of the bath.
	Soap landed with a plop next to me; a sponge bobbed next to it a moment later. Istria sat down on the edge of the bath, drawing her knees up in her arms and trying to make it seem like she wasn’t looking at me.
	“Aren’t you coming in?” I said, unable to keep out a note of disappointment. 
	“I had a bath this morning,” she answered.
	“But you were rescuing us all day,” I said. “Surely you must have gotten all hot and sweaty?”
	She cracked a smile. “Nice try. Now wash up and let’s not traumatize Aine.”
	Interested as I was in the other possibilities this situation presented, I was also very interested in getting clean. The water was warm--the spring was heated by some mysterious thing inside the mountain, and after I had dealt with the most pressing filth issues I began really enjoying the bath. My poor body had been treated pretty foully by a lot of people, including myself, in the past several months, and the water was treating it a lot better. Sitting on the submerged marble bench, stretching myself out, I could feel the residual pain and soreness leaching out of my limbs. I closed my eyes and leaned back.
	The next thing I remember was hearing a splash, and finding that Istria was standing up to her shoulders in the water, holding me in her arms. I moved my head against her wet shoulder; she’d come in for some reason without taking her clothes off.
	“I thought you said you weren’t coming in,” I murmured, looking up at her face and thinking how it got more beautiful after I hadn’t seen it for a while.
	“You fell asleep,” she said. “I saw you sliding under.”
	I put my arms around her neck. “Thanks. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”
	“I know.” The water held my body up, so that all Istria had to do was gather me. 
	“You can put me down now, I’ll be all right,” I said.
	She didn’t put me down, since she can read me better than that. “You still haven’t done your hair.”
	“I’m afraid--it’s been neglected a long time, and you know what it’s like even under normal circumstances.”
	“I’ll help.” I had lifted my head, and was looking at her from not very far away.
	“Thanks.”
	After another moment of not moving, I said, Remember about traumatizing Aine.
	Istria dropped one arm, releasing my legs. I ducked under to get my hair wet. It was tangled and full of mats.
	“All right then,” I said. “I warn you it’s not going to be pretty.”
	“I can take it,” Istria answered. “Turn around.”
	Istria squeezed some of the liquid soap into my hair and began working at it. It was a long and tedious process, but she didn’t seem to mind. Because of Idair, red hair is supposed to bring people luck, and that means that when you’re a redheaded child people are constantly patting you on the head or trying to play with your hair. And then my mother and I had fought over my hair in my early youth, because at that time the style required a lot of things done to it that I wouldn’t let be done. When you’re a shriia people don’t touch you much--they’re sort of afraid you might burn--so my hair was finally safe. Istria knew I had a thing about people touching it, which was why she had waited until we’d been friends for years before offering to help with it. I said yes, which should really have shown me the future right there; but as the old keep saying, the young are stupid.
	She got so absorbed in dealing with it she didn’t notice Umrin and Jipthal getting out and drying themselves off with the very large towels piled up in the corner. Or Aine, having already taken care of her business, climbing back into her clothes.
	“All right, I think we’re done,” she finally said. “Duck and see what it feels like.”
	I submerged and worked the soap out of my hair. When I stood up again my hair laid smooth over my head and neck. I wrung some of the water out of it.
	“It’s great now,” I said. “Thank you.”
	Istria smiled. She lifted one of the strands with one hand, running it through her fingers. “Thank you.”
	We said nothing for a while. And then when her mouth opened, it wasn’t to talk.
	My arms went around her neck, drawing my breast against hers. My legs floated up to wrap around her hips. I closed my eyes because if anything in the world existed aside from her body, her mouth, and the water I didn’t want to know about it. 
	chara
	mo ghra
	I can’t stand missing you
	me neither
	“So,” broke in an unfriendly voice. “I think you better come get dressed.”
	I looked up at Cualha, angry but somehow not finding a voice to snap back.
	“It’s almost time for dinner,” she said.
	I climbed out of the bath, exasperated, wet, and dripping all over the marble. I padded angrily over to the towels, drying myself off in a series of sharp, angry motions. Istria waited until I had returned to do her own drying off, wrapping the towel tightly around her and holding anxiously onto it.
	Cualha led us into the same room Aine and the others had disappeared into. “So that was the bathtub,” she said sardonically, “and this is the closet.”
	I looked around at the ranks and ranks of clothes hanging from poles that ran the length of a room that was the size of my living area. Bigger.
	“Why does he have all of this stuff?” I demanded, looking it over.
	“He says it accumulated,” she answered. “Evidently nobody ever moves out completely. Viecter says there are things in here that date back to the first owners--castoffs left behind because they were out of fashion or didn’t fit. Pick something you can wear with a straight face, and then go down to the dining room. Istria knows where it is.”
	Aine was silently looking around her at all of this. Umrin and Jipthal were already going through one of the ranks, heads bent in unspoken consultation.
	“Are you flashing back, Aine?” I asked, as she shook her head slowly.
	“A little,” she answered. “I thought your family’s house was a hundred times too grand for someone like me...but this...”
	“This place is too grand for everyone,” Istria said. “Including the people who owned it. Nobody has the money to keep up something like this--not since Organization.”
	By which she meant what had happened with the miners, about a hundred and fifty years ago. Which is a long story for another time, but the upshot was, the big house people no longer had the workers by the zazb, and so certain things were no longer possible, including places like this.
	Aine began timidly sorting through the clothes, looking for something plain and covering. Istria came up to me with something green on a hanger.
	“Here, give this a try,” she said.
	I picked it up. “Istri, this will never fit me.”
	For some reason that seemed to bring up the lump in her throat.
	“Theamh, it will,” she finally said, sadly. “You keep forgetting.”
	I dropped the towel and began struggling into the dress. Or actually not struggling very hard. It was from an earlier epoch, and the skirt flared out full from the waist, so that all I had to worry about was settling my chest into the bodice and arranging the sleeves right. It was designed to be worn off the shoulder, with the stiff green sleeves making a V across my breast and arms. I wrenched my arms awkwardly behind me to do up the hooks and eyes on the back, and was surprised to find the thing closing without any trouble.
	Istria, meanwhile, was off helping Aine with a pearl-gray dress she had found, that had a straight skirt, long sleeves, and a high neck--and therefore a number of inconvenient buttons. I walked to a mirror in the wall, my hreapa tucked awkwardly under one arm and the towel trailing from the other hand.
	I noticed that my hair was still wet, so I popped out some fire and began trying to dry it. This is, of course, a risky business, and requires great concentration; otherwise you end up smelling pretty bad and looking worse. So by the time I had the stuff dry enough that I didn’t quite look like a wet cat, Istria had already helped Aine discard her first, second and third choices and was now insisting that she stick with the brown outfit she had on, never mind about the way the trousers fit.
	I turned toward her. “I don’t know, Istri, I’m not sure I can wear this with a straight face.”
	Istria glanced over her shoulder. Then she abruptly abandoned Aine to her own devices and swiveled around, hands raised a little in front of her.
	“Oh please,” she said. “Please wear it.”
	“But Istri, I look ridiculous--”
	“Oh no you don’t.” She shook her head emphatically. “Trust me.”
	I got close enough to read her. “You really like it that much?”
	“More.”
	<Will it make you happy to look at me in it?> I asked, fiddling a little with the bodice as I looked up at her.
	<Yes.>
	<All right then.> She smiled. I rustled off into one of the other aisles.
	<Where are you going?>
	<To find you something.>
	It took a while, because as it turned out Istria was more stubborn than I was. She categorically refused to wear red or black, because those were Lythril’s colors, and that knocked out a lot of options. And she was almost as squeamish as Aine when it came to hemlines and necklines. She ended up in a two-piece like Aine’s--a pair of dark-blue trousers under a kind of tunic that wrapped in the front and flared out around the back like a long skirt. The tunic was in a more brilliant blue and had a lot of beading on it, which she objected to until I informed her that I was prepared to look at her pleadingly if necessary.
	So by the time we all assembled in the dining room, spirits were already running a little high--at least ours were. Aine was as usual self-conscious, but she seemed more or less comfortable talking to the other shriias and Sonnia and Sinal. Taric was out eating the game along with Ilean, Abiard, and the other members of the guard. It didn’t surprise me--the meat thing gave them a convenient excuse to skip a performance I think they would have found intensely uncomfortable. I don’t think Sinal would have been there either if it wasn’t for Sonnia, who had on something that was actually a man’s outfit, I think, from about ninety years ago, but which still looked better on her than her usual rusty black gear. 
	The table had been set with silver and china, but there had to be at least four different patterns of each. Accumulated, like the motley assortment of clothing we were drifting around in--the abandoned finery of dead eras, hanging awkwardly off bodies unused to it. The dining room, like the rest of the place, was too big and cavernous, with an enormous polished oak table glistening under the light globes and thick if motheaten tapestries doing something at least to soften the marble walls.
	“Do you believe all this?” Eorna said, indicating with a rueful glance her white muslin dress. “I stick with white, it makes me feel less...”
	“Stupid,” I finished, nodding.
	“But you must be used to all this,” she said.
	I shook my head. “Even when I was at home I never got used to it. And this is on a whole different level from what my family has.”
	Kelah, uncomfortable in a shapeless green dress that seemed too big for her, decided not to let that get by her. “I understand things get pretty fancy down at the Craoibh Oir,” she said. “You’ll have to let us know which fork to use first.”
	“At least wait until I’ve had a night’s sleep before you start in on me,” I snapped. 
	Eorna, who could read a clear thing when she saw it, stepped in. “So we’ve all been trying to figure out why Viecter puts everyone through this. It can’t be for the pleasure of ogling us.”
	“I don’t know about that,” Istria mused.
	Cualha appeared. “If he is ogling us I’d really rather not know about it.”
	“That’s not what I meant,” Istria said. “I think he likes the clothes--seeing them on people. It’s part of why he lives here. He’s a romantic. They like the old stuff.”
	Viecter put an end to all this by appearing in the doorway.
	“Everyone get seated, it’s ready,” he said, brushing his hands on an apron. “Sonnia, will you help me carry it in?” Sonnia followed him as if she were used to this. 
	“Nope,” Cualha said, as Istria pulled out the chair next to the one I’d chosen. “I promised Harani I would get the goods on you, and now I have to.” She plunked herself down next to me. “And I also promised Viecter he could flank you, so leave that chair.”
	What with the maneuvering, Istria ended up very far away, and very irritated. 
	<I’m getting very impatient with all this,> Istria sent me as Viecter and Sonnia returned with the food.
	<Well, we’re linked, it doesn’t matter,> I answered.
	<But look where I’m stuck.>
	Between Kelah and Umrin--not an enviable position. Meanwhile Sinal and Sonnia were chatting happily next to each other as Viecter began serving out the stew.
	“It’s very simple,” he said apologetically as the bowls circulated, “but you understand I’m not used to cooking for so many, I’ve had to make things stretch.”
	“I wouldn’t dream of complaining,” Jipthal said politely. “You’ve been so generous to us...” She took her first spoonful, brightening. “Anyhow, this is really good.”
	Viecter smiled. “Oh, I’m glad to hear you say so.”
	Aine chimed in assent. “It tastes like you’ve got illip in here--is that possible?”
	Viecter beamed at her. “It’s not fresh, of course, you can’t get the fresh this far from the ocean. But regional cuisine is sort of a hobby of mine...”
	And the conversation went on, while we ate our stew out of mismatched fine china with odd-sorted silver spoons. My relief at having access to some real food for once was soured somewhat by having to be grilled at length by both Viecter and Cualha--Cualha on my more recent exploits, and Viecter on my previous ones.
	“So that story you were going to tell us,” Cualha finally said, after I had told Viecter what I could remember about Ethir’s opening statement at Lythril’s first trial. “What was it happened to you after Aine got her fire?”
	I glanced at Viecter as I took a sip from my water glass. <I can’t tell you here.>
	<Even over the link?>
	<I want to tell everyone at once, and I don’t want to do it in front of the lay people. It’s personal, and it’s a shri matter.>
	I saw Cualha’s eyebrows rise.
	<And I suppose this is all going straight to Harani.>
	<You know what she’s like,> Cualha said, apologetically.
	I had to put down the glass now, and Viecter was on me. “So? What did happen?”
	“Viecter, that’s a long story and I’m not going to tell it right now,” I said. 
	Something about my tone managed to put him off. I felt Istria’s stare on me, and glanced up across the table. She was nodding at something Kelah was droning on about, but that wasn’t what her mind was on.
	<Thank you for wearing the dress,> she said. <You look beautiful.>
	I looked down, embarrassed if at the same time sort of pleased. Other people had, at various times in my life, tried to tell me that I looked well in something or other, but as long as I could remember I had never believed it. But I had to believe that Istria was telling the truth, because she told the truth to me, shri or no shri, and so somehow it must be that I was sitting here in one of those dresses that had never fit me and looking...beautiful...to her, at least.
	<You’re always beautiful, Istri,> I said.
	<So are you,> she answered. <In anything. I just...you look good in green.>
	I smiled into my bowl, hoping Cualha would think it was at whatever Viecter was saying.
	“...read my work?” he finished.
	“Oh--you mean the poem?” I finally said, unfortunately betraying my inattention.
	“Yes,” he nodded, not seeming to mind. “I’ve put a copy in your room--maybe you would talk to me about it, after you’ve had a chance to finish it?”
	“If I have the time,” I said. “You’ve been very generous to us--”
	“I understand you don’t like to make promises about the future,” Viecter said, nodding. “I know, I just--it would mean a lot to me, to know what you think of it.”
	I looked at him. “You know I’ll have to tell you the truth.”
	He nodded. “That’s why I want you to read it.”
	“All right then,” I said, returning gloomily to my stew.
	If it were prose, even, it wouldn’t be so bad. But bad poetry is something almost impossible to stomach, and it’s hard to put much of a gloss on your reaction, especially if it’s the kind that makes your head bleed. 
	<Don’t worry,> Istria said, having caught the conversation somehow. <I doubt we’ll have time to read it tonight.>
	I glanced back at Cualha, who appeared to be retrieving more questions from Harani. <I hope not.>
	Istria’s eyes, when I met them again, were dark with emotion that had nothing to do with what Umrin was saying to her. And I wondered what my face looked like. Because watching the shine of the beads on the fabric that moved over her breast and arms as she reached for her glass, I felt the sudden stir growing in me, spreading up down and through. And the light settled back onto her as she set the glass down and tossed her hair back a little from her face and the hunger turned in me and I thought so this is it, then, this is desire, and now that I’m burning with it I am of course stranded on the other side of this cruelly huge table and surrounded by people who much as I love some of them I wish right now were a hundred miles away or at least in the next room.
	“Harani wants to know how you’re doing it,” Cualha suddenly said. 
	“Doing what?” I asked, wrenching myself back to my immediate surroundings.
	Cualha wrinkled her nose a little. “Well, her exact phrasing was ‘keeping your virtue intact,’” she said.
	I sighed, and decided not to get angry with her for what she couldn’t help.
	“Tell Harani that if I tell her everything now I’ll have nothing left to tell her when I see her, and then what will she have to live for?”
	Cualha laughed and transmitted this. I returned to my stew.
	<How long does dinner usually last?> I asked, while Viecter geared up for a new line of questioning.
	<Longer than I want it to,> she answered. 
	<Do you have to void at all?> I ventured.
	<Is that supposed to be flirtatious banter?>
	<It’s just I do, and I’m about to excuse myself.>
	Istria turned back to answer Kelah. <I’ll follow you at a decent interval.>
	Before Viecter could get started, I said, “I’m sorry, Viecter--can you give me directions to the nearest privy?”
	“Out the door, turn left, past the parlor and it’s on the right side behind the door with the mosaic,” he said.
	“Thanks.” I stood up as quietly as I could. “I’ll be back.”
	I slipped down the deserted hall, listening to the conversation echoes wash back and forth fainter and fainter as I found the doorway he’d mentioned. 
	The room was dark, so I hung a globe after I closed the door. At first I thought I had come to the wrong place--it looked almost like a bedroom, with the couch, the vanity, and the mirror. Then I realized that there was a curtain that separated this portion from the actual business of voiding. Behind the curtain was the enclosed booth with the privy inside it. I pulled the frosted glass door shut, and sat down for a few moments of privacy.
	I was rinsing my hands in the basin in the lounge when I heard the sound of feet in the corridor. Opening the door, I poked my head out and saw Istria flying down the hallway, her skirt billowing behind her and her borrowed slippers pattering over the marble.
	She pulled up short, ducked into the doorway, and pulled the door shut, turning the latch. Her color was up and she was still breathless from running, and I was already halfway toward her before I thought to say, <Maybe you should catch your breath?>
	<Why bother,> she said, backing against the door and pulling me with her. <I’ll only lose it again.>
	Her hands skimmed along the neckline of the dress, over my shoulders and then down my breast as she pushed gently against my weight. My hands got lost in her still-damp hair; her beaded bodice rasped against the stiff linen on mine. The sound of fabric on fabric was strange, as was the feel of her studded tunic under my hands or the lining of my skirt brushing over my bare gleacha. But the strangeness of this place and these clothes only sharpened the pleasure of being finally as we should be, with my mouth full of her and her hands full of me and our bodies straining against each other under the globe.
	Even though she was still out of breath she wanted to use her voice, interrupted and slurred as it had to be by my interference. “I love...just...looking at you...”
	I told you, I said, my hands tightening on her gleacha as I pushed into her open mouth. That someday it wouldn’t hurt you to look at me.
	And her mouth ran wet and hot down my arched neck to the division of my breasts where they rose slightly in the cradle of the bodice and the tremor from my achmor was starting to shake my legs too as her mouth opened on my bared breast and the blood beat in my ears but damn it all it couldn’t beat louder than whoever was banging on the door.
	The knocking had the effect of an explosion. My whole body seized up and we sprang apart, both our hearts beating double-time but now for a different reason.
	“Theamh!” More banging. “What are you doing in there?”
	Rather than be humiliated by answering, I opened the door. “Look, Kelah, do want to void or are you just checking up on us?”
	“I’m checking up on you,” she said, flatly. “Istria, go back to the table, I need to talk to Theamh.”
	“The hell I will,” Istria snapped, crossing her arms over her chest.
	“All right then I’ll say it in front of you,” Kelah went on, transferring her bilious stare from Istria back to me. “It was bad enough your flouting the rules and running yourself into danger when things were normal. At a time like this it’s a million times worse. If you have any respect for Idair or shri you will for Idair’s sake control yourself. By Idair’s hair, it’s disgusting. The rest of us sitting there trying to have dinner and the two of you doing nothing but thinking about when you’ll get the chance to rut.”
	For a minute I thought Istria was actually going to strike her. But she looked at me first, so she stayed her hand.
	“Kelah,” I said, keeping my voice low. “You are older than me, you’re on the Council, and you’ve been true to your fire. Because of all that I’m not going to say what’s in my mind to say. But if you ever speak to me or Istria like that again I’m going to let you have it and I can be nasty when the anger takes me.” I lifted my hand. “Mo linn agam.”
	The light globe flew back to my hand. “Be disgusted if you want,” I said. “I can’t stop you. It’s not my fault if you don’t know a beautiful thing when you see it.”
	We pushed out the door, leaving Kelah behind, and made our way down the hall.
	<Interfering bitch,> Istria snapped, settling her tunic.
	<You remember, you said yourself, you can’t blame them...>
	<Cualha’s at least halfway polite about it.>
	<Courtesy is not something Kelah has ever been rich in.>
	Istria returned to her seat at the table, flush with embarrassment. Aine’s eyes were on me, although she was trying not to make it obvious. And Viecter, when I sat down, accosted me with a light in his eyes that I didn’t at all like the look of.
	“It must be very difficult,” he said in a stage whisper. “I admire your strength greatly--always have.”
	I put my elbows on the table and my head in my hands and wished we were all back in Dairc and away from these people.
	“It’s the great theme of my work,” he said. “The conflict between duty and love.”
	“Oh is it,” I answered dully.
	He nodded, not seeming to read my mood. “That’s why I was drawn to the trial--aside from it being exciting in itself, of course.” The others had finished their stew, and I was no longer interested in eating. “Well, time to clear the table--no, please, sit, I’ll do it.”
	He moved around the table gathering the bowls and then trotted into the kitchen. The only non-shriia now present was Sinal, and he would have to find out sometime.
	“Listen,” I said, trying to say it loud enough to get everyone’s attention. “There’s something very important I have to tell you about what happened to us after we came back to the country. And obviously none of you are going to leave us alone for even a minute until I do it, so--”
	“Who wants cake?” Viecter called out, suddenly popping back into the room carrying an enormous mound of iced something on a platter.
	“Damn,” I muttered, as the others began making a fuss over Viecter’s confection.
	It was like that all night. After the cake, Taric brought Abiard by to see us, and much as I was glad to get to catch up with him I was still on fire to tell the story so we could be let alone, but then Ilean brought the baby by and at that point Istria gave up and started taking Aine around trying to show her how to read back to the beginning just because it would distract her from thinking about what she wasn’t able to do with me. And by the time they got back it was late and Umrin and Jipthal had already gone off to make up the beds in their rooms and this was a conversation that I only wanted to have once. So then there it was--time to go to bed, and Cualha, Kelah and Eorna were still thoroughly convinced that it was their duty to Idair, shri, and us to separate us. And so, apparently, was Viecter, who not only put us in separate rooms but installed Istria at the extreme opposite end of the second story and put Kelah into the room next to me.
	As I withdrew resigned into my quarters, I could hear Istria still arguing as Viecter led her down the hall with Cualha in their wake. I slammed the door and sat down dejected on the edge of the bed.
	It was a nice bed. Big, feathery, with nice thick soft pillows and sheets and a white tassled canopy arching over the four dark carved posters. Right next to a little nightstand on which rested a bound copy of “A Shriia’s Way” by one Viecter mac hIrbirt.
	I couldn’t bring myself to pick it up. I flopped onto the bed with an aggrieved sigh.
	<Theamh?>
	<Istri?>
	<This stinks.>
	<Tell me about it.>
	<What are we going to do?>
	I kicked off my slippers. <I hate the thought of it, but I think we’ll just have to stick it until we can tell them. It’s too risky otherwise.>
	It was a minute before she agreed. <I know you’re right...I just hate it.>
	I stood up and started twisting around to unhook the back of my dress. <I do too...but remember, we lived for a year like this.>
	<Yes, but remember we couldn’t stand it.>
	<I know, but this is only one night.>
	<I know.>
	She was silent for a while. I finally got the hooks undone and began wriggling out of the thing, letting it fall to the floor in a rumpling swish. Stepping out of it, I unbundled my hreapa and hung it up on a peg in the closet. I climbed into the bed and pulled up the covers, blowing out the candle on the night stand.
	<So what do you think,> Istria said. <Is it better, or worse than before?>
	<It’s better, because we know we’ll be able at some point,> I said.
	<It’s worse, because now I can imagine what it’s like,> she countered.
	<All right, it’s both.>
	After a resigned pause, she said, <Well, the sooner we go to sleep the sooner it’ll be morning, I suppose.>
	<I suppose. Idair with you, Istri, I miss you.>
	<I miss you too. Take care in there.>
	We shut the link. I lay on my back looking up through the darkness at the canopy. Sleep persistently failed to come to me. I had had a lot of nights like this the year before Istria left--lying in bed trying not to think about her, failing miserably, getting up at dawn the next morning without a real night’s sleep. So after about an hour I knew it was no use.
	I hung a globe above the bed--carefully, where it wouldn’t ignite the canopy--and, with an unspoken curse, picked up “A Shriia’s Way.”
	It had been dedicated to Istria’s memory--a touching gesture, if ultimately misguided. I turned the flyleaf.

	Twas on a bitter wintry day
	When the curlew was on the wing
	That the two girls of whom I sing
	Did wend upon their winding way

	North to Amst’s cold and darkened caves
	Where Lythril and her minions lurked.
	So off they went, and neither shirked
	This task that was so hard and grave...

Well, my head wasn’t bleeding yet, but I wasn’t hopeful.
	The journey to Lythril’s lair took about twenty pages, most of which was description full of the worst motheaten moldy conventions about the hoar-frost twinkling on the trees and so forth. But things didn’t really take a turn for the worse until we met Lythril. Because once that happened, there was dialogue.

	“By darkness!” quoth the sorceress,
	“Ye shall not enter my demesne
	Until ye make your reasons plain
	And your desires you do confess.”

	Then spake chaste Theamh, “Mistress of
	The night and darkness, we are two
	Who cannot do as we would do,
	For Idair saith we cannot love.”

	And as the witch’s burning gaze
	Fell on th’hot-tempered Amstian maid,
	Thus spake Istria, unafraid:
	“So we would walk the Dark One’s ways.”

I tossed the book onto the floor and fell back exasperated on the pillow.
	<Theamh?>
	How convenient that she hit her breaking point at the same time I had. <Hail and well met, my hot-tempered Amstian maid.>
	<You’ve started it then.>
	<Iandar’s trousers. How do people have the patience to write this drivel?>
	<I don’t know. I can’t even find the patience to fall asleep with.>
	<Neither can I.>
	She was quiet for a moment.
	<What are you doing now, chara?>
	It was a plaintive little question, that made my heart move for her. <Well, I’m lying here in this bed looking up at my light globe and thinking about how much better it would be if you were in here with me.>
	<That’s exactly what I’m doing, only I’m in the dark.>
	I sighed, sitting up in bed. I was restless now, and giving up on the idea of sleep.
	<What’s your room like?> I asked.
	<Too nice for the likes of me,> she answered. <I’m half afraid to be in this bed, the sheets are that white. You suppose Viecter does his own laundry?>
	<Unlikely.> I got up, thinking maybe my body would let up on me if I gave it something to do. There was a long mirror on the wall opposite the bed, enormous and gilt-edged. I stood in front of it, moving the light globe so I could see a little better.
	I have no mirrors at home; they’re complicated to make and I don’t like looking at myself. But I was curious to see what I looked like now.
	The face that looked back at me looked like it should--pale, with marked red eyebrows and a dense pattern of freckles over the bridge of the nose and cheeks. My hair fell around it in a tangled orange cloud, rumpled and crimped from going to bed with it still slightly damp. Underneath that, things were different.
	The extra envelope of flesh was gone. I could see my ribs. My hipbones and collarbones had reappeared. I still had heft in my hips and my chest; solid thighs and calves that kept me from seeming too fragile. But I was startled to see what had disappeared.
	<What are you doing now, chara?> Istria finally said, again.
	<I’m looking at myself in the mirror,> I answered. 
	<Let me see you?>
	I let her bleed in so she could look out through my eyes at the reflection.
	Seeing her in my eyes was strange--the reflected face took on this look that didn’t belong to me, made of elements I couldn’t quite identify, except that it seemed like desire and compassion were both there.
	<That’s it, I’m coming over.>
	<Istri, you can’t, they’ll just catch you in the hallway and make a big scene.>
	I moved a hand over the bones at my throat, a little frightened at how sharp they seemed.
	<I’ve got the bag with me,> Istria said. <And the shields are still in the bag.>
	I knew I should have kept on discouraging her, but when I heard this my heart suddenly leapt.
	<But you’d still have to get out of your room...>
	<There’s no one at my end of the wing, they’ll never notice me slipping out.>
	<But Kelah will hear my door opening.>
	<The privy’s down at your end--you could go out to void, and then I could follow you in when you went back to your room.>
	She could see the hope on my face, and she knew she had me, and I knew she had me, and that after all I had been angling for her too, in my own unconscious way.
	<All right, but we better wait until I really have to go, so if she asks I can tell her.>
	<But that could be hours,> she said.
	<I drank a lot of water at dinner,> I answered.
	<Let me know when you’re ready.>
	We shut the link. I was left looking at myself, with just my own eyes.
	For so long, growing up, I had wanted to be thin. It seemed like my body was nothing but a problem, and the more of it there was the bigger a problem it became. My mother had delivered long, complex tirades to me every time the dressmaker came by about how much it cost to keep making new dresses for me as I got too big for the old ones and how someday nobody would be able to make clothes for me any more. I would cry afterward, lying on my bed, wishing that I could shrink away into nothing, or back into my child’s thin unripe body. If this had happened then, I would have hailed it as a miracle, Idair’s way of trying to do the impossible and make my mother happy about me.
	Now, I found it disturbing. It bothered me that I looked like someone else, someone who wouldn’t have made my mother unhappy or had to bring the dressmakers back out to the house too often or wished her body away. And it bothered me to know that what it took to change my body from something wrong to something right was a month of starvation, torture and black despair. Transformed by evil into the thing she wanted. And looking to transform back as soon as I could do it.
	But that was something, wasn’t it. To realize that there was a body I had grown comfortable with, that I liked better than this one. That somehow, between leaving home and winding up in that padded cell, I had made my peace and accepted the burden of flesh.
	<All right, Istri, I’m ready.>
	<That was quick.>
	<Must be all the excitement.>
	Because I was excited, thinking she would be coming to me soon, that she wanted to come to me, that even though that first night she had shed those tears for the flesh that had been starved off me she loved this body as much as the one she had met me in. 
	<I’m ready. Let’s roll.>
	She told me later that this was something she had picked up from “The Enforcer.” At the time I had to get the meaning from context. Trying to assume nonchalance, I wrapped myself in a robe I found in the closet and stepped into the hall toward the privy.
	I left the door to my room open. When I emerged after doing my business, I saw Kelah’s open next to it.
	“Where have you been?” she demanded, suspicious.
	“Voiding,” I whispered. “Good rest to you, Kelah, I’m sorry to have woken you.”
	Sorrier than I hoped she knew. Kelah watched me return to the room and close the door behind me, then shut her own.
	<Istri?> I glanced around and saw no one, but then that didn’t mean much.
	<I’m here, chara.>
	<Let me see you.>
	The air between me and the bed shivered. Her head appeared first, then her bare shoulders, and then her breast and hips as it dawned on me gradually that under the shield she hadn’t put on anything at all.
	She smiled as she saw me realizing, with that look she always had whenever she was proud to be doing something she knew she wasn’t supposed be doing. Which look had always gone right to my heart.
	I was kissing her before I could get the thought off. <You’re a brave, beautiful woman and I love you like no one else.>
	Her hands worked at the robe and it fell off me. She kicked her feet out of the shield, which landed on top of my piled-up green dress. <I get my courage from you.>
	It was better to be naked. No question. Because nice and all as finery was, she looked felt tasted smelled so much better in her skin than she could have in anything else. And because my bare body could meet hers with that beautiful immediate shock, skin on skin like fire on fire, warming to her as she warmed to me, changing as she changed.
	<You find it in yourself,> I said, hissing out the tremor her touch put in me. <You were always brave and beautiful, before me, long before.>
	<I can be it because you see it,> she insisted.
	And it seemed like there was some truth to that, if not for her then for me, because I knew I was becoming something only she could make possible. That if I had always been, even young, ardent, burning, hungry to love, the only one who saw that besides Idair was Istria, and now here I was after five years of fire learning because she loved me enough to show me how to be that flame I had carried, how to burn into who I was.
	you are were will be
	ah Theamh
	beautiful
	like you
	brave
	like you
	 I couldn’t trust myself to stand any more; my whole body was dissolving into hunger. When we bumped against the nightstand the flash of pain where the corner hit my leg broke in on me and I drew back.
	chara, are you all
	Istria watched me in a kind of concerned confusion, wondering if she had hurt me somehow. Until she realized I was only climbing onto the bed, and followed me over.
	<I should take the fire back.> I rose on my knees on the bedspread, reaching one arm up toward the canopy.
	Before I reached it her arms were around me and her breast and belly against my back. My arm dropped; my head arched back as her mouth searched up the side of my neck. My gleacha pushed into her hips, searching suddenly for the heat radiating from her soft curled triangle right through my flesh to mine.
	I dropped forward, my breasts falling into her hands as I slid flat along the sheets. She was all around me. The backs of my legs, the nape of my neck, my shoulder blades, the small of my back--touching down on all the places, too much and too many to name. 
	My hips lifted up against hers, and one of her hands slipped down the space between my belly and the bed to where I was waiting for her in my own sudden heat. The other slid out around and up the back of my neck into my hair while her mouth ran down along the hollow of my spine. My head twisted to the side for air. Hers ran up my neck until her mouth closed over my ear.
	And she didn’t ask because she knew like I knew that this is what I had been wanting, to have her everywhere, breathing warm and wet right into me, stroking through the heat toward that other heart, to be wrapped up in her and nothing else. To be searching with my eager mouth for something else to take in, because I wanted her there too, to close it over her hand as it slipped off my shoulder and into reach. To feel more than hear the changes in breath voice strength heat, to know that every inch of my skin and everything inside it was changing with her.
	“Ahth...ah Theamh...”
	“Istri...”
	We shouldn’t have used our voices but I couldn’t help it, there had to be some way for all of this to take shape, this was a cry that couldn’t be made with the mind. Because language now wasn’t living in my mind, but in my mouth, my throat, my speaking body.
	<Dhiaoc.>
	When it came to me at first I literally didn’t know what it was. Then somehow my mind cohered long enough to realize Aine was calling me.
	<Aine.> I had no idea how well I was controlling the link; I could only hope she couldn’t hear me breathing. <This better be important.>
	<Dhiaoc, she’s not listening to me-->
	There was a resounding crack as the door swung in, and the sound of loud cursing.
	I couldn’t at first see who it was, since my head was turned the other way. What I noticed was that I was now exposed both to the cold air and to the blast of Kengdan profanity that was ripping through the open doorway.
	Istria had slid off me and was hunkering down into the bedclothes, shaking violently and staring toward the doorway with the white eyes of a cornered animal. It wasn’t until I saw Kelah standing in the doorway in her shift that I really grasped what was happening.
	“What the thurking hell are you doing?” I shouted.
	“You’re asking me!” she shouted, her face distorted in rage.
	Aine was visible in the hallway behind her, although she couldn’t get past Kelah, who had the doorway blocked off with her arms. “Dhiaoc, I’m sorry, I tried to stop her--”
	“It’s not your fault, Aine,” I said, resigned. “Go on back to bed.”
	“And after you swore you wouldn’t go shrimarbh at a time like--” Kelah railed on.
	I lurched up onto my knees, stretching a hand up. This meant exposing myself to Kelah, but for some reason I didn’t care about that. I suppose I figured the damage was already done, and at this point it bothered her more than it bothered me.
	“Mo linn agam!”
	The globe above us dropped into my hand. Kelah looked at it.
	“You see, I’m all right,” I said, my breath unruly in my throat. “Now thurk off.”
	“Lucky I got here when I did then,” she said. 
	I leapt off the bed with an oath that could take the paint off a house. Kelah froze.
	“All right, that’s it!” I shouted, in a voice that I was sure would echo through most of the wing. “You go wake up all the other shriias in here and tell them I want to see all of you down in the kitchen because I’ve got a message for you all from Idair and I’m not going to wait another thurking minute to deliver it!”
	Aine says that at that moment I was actually unrecognizable. That something was coming through my words and my face that wasn’t just me. I know she thinks it was Idair, although she won’t say that because she knows it would bother me. I don’t think it was Idair. I would rather think that was my own high anger, on my behalf but more for Istria, and that it was enough to make Kelah turn around and go do what I had told her.
	“And shut the door!”
	It was Aine who pushed the door closed; Kelah was already gone. I went back to the bed and Istria, who had pulled the sheet over her head and was shaking underneath it.
	“Istri?”
	The part where her head was shook.
	“Istri, will you look at me?”
	Slowly she pulled the sheet back from over her head.
	The trauma and shock in her face hit me in the stomach, and made me even angrier. I crouched down on the bed so I could look at her, and put a hand carefully out to stroke her hair. I knew that I was acting toward her as you would act toward an animal that had been hurt, that you needed to convince to trust you so you could get it inside to safety. Because that’s what she seemed like, still.
	“Istri, I’m going to go tell them the story so they’ll leave us alone,” I said.
	She stared back at me, silent, and nodded once.
	I really didn’t want to leave her, but I knew I had to. I tried to look into her, even though I wasn’t sure I would be able to look past the fear. 
	“Stay here,” I said, pleading. “Just...please, wait here, until I get back. I’ll make it as fast as I can.”
	She didn’t answer, except for looking at me out of those big terrified eyes.
	“Istri.” I didn’t know what else to say. “It doesn’t matter what she thinks, or what they think. You’re beautiful and brave and what we do is beautiful and Idair knows it and so do we. I love you.” Because I knew she wasn’t going to answer, I got off the bed, pulling my hreapa off the peg and pinning it around me. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
	I left the room, closed the door, and went down the stairs toward the kitchen, anger mounting in me as my bare feet stomped across the cold stone floors.
	They were already down there, and there was already a lot of argument.
	“...breach of responsibility equaled only by--” came Kelah’s voice.
	“What do you mean, barging in on them like that?” Aine was angry. Very angry, and since the others hadn’t seen that happen yet they were set back by it. “Are you that jealous of them, that you have to humiliate them like that?”
	Kelah was too shocked to retort, but Cualha stepped into the breach. “She’s just trying to stop Theamh from making a serious mistake,” she said, trying to sound patient.
	“Tarbhfnaa,” Aine snapped. 
	“For a shriia without a hreapa, you’ve got a lot of nerve talking back to the council that way.” Kelah had found her voice, apparently.
	“If you want respect, then why don’t you earn it!”
	That was Eorna. I didn’t know her at all; maybe she and Kelah had issues. It was all moot now anyway, because they saw me walking in and suddenly the room was crushed in the icy vise of silence.
	I stood at one end of the table. The rest of them were sitting around it, all silent, all staring at me. Umrin, Jipthal, Cualha, Kelah, Eorna, and Aine. 
	“Aine, come up and try me,” I said.
	Aine got out of her seat. We made fire with our left hands, touching with our right. When I figured they’d gotten the point I drew mine back. 
	“You’ll have to try the others,” I said. “Right now I wouldn’t touch Kelah if she were covered in honey.”
	Aine went around the table dutifully. The others didn’t understand why I was going through this. I wanted them to have the results fresh in their minds before they heard the story.
	Aine finished trying them and resumed her seat, looking up at me and trying to give me strength.
	“This is what’s going to happen,” I said, my voice cold although my anger was still raging. “I’m going to start with how Aine got her fire and I’m going to tell the story all the way through to the rosebush and no matter how outlandish things get nobody is going to interrupt me until I say I’m finished. When I’m done I’ll answer five minutes’ worth of questions and then I’m going back upstairs. And tomorrow when we’ve all had a chance to recuperate Kelah will deliver an abject, ornate, sincere apology to me and Istria.”
	“As if--” Kelah began.
	“Shut up!”
	Cualha looked very alarmed. I hadn’t had much contact with her, but I suppose she knew me through Harani, and although I had, as Barant used to put it, “authority issues,” I had never been this openly insubordinate. And yet they sat and waited for me to start--even Kelah. Because they were starting to have the feeling that this wasn’t just about me.
	I told the whole story, as I had said I would. I tried to look mostly at Aine, since I knew I could count on her. When I got to the part about our having sex there was a lot of unspoken resistance and disbelief, but I paid it no mind. Because I figured once I got to the part about meeting Idair that would be harder, and I was right.
	Until I got to the saying. And I could see them listening, and knowing her through the words, and things began changing. I didn’t want to pay too much attention; I plowed through the description of finding the rosebush. And then when I put a hand up to my hair, I found the rose there, stuck loose into the hair I had tucked behind my ear.
	“This is the rose I plucked off that bush,” I said, handing it to Aine. “You can see it’s real. You’ve heard the saying. You’ve seen my fire. You know that I believe that what I say is the truth. I am telling you now that I have had sex, a number of times, and I still have my fire. So whatever you believe or don’t believe, one thing is certain. Sex is not a loss violation. If it were, I would be shrimarbh. And I’m not.”
	I popped fire out of both hands for emphasis. They all stared at me. 
	“Any questions?” I said.
	There was a dead silence.
	“Did you suspect that when you...when you...” Eorna was embarrassed, but she seemed to really want to know.
	“No, I didn’t,” I said. “I thought I would lose my fire. I wouldn’t maybe have found this out if Aine hadn’t made me test myself afterward.”
	This was all Kelah needed. “So you did this believing you would go shrimarbh?”
	“Yes.”
	“So you really are as irresponsible as I thought you were,” she said.
	The others were on her before I could even get there. The only voice I could pick out of the hubbub was Aine’s, which rose above the others and went on for longer.
	“...don’t know what they’ve been through!” she was still shouting when the others had subsided. “I’m grateful she waited till I had my fire because she’s a good diaoc and she’s a strong woman. If you think you’ve got the right to tell her she should have waited until Idair came down in a big pink cloud to tell her it was all right, well, then, well, you--you just suck!” 
	Eorna laughed; Cualha looked like maybe she would like to, but couldn’t get over her sense of decorum. Umrin forestalled Kelah’s retort with a sudden gravity I wouldn’t have seen in her.
	“Kelah,” she said, heavily. “Do you not see that we’re being given something here. Something precious that hasn’t happened in hundreds and hundreds of years.” She passed the rose to Japthil. “Idair has spoken to us. Can you try to grasp that for a minute?”
	Kelah was not to be put off. “Idair my gleacha! If it was Idair why didn’t she say something useful? What does it matter to us if Theamh can have sex or if her mother loves her?”
	“Idair’s boots, Kelah, how do you fit anything into a mind that narrow?”
	This little explosion proceeded from Eorna’s corner. While Kelah was still staring in shock, Eorna went on. “Were you listening? There is so much more in there than just the new instruction--we’ll be another kyelran figuring out what that all means. At least I will be. I guess you think you know it all already.”
	“Like what?” Kelah demanded.
	“Like what she said about the Dark One being part of her,” Eorna shot back.
	Kelah snorted. “She could have told us how to win this thurking war, if she were that concerned.”
	Eorna slammed a hand down on the table. “She has, don’t you see that?”
	“I’m afraid I don’t see it either,” Cualha said, meekly.
	“We’re fighting this enemy, we don’t know what it is, where it comes from, none of us have ever seen or dealt with it,” Eorna went on. “She’s just told us what the Dark One is. All right, we don’t understand it right now. But if we think about it instead of bitching about responsibility and respect, someday we will understand it--and that will change everything.”
	I had to admit this had not occurred to me. I felt like a fool for having been so focused on what she was telling me about love that I hadn’t even thought about the rest of what she’d told me about the Dark One and how she’d made the world. It did seem, as I looked back on what she had said to me, that there was a lot in there. And the seriousness of it all hit me suddenly in a way it hadn’t before.
	“So you believe this,” Kelah said bitterly. “Instead of believing, for instance, that Theamh dreamed it all so she’d be able to feel good about this dereliction of duty.”
	“She’s still got her fire, hasn’t she?” Aine snapped.
	“So sex isn’t a loss violation,” Kelah conceded. “That doesn’t mean all that happened.”
	The wave of anger and refusal that crested against Kelah’s stubborn insistence on unbelief convinced me that my work was pretty much done. They had seen Idair in her words, and known it had to be her, and they were convinced. So all I could really do that was useful would be get upstairs and try to talk Istria out of her shock.
	“You can believe what you want,” I said. “But I’m going back upstairs to the woman I love, and if anyone else feels a burning need to drop by in the middle of the night, well, you better thurking knock.”
	I swept out of the kitchen, their voices pattering behind me.
	“I still think she’s out of her mind,” Kelah insisted.
	“Kelah, she met Idair,” Eorna replied. “You cannot expect her to be normal.”
	“Well Idair knows she’s never been normal,” Kelah retorted.
	“I’ve had about enough.” I hurried down the corridor as Cualha finally lost her patience. “If you can’t admit you’re jealous--yes, you are jealous, Kelah, don’t deny it or you’ll lose your fire--anyhow it was your choice to piss away your career on petty political tarbhfnaa, don’t go crying to us about it...”
	I was glad to escape up the stairwell, and down the hallway to my room. I opened the door quietly, sliding in carefully so as not to startle her.
	“Istri?”
	An examination of the bedclothes did not turn her up. She wasn’t in the closet. The robe I had put on to go out to the privy was not on the floor where I’d left it, and the shield was no longer making a hole of invisibility on top of my discarded dress.
	<Istri, where are you?>
	She didn’t answer. I satisfied myself again that she wasn’t hiding somewhere in the room, and went back out in the corridor.
	<Istri, talk to me.>
	Still nothing. I went to her room at the other end, but she wasn’t in that one either.
	<Istri, if you’re safe, answer me.>
	Nothing.
	<Listen, Istri.> I moved back down toward the stairwell. <Lythril is abroad somewhere and so are Barant’s minions. Now if you don’t tell me you’re all right I’m going to start thinking something has happened to you and then I’ll have to get them all to start helping me search.>
	<I’m safe.>
	That was all she would tell me. I stopped in the middle of the hallway, not sure what to do next.
	<Istri, please, tell me where you are.>
	<I want to be alone.>
	<I don’t.>
	<Theamh, I’m all right, just leave me alone.>
	She wasn’t all right. She was as masked as she could get but the pain was still coming through to me. And when she said she wanted to be alone she was saying the truth, but then again I thought she might also not be.
	I thought about where she would go. Not downstairs where the public spaces were, not into one of the bedrooms, not down the other wing where Viecter and the others were. She’d go up. Probably as far up as she could get, to someplace remote.
	I climbed the stairs up to the northern tower.
	There were a lot of them; the tower was two stories taller than the rest of the house, just like its counterpart on the south wing. If she wasn’t in this tower I would have to climb back down, cross at the baths and go up the other staircase to try the other one. 
	I pushed the door open at the top of the stairs and stepped into the round room. 
	It was a simple design, simpler than the rest of the house--one round room with large bay windows on all four sides over a circular window seat that probably had once had cushions on it. The place was dusty; I could see tracks on the stone floor. Two sets; Sonnia and Viecter, probably, coming up to look at it while we were talking shop. Nothing that looked like her.
	I stood by the southern window, looking across the roof of the house at the other tower. It looked far away, cold and remote in the scant moonlight.
	“Istri?” I said.
	There was no answer.
	I pulled a light globe out of my hand and stood in the window, lifting it up so it would be visible from the other tower.
	<Istri.>
	She didn’t answer, but somehow I could tell she was there anyway.
	<If you can see my light, tell me.>
	There was a pause, while my heart began sinking.
	<I see it,> she finally said.
	<Will you wait till I bring it to you,> I asked.
	Grief burst in her mind, and all she got out was, <Theamh.>
	<Hold on,> I said. <I’m coming.>
	I took the light back and went clattering down the stairs, all the way to the first floor. Then running across the wet marble surface of the baths, nearly slipping and braining myself, slowing down, speeding up again as I got into the other stairwell, and arriving at the second round room much out of breath.
	I pulled out the globe before I nudged the door open, holding it in front of me so that she could see me clearly the moment I emerged. 
	“Istri,” I said, quietly, looking at the single set of footprints in the dust.
	I heard the sound of sobbing.
	“Please,” I said. “Let me see you.”
	This time she appeared suddenly in abrupt installments as she tore the thing off, crying with rage and grief. She was huddled up on the seat by the northern window, my robe wrapped around her, her face stained with tears.
	I hung the globe near the roof of the tower and slid onto the seat next to her.
	“I’m sorry,” she cried, hiding her face in her hands. “I’m sorry.”
	“It’s not your fault,” I said, not knowing what ‘it’ was but trusting that what I said was true.
	She shook her head. “I shouldn’t be like this to you--I shouldn’t--”
	I took her hands, bringing them gently down from her face. She looked up at me, ravaged and pale.
	“Ah Idair’s mercy, Istri,” I said. 
	Hearing the compassion in my voice brought out a fresh flood of angry tears. “I didn’t mean--to run away--not from you--”
	I put my arms around her. She huddled into me, bending her dark head on my shoulder.
	“I don’t know--why--I’m doing this--”
	“Istri...”
	She looked up at me.
	“When you were twelve years old you had to go down to the town square and tell your entire village who was thurking you, when, how, and how often,” I said, finding my own voice unsteady. “I don’t--I don’t know, still, how you got the nerve to do that. I can’t know what it was like. I just--know--it’s got to have left a mark, and--having Kelah drag us into public like that--”
	She started crying harder. I took this as a sign that maybe what I was saying made some kind of sense. I wasn’t at all sure. And even if I were right, I didn’t know what I could do, besides hold her and try to make her know it would be all right.
	For a long time all I heard was her crying. And then she said, her voice muffled against my shoulder, “Will you sing it for me?”
	“What, chara?”
	She lifted her eyes to me. “The seanstiobhi.”
	I put my arms around her, wondering if maybe my heart would just burst when I took more of this on than I was already, willing to take the risk. 
	This should not surprise you, daughter,
	Watch a pebble break the water...
	I wasn’t far into it before it hit me. The animal shock that she’d felt, that I’d seen, the hissing contraction of her violated flesh around that tight painful core of shame. What happens when suddenly you’re brought back to a place you thought you had left forever. Fear wrapping its cold hand around the throat--fear of pain, of violation, of humiliation, fear tightening its electric grip, fear freezing veins solid all the way--almost--to the heart.
	...share the burden out with me,
	give me half and be half free...
	And the fear broke up into grief, sorrow for the child she was and the woman she’d had to become too early, melting like snow in the spring into a torrent of tears and wordless pain. And now instead of pulling back she was warming toward me, anchoring herself on my shoulders, trying to kiss me with a mouth still open and crying. And my heart found something in me that answered this, tears for tears, groping toward her to at least share a grief that it couldn’t understand.
	Theamh
	I’m here 
	hold me
	I am
	hold me there
	I slipped my hand down under the robe. When I cupped her in my hand, as gently as I could do it, the cry changed key.
	hold me
	I am
	you love me
	I do
	please
	just ask, Istri
	speak it
	“I love you, Istria.”
	She was still crying too hard to speak, but it was changing. I know.
	She knew. But there was that tight painful core, closed in on itself, hurt, throbbing, not wanting to know.
	“I’ve loved you for so many years...”
	I moved my hand, just gently, to remind her it was there.
	I love you too
	“I love you now more than ever...”
	Oh Theamh
	“And I’ll always love you, while I live...”
	I know    I will
	“You...and your strength...and your wounds...everything that’s been hurt...everything that’s survived...everything that’s you...brave and beautiful, like I said...”
	Theamh
	And we sat there for a long time up in the tower, and I could tell you all the things I said to her but they wouldn’t mean much to you, it’s the same thing over and over, read out on the page it’s boring as milk but it’s not boring when you’re living it and when you know that every time you say it she gets a little closer to all right and that as long as your life and your happiness and hers depend on your holding her and saying yes, I’m here, where he was, yes, I can hold you here, where you’ve been hurt so badly, and tell you, so that you know it’s true, that I love you, that you are something to love, brave and beautiful, a miracle, Istria, nothing less than that, then you’re going to do it, till the sun comes up if that’s as long as it takes.
	But as it turned out it didn’t take that long, and when she was ready to go back it was still black night, and I still had to use my fire to guide us down the stairs, her leaning on my shoulder with an arm around my waist, both of us feeling weak as water.
	We reached the bottom of the stairwell and began making the trek across the baths to the other wing. We could have gone out into the hall, I suppose, but I thought maybe it would calm me down to go back there. We were both so exhausted that we didn’t see the two figures in the northwest corner until they saw us--and we might not have noticed them, except that Sonnia still didn’t know enough to keep quiet when she was discovered.
	“Oh fnaa--Sinal, it’s your sister--”
	Sinal, seeing Istria’s face suddenly leap from exhaustion to outrage, slid off the bench and under the water.
	“You’re going to have to come up for air sometime!” Istria shouted.
	“We were just talking,” Sonnia said, crossing her arms over her naked chest.
	“My gleacha!”
	Sinal poked his head timidly out of the water. “Don’t talk to her that way.”
	“I’ll talk to her how I want,” Istria snapped.
	“Don’t,” Sinal said, his chin quivering as he stood his ground. “I love her.”
	Istria was too thunderstruck to retort, which gave me an opening.
	“Come on, Istria.” <Remember how much we liked it when it happened to us.>
	She wasn’t to be persuaded. <It’s not the same thing--he’s a child-->
	<He’s the age you were when we fell in love.>
	Istria blinked.
	“Come on,” I said, trying to nudge her along. “Come on, you can take it out of their hides tomorrow. Come on.”
	Istria allowed me to walk her along, contenting herself with a baleful backward glance at the two of them, now no more than heads poking out of the water.
	“Oh man,” I heard Sonnia murmuring. “Is she ever going to kick my gleacha.”
	<Damn right,> Istria added as we finally made it into the hallway.
	<It’s unfortunate that she’s still lying under duress,> I observed.
	<Oh, is that what strikes you as most unfortunate?>
	<The boy’s got to grow up sometime, Istri.>
	A door opened on the hallway, two down from mine. Aine’s rumpled brown head emerged from it, and a light globe in one sleepy hand.
	“You found her then,” she said.
	“Yes,” I answered, not asking how she knew I was looking.
	“Are you all right, Theamh?”
	I looked at her, blinking into her own light, exhausted but still waiting up for me.
	“I’m all right, Aine. Thanks.”
	“I’m sorry,” she said, addressing herself this time to Istria. “I tried to stop her going in there, but she wouldn’t listen to me.”
	“Thank you,” Istria said. “I--”
	She broke off, and stood up away from me, getting ready to say something real. Aine rubbed her eyes with her non-burning hand.
	“I know Theamh...is really touched...by how you are about this,” Istria said, the words coming ragged from a raw throat. “It means a lot to her. And I want you to know...it means a lot to me too.”
	“I’m sorry now I was jealous of you, at first,” Aine said, waking up so she could be as earnest as she felt the occasion asked her to be. “You make her so happy, and--you’ve been a good friend to me--it’s--” She shook her head a little, trying to settle what she wanted to say. “It’s like--I felt, at first, like you were going to take her away from me but...” We waited, a little embarrassed but wanting to respect her need to get it out. 
	“With you she’s how she should be,” Aine said, talking to Istria and forgetting, I think because she had to, that I could hear her. “So you gave her back to me. To all of us. If I weren’t grateful for that, I’d be...I’d be an ingrate...I’d be stupid...I’d be Kelah.”
	If she hadn’t been so tired she maybe wouldn’t have said it, but having said it--and said it as if that were the worst you could be--she didn’t disown it, or the laugh we met it with.
	“And thank Idair you’re none of those things,” I said. “Good rest to you, Aine. See you tomorrow at dawn.”
	“See you then.” She ducked back into her room and closed the door.
	We went back to my room. She took off her robe; I put my hreapa back on the peg, and we crawled gratefully into bed.
	<Well,> I said, as she curled up on me. <At least now they’ve got something to talk about.>
	<You know,> Istria murmured as we sank toward sleep, <that Cualha’s going to be telling Harani as soon as she can raise her.>
	My eyes sprang wide open.
	<Night, Theamh.>
	I looked at her. Her eyes were closed, but she was smiling.
	Ah well. At least Viecter might take less of an interest in us once he learned that love and duty had finally kissed and made up. At least as far as shri was concerned.

XIX.
Back To Life

	“So we’re...here.” Aine put her finger on a gray straggling line that represented the Sharptooth Mountains. “Farther north than we wanted to be--since Amranth is over here.”
	“On the other hand,” I said, “it’s not a bad thing to approach from the north.”
	Aine looked at me puzzled. “But that’s where the walls are strongest and highest--I mean, wouldn’t it be? Since they were building against the Cretids.”
	“They were, but that’s not where the threat is,” I said. “And we’re working against the army, not against the city. The people in charge of that siege know that when trouble comes it’ll come from the east or the south--from Dairc or Jipran. The one place they would skimp if they had to is the north side. They know reinforcements won’t be coming from there--and it’s not as if anyone’s going to go looking for provisions up in the Zone.”
	I glanced across the kitchen at Istria, who was sitting by the fireplace with Sinal. They weren’t speaking, but that didn’t mean they weren’t talking. And they probably were, because if it were just a staring contest someone would have won by now.
	I would have liked to ask her opinion, but she was busy, and it could wait. I returned my attention to the map on the table. It was an old map, an antique Viecter had dredged out of a closet somewhere. Even when this map was made, Ancinte hadn’t been large enough to merit a name. But by following the rivers, hills, and other features, I could pinpoint the place where it was. Almost due south of here, in the foothills of the Sharptooths with its back up against Mount Caraig. No longer on our way.
	“It would be a detour,” Aine said, having followed my eyes.
	“I know,” I said. “I’m thinking maybe it should be a separate trip altogether.”
	“What do you mean?”
	“Kelah’s going to be coming with us,” I said. “It’s been a long time since she’s been in active practice; it might be a good idea to get her warmed up a little.”
	Aine hid her distaste for the pun. “Do like a trial run down there, you mean?”
	I nodded. “It’s not a long journey, and if something goes spectacularly wrong we can always retreat back to here.”
	“Spectacularly wrong,” Aine mused. “You mean, for instance, suppose she’s so hung up on not speaking to you that she doesn’t warn you that the thing is coming for you, and you get thrown a mile over the mountains to break your back on a hillock?”
	“She can’t keep this up forever,” I said. “I mean, anything’s possible, but--Idair wouldn’t have left her her fire if she were going to be completely useless, would she?”
	Kelah came through the doorway. Studiously refusing to look at me or Aine, she lifted a mug of milk from the hob where she had left it and exited without a word.
	“You tell me,” Aine said, watching her retreat.
	“I don’t get it,” I answered. “If she doesn’t want to apologize, well, that’s her affair, but why be like this about it?”
	Kelah moved back into the kitchen, having forgotten to take a saucer with her.
	“I don’t know,” Aine said, glancing up at her. “Maybe it’s because you remind her of what a petty and small-souled timewaster she’s always been.”
	“All right, Aine, that’s unnecessary,” I said, a little sharply. “I’m sorry, Kelah--she’s attached to me, and very protective.”
	Kelah found a saucer and left without looking at me.
	“I don’t want her coming,” Aine said flatly. “I don’t trust her and I don’t see how we can work with her in the mood she’s in.”
	“We need help, and she’s what Idair’s given us,” I said. “Umrin and Japthil are away to steal back their hreapas. Eorna needs to work on the waterglobe, and Cualha has no talent for this kind of thing. Kelah trained for this, and she’s more experienced than me. She’s the right woman for the job if only she weren’t so bloody-minded.”
	Aine returned gloomily to the contemplation of the map. In the silence I heard Istria’s voice.
	“All right, Sinal?”
	Sinal stood, as she got to her feet. He was snuffling a little bit.
	“All right, Istri.”
	Istria took him in her arms for a moment. “Now go and talk to Sonnia.”
	Sinal left. Istria joined us at the table.
	“Talk to Sonnia about what?”
	“He’s going to bring her with us to Ancinte,” she said. 
	I looked at her.
	“Don’t look at me like that, Theamh.” Now Aine was looking at her too. “He’s promised me he’ll stay behind with Varen and Dohem, and since he’s so damn attached to her she should stay with him.”
	“Of course,” I said. “And I suppose you wouldn’t say, maybe, that you’re hoping that Varen will put the wind up her inside of the first five minutes?”
	“He says he loves her,” Istria said, exasperated. “Sonnia may as well learn right now what she’s trifling with.”
	“How do you know she’s trifling?” I asked.
	Istria’s eyes now returned my skeptical glance.
	“I’m serious. What makes you so sure? I know she’s young--”
	“If she’s really in love with him, then she ought to meet his family, oughtn’t she?”
	“How long was it before you thought I could handle meeting Varen?”
	She let out a laugh. “Chara, if it were up to me you would never have met Varen. I only let her come to my ordination because Dohem wouldn’t come without her.”
	Istria drummed her fingers on the table as I looked at her some more.
	“All right!” she finally said. “Yes, I’m hoping Varen will scare her off. Are you happy now?”
	Before I could answer, Aine said, “If things are that way with your mother, why are you going there at all?”
	Istria looked stunned for a moment, and then tears came to her eyes.
	“Oh no,” Aine said, genuinely alarmed. “I’m sorry--I shouldn’t have--Idair’s teeth, what a stupid thing to say--of course you want to see her, and you having been dead for so long--I mean--”
	Feeling that she was just digging the hole deeper, Aine stopped talking, watching miserably as I moved over to where I could comfort Istria. 
	<I’m sorry, dhiaoc, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.>
	<You and your mother get along,> I answered, letting Istria rest her head on my shoulder. <You don’t understand how complicated things can get.>
	Istria broke in on me. <She’s right, Theamh, she was probably relieved to be able to stop fighting with me...>
	<Oh don’t say that,> I said. <I saw her at the departure ceremony.>
	<You said she didn’t bring anything.>
	<Varen does things Varen’s way. Sinal said she missed you but didn’t show it.>
	<Sinal wants to believe good about her--she’s always been better to him.>
	<Istri...>
	Cualha wandered in. “Have you seen Kelah?”
	“She was in and out of here a few minutes ago,” I said. “Why?”
	“I want to have some chat with her,” she said, darkly. 
	“Cualha, I thank you for trying, but you’re not going to get an apology out of her. Nobody here has the power to order it, and she won’t do it off her own bat.”
	Cualha sighed. “I guess we were too hard on her last night,” she said. “It’s just...” Cualha pulled up a chair. “Can you imagine what it’s like working with her on the Council?”
	“I prefer not to try,” I said.
	We looked up as Eorna walked in, dragging Kelah by the ear.
	“Uh...” Aine began.
	“I know, we can’t do scrainnte, and anyhow it’s not really serious enough,” Eorna said, pushing Kelah forward. “But I’ve just about had it.”
	Kelah still wasn’t looking me, preferring to gaze over our heads with stony determination.
	“Is she still speaking to you all?” I asked. “Because, you know, there’s arani all over the place--maybe she’s thralled.”
	“I am not thralled!” Kelah snapped, shooting a murderous look in my direction.
	“Good morning sunshine,” I said.
	Kelah was going to turn and leave, but Eorna was standing behind her and not moving, so instead she sat down at the table, trying to salvage some dignity.
	“Look, Kelah,” I said. “You said you would come with us on the mission. You know as well as I do that means you’re stuck doing it, unless I release you from your promise. And I don’t. So why don’t you tell me what your thurking problem is and we can thrash this out so somebody doesn’t get killed.”
	“It’s easy enough for them!” Kelah snapped, indicating Eorna and Cualha. “They didn’t have to see it.”
	Istria bristled. I patted her knee under the table.
	“You wouldn’t have had to see it either, if you had some respect for our privacy,” I replied.
	“How was I supposed to know?” Kelah demanded. “I was trying to save you for shri. Next time I’ll just let Idair look out for herself.”
	“Kelah, that’s tarbhfnaa,” Cualha said, the tone oddly more gentle than the words. “We all knew it was a possibility, but we weren’t prowling about all night policing the hallways. That’s not because we don’t care about shri.”
	“Something like this is a matter between Theamh and Idair,” Eorna agreed. “We stayed in bed because it wasn’t our business. It wasn’t yours either, Kelah.”
	Kelah was silent.
	“You don’t have to apologize,” I finally said. “I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, and think that you were really trying to do me a favor. I just don’t see why you have to treat me this way.”
	Kelah shook her head.
	“We have to work together,” I said. “Look, we’re all honest people, why don’t you just tell me why you’re finding it impossible to acknowledge my presence or interact with me, and we’ll see what can be done about it?”
	Sonnia and Sinal came through the doorway, hand in hand. Istria watched them with an expression of mixed resignation and resentment. Kelah, in the interval, worked herself up to answer the question.
	“I don’t understand,” she said, her voice straining. “I just don’t understand how a woman who’s known shri for so long and is so close to Idair’s mystery could submit to being--to being--covered like an animal!”
	So at least now Istria wasn’t paying attention to Sonnia and Sinal any more.
	“So that’s what it looked like to you, is it,” I said, bitingly.
	“That’s what it was!” Kelah insisted.
	I heard Istria getting to her feet, and I thought for a moment that she was going to go for Kelah with her bare hands. 
	“I’ll tell you who’s the animal around here,” Istria said, with fire crackling in her voice. “I’ve known cows who were more sensitive than you--I’ve met sheep who could accept change more gracefully--there are wolves prowling the Sharptooths that know more about compassion than you do--”
	Sinal disappeared abruptly. I wasn’t sure where he was headed; but it was clear that Istria was just getting started. Perhaps he was afraid of hearing things you don’t want to know about your own kin.
	“--you shrivelled-up, dry-hearted, titleproud stone in the Council’s throat--”
	After a minute Sinal returned, and he’d brought Viecter with him. And a number of men I recognized from the checkpoint. And I realized that word had got round, and all the Amstians were showing up for what was clearly going to be a virtuousic cursing display.
	Virtuousic it was, although a trifle one-sided. Kelah was Kengdan, and I don’t think she really understood what was happening, or was able to do much but look on in stunned dismay as Istria ran her through the wringer. But the growing crowd of Amstians was a more knowledgeable audience, cheering her on when she made a particularly telling point or passing critical comments amongst themselves at the moments when she flagged.
	Having finally built to a climax, Istria delivered a few stingers in Amstic, which the crowd appreciated but which meant little to Kelah, and landed down with her palms on the table leaning across it into Kelah’s face.
	“So get it straight now,” Istria said, as Kelah blinked. “When you speak to Theamh you speak with respect. Because believe me there’s plenty where this came from.”
	“That’s my sister,” Sinal said proudly.
	The others applauded. Istria dropped back into her chair.
	“Kelah,” I said.
	Kelah turned wearily to me.
	“You remember, I did promise that if you ever spoke to me that way again, I would let you have it,” I went on.
	She nodded.
	“Would you like to release me from that promise, or should I get started?”
	Muttering it so low I doubt the crowd heard, she said, “I release you.”
	“That’s well,” I answered. “I would hate to try to follow that.” 
	I looked up at the laughter, and in the group of spectators spotted a face I knew.
	“Virmant!” I shouted.
	He looked my way, a little vacantly.
	“It is Virmant, isn’t it?”
	He seemed to suddenly return to earth. “Shriia! Yes, yes, it’s me, I’m...sorry, almost, that you remember me.”
	“What are you doing here?” I asked, rather than take up the history he had alluded to. “Where’s your daughter?”
	“I’m a Reliever,” he answered. “My party is just back from a run to Amranth. Viecter supplies us.” His men had started to drift out of the kitchen, and Virmant looked anxious to be gone. “Thank you for asking after Manelt--she’s safe home with her seanmathi. I’m sorry to run, but I have things to see to.”
	“Of course,” I said. “Glad to see you’re safe, Virmant.”
	Aine watched him go. “Take you coat off, stay a while,” she said.
	“It’s awkward for them, you have to admit,” I answered. “Having to make small talk with someone you might well have murdered if things had gone differently.”
	Istria’s eyes came back to me.
	“I’ll explain on the road,” I said. “Find Taric and let’s get going.”
	
	Sonnia was no more happy about her role as the bait than before, but she bore it patiently enough. Eorna had made more shields, so we had one for Kelah. Since we were supposed to be preserving silence, so far things hadn’t been too bad. Except that we’d heard nothing from the army.
	It puzzled Istria like it puzzled me. We’d been making our way south for hours, and much of that time we’d been going through mountainous terrain with very little cover. If they were there, we should have seen them--certainly they should have seen Sonnia. Around about noon, the lack of ambush was really beginning to get to us.
	<Theamh?>
	It was Aine, for the fortieth time. <Yes?>
	<Where are they?>
	<I don’t know.>
	<If the army had retreated, wouldn’t someone have told us?>
	<Yes, probably.>
	<Are they luring us into a trap?>
	<Maybe, although there isn’t anyone out here doing much luring.>
	Istria suddenly broke in. <Theamh, stop. Everyone stop.>
	<Hold up, Aine.>
	Istria darted over to give Sonnia a verbal order, while Aine sent it to Kelah and Taric. We were on the crest of a little hill, and Istria had been further up than I was; she must have seen something in the valley that alarmed her. 
	<What is it, Istri?>
	<Come with me, and bring Aine and Kelah. I think we’ll need that third opinion.>
	Aine brought Kelah with us and the four of us stood on the crest of the hill, invisible to each other and to the several hundred men who were gathered in the valley.
	They were Amstian Army all right. But they weren’t doing what, in our experience, the Amstian Army usually did. They were making no effort to conceal themselves, spread out, or maneuver. In fact, they seemed absolutely incurious as to the world around them. Nobody had even pitched tents or set up a camp. The only signs of permanent habitation we saw--aside from these men sitting or lying on the ground--were several stockpiles of what looked like army rations. And the only thing we could see any of these men doing--at least the only thing that seemed to have any purpose--was eating.
	<This is very strange,> Istria said.
	We’ve seen personality depression before, I said, so Kelah could hear. But this...
	That’s what this is, Kelah said sharply. It doesn’t normally get this extreme--but it can.
	So you think this is consistent with thralling, I said.
	Oh of course if you think you know better then don’t bother asking me, Kelah snapped.
	I don’t think I know better, Kelah, that’s why I asked.
	After a pause, Kelah resumed. You couldn’t get that many people under control through true possession--and thralling can have this paralysis effect. 
	<Theamh!>
	Istria had noticed something that alarmed her even more. <What is it?>
	The Aivs...look, there are Aivs down there, as mired in sloth as the rest of them. And they’re from two different companies.
	What the hell does this mean? I demanded.
	Who’s controlling these arani, anyway? Kelah asked.
	We never found out, I answered. Although I suppose...oh fnaa.
	Suppose what? Kelah demanded, irritated by the profanity.
	Well, what if it was Hern who was in charge of the arani for this area, I answered. And now she’s dead...what would happen?
	The four of us put our minds to it, but Istria was there first.
	The arani would look out for itself, she said. It would try to grow.
	And that would mean taking over more people, I added.
	That’s why the Aivs are thralled like the rest now, she said. It’s moved into them...it’s just going to keep on thralling new victims and getting bigger and bigger.
	Kelah seemed to agree. It has no particular plan in mind, other than growth, she said. So it keeps them quiet, so that they don’t have to do much to maintain their bodies; and then it can take more from them. 
	Do you suppose...Aine put in.
	Supposing is for the weak, Kelah snapped. What’s your theory?
	Aine was a little set back by the rebuff, but advanced it anyway. There being two companies...maybe one of the arani fought the other, for its victims?
	Oh fnaa, I hope not, Istria said.
	Because if that were true, then this arani wasn’t thralling one hundred, or two hundred, or three hundred men. It had four hundred people, at least, by the tentacles, and that made it a third again bigger than anything else we had dealt with.
	Well, Kelah, I finally said, I thought it would be difficult to say this and mean it, but I’m glad you’re here.
	I can’t say I am, she answered.
	After a long consultation, we decided the safest plan would be to go among them and start unthralling. If we tried to capture one and drag him off, that would alert the arani. However, we thought it prudent to take a stab at disarming them first.
	Istria, Sinal and Taric went down, while we hung back. They were so deep into thraldom that none of them noticed when their swords slipped out of their scabbards, or the arrows leapt in a bunch from their quivers. And because disarming changed nothing as far as the arani was concerned, I don’t think it ever really knew what was happening. With or without weapons, these men were the same to that arani--prey, captive, held in this slow stupor while the arani snaked into every corner of their minds and drank deep.
	<Theamh.>
	<Istri?>
	<It’s the Star Sight Two-Fifty and the Flying Hart Four.>
	<You think Larc and Merth are down there?>
	<I’m looking.>
	Her stepbrothers would probably have been in one or the other--Star Sight, like the Cold Mountain Two, was recruited from this area, and the Flying Hart Four was an elite company made up of veterans. At the moment, they didn’t look very elite, paralyzed on the ground with all that staring and silence. 
	<I found Larc in the Flying Hart Four. And--thank Idair, Sinal’s found Merth.>
	<Both thralled?>
	<Absolutely.> I strained my eyes to the other end of the valley--Istria, of course, I couldn’t see, and though I knew the two of them by sight it was too far to tell. <Theamh, if you don’t think it would mess up the plan-->
	<See if you can get them out to the edge by where you’re piling the weapons, and point them out to me somehow; we can start with them.>
	<Thanks.>	
	Istria and Sinal dragged them across the ground to the edge--no extra physical effort on their part, nothing that would alert the arani. Larc was a big lad, with startlingly fair hair for an Amstian and a burly chest; Merth was more typical, tall and thin with a big shock of dark brown hair. They were propped up by the weapons pile and left there.
	<We’re ready, Theamh.>
	I turned back. <Aine, where’s Sonnia?>
	<Taking cover. The fire scares her.>
	<Well, that doesn’t bode well, does it.>
	<Spirits still scare me, dhiaoc.>
	<Me too, at least these.> I turned to the vista below us, and sighed.
	Come on then. As we planned it.
	Aine, Kelah and I stole into the valley. It still stands out as one of the stranger memories of my life. Four hundred men, and not a word spoken, not a glance exchanged. Knowing from their distinct but vacant faces that each one of these men had at one time been a person, worn his body and his uniform a particular way, sprung from a particular set of parents and been nursed in a particular community--and now here they were, all four hundred of them blighted with the same blank stare. All creatures of the same creature.
	I started with Larc; Kelah went over to Merth. 
	Larc couldn’t see me. He couldn’t really see anything. His blue eyes wore a look of utter preoccupation. Whatever he was turning over inside that head, it was absorbing his entire attention. Even if I had been visible, I wouldn’t have been there to him. It was a chilling sight, even though it was a pitiful one. 
	I gave the signal. Together we dropped the shields. Larc’s eyes blinked once, still not quite registering. But by then I had my hands on his head.
	“Tabhair, mo sielnai!”
	Aine and Kelah had appeared too; Aine was ringing us while Kelah and I called our vigils. She made the ring big enough to enclose the pile of weapons, and there we were, me pinning Larc to the ground trying to find and deracinate the arani, and Kelah, having cleansed Merth with the speed of experience, looking anxiously up from the dirty gray tentacle she’d showdusted to try to find the body.
	“You’ll need another hit,” I shouted, as I found the thing in Larc’s mindspace. “At least. It’s a big sucker.”
	Kelah kept firing showdust. I got the tentacle out and hooked on to Phredi.
	<All right, friends, here we go.>
	Kelah had put a lot of showdust onto the thing, and now it was starting to look like itself. Which might have had something to do with the way Kelah was staggering backward with her mouth open while her vigils swarmed protectively around her.
	“Come on!” I started slinging fire out to snag at the tentacles that began flailing toward us. “It’s just like with a regular one, only ten times worse.”
	Kelah swallowed, and began giving her vigils commands. 
	Hers were, of course, different colors--mauve, ultramarine, orange, a kind of salmon color. Sophisticated; they made a very attractive blend. But for all that they were tenacious enough. It was easier with more vigils; they didn’t have to work as hard individually. The problem was that with the three of us occupied, Larc and Merth were free to go rocketing around the circle--and they had access to the weapons.
	My first inkling that this would be an added difficulty was when I felt Larc’s burly arm around my waist and the blade of a knife against my neck. He had jumped me from behind--not difficult, given how preoccupied I was with the arani. 
	“Who are you? What are you doing to us?”
	“I’m Theamh ni hUlnach and I’m saving your gleacha!”
	“Larc!” This was from Merth, who had stopped pestering Kelah. “Over here!”
	Istria had dropped the shield, and the two of them were effectively distracted. I returned to the business of tentacle-wrangling.
	“Spirits take them, I’ve lost count.” I scanned the sky trying to work out how many strands were streaming from our vigils’ collective grasp. “Kelah, how many is it?”
	Kelah didn’t answer. She was still throwing fire and trapping tentacles, and doing it pretty handily. But her face was gray, and beaded with sweat, and she looked like she was about to throw up. 
	“How many is it, Aine?” I demanded, giving up.
	Her eyes flickered over the strands of gray worming into the sky. “Just keep trapping, Theamh.”
	“Are we at least even halfway there?”
	“Just keep going.”
	Fortunately the thing got impatient and began striking down at us with whole clusters, twenty or thirty tentacles twisted into a cable of death and terror, which we could then snag at one shot. Brute strength it had, but it wasn’t too long on cunning.
	“Theamh!” Istria had evidently explained to her stepbrothers about not being dead, and was now devoting her attention to the battle. “Look out for Aine!”
	I looked. Aine was still working the tentacles while also keeping up the fire, and it was starting to tell on her. She didn’t want to admit there was anything she couldn’t handle, but she was also starting to get the shakes.
	“Aine!” It took a couple tries, but she finally heard me through the other noise. “Aine, take the ring back, we need you on the arani and you can’t do both.”
	“Dhiaoc--”
	“Don’t argue, just do it!”
	“Listen to me, the mac Diodani!” Istria shouted. “You’ve got to keep them from rushing us or getting to the weapons. Make your friends who have their minds now understand that.” Larc and Merth armed themselves. “And play by shriia’s rules!”
	“Istri--” Larc remonstrated.
	“You know what it is to anger me, Larc.”
	With something like a smile, the two of them prepared to leap through the ring.
	Aine recoiled with the shock as the fire ringing us leapt back into her. Now we could see, along with the arani, four hundred men in a much different state from when we’d first seen them. About half of them were still dangling from those gray lines like fish on a stringer, and they were trying to get to us. But about half of them listened to Larc and Merth, and turned around to stop them.
	Watching four hundred highly-trained men in hand to hand combat from very close range unnerved Kelah even more than the arani. Which made sense; arani she’d dealt with before, but two hundred Amstians slugging it out with two hundred others is something you don’t often see.
	The tentacles Phredi had of started jerking, and my feet came off the ground.
	“Istri!”
	She was there dragging me back down. “Taric, take Aine, she’s lightest--Sinal--”
	Kelah had already flown several feet into the air before Sinal grappled her with a springing leap and dragged her back down. It was a moment before Kelah sorted herself out, but at least she hadn’t lost any.
	Out on the field the numbers changed. Gradually it was three hundred on one hundred, and then finally only a tiny handful that were easily subdued, and then the last tentacles jerked free into the air.
	“Here it comes!” Aine finally shouted, looking up as a shadow fell over us.
	Kelah, evidently, was not as addicted as I was to cursing. So all she did, as the sun blotted itself out behind the grotesque and distended bag of arani gut that floated down toward us from the clouds, was stare with her mouth open. I suppose if you hadn’t seen how big they could get, it would somewhat take you by surprise.
	“Kelah.”
	No answer.
	“KELAH!”
	She shook her head quickly. “Yes?”
	“Istria will give us the mark. Ready?”
	She nodded, barely.
	“Close your eyes!” I shouted. “Reveal!” 
	We crossed our arms, and the fire burst out of all three of us.
	Istria, who knew it was now safe to look, glanced up to judge the timing. “All right...steady...steady...annnnnnnd...STRIKE!”
	Bolts shot from six hands, sinking into the pit of its body. The tremor shook the air around us, but it didn’t budge.
	“And STRIKE! and STRIKE! and STRIKE!”
	Three hits, from each of us, concentrated. But that turned out to be enough. 
	The vigils released the tentacles as the body shuddered, groaned, and shriveled in the blackening air above us. The tentacles curled back into the quivering hulk of its body, and then that body too gave up its shape, hissing back into the ether.
	“Tar cieridh.” My vigils came home, Aine withdrew her fire. Kelah took a minute to take her vigils back in, still a little unsure that we’d actually done it. “Well done, Aine, you’re getting much better at this.”
	“Thank you dh--Theamh.”
	Kelah turned a haggard countenance in my direction.
	“Thanks for the help, Kelah,” I said, sincerely grateful. “I’m glad to have you in my corner.” I took a deep breath, still winded from my exertions. “I tell you, there’s nothing like the work, is there?”
	Kelah just looked at me.
	“Theamh, don’t forget the soldiers,” said Istria’s voice.
	I braced myself for anything. But we seemed to be the last thing on their minds. Instead of moving toward us, they were moving toward each other. And now that the battle was over I could take in the wave of grief and despair that rolled off them, so hard you almost felt the crash.
	Taric and Sinal reappeared. Istria was looking over that valley full of men, and what struck her like it struck me was that they were taking care of each other. Gathering in groups, kneeling by their fellows, awash in solicitude, sodden with concern. Except for the Aivs, who were nowhere to be seen. They must have hightailed it. Smart move.
	It was only once we started walking toward them that some of their heads lifted and they spared a thought to wonder who we were and what had happened. And I saw a few of them standing, ready to confront us if it was necessary, but mostly full of questions.
	Larc and Merth saw that we were done, and stood up. 
	“Our Aivs have run off like the scum they are,” Larc said. “As the plan man, it is my place to claim leadership. Do I have it?”
	He turned around to ask for their approval. There were voices raised for him, and none raised against, the most of them being too absorbed in their work of comforting each other to take much of an interest.
	“I’ll act for them so,” Larc said, advancing on us. “I’m sorry not to have recognized you right off, shriia. Idair knows I ought to know your face, but...you’re much changed since the...the ceremony, and so am I.”
	I was just beginning to understand that something very awful had happened to this company. But Larc, like a good soldier, went on to introduce himself to Kelah and Aine.
	 “I apologize for their not being in shape to receive visitors,” he said, gesturing at the crowd as Merth nodded. “You mustn’t think this is typical of our discipline.”
	I would have laughed if his concern for his company’s reputation hadn’t struck me as so tragic, given the circumstances.
	“And you mustn’t think we’re not glad to see you,” Merth said, looking at Istria as if he knew he should be amazed but didn’t have the energy. “It will mean everything to Varen, and a lot to Dohem--to have you and Sinal back. But...coming out of this...”
	“I understand,” Istria said.
	“What...what happened here?” Aine finally asked.
	“The Star Sight Two Fifty and the Flying Hart Four Hundred,” Larc said, with a trace of bitterness. “And if you look now, you’ll see they’re the Star Sight One Hundred and the Flying Hart Three Fifty.”
	“And the other two hundred?” I ventured, after a silence.
	Larc sighed. “Come with me.”
	The eyes of the others followed us as we walked to the end of the valley. Nobody moved or spoke. But they knew what we were going to find. And it wasn’t going to be good.
	At the foot of the valley, where the hills met, there was a little ridge to step over. Once you did, you could look into another valley--this one a bowl, formed on the shanks of five different mountains planted in more or less a circle. Rock tailed off into gentle sloping brush-covered hills, a hollow carpeted with moss, lichens, creeper. And dead men.
	They were stiff, but they hadn’t had time to rot. They lay where they’d fallen, impaled or hacked or slit or pierced as fate had pleased to do it to them. Kelah stood by the edge of the first valley, unwilling to make her way any closer to this carnage. Istria, moving with a kind of heavy constraint, walked forward onto the killing field.
	I followed her, not because I had any idea of doing anything but because I thought she might want me near her when she found whatever it was she found.
	When I caught up with her, she had squatted down by one corpse, looking not at the arrow that was sticking through his throat but the insignia strapped to his arm. Seven stars with seven points, arranged in one of the sky’s designs. Her eyes flicked to the next body, and his bloodied insignia. The mud and dried blood made it hard to read, but you could still see the narrow, nervous feet of a deer in flight.
	“Both companies,” Istria said, standing up. “They fought each other.”
	“One arani taking on the other,” I said.
	Istria put her hands on her hips, staring out over the sweep of the bowl with a lump rising in her throat.
	I turned around. “Kelah!”
	Kelah appeared to be traveling back from the further regions of her mind. “Yes?”
	“Will you and Aine see what you can do for the others, we’ll sort out the dead.”
	Kelah nodded, and turned, a little shakily.
	We were left there looking at each other over all that death.
	“Great Idair’s wrath,” I muttered. “How can we burn them all?”
	“We shouldn’t,” Istria said. “There’s four hundred of them left...enough to carry the dead back to their towns...since they are all local boys...”
	“But it’s the middle of a war, Istri--”
	“They have a right!” Istria shouted. “The right to go surrounded by the people they love, not as one cinder in a huge pyre lit by an unfeeling unseeing total stranger...”
	I blinked the hurt back, remembering how upset she had to be. She saw it anyway.
	“Oh--no--I was thinking of Kelah, Theamh--”
	“Istri,” Larc cut in. “Talk sense. We can’t. We’ve got to do the departures here.”
	Istria swung around on him, but he was ready. “It’s a risk every man takes when he joins, and every family knows it. We can’t get these men home to their families--so many of their families are in exile anyhow, or in hiding. Your friend is right.” He nodded at me. “It’s a war, we can’t stop for this. So if you’re willing...”
	“We’ll do it,” I said. “Idair knows I hate this kind of work, but she’s determined to see I do my share.”
	<Theamh.>
	<Aine?>
	<Come quick.>
	<Is it back?>
	<No--they’re making up a party to go after the Aivs.>
	<I’ll be right there.> “Istri, come with me, we have to stop them executing the Aivs.”
	She took off after me. When we got to the camp Kelah was trying in vain to dissuade a bunch of them from girding on their arms and setting off.
	Istria said something to them in Amstic, and suddenly everyone was watching her. And so was I, as she stood there with her arms folded, against the afternoon sun, looking beautiful and dangerous and in danger all at the same time.
	What she said could be translated but the appeal of it can’t. The argument was the same one Kelah must have been using--that if the newly freed companies kept doing this, we would have to stop unthralling them, since murder was now a foreseeable consequence of that action. But unlike Kelah, Istria was an Amstian--and an Amstian woman with three brothers who had undergone this, and who could stand with her as she made the case, and in whose name she could charge these men not to go out there for blood. 
	By the time my name came into it she’d already sold them. But it mattered to me, that she ended by saying that they had been freed by a good woman and they owed it to me not to repay me by staining my conscience and my reputation. 
	She finally wound up. In the moment of silence, I saw one of the men bend down and gather a fistful of earth into one hand, and stand up with his fist raised.
	The others did the same, until all four hundred were there with their hands in the air, each clutching a little bit of Amstian soil. Larc stepped out in front to lead the oath.
	“I, Larc mac Dioda...”
	The others repeated their own used names.
	“Swear that while I live I will serve Idair and the right...”	
	They repeated the oath, with one voice whose strength and intensity startled me. 
	“...and that I will neither plot nor do murder against my former Aivs, so that Idair may have leisure to take her revenge on them as she sees fit.” He waited for them to repeat this, then punched his fist once in the air.
	It came from them in unison, in Amstic. This I swear by the blood of my comrades, on the heads of my kin, on the soil of my homeland.
	Larc lowered his hand and let the soil fall through his fingers. “Well, I’ve sworn it on your head now, Istri,” he said. “So I’d better keep the oath, hadn’t I.”
	“You’d better,” she answered.
	They were not technically kin; Larc and Merth’s mother Dioda had left Dohem for a man in High Winds, and Dohem had joined Varen long after Istria’s father died in shame. But though they had only lived in the same house for a couple years, they clearly saw her as their own. A real sister, albeit one they didn’t feel they quite understood.
	“It’s good to see you again, Istri,” Merth said, awkwardly.
	“I was away too long,” she said.
	Larc turned back to the men. “Form up,” he called. “Out to the field, and let each man attend to those his hand killed.”
	To try, in whatever way they could, to start wiping out that history. They started moving. Istria looked at Larc’s face, and it was like the shell of a burned out building.
	“How many fell by your hand?” she asked quietly.
	He shook his head.
	“It’s all right,” she said. “Later, you’ll tell me your story...and I’ll tell you mine.”
	Larc nodded, and followed the other men out to the valley of death.

	The season had turned, and it was cold enough nights to need a fire. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be looking at fire at that moment, having seen enough to last me during the departures. But there we all were, drawn toward it because fire draws people, even though Kelah, Aine and I were all wishing we could forget what the flames reminded us of.
	It was Aine’s first departure as a shriia, and like all of her other firsts it had happened too suddenly and on too big a scale. At least when we got back to the big house, Eorna would have finished the learning tunic she had promised, and Aine could do this without further charring her clothing. She had finally had to borrow a uniform off one of the men who had a spare, and it was strange to see it on a woman.
	“You’re determined to set off tonight,” Larc said, looking across the fire at Istria.
	“We’re only a couple hours away,” Istria said. “I can’t sit here. I’ve--I have to go.”
	“You’ll need to be careful,” Merth said. “We went to your departure. We...I really, honestly, I believed you were dead. All those shriias said it.”
	Istria was staring into the fire now. “And I was, in a way.”
	“Maybe,” Larc said. She’d told them the story, finally, while we were doing the departures; Kelah still didn’t know it. “But if you don’t mind my saying, Istri, dead to Idair is one thing, and dead to the world is another. You’re not the kind of dead we’ve all been getting ourselves used to. And Varen...she took it hard.”
	Istria swallowed. It was a terrible battle in her--the wish to go home, to see them again, to know that she was alive again in their minds, and at the same time the fear. Even before the scrainnte things had never been easy for her and Varen; in a house like that there is always the whiff of betrayal in the air. After the scrainnte it was much worse. Varen put Istria into a kind of internal scrainnte--speaking only when it was unavoidable, doing only what was necessary to avoid charges of neglect. While, at the same time, she lavished all the love in her starved heart on Sinal. How Istria managed not to hate Sinal’s guts I still do not understand, unless it was that she just hated her father more.
	“I should go alone,” she said. “She won’t like a crowd, whatever happens.”
	Aine nodded. Kelah shrugged, perfectly willing to camp out with the soldiers for the night and skip the scramble over the hills in the dark. 
	“Sinal, you’ll bring Sonnia tomorrow morning?” Sinal nodded. Sonnia looked very nervous. Either she really was getting more sensitive, or Sinal had been telling her stories. 
	Istria stood up. “I’ll find you all here tomorrow night, then.”
	Kelah nodded. “There’s plenty of work. Aftershock.”
	Kelah had been very quiet since the departures. 
	Istria hefted her bag. “Till tomorrow, then,” she said.
	“Good luck to you, chara,” I answered.
	She looked genuinely surprised. “But you’re coming with me.”
	“I thought you said--”
	“I didn’t mean alone alone.”
	Aine looked away so I wouldn’t see her smiling. “All right then, I’ll get my things.” I brushed the ash off my hreapa as I stood. “Kelah, will you be all right to hold the fort here until tomorrow night?”
	Kelah thought about it and then nodded. “I think so.”
	“And you’ll show Aine how to deal with aftershock?”
	“I’ll try. As you might imagine, aftercare has never been my particular specialty.”
	She said it with a kind of self-deprecation that was a new thing in her, as far as I could see. It made me somehow have compunctions about leaving.
	“You did well with it today, Kelah,” I said, awkwardly. “It might have been too many for us, if you hadn’t been there.”
	“I know,” she said, looking up at me from hollowed-out eyes. “You’ve told me.” 
	Since she seemed not to be about to say any more, I finished packing my bag. 
	“Theamh,” Kelah called out as I passed by the fire again.
	“Yes?”
	“You’ve done a good job with Aine.”
	Aine was certainly startled to hear it from Kelah, even though it should have been obvious to anyone how well she’d turned out.
	“Thank you,” I said. “That’s the best thing you’ve ever said to me.”
	Istria was finally ready to go, having said her goodbyes. Larc and Merth would be moving on with the remainder of the Flying Hart Four when they had chosen new leaders and dealt with the worst cases of aftershock. Sinal and Sonnia would follow us to Ancinte the next day. Istria hadn’t wanted to take him back with her because of the tradition.
	We don’t know what happens after death, but of course that doesn’t stop people from believing all kinds of things. Kengda has its own set of folk beliefs that my mother thought were too ridiculous to teach me. In Amst, the story is that before you die, someone you knew who has already gone ahead--family, lover, friend--will appear to help watch you out, and to guide you to the other place. At times the guide, and the newly-liberated specter, are said to become visible to others, especially if they have a particular connection. Which is why Sinal thought he was dead when he saw Istria, and why Istria knew that if she showed up with Sinal her mother would immediately assume that Istria had come to take Sinal to the land of the dead, and not the other way around. So Istria and I went off in the dark, searching for the farmhouse I’d seen in that dream we shared.
	We didn’t have to get all the way to Ancinte proper; Istria’s family’s holding was on the far northern border, isolated from the town. There had been a lot of talk about Dohem being an idiot to move out there when he had an apartment in town, but I doubt he could have gotten Varen off that land. Too many sacrifices had been made; she had given up too much to have that roof over her head and those acres under the hoe. At least the house was in good repair--better than Istria’s mind had kept it in. I was surprised at how inoffensive and harmless the place looked, even in the dark under moon and starlight with us crouching by the farthest rock wall and looking up the hill in extreme trepidation.
	I had seen her recognize the place, registering its familiarity with a physical shock. The last time she’d been home was after we escaped from Lythril’s lair--she’d been another woman in another lifetime. And now here we were, about to go up to that house whose windows should have been dark.
	But there was one window, downstairs on one side of the chimney, that was lit. Through the fogged glass I couldn’t tell by what--it looked too big to be a single candle.
	<What are they doing out of bed at this hour?> I asked.
	Istria was as puzzled by the light as I was. Then suddenly she wasn’t.
	<It’s for me,> she said, trying to take in the strangeness of it. <It’s the wayfire.>
	I knew about this tradition, but I had gotten used to the idea that Istria was alive so it hadn’t occurred to me. In the country, there are a lot of ways to die, and it isn’t always possible or practical to recover the body. There is always the fear, which we do what we can to dispel, that if the body hasn’t been given a proper departure, the spirit won’t find its way to the other place. So in that case the dead person’s family will keep a fire burning in the window at night. If the spirit should come back to where it remembered living, it will be drawn into the fire, and go up with the flame to Idair.
	It’s a courtesy to the dead, but of course it’s also protection against them. We want them gone for their own sake, because there’s no way to enjoy being on the earth without a body. But then if we speak the truth we the living want them gone for our sake, because as much as we may miss our dead we don’t want to be haunted. The heart wants to live, in the world and of the world. And the body has its own undeniable logic, and so does time, and even love gets tired of missing what won’t be found. 
	We crept toward the light in the window. There it was, proof that Varen had accepted what I couldn’t, that she no longer wished to be haunted. Or maybe this light wasn’t about that, maybe it was burning because Varen was still lying awake wondering if Istria had made it home all right. A sign of rejection, or a sign of love. Both, maybe. 
	<You never lit one for me,> Istria said, not really as a question.
	<I never believed you were dead,> I answered. 
	Varen had chosen to accept; I had chosen to refuse. Any objective observer, six months ago, would have known that I was the lunatic. If as it turned out I was right, maybe that was only because Idair was, in her own way, a lunatic too.
	<Will you knock?> Istria said, with a timidity that was not natural to her.
	We had reached the house, and turned the corner so we could see the door with its oaken bar.
	<Istria, we’re in the middle of a war zone and half the shriias around here are dark,> I said. <If I were Varen and a strange woman in hreapa started banging on my door in the middle of the night, I sure as hell wouldn’t answer.>
	<She knows who you are.>
	<All the more reason not to open the door to me.>
	<Well how are we going to get in?>
	<You could knock.>
	<And would any sane person open the door to a ghost at this time of night?>
	Istria looked up at the window with the light in it. 
	<You’re not thinking of getting in that way?>
	<What choice do we have? It’s either a door or a window.>
	<Istri, I didn’t make a very good first impression on Varen, I don’t think breaking into her house in the dead of night is the way to repair it.>
	She looked back at me, and I saw that it was something she couldn’t get over. The image of her standing there banging on the door waiting to be let in, of her mother coming to the door, opening it, making the sign of protection with a scream and then slamming it again, was too powerful in her mind. Even if it wasn’t actually true, in her mind she felt it would be easier if we could get ourselves into the house and then go and find them. And since at least in her mind it would make it easier on her, I was willing to give it a try.
	I sighed. <So what, we just break it?>
	<Are you nuts? Do you even know how much glass costs up here?>
	<No, I don’t.> I peered at the frame. <Look at this, Istri--it’s a casement.>
	She looked. That was unusual--architecture in a town like this was usually pretty bare-bones, and most farmhouses dispensed with niceties like windows that actually open--a lot of them never even went for glass, preferring just to close the wooden shutters at night. Either Dohem was very handy about the house, and had put this in to please Varen, or this farm was doing a lot better than it had when Istria was growing up.
	<All right then, we should be able to open it.>
	We got the fastening undone and the windowpane creaked open. The wayfire was burning on the sill inside a clay bowl that had been pierced at the sides. The window was as open as it would get, and I wasn’t sure it was open enough for me.
	<Do you think we can get to it from here?>
	The window was at an awkward height in the wall, but it didn’t look impossible.
	<I scaled that damn moat around Greenhaven, I can probably get up there. Here, give me a boost.>
	Istria pushed me up as my feet scrabbled in the chinks of the fieldstone wall. I leaned forward over the sill and blew out the wayfire, pushing the clay bowl over to one end. I dragged myself forward across the sill and tumbled clumsily down to the floor.
	<You all right?>
	<I’m all right, it’s not much of a drop.>
	I heard her starting the climb, and saw the silhouette of her head in the window. <Can you give me a light, Theamh?>
	I pulled out a globe and hung it above the window. It was touching, although at the same time comforting, to see that she was having just as much trouble wriggling through as I had. Even with me tugging on her from the other side it was a difficult process, one which was not made easier when she started to find all of this very funny.
	<Come on, Istri, if you laugh we’ll wake them-->
	<I know, I know-->
	But she couldn’t quite repress it, for whatever reason--maybe because what had at first been strange and tragic was now become comic, and the idea of her having to infiltrate her own house for all the world as if she was a ghost come back to do harm now amused her. Or maybe I was what she found amusing, or her own ungainly struggle flat on her stomach on the sill. Her being about to lose it set me off, and my primary objective became getting her into the house and closing the window before I burst out laughing.
	<All right, you’re through-->
	“Whoops!”
	I said this out loud, involuntarily, because she had finally wriggled forward over the sill and onto the floor, or rather onto me, and with one final flail of her leg had knocked the wayfire in its bowl onto the floor, where it shattered.
	Suddenly none of it was funny, and the body that had been ranging rather playfully over mine froze into a backward crouch of terror and anticipation.
	“Istri.” I don’t know why I was whispering instead of using the head voice, unless it was to remind her I was real. “It’s all right, he’s dead, and anyhow it was an accident.”
	She rose on her knees, grabbing onto my arms as I went to her. “Oh Theamh--why did I come back here--am I insane--”
	“You’ll be all ri--”
	We both heard the creak of the pine floor. Dohem had been asleep, of course, so he hadn’t put on his boots; but he was a big man, and the bigger you are the harder it is to be silent, even when you’re Amstian, and even when you’re trying.
	Caught unprepared, Istria said nothing, kneeling under the light globe and staring at him in all kinds of straits but mostly in fear, although neither of us could have told you fear of what. But if she was afraid, so was Dohem. Being six feet tall with the body of a mountain man isn’t much against the spirits.
	“Istria?”
	He spoke in a rusty whisper. She nodded, her lower lip thinning as it caught in her teeth.
	Dohem didn’t have aftersight; and he wasn’t a man with much fear of the past, or he would certainly never have joined with Varen. He put down the hammer he had caught up and darted forward to where she was still rooted to the floor.
	“Istria.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Istria, is it--is it you?”
	“Yes,” she said, trying to keep her voice from breaking.
	He turned to me, and for an instant it looked as if he had no idea in the world who I was.  Then something registered, but not enough, so I made it easier for him.
	“I’m Theamh ni hUlnach,” I said, keeping my voice low because I was still afraid of Varen. “You would have met me maybe two or three times--”
	He nodded, not wanting to be rude but impatient all the same. “She’s alive? She’s all right?”
	“She’s alive,” I said. “Whether she’s all right depends on how Varen takes it.”
	“Name of the Spirit.” Dohem looked back to Istria. “I--Istria--what is the matter with me, welcome home.”
	So saying, he crushed her in an abrupt embrace. Istria tried to stifle her crying.
	“Stay here,” he said, when he finally released her. “You won’t--I’m just going up to Varen, you won’t--go anywhere.”
	Istria shook her head.
	“Stay right here,” he repeated, standing. “I’ll bring her down to you.”
	Once he left, she stopped being able to hold it back. As the cry fought out of her throat, she bent over the pieces of the broken bowl, sweeping them together.
	“Istri, you don’t have to do that.”
	Her head shook and the cry got louder.
	I was distracted by another cry, muffled through the boards of the loft floor, and the creak as Dohem moved around up there. He must have told Varen. And I couldn’t figure out what she was saying, but it sounded pretty hysterical.
	The sound of her mother’s voice went through Istria like a mountain wind. It looked to me, when she sat back on her haunches with that look of mute and terrified expectation, like she was literally shaking.
	“No,” said the voice, rising loud enough to be faintly articulate. “No, it can’t be.”
	“Theamh, I can’t do this--”
	I seized her wrist as she was turning away. “You can.”
	“Let go of me!”
	The anger in her wasn’t for me, although I was the one who felt it. I dropped her.
	“Theamh--I’m sorry--it’s this house--I can’t stand this--”
	“You know damn well I am not a man who suffers visions,” came Dohem’s voice from the bottom of the loft ladder. 
	And before I could say anything, Varen was in the doorway.
	She had thrown on a shift, but her feet were bare, and her hair was hanging down in a braid, black threaded with gray. The lines on her face were no less harsh for her having been brought out of sleep. I had never seen Varen in anything like this kind of undress, and the portion of my mind that was not quivering in apprehension was startled to see how thin she was--she had a big frame, but her flesh was wrapped tight around it. When her hands went to her mouth it was easy to see the bones in them.
	Varen said nothing. A high, strained, lost cry came from behind her raised hands but it had no words to it and her eyes remained dry.
	Istria stood up, moving as if the weight of Varen’s transfixed gaze made it harder.
	“It’s me, mathi,” she said, one hand still and one hand twisting as if it wished there were a skirt whole folds it could hide in. “I’m back.”
	Varen’s scrutiny swung to me.
	“Is that your fire?” she demanded, her voice flat as flint.
	“Yes,” I said.
	“Take it back and get out of my house.”
	“Mathi!” Istria shouted, forgetting her fear for a moment in her anger.
	I went to draw the globe back, but Istria had put a hand out to stop me.
	“Don’t you treat her like that! I’m not an aidolen and it’s not mindforcing--”
	“It’s Theamh ni hUlnach, chara,” Dohem said.
	“I know you you are,” Varen answered. “Get out.”
	I turned to go. Istria grabbed my arm.
	“You won’t,” she said.
	“Look, if my taking a walk will convince Varen that you’re real--”
	“Of all the dark things you have ever done in your life this is the worst,” Varen shouted at me. “My daughter is dead, don’t you think I know that?” There was a cry in the words although her eyes were still dry. 
	“I swear to you, Varen--” I began, forgetting that I had been not going to argue.
	“For Idair’s sake, mathi!” Istria shouted, advancing on her. “Would it kill you to believe it? Would you rather I was dead?”
	Varen shook her head and said to herself, “You’re not real. You’re not real.”
	“What does it take?” Istria said, raw red and streaming with grief and anger. 
	Varen shook her head.
	Istria flung out a choking cry and one hand. Varen’s head snapped back from the blow.
	“Is that what it takes? Am I real now?”
	“Istri--”
	Dohem and I both said it at the same time, both starting forward. But it was Varen who stopped her, by suddenly crumbling into tears and pain.
	An aidolen wouldn’t be able to strike someone; they’re not solid enough. But that wasn’t why Varen caved like a crushed eggshell and dropped to the floor sobbing.
	“Ah hell and death,” Istria whispered, crouching down into her own puddle of shame and grief. “Mathi, mathi, I’m sorry, I’m sorry...”
	She sounded young--a child alone in the dark, convulsed with fear, ridden by nightmare, terrified that she had done something so horrible that she could not be allowed in the land of the living.
	Varen rose on her knees and pulled Istria into her lap, clutching her to her chest and rocking her like a baby. Still saying nothing, aside from that cry.
	Istria put her arms around her and buried her head against Varen’s bony shoulder, crying just as hard and just as inarticulately.
	I found myself looking away from something I felt might be intense enough to blind me, and turning awkwardly to Dohem for relief.
	“So,” I said, desperately at a loss, “you should know Larc and Merth are all right.”
	“You saw my boys?”
	His voice was low, but I still got the freight of all his anxiety. 
	“We’ve just come from the scene of his company’s last battle...neither was wounded, at least not severely.”
	Dohem nodded toward the living area. “Come in, come in here.”
	While Varen and Istria got on with what they had to do, Dohem sat me down in an armchair. He sat on the couch opposite, which I saw after a moment was a bed with cushions strewn on it--it must be where Sinal slept, when he was home. Larc and Merth had both joined and lived on their own. I hung another globe, a little taken aback at the place now that I had time to look at it. There had definitely been improvements since the last time Istria had seen it--or at least since it had turned up in her dreams.
	“Looks like you’re doing well, Dohem,” I said.
	He looked down at the floor. “I’m ashamed to be, in the times that are in it.”
	“I’ll give you all the news I have of them,” I said, since that was what he wanted. 
	Dohem nodded, relieved. “You said they were in a battle?”
	“Yes.”
	“Against who?”
	I sighed, but it looked like he wasn’t expecting good news anyway so I went on.
	“They fought the Star Sight Two Fifty,” I said.
	“Why?” Dohem said.
	He asked with the weariness of someone who has stopped expecting the world to make sense.
	“Dohem, the dark users--Barant and her lackeys--they thralled the Amstian Army, so it would do their bidding. One of the women who was in charge of army maneuvers is dead now, and the arani that were under her command are running amok. The arani thralling the Flying Hart Four wanted to be into the heads of the Star Sight Two Fifty. They fought for control, and the Star Sight Two Fifty lost.”
	“So my boys were thralled,” Dohem said, anger hardening behind his eyes.
	I nodded. “I cast the thing thralling them. They’re both clean.”
	“They’ll be all right then?”
	The look on my face defeated the purpose of my not answering, so I answered.
	“They killed a lot of people, Dohem,” I said. “And they were thralled a long time. I wouldn’t...they seem all right to me now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if effects show up, later. Sometimes it’s delayed.”
	Dohem nodded. There was an uncomfortable silence. Finally, I said, “So, Dohem--Varen obviously thinks I’m dark. How about you?”
	In Amst, they don’t think this kind of bluntness is all that weird--they sort of prefer it. Another reason for us to live here, maybe. “If I thought you were dark I wouldn’t be sitting here chatting with you. I like to think I have a pair, but I’m not that eithanta.”
	“Whereas Varen is,” I said, ironic though that was.
	“You must understand...” He sighed. “As far as she’s concerned, you and Morat killed Istria. You can’t expect her to be on your side, whatever the evidence may suggest.”
	I scratched my head nervously. “And...so now that Istria’s not dead, what do you think my odds are?”
	Dohem shook his head, and laughed quietly to himself.
	“You know these na Craic women,” he finally said. “Anything at all is possible.”
	Because Dohem, like me, had the strange fortune of loving one of them, and as odd as this all seemed to him, surely, I had the feeling that he saw me as a kind of brother in arms. Someone to swap war stories with, sitting around the fire late at night. Remember when she...and what did you do?...it was touch and go...but we came out of it all right. And though we didn’t know each other well enough to be doing that, we did manage to keep the conversation up pretty well over the long hour they spent in the kitchen together.
	When Istria finally appeared in the doorway, she was as drained as I’d ever seen her. She was too shock-struck to be happy or un about what had happened. But it was easy enough to see that something had changed.
	“Varen wants to talk to you, Theamh,” she said.
	I heard this news with something less than joy.
	“Are you all right, Istri?”
	“I’m...” She trailed off. <I want to be with you and talk about it.>
	<Soon as we can.> “Well, all right then,” I said.
	Istria sat in the chair I’d just left, and I walked with trepidation into the kitchen.
	They had gotten up off the floor and pulled out a couple chairs at the table, at some point; Varen was still sitting at one. She nodded curtly toward the other when she saw me. My light globe was hanging where I’d left it; I moved it over the table.
	In the light, Varen’s features looked even harder. I felt it was not my place to start the conversation.
	“Istria tells me,” she said, her voice expressionless, “that you two consider yourselves joined.”
	“We do,” I said.
	“She also insists you’re still a shriia.”
	“She’s right,” I answered.
	“I don’t want a dark user in the family.”
	“I’m not a dark user,” I said.
	She watched me skeptically.
	“I know it’s hard to believe,” I answered. “It pains me to be thought evil, but I know I can’t expect you to accept this right away.”
	Her eyes blinked, but that did nothing to blunt the intensity of that gaze. This was a woman who probably could stare down hell. Probably she had had to.
	“I’ve never liked you, Theamh ni hUlnach,” Varen finally said, after taking a quick little breath. “Will I tell you why?”
	“I suppose you will,” I said.
	“For a start,” Varen replied, “you’re a smart-mouth.”
	“Some people find that endearing,” I said.
	“I don’t.”
	“I know.”
	“To continue,” she went on, “you’re a soft-bred city girl and you know nothing about hardship or suffering.”
	“I am a soft-bred city girl,” I said. “I would say I know a fair bit about suffering.”
	“She suffered for you,” Varen said. 
	Now we were getting to the real stuff. “I know she did.”
	“She wanted to be a shriia since she started fosterage,” Varen said. “And the only thing that ever stood in her way was you.”
	“That’s not entirely true,” I said.
	Varen was evidently not used to being contradicted, at least not by soft-bred city girls. “I beg your pardon?”
	“You’ve told me some of what you have against me,” I said. “Do you want me to tell you what I have against you? Because once I get started, it could get pretty ugly.”
	“I’m not afraid of you, Theamh ni hUlnach.”
	“I’m sure you aren’t,” I answered.
	She seemed to be waiting for me to start, so I did.
	“Her father called her dirt, an animal, a demon and a whore,” I said. “But it was you who called her a liar.”
	Varen wanted to look away but she didn’t. She also wanted to answer me, but it seemed that nothing came to her.
	“I don’t know whether you really believed she was lying or not. Given that sitting here in the kitchen I could hear you and Dohem arguing upstairs, and out in the living area they can probably hear me talking, I have a hard time thinking you could have missed it. But even Idair didn’t want to believe it was possible.”
	Her expression hadn’t changed, or the way she was holding her body straight in the chair and her hands flat on the table. But something was blossoming underneath all that that scared me, and I wished I hadn’t gone to this place.
	“There are a lot of things I don’t and can’t understand about you,” I said. “The one that bothers me the most is that you were loyal to him and not to her.”
	“Of course you don’t understand that,” she said, that flat tone sharpening to bitterness at the edge. “You grew up with money.”
	I wasn’t sure what that had to do with it, but I was for some reason no longer ready to harry her.
	“Loyalty,” she said. “It means a lot to you, doesn’t it.”
	“Yes.”
	“It’s a fiction. A story. A lie.”
	I wondered if she had shared this theory with Dohem. 
	“You weren’t loyal to her,” I said. “Even after he died. That’s what I have against you.”
	“She wasn’t loyal to me,” Varen said.
	“For Idair’s sake!” My voice rose. “She was the child, Varen.” 
	She registered my anger, but didn’t let me see it rattle her. “I state the facts. He used her against me like he used me against her. He had the strength and the power, and we let him do it.” Her hands closed a little tighter, but the voice didn’t change. “She was my first child, my only girl child. From before she was born I loved her more than I could love my own heart. But you’re right. I wasn’t loyal to her.”
	I waited, not sure exactly what to say.
	“If the story she tells me is true,” Varen said, “she wasn’t loyal to you either.”
	I raised my hands a little, wanting to push that away. “She--she’s too hard on herself. If it hadn’t been for her being in captivity, she would never have done any of that.”
	“In captivity,” Varen said, looking at me.
	And although I would have sworn I’d have better luck reading a stone than reading Varen, it came to me. All her life she had been in captivity. Captive to poverty, to the plague, to her mother’s grief and anger. She had joined with Istria’s father to escape from that captivity, and found herself held captive to his violence, his need, his rage, and even the land he had brought her to. And by the time he had died, she had been in captivity for so long that she couldn’t live any other way. Until Dohem had helped her learn how.
	“I’ve been in captivity, Varen,” I said. “Long enough to get a taste of it.”
	Varen seemed for the first time to be really listening to me.
	“You still believe in loyalty,” she said.
	“I’m a shriia,” I answered. “We believe in imaginary things, it’s our job.”
	“Well,” Varen finally said. “Perhaps that’s just as well.”
	One of her hands moved to her head, smoothing her hair down over the back of her skull. Suddenly, as if a screen had dropped, I saw that she was exhausted, sick with the effort of enduring this, drained and dead-tired.
	“There’s a lot wrong with me.” Varen’s eyes were back on mine now. “I trust people too easily, I’m quick hurt and long healing, I need love and I’m not afraid or ashamed to ask for it. I’m tender, I’m naive, I’m weak and vulnerable. I’m not like you, I’m not a hard woman.” 
	She nodded, which annoyed me, but I went on.
	“But I am a good lover,” I said. “A good wife and a good husband. I’m good to Istria. I make her happy. And I love her like I could never love any one or any thing on the earth or elsewhere. I know you don’t like me. But that’s got to count for something.”
	Varen stood up abruptly, turning away to look out the casement window. Someone had closed it against the spirits. The fragments of the wayfire bowl were collected in a pile under the sill where Istria had swept them.
	“You must have wondered why I had no children between Istria and Sinal.”
	I had, but that certainly wasn’t on my mind at the moment.
	“I conceived,” she said. “Four times. Each time, there came a point when I knew that it was a girl.” She was still addressing herself to the window. “The first time, I miscarried. The second, third, fourth...as soon as I knew it was a girl, I had her returned.” 
	Now I couldn’t read her very well. A miscarriage, in a house like that, could easily be a name for something else--it was amazing she was able to carry any of her children to term, the way he was treating her. But the returns were harder to figure.
	“Even when she was a baby,” Varen went on. “I saw him with her and I knew he was going to use her as he was using me. When I carried the second girl, I worried night and day about what I was bringing her into.” 
	I stood up, not sure what I was meant to do but not wanting to sit still while all this was happening.
	“I lost the second girl, and it was bad for me. But I was relieved for her.”
	It was still dark out, not yet beginning to lighten. And now that she was further from the globe her face was in shadow, turned as it was to the wind and the cold stars.
	“I made up my mind that I would bring no more daughters into this house,” she said. “That nobody else was going to suffer here.”
	I didn’t say what I was thinking. That Sinal would have suffered just as much, if not maybe in exactly the same way. That it wasn’t her being a daughter that had put Istria at her father’s mercy. That there might maybe have been other ways to resist.
	This was the way she had chosen. Instead of lashing out, turning inward. Denying him more victims, more opportunities for power and pain. And denying herself, of course, much more than that. A choice she had made without consulting anyone, alone and in the dark. Groping for a way out of captivity and finding this. Refusal.
	“She loves you,” Varen said. “In a way I don’t understand.”
	Something strange seemed to be happening to her. And I knew that, but I still wasn’t prepared for it when she turned around in tears.
	“Please,” she cried. “Tell me you won’t ever hurt her.”
	“I--” When you’re a shriia you have to be careful about promises. “I may hurt her by accident or through my stupidity or sightlessness but I’ll never hurt her deliberately.”
	She was unsatisfied with a qualified answer. I did what I could to make it stronger.
	“Varen, every part of who I am wants her to be happy. I have a temper and I can be selfish like the next woman but I’m not by nature cruel.” The pitch of my voice was rising. “I’ll never do evil to her, I’ll never betray her, I’ll never lie to her. I’ll never strike her in anger. I’ll never give her a stone when she asks for water. I’ll never torment her for the pleasure of it, I’ll never laugh when she’s weeping. I’m human and I’ll make mistakes and regret them but I will never treat her like her father treated you.”
	Varen’s voice was raw, her face bleached in the light of the globe.
	“You can’t even use his name.”
	“I’m not sure I know it,” I answered.
	The crying sank gradually back into her, and when she spoke it was clearer.
	“Enselm,” she said. “Enselm mac Troiha.”
	I nodded, not knowing how else to respond to that.
	“You really are a shriia,” she finally said.
	“I am.”
	She crossed her thin arms over her chest.
	“Are you attached to your line name?”
	I blinked.
	“I’ve never really thought about it,” I said.
	She saw that I was suddenly frightened, and that made her smile. First time I’d ever seen that happen.
	“Think about it,” she said. 
	“I will.” 
	“Did you get dinner tonight?” she said.
	“Yes and no,” I answered.
	“Sit. I’ll get you something.”
	I returned to my chair. Varen went into the living area, leaving me a little stunned.
	“Come out to the pantry with me, Dohem,” I heard her say. “Istri, why don’t you go see if do bheanin wants anything.”
	When Istria came in she took in my look of gaping incredulity with a tired, but real, smile.
	“Well, my little wife,” Istria said, ruffling my hair, “do you want anything?”
	“I want to know how you are,” I said.
	She didn’t give me time to stand up. It was awkward, embracing her from the chair, but she didn’t seem to mind and I was just glad to be holding onto her.
	“I don’t know how I am, except that the whole world is changing,” she said.
	“In a good way?”
	“I think.”
	She still sprang away nervously when Dohem and Varen came back, carrying a clay baking dish with a cover. 
	“It’s cold by now,” Varen said. “But it’s what we have.”
	We shared it out among the four of us--it was a kind of pratai-and-herb pancake, which you drop a splotch of soured cream on and then roll up and eat. A messy sort of meal, but fortunately this wasn’t our first date. Dohem poured water into wooden cups and passed them around. When we all had our portions, he raised his solemnly.
	“This morning I had no daughter,” he said. “Tonight I have two.” His chin quivered slightly, and his voice wavered a little on the next speech. “Idair is good.”
	“Idair is good,” we repeated, raising our cups.
	Embarrassed, he downed his water and devoted himself to the business of eating. The rest of us got down to it. I was tired, and wondering how long I had until daylight.
	“So I suppose,” Varen said, grudgingly, “that if you’re on the right side, Morat must be too.”
	“Tell me something, Varen,” Dohem said, with a trace of amusement. “What finally brings you round to my opinion? It happens so rarely.”
	Varen didn’t smile, although I thought she was pleased somehow at the joke. 
	“I asked her to lie to me, and she didn’t.”
	I wasn’t exactly sure when that had happened, but what did it matter.
	“Morat is on the right side,” I said. Istria nodded.
	“I had always figured her for the bitch,” Varen replied. “Your woman--Barant--she treated you much better, you and Istria both.”
	I snorted. Istria was roused to anger.
	“Good to me, was she? Sitting there for a year while I was being tortured, knowing exactly where I was, and letting me rot until she knew I was broken--”
	I almost choked on my pancake. “She knew where Lythril was?”
	“Of course she knew, how do you think Lythril avoided Dalen as long as she did?”
	“She was dark that early?”
	“Oh no, not dark,” Istria said bitterly. “Just shrimarbh. Doing her duty to the Order, you know--sacrificing her fire so Lythril could keep the rich happy and the rest of you could survive. Sacrificing me, while she was at it.”
	I hadn’t thought I could be more angry with Barant than I was. But it had come to pass.
	“I didn’t know about all that until after I went shrimarbh,” she said.
	“Istri, save it for after we’ve eaten,” Varen said. “You’re spoiling Theamh’s appetite.”
	Obediently, we tucked into our pancakes. But you know how sometimes you just can’t help pressing the bruise.
	<And after you went shrimarbh?>
	Istria avoided my eyes, but I wasn’t sure Varen couldn’t tell we were talking. <I saw Barant come in and I thought, thank Idair, the rescue. Then she pulls up a chair and starts telling me I’m better off where I am.>
	It took me a long time to swallow the mouthful I’d bitten off.
	<I wouldn’t want to go back as a failure, would I. You’d be so disappointed in me. So would Morat. And if I went back shrimarbh, it was virtually certain that you’d drop out to be with me, and that would be two shriias gone instead of just one. Obviously my being in shri wasn’t part of Idair’s plan. Wouldn’t it be better to accept that, and protect you by keeping Lythril busy so she didn’t have time to settle that score.>
	The food had long turned to dust in my mouth, but I didn’t want to offend Varen so soon after getting what was as close to a blessing as I was going to get. I kept chewing. But what I really felt like doing was throwing up.
	“So Theamh,” Dohem finally put in. “What about your people, do they know you’re all right?”
	I swallowed and took some water to wet my dry mouth. “I assume they know I’m in country, they must have been following the trial.”
	“What trial?” Varen asked.
	“Oh mathi,” Istria said. “Tell her about the trial, Theamh.”
	It was a long story, but that was a good thing maybe. By the time I was done it felt almost normal to be talking to them, sitting around that kitchen under my globe. And when Varen brought some spare sheets down to make up Sinal’s bed for us, and wished us both good night as if she meant it, and left us there while she and Varen went up to that loft of evil memory, I could almost believe that this night had really happened. Almost.
	We crawled into bed under my hreapa. She burrowed into me with her eyes shut.
	<It’s still not a good place for you,> I said. <No matter how things are with Varen.>
	<No.>
	I held her for a while, while she cried and I cried.
	<All those years she was trying to get me to accept your death and move on,> I said. <All that time she was comforting me, and she knew you were alive.>
	<She’s a bitch and a half,> Istria said. <I hate her for a lot of things, but more than anything I hate her for doing you like that.> She wiped her eyes on my bare shoulder. <So what. We’re together, we’re alive, we’re working for the right. Me and my little wife.>
	<I’ve been thinking about it,> I said. <I’m thinking I’ll take your line name.>
	She looked surprised, and touched. <Why?>
	<I’m not sure,> I answered.
	Unless it was that someday I wanted to hear people say of me, well, you know those na Craic women. Anything at all is possible. Including, against all the odds, coming home.

XX.
Interference

	It struck me, as we all stood around in that kitchen, that one thing Istria maybe had inherited from Varen was her skill with silences. Because Sinal had just introduced Sonnia to her, and Sonnia had said “I’m pleased to meet you, mathair na Sinal,” in a polite and respectful tone in which Sinal must surely have coached her, and now just by waiting a little bit longer than she should have to give her response she was making all of us hang fire waiting to see what would happen, even Dohem who by now was surely used to her.
	Finally Varen spoke.
	“What’s happened to your hair, child?”
	This was not what Sonnia had been expecting. As I looked at her, though, it seemed like a natural thing to ask. Most of it was still that inky black, but near the scalp it was a different color--not as light as the blonde hair in that childhood photograph, but many, many shades lighter than the rest of it.
	“At home, I dye it,” she said. “I can’t get the dye down here, so it’s growing out.”
	“So that mouse sort of color, that’s how it comes in naturally?”
	“Yes,” Sonnia said.
	“Why do you dye it black, then?”
	This question dredged up a whole boiling of things that I knew Sonnia would never actually say to Varen. But even though she tried to keep her face neutral, she was transparent as Cretids are, and Varen must have been reading some of this. 
	“Just ‘cause,” Sonnia finally said.
	More progress not made on the road to shri. Varen found the answer unsatisfying.
	“You’re courting my son, apparently,” Varen said.
	Sonnia nodded, not sure how to answer.
	“Why?”
	After a moment of tongue-tied silence she said, “I like him. He’s nice.”
	This injured Sinal’s feelings--after all, he was making protestations of love to her, he expected a less lukewarm answer to that question. But if he was hurt, he didn’t show it.
	“Nice,” Varen repeated.
	Sonnia nodded.
	Varen turned to me. “You talked enough last night, but that’s one word you never used.”
	I was going to answer, but Varen interrupted before I even got started.
	“You know Istria,” Varen said.
	“Yes, I--”
	“Istria will have let you know, even if she hasn’t said it, how much she loves her brother.”
	Sonnia nodded. “I know.”
	“You will have understood, when you began paying court to him, that if you hurt Sinal she will take it amiss.”
	Sonnia swallowed. “Yes.”
	“I can see you’re afraid of her, much as you admire her,” Varen went on.
	Istria was surprised to see Sonnia assent to this. “You’re right, mathair na Sinal.”
	“She’s his sister,” Varen said. “I’m his mother. I love him more than she does and I’m not at all nice.”
	This didn’t seem to call for a response, so Sonnia didn’t offer one.
	“As long as you make him happy you are welcome to this house and everything in it,” Varen said. “If you hurt him, you better be in Dairc before I know about it.”
	Sonnia didn’t really know how to answer, except to nod silently. Sinal broke in.
	“I can take care of myself, mathi.”
	“I’m sure you think so,” Varen said. She sighed. “So. My daughter joins with a woman, and my son brings home a Cretid. I would ask where I went wrong, but someone might answer.” She didn’t look at me, but then she didn’t need to. “All right, Sonnia ni...”
	“hUstine,” Sinal said.
	“hUstine, then, you’re welcome at my table but watch yourself. Istria, come with me and we’ll get lunch ready.”
	“But mathi, we need to get going--” Istria began.
	“But nothing,” Varen snapped, nodding at me. “Someone’s got to put some meat on her bones and from the sound of things it’s not going to be Ulnach. Come.”
	Istria followed her, realizing as I did that Varen just didn’t want her to go away yet. It gave me an opportunity to fulfill a promise I was already regretting having made.
	“What...what is this ‘husting’ name you--”
	“Your mother’s name is Ustine,” I said. “The way we do it here, people are known by their used names and their mother’s name. There’s the line name that gets handed down in the family, but unless land goes with it that tends not to mean too much. Your name down here is Sonnia ni hUstine na Rytehouse.”
	She nodded, trying to remember and seeming pleased enough with the sound of it.
	“Now come out with me, I promised Istria I would show you something.” 
	Perhaps detecting the level of my embarrassment, Dohem and Sinal went to the sheep pasture. The sheep, he had told me, were the secret to the farm’s new success. Enselm had been subsistence-farming the place, which is always a struggle. Because Dohem had a little money left from selling up the carpentry shop he had in what in Ancinte passed for the town, he was able to buy into a good strain of red sheep, and now they were thriving all over the green hills. It was a gamble, since it meant they had to spend money buying food they would otherwise have grown, and it was something you could only do if you had enough money to make the initial investment. So instead of a farm, the thing was one large pasture, except for a small patch for pratai and a few vegetables. 
	Red sheep are tricky--if they don’t get proper care they fade, and although there are breeders who specially alter their diet to get a kind of dusty rose, what usually happens is more of a dried-blood color spotted with patches of leached pink that’s no good to anyone. To stay red they need to have their diet supplemented with a special kind of thistle--the thistle is actually lavender in color, but who knows how these things work. So they were off trying to gather thistles for them--easy enough to do, given that they grow like weeds especially on abandoned farmland, which with the rest of the town in hiding in Dairc there was plenty of. I took Sonnia off into the waste ground up on the hills.
	“Where are we going? What’s this about?”
	Cursing myself for a fool in love, I said, “I promised Istria I would show you how to use leagruh.”
	“What’s leagruh?” she said, panting a little as we began climbing the hill.
	“It’s a plant that grows throughout this part of the island, and maybe it would grow up north too if you didn’t make a litter of the place.”
	“What do you use it for?”
	“For not getting pregnant.”
	Sonnia’s embarrassment burst into red-hot flower. “Oh my God!”
	“I’m not exactly enjoying this either, but I made the promise and I’m sticking to it. She doesn’t think Sinal’s ready to be a father and neither do I.”
	“Where does she get off--”
	“The funny thing about leagruh,” I said, tramping over to a thicket of low bushes and shrubs I had spotted, “is that the stuff grows year-round; even in winter when everything else has dropped its leaves you can still find it. It’s not natural for a creeper vine to be like that.” I began parting the leaves on one of the shrubs. “It prefers trees, but it’ll twine around anything. See, look--it’s climbing up the branches on this jade bush.”
	Sonnia, despite her reluctance, looked at the vine I was pointing out to her.
	“Now I know this kind of knowledge doesn’t come naturally to you,” I said. “It doesn’t come naturally to me either. But I want you to take a good look at this thing, and then when you think you remember how to identify it we’re going to try it again. Look there and tell me what the characteristics are.”
	After some study, Sonnia said, “It’s got notched leaves...it’s kind of...glossy green...and there are three leaves on a stem.”
	“True enough,” I said. “That’s also true of a number of other creeping vines, including sirrthne, which will raise a string of boils all over you as soon as you offer to touch it. See if you can get a little more detailed.”
	“I...” She gave up. “It’s a vine with three notched leaves on it, Theamh, I don’t know what else to tell you.”
	I pulled off one of the leaves and held it up to her.
	“Smell,” I said.
	She did.
	“What does it smell like?”
	“It’s...sort of...evergreeny.”
	Patience. Always patience.
	“Look under here.” I flipped the leaf over. “You see these little hairs on the underside of the leaf, that lie flat if you brush them toward the tip?” She nodded. “Leagruh has these, and it has the ‘evergreeny’ smell. It’s also got a round, woody stem with a distinct growth pattern. Look at the way the lines run along the twists.”
	She gave it her best shot. I had been the bane of the herbalist’s existence during my entire scoil term, so I suppose there was justice in my having to teach someone whose understanding of plant life ran only to recognizing the difference between trees, grass, and flowers how to identify leagruh. When I thought I’d pointed out about all I could point out, I said, “All right, so this is leagruh. Now go find what you think is another leagruh vine and let me know when you’ve got it. DON’T TOUCH IT before I get there.”
	Sonnia nodded, and was off. And the tedium began.
	The first one, sure enough, was sirrthne. Then she got very excited about a strand of ivy. It was only on the fifth try that she actually found herself the genuine article.
	“That’s good, Sonnia,” I said. “I think you better not trust yourself to look for it right away; take someone with you. Not Sinal, men don’t really understand about this.” She seemed grateful enough. “Pick one leaf off every cluster, that way the vine will live. You’ll need a good-sized fistful.”
	Sonnia went gathering leaves, rustling in the shrubbery and seeming, against all the odds, as if she were rather enjoying this. Maybe it was a novelty to her, as it couldn’t be to me after years of painfully drilling botanical knowledge into my reluctant City-bred skull.
	By the time Sonnia came crashing back out of the brush with her handful of leaves I was already letting my mind wander. It was wandering on sort of anxious and ominous things. We still didn’t know where Lythril was; we didn’t know how many other confederates Barant had in the area, or for that matter what had happened to the arani that had lost the battle for the Star Sight Two Fifty. I hoped it had gone home, but I was expecting it to cause some more trouble before we heard the last of it. 
	“So now what?” she said, holding out her catch.
	“Well,” I sighed. “What you do is take them home and you them out--spread ‘em out on the windowsill is the easiest way. When they’re desiccated you crumble them into some kind of airtight container--ask Varen to give you a jar. Then whenever you...you...”
	“Have sex?” Sonnia ventured.
	But that wasn’t why I hadn’t finished the sentence. My woodscraft is nothing to sing the praises of. But my mindstrength is pretty good, and I was starting to get the sense that we weren’t alone.
	Stay here.
	I began moving in the direction the signal seemed to be radiating from. Sonnia stayed where she was. I had given the command silently out of habit, forgetting she wouldn’t be able to receive it. But I wasn’t sure she hadn’t. Definitely she didn’t know she had; and it was likely she was just waiting there to see what I was up to. But on the other hand, it was possible that she was beginning to make a tiny little bit of progress.
	As was I. Because there was a stand of bushes under the shade of one of the few deciduous trees on this hill whose leaves were waving slightly in a way that had nothing to do with the breeze.
	Whoever it was, it was probably male, by the way it read. Fantastic.
	I closed in on the hiding-place. He had to see me coming if he was paying attention at all. Perhaps he was hoping I would get distracted halfway there by something else. But for whatever reason, he was still there when I made the pounce, and when I dragged on his collar he emerged from the bushes dangling from my angry grasp.
	Sonnia gasped, forgetting all about her leaves and letting them scatter all over the ground. I just threw him back onto his feet, so that he stumbled backward.
	“Kleark mac Caille,” I said. 
	“Shriia,” he answered, warily.
	“How long have you been following us?”
	“I haven’t--I--” Now he looked frightened. “I got a tip from one of the Flying Hart Aivs.”
	“You what?”
	My voice was hoarse with outrage, and I think it unnerved him. “Shriia--don’t get angry--I know what they are--I was playing to them--you know--to get information--”
	My hand shot out to grab him by that dingy collar again. “Whose side are you on?”
	“I’m a repeater--we don’t take sides--”
	“Tarbhfnaa!” He closed his eyes and sighed, miserably. “This thing has split the world right down the middle and the middle is nowhere. Fall into it and you disappear. Now whose side are you on?”
	He opened his eyes and nerved himself up.
	“I’m on your side,” he said. 
	“Is that because I’m the one who’s got you by the short hairs, or because you think I’m in the right?”
	“Both.”
	I released him. He took this as a sign of encouragement.
	“I’ve been fired from True Stories,” he said. “Within an hour of that piece going out over the globes. Reason given, I’m not learning the new machines fast enough. Real reason, I crossed Barant.”
	“So this is how you want to spend retirement?” I said. “Hiding in the bushes?”
	“I’m still working,” he said. “I joined a rogue network, cobbled together in bits and pieces, we call it Unheard Of. It started up around the time Twil invited the Cretids down here. I never bothered with it because--” He laughed. “Will you credit this, I didn’t believe we were really being censored. When they ask for a fool, give them my name.”
	I was reading him as best I could, but he was a man, and it was hard to be sure. Certainly there was nothing outlandishly evil. But that didn’t mean that what he was telling me was true.
	“And what are you shadowing me for?”
	He swallowed.
	“I want to find out what the hell is going on,” he said. “And when I find that out I want to tell as many people as possible. And you seem like you know.”
	“Kleark...”
	“I want an interview with you,” he said. “With Istria, with anyone else who’s on your side. We know their version, shriia. It’s only right we should have yours.”
	“Of course that would involve your meeting them,” I said. “Which would involve your knowing where they’re hiding.”
	“Of course I’d never reveal to anyone--”
	“So,” I broke in. “You want me to take you to what I’m sure they would be calling ‘the rebel stronghold,’ is that it.”
	He gulped. “Shriia, did you see the piece?”
	“If I hadn’t I wouldn’t have listened to you this long.”
	“Do you trust me?”
	“No, not really.”
	“Can I do anything that would make you trust me?”
	“You can let me scour you.”
	He considered this for a moment.
	“That kind of thing hurts, doesn’t it?”
	“Yes.”
	It took him a minute, but he made up his mind. “All right, I consent.”
	“So look at me.”
	I put my hands on his temples and went in. It did hurt him. Since he was a man, I felt a need to double-check, and it took longer than it might have. But when I was done I felt better about him.
	“This Aiv you spoke to...”
	“They’ve fled back to Mypril,” he said, eager to make himself useful now that I appeared to be willing to trust him. “That’s where they’ve all gathered, as far as I can make out. I borrowed a uniform from a friend who’s a veteran and went down to the tavern with them one night. I had to put up with a lot of disgusting boasting about things they can’t possibly have done, but I got one useful piece of information out of it.”
	“Which was?”
	“The Flying Hart Aivs, two of them, they swore they’d seen Istria ni Vharen on the battlefield,” he said. “The other five said they were insane, but I thought different.”
	“Hey!” Sonnia shouted.
	“Come on over here,” I called. “I’m sorry, I got distracted. Bring the leagruh.”
	Kleark turned red.
	“Don’t worry, it’s not for you,” I said.
	He turned a cough into a speech. “Shriia...the stories they were telling...”
	“Yes?” I said, wearily.
	“I’m hoping half of it was lies.”
	“Well, you can go on hoping till you have a chance to tell me about what you heard,” I said. “Kleark mac Caille, Sonnia ni hUstine. Sonnia’s visiting us from the Cretid Nation. She aims to stay, apparently, although I think the lack of plumbing and laundry facilities is starting to get on her nerves.”
	“Glad to know you,” Kleark said, bowing at her. She bowed back, hiding the handful of leaf behind her back.
	“I’ll call ahead and warn them,” I said. “You’ll need to be made of stern stuff, friend; next to the na Craic clan I’m a pussycat.”
	
	And so that was how it happened that about a day and a half later most of us were clustered around the waterglobe in Viecter’s parlor waiting to see if Eorna could pull it off. Me, Istria, Kelah, Taric, Aine, Viecter, Cualha, and Umrin and Japthil, who had returned in hreapa from their excursion to the city. Eorna and Kleark were out collaborating on this little project.
	What was wavering on the globe at the moment was another one of those Cretid shows--not “The Enforcer,” for once. Poor Sonnia. I hoped she was doing all right.
	The image suddenly shivered into bits, and coalesced again. But now, instead of a Cretid VB show, we were looking at Kleark’s image.
	“It’s on!” Cualha shouted, passing the news to Eorna over the link. They were out in the baths, which Eorna had realized would be a mighty powerful base to project from. Not understanding practical magic, I had not been sure this would work, but she’d been confident. And now we had overtaken the Council’s system and were sending out our own story on their waterglobes. Or at least, our own story as told by Kleark and his machines.
	“...yes, you’re right,” the little Kleark in the globe was saying. “There is something the matter with your waterglobe. At least as far as Barant and the new Council are concerned. I’m Kleark mac Caille. I used to work for True Stories. Well, True Stories is under the control of Barant’s regime. I’m under the control of nobody. And I’m going to tell you a story you won’t hear from the authorities who have taken over our Seat, our army, and our Council.” He took a breath; poor man, he was doing this part (as he put it) “live,” and he wasn’t used to it. “In association with the Unheard Of chain, and on behalf of--well--on behalf of the truth, The Real Story brings you ‘Inside the Rebel Stronghold.’”
	“I asked him not to call it that,” I muttered.
	“It’s got to be sexy to sell,” Istria said. “I know you don’t like it, but trust me, he knows what he’s doing.”
	They had managed to feed in the start of the tape; I still don’t know exactly how. I had raised strong, not to say strident, objections to the use of video, once Kleark revealed to us that he had secreted a pile of equipment in the vicinity of the battlefield. 
	“...one thing about these women that’s very different from Barant,” a different image of Kleark was saying. “They sure hate cameras.”
	The rest of the watchers laughed because the next thing on the globe was me, looking at the camera and chewing Kleark out.
	“You told us you wanted to find out what was going on. You did not tell me you were going to be shoving that thing at me--”
	“Shriia.” Kleark’s voice was audible but of course he couldn’t be seen because he was holding the camera. “I’ve told you, video builds credibility--”
	“My word ought to be good enough for anyone!”
	“It’s not your fault that it’s not.” The image now swung in a stomach-upsetting rush to Istria. “Theamh, anyone who knows you knows you’re true, but we’re going to send this to people who have never met you and only know the lies Barant’s spreading.”
	Now Istria was turned out toward us as she addressed Kleark. “Of course she hates them,” Istria said. “Leaving aside her worrying about your using the video to lie about us, which of course we’re all worried about, she just plain hates the machine itself.”
	“Why?” came Kleark’s voice.
	“Because the last time she was looking at a camera she was in a padded cell in Lythril’s dungeon,” Istria said, shortly.
	The image returned to me. I wasn’t sure what my face looked like, but the others seemed to be registering something--sympathy, I thought.
	“This is Theamh ni hUlnach,” said Kleark’s voice, over my image. “If you ask Barant or the other Councillors, they’ll tell you she’s evil in a white robe. If you ask any of these women, they’ll tell you different.”
	Now there was a jump from the Amstian woods, where that first argument had happened, to the interior of one of Viecter’s rooms, which we had tried to make as anonymous-looking as possible.
	“Her apprentice, Aine ni hEmer,” said Kleark’s voice, as Aine’s face appeared. 
	“She’s my diaoc,” Aine said. “I don’t know her better than anyone, but I know her better than most people. I know she’s true.”
	“Kelah ni Mhulan, once head of Possessions on the Council,” said Kleark’s voice.
	“Do I like her? No,” said Kelah’s image. “Do I trust her? You bet your gleacha.”
	Cualha laughed, and poked Kelah good-naturedly. “You’ll get to like her eventually, Kelah. Honest, I didn’t use to like her either.”
	“Didn’t you?” I asked, but they shushed me back to the globe.
	Cualha’s head was now on the globe. “...I knew the minute Riina doubted her word that Riina had to be the liar. Because I knew then that Theamh couldn’t be dark. And I know it even more now.”
	And over to Eorna. “She doesn’t know this,” said Eorna. “But Theamh’s been...well...ever since she went to Dairc for the long slow burning, she’s been a...like, an inspiration, for me. Someone you look at and say, ‘I want to be that.’” My face was getting hot and I wasn’t looking at the globe, so I didn’t see the face that went with Eorna’s laugh. “She’s going to hate hearing me say that. But it’s true all the same.”
	“Why will she hate hearing it?” came Kleark’s voice.
	The camera jumped to Istria’s face. “Oh, she hates hearing herself praised,” Istria said. “It...well, I think it’s a charming thing about her, but I’m an exceptional case.”
	“This is Istria ni Vharen,” said Kleark’s voice. “And she certainly is an exceptional case.”
	And now, without warning, there was an image of Istria tackling Taric.
	“I wouldn’t have thought it,” said the real Taric, as we watched the images struggling on the rocky surface of that mountain path. “You can take me, right enough.”
	The camera was bouncing around as Kleark tried both to capture the struggle on tape and stay out of the way of a dangerous fight. Kelah, Aine, Istria and I had all seen this already, albeit from a different perspective; the others were a little more impressed.
	“Four years and nine months from this day, Istria ni Vharen left the City on a mission to find Lythril. Six months later, she found her. Now, after four years, Istria’s coming back from the dead. And there seem to be a lot of people who wish she wouldn’t.”
	When Istria had Taric down on the ground and the knife drawn on him, she shouted, “All right, I’ve got him!”
	The camera swung to where Kelah and I were standing, surrounded by vigils in eight different colors and grabbing arani tentacles.
	I had never seen myself work before. What surprised me most was the look on my face. I was a lot calmer than I would have expected--focused on the thing, moving my hands without thinking too hard about it. And, of course, cursing a blue streak.
	“Come here, you spiderwebbing mindsucking son of a BLEEP!!”
	I hadn’t actually said “BLEEP.” I looked at Istria in confusion.
	“They do that, in the Cretid Nation,” she said apologetically. “Bleep out the profanity. And our repeaters have been copying that; people are used to it. Kleark thought it would be a good idea--some people are squeamish about cursing.”
	“I’ll teach your festering BLEEP to BLEEP with my friends!”
	“Spirits of everywhere,” I sighed. “I’m practically unintelligible.”
	When I paused between curses, Kelah shouted, “Where the BLEEP is Aine?”
	“I’ve been around her too long,” Kelah commented, in answer to Cualha’s stare.
	“I’m sure we’ll hear from her at the worst possible moment,” was the answer that came from me on the globe.
	When we ripped the tentacle out of Taric’s head, the camera showed Istria letting him up.
	“I’m all right,” he said, dusting himself off.
	“I didn’t cut you?” Istria asked.
	“No,” Taric said, feeling his throat. “No, I don’t think--”
	The camera suddenly lurched back to show a bolt of yellow fire scorching toward me, which I blocked with one hand. The image followed back into the scrub pines, where Aine was standing with a kind of fixed look in her eyes and fire in both hands. And the shadowy image of a gray tentacle playing over her head.
	“You can barely see the thing,” said Kelah, disappointed.
	“Low-grade showdust,” I answered. “I made it myself, it’s pretty piss-poor--”
	“SHHHHH!” said Aine.
	Well, it was an important chapter, as far as she was concerned. We quieted down.
	“Hold this,” said my voice as the camera stayed on Aine. What I had been doing was passing my vigils to Kelah, so she could keep trapping while I went to confront Aine.
	“Don’t come any closer,” said Aine’s voice from the globe.
	I was now in the image, which had leapt back so that it showed me walking toward her, my hands up in surrender.
	“Listen, Aine,” said my voice. “It’s gotten into you. You need to throw it out.” I ducked another spurt, but kept walking. “You know the words. Say them.”
	“Stay away from me!” Aine flashed more fire, which I blocked. I stopped where I was on the path. The camera rested there, with both of us squared off in that image.
	“Nilachaon,” I said. “That’s how it starts. Say the words.”
	When I’d lived through it, it was much more intense. But the others who hadn’t been there could see the struggle in her, though she was frozen like a statue.
	“You can cast it,” I said. “You can, Aine. I know you can.”
	Still trapped in struggle, she brought her arms jerkily up to cross over her chest.
	“Yes!” My voice and my face showed how hard I was willing her to bring herself out of this. “Throw it, Aine. Come on.”
	And, as she got her hands on her shoulders and those of us familiar with this were recognizing the signs that she was gathering, Istria’s voice broke in on the globe.
	“Close your eyes! And turn off that BLEEPing camera, are you nuts?”
	There was an instant of inky darkness. When the image returned, Kelah, Aine and I were all struggling with the arani, all on fire, and just about ready to nail it.
	“On three,” came Istria’s voice from out of the image.
	“A haon...a do...”
	“TEIR ABHAILE ARANI!”
	The body of the arani was big enough to show up, at least, even if it was much less impressive shrunk down to the size of that globe image. The camera watched it disappear, then went back to the five of us standing around in the aftermath.
	“You all right, Aine?” said my voice, softer than I was used to thinking of it.
	Aine’s image nodded, snuffling. The little me gave the little her a hug.
	“Aww.”
	Cualha, Umrin, Japthil and Viecter were all in on that. Kelah remained aloof.
	When my attention turned back to the globe, there was just a head shot of me and Istria, with my face in her hands and her getting pretty intense.
	“I’m so sorry, Theamh...”
	“Look, it wasn’t you, I know that--”
	“You know I would never do anything to hurt you--”
	“I know, Istri. I believe you. You know that.” My image was starting to cry too.
	“Chara--” She broke off and suddenly turned toward the camera. “Get that BLEEPing thing out of my face!”
	“It was a refrain I was to hear often,” said Kleark’s voice, as the image returned to him. “Kelah ni Mhulan, at least, was willing to explain what had happened.”
	The image showed Kelah walking, as we had resumed our journey. “There were two companies of the Amstian Army back there, each thralled by one arani,” she said, looking ahead at her path and ignoring Kleark. “We got rid of the big one, but we knew the smaller one was probably floating around somewhere. Sure enough we found it. Or it found us.” Kelah’s head shook slightly. “I told Theamh, we should have scoured all of them before we started off, but she thought having done it that morning was enough. Ah well, she’s young. She’ll learn, I suppose.”
	“So what happened to the soldiers that had been thralled?” came Kleark’s voice.
	Kelah shrugged. “Two hundred are dead,” Kelah said. “The arani fought each other for control; the soldiers lost. The remaining cohort, minus their Aivs, have gone off to join the Volunteers and the rest of the freed Amstian Army. I don’t know exactly where they’ve gone to and I don’t want to know. Military business is bad business.”
	Kleark returned to start explaining our theory about the army to the folks at home. I took the opportunity to check up with Aine.
	<You did well out there, you know.>
	<I should have felt it coming, dhiaoc.>
	<You would have if you had vigils; that’s what they’re for. Once you’ve got a hreapa we’ll go out to the spheres and get you some. Or...>
	<Or what, dhiaoc?>
	I had forgotten about this. <You’ll be doing that yourself, Aine. I forgot. You’ll be out on your own by then.>
	Aine was maybe about to answer, but the globe arrested our attention. It was an image of the five of us greeting Umrin and Japthil, who we had encountered on the road up to Viecter’s safe house. It was arresting not because of what we were doing--which was just congratulating them for having found their hreapas and made it back, and trying each other--but because we knew what was probably coming next.
	After some explanation by Kleark about who they were, the image went to a picture of Umrin and me walking along chatting.
	“...how’d you get them back?” asked the image of me.
	Umrin shrugged. “It wasn’t so hard after all,” she said. “With the shields no one spotted us; we were able to roam around until we found out where they put them and just grab them back.”
	“Just like that?” I said.
	“Just like that,” Umrin agreed. We kept walking for a moment or so, but I dropped behind in answer to Kelah’s unspoken summons. Of course on the globe you couldn’t hear anything she was saying to me. All you saw was me looking sort of impatient with her, and then finally starting forward to catch up with Umrin.
	“Here, Umrin,” called my voice.
	Umrin slowed down. “What?”
	“Do you mind me scouring you? Just to be on the safe side. I told Kelah it’s not necessary but she seems to think--”
	Twin streams of flame from Umrin cut that speech off and set the image rocking as Kleark and the camera scrambled for safety.
	“Ah BLEEP.”
	I would have sworn that even in that little mechanical noise you could hear the weariness and disappointment.
	The folks at home were treated to another battle, this one a little more intense since it became clear that what was in Umrin wasn’t an arani at all. By the time Kelah helped me get her onto the ground so I could search, I had already figured that out; but it was still a shock to all of us to see the red thing lifting out of her when I did the cast.
	“What is it, shriia?” came Kleark’s voice as he tried to follow me with the camera.
	“It’s an emanation,” I shouted back, struggling to hit a target that was zipping around in the most maddening way imaginable. 
	“What’s an emanation?” from Kleark.
	“Shut up and let me work!”
	While Kelah, Aine and I started trying to keep the thing from flying into someone else’s head, Istria was kind enough to explain to Kleark. “An emanation is a kind of offshoot of a person’s specter. You plant it in someone’s mind and it allows you limited access to their thoughts and control over their actions. It’s not as effective as full possession but it’s also not as risky for the user, and you can keep it up for longer.”
	“Teir abhaile feiceann dubh!”
	The three of us had finally sent it hurtling back away into space. The camera leapt anxiously from face to face, waiting for some kind of commentary.
	“You think it was Coel?” Japthil finally said.
	“I guess,” Umrin answered, much shaken.
	“I would say ‘I won’t say I told you so,’ except I will,” Kelah’s voice said.
	“You’re right,” said my image. “You told me so.” Then my image sighed and turned to Japthil’s. “Let me take a look around in there, will you?”
	“By all means.”
	While the little me was scouring the image of Japthil, Kelah’s voice went on. “It wasn’t necessarily Coel, you know.”
	“If the rest of the Mypril council is shrimarbh...” Aine’s image said.
	“It could be Lythril,” Kelah replied. “We have no idea where she is now.”
	Istria’s image shook her head. “That wasn’t Lythril.”
	“How do you know?”
	“I don’t know, it just didn’t act like her somehow.”
	Kelah looked at her skeptically, and from out of the image came my voice again, disheartened and weary.
	“Ah, son of a BLEEP.”
	Another one of those lurches, and the camera focused on me flinging fire like a maniac trying to keep a boiling mass of red spikes from raking me raw.
	“Now that’s Lythril,” said Istria’s voice.
	The image jumped to Kleark. “My batteries ran out, but fortunately Theamh’s didn’t; that emanation was banished like the first. Ultimately everyone got safe home to what they refer to as the safe house. And by the time I got the batteries recharged, they were already in the middle of what you might call a war council. If you can call it a war when all the participants--at least on this side--are adamant about not taking life.”
	Now there was an image of all of us sitting around the table, and Japthil was in the middle of arguing about something.
	“No, no, no. There is no way Lythril and Coel are collaborating--you saw what Lythril did to her.”
	“Well then how--” Aine interjected.
	“It’s a big coincidence,” Kelah agreed.
	“Not necessarily,” I said. “They both must have known that you two would have to come back for your hreapas. Setting up an ambush would be the first idea that occurred to anyone. If it occurred to Coel, it could just as easily occur to Lythril at the same time.”
	“But how would Lythril know where the things were hidden?” objected Cualha.
	There was a pause, and then Umrin’s image shouting, “Bric!”
	“Oh no,” Japthil muttered, looking vexed with herself.
	“You remember, we saw him in one of the chambers with the other three--”
	“That’s right, and you said, ‘So, he hasn’t turned up dead yet after all--’”
	“He’s working with her again,” Aine said.
	Istria shook her head.
	“Not with,” she said. “She’s working him. She’s got to be. He’s betrayed her once, she’s only going to use him if she has total control.”
	“Possession?”
	“Too risky. Thralling, maybe, or emanation. But one way or another she’s got him. He’s doing her legwork while she holes herself up somewhere in Mypril.”
	Our voices faded under Kleark’s. “They all know Istria knows what she’s talking about. Because they all know that when Theamh discovered Istria inside Lythril’s dungeon up in Cretid City, she’d been working for Lythril for more than two years.”
	Now it was just Istria, alone in that room. She looked at the camera stonily.
	“How did it happen?” Kleark’s voice asked.
	“I broke,” Istria said. “She had me in her power and she knew my weaknesses. They worked at me long enough and I broke. It’s as simple as that.”
	“They?” Kleark prompted.
	“Lythril and Barant,” Istria said.
	“Working together?”
	“Working in concert, anyhow. Lythril did the actual breaking. Barant was just brought in to finish me off.” Her eyes darkened, and you could see the pain even in the globe. “Look, I don’t want to say that my turning was anyone else’s responsibility. In the end it was my choice, and I have to live with its consequences. But so does Barant.”
	“How did she...‘finish you off’?” asked Kleark.
	“Can you imagine what it’s like?” Istria demanded, suddenly inspired by anger. “There I am, after a solid year of being tormented by Lythril and cut off from every other human soul. I’ve finally broken and given up my fire. But I’m still holding on with that shred of hope that maybe someone will find me before I’m all the way gone.” She wasn’t going to break, not in front of Kleark and the camera. “So can you even imagine how I feel, when I finally see someone in a hreapa come to rescue me.” 
	After the pause, Kleark said, “And it was Barant?”
	Istria nodded.
	“And what happened?”
	“I said, ‘Oh, Barant, thank Idair,’” Istria went on. “And then I said, ‘Is Theamh with you?’”
	Kleark prompted her after a while. “So...”
	Istria stopped reliving what was clearly an exquisite disappointment and went on. “She said, ‘No, Istria, she’s not. Come upstairs, I want to talk to you.’”
	She ended the pause before he could prompt her again. “The door to my cell was open...and I saw Lythril standing behind her.” Her eyes went out to that camera lens, challenging, angry. “All that time I’ve been praying for rescue thinking, ‘I’ll be all right, the Council must be on her trail, someone’s got to find me.’ And then the Council does find me. And then I find out that stinking BLEEP has known where I was all along.”
	“Why did she wait so long to show herself to you?” Kleark asked.
	“She was waiting for Lythril to break me,” Istria said. “To come in person like that was a big risk. I don’t think she would have come at all unless Lythril had told her it was necessary. I think Lythril thought seeing what had become of Barant would help convince me to turn. She was right.”
	After a tense pause, Kleark said, “And so she helped Lythril turn you?”
	Istria nodded.
	“Why?”
	Istria exploded an angry breath. “Who BLEEPing knows why--she gave me a load of BLEEP about how my working for Lythril would protect Theamh just the way Barant’s being shrimarbh was protecting the order. I think at that point she actually believed that. I don’t know whether she still does. Turning forces you to face some things.”
	“So you think Barant has turned,” Kleark said.
	“Barant is dark as an Amstian night with no moon and that’s some deep BLEEPing dark.”
	“And you’ve been dark yourself,” Kleark said.
	“Yes,” Istria answered.
	“Are you still dark?” Kleark asked.
	“No,” she said.
	“Why not?”
	Istria paused as if considering how to answer this.
	“Because Idair gave Theamh back to me,” she said.
	And now instead of her it was me in that room. “Istria credits you with bringing her out of darkness. What do you say to that?”
	“I say she doesn’t give herself enough credit,” said the image of me. “Istria had help turning--a lot--but in the end she had to turn herself. And I hope I helped with getting her back; but in the end she had to do that herself too.”
	And back to Istria. “And Barant just looked at me, and she said, ‘Istria, we both know what will happen if you go back shrimarbh. Theamh will leave the order to be with you. The Order can’t afford to lose her.’ And I said to her, ‘But the Order can afford to lose me, is that it?’ And she said...” It took her a moment to find what was necessary to go on. “She said, ‘You’ve been lost to the Order for a long time, Istria. If you look in your heart you’ll know that.’”
	<You know she’s a liar,> I said, while the Istria in the globe smoldered quietly.
	<I know, chara.>
	“I was so depressed it seemed to me like she was right,” the image continued. “And I was looking at her, and seeing how dark Barant was becoming, and thinking, Theamh trusts this woman. Theamh has no BLEEPing idea that she’s put herself smack dab in the palm of evil and nobody’s going to give her one. And if I tell this woman that she is the most disgusting BLEEPing hypocrite the Dark One ever deluded, Barant will close that fist, and Theamh will be crushed.” The Istria on the globe swallowed, and went on hoarse. “So she said, ‘Of course the choice is yours to make, and you can’t make it on the spur of the moment. I’ll go now and let you think it over. But you will think about it, won’t you?’” Istria’s eyes burned out into that camera lens. “And I said, ‘I will.’”
	After another long silence, Kleark’s voice said, “It was so long ago, but you can remember exactly what she said to you.”
	Istria looked up with dangerous eyes.
	“Every word,” she said. “I wear each one as a separate scar. And if Idair lets me help bring Barant down, I will make her account for every last one of them.”
	“It’s hard to believe that someone could go to the dark side and make it back,” said Kleark’s voice. “But these women are convinced she’s done it.”
	“Oh absolutely,” said Cualha. “We’d know, otherwise. You have to...see, this is the thing, you have to watch what people do. Barant won’t let anyone see what she’s doing, even though she talks up a storm. That should tip people off. Since she’s been back all I’ve seen Istria do is help the rest of us try to set things right.”
	“And you believe that Barant is dark,” said Kleark.
	“Oh yes,” Cualha said, with a bitter laugh. 
	“But even say she is,” said Kleark. “How does that make her any worse or better than Istria ni Vharen? Since dark is dark.”
	“Look,” Cualha said. “Dark is as dark does. Istria has never taken life, she’s never overtaken, she’s never done permanent harm. She’s done absolutely unholy things with the spirit world and that’s not something that doesn’t matter. But Istria has also had the courage to admit she’s done wrong, stop doing wrong, and take responsibility for what she’s done. Istria’s a good woman who’s gone through a dark time. Whereas Barant...”
	Kleark waited for her to resume. 
	“Since Barant turned, either she or her agents have, by our reckoning...” She began tallying it up on her fingers. “Betrayed and broken Istria ni Vharen. Butchered fifteen Duntani in an attempt to assassinate her own apprentice. Murdered Daire ni Fhilim in cold blood.  Massacred three towns in Amst to prevent them bearing witness. Assassinated Slythe. Overtaken several thousand Amstian soldiers. Helped provoke and prolong a bloody civil war. Killed true shriias in every province and driven the rest into hiding. Sanctioned the overthrow of our government and imprisonment of our elected leaders.” Cualha paused. “And she says she’s doing all of this to save shri.” Cualha’s eyes glittered in the water of the globe. “Now either she is stark raving mad--which is always a possibility--or she is some kind of evil thing we haven’t come up with a name for yet.” 
	“Cualha ni Chrot has been central coordinator of rainmaking for the past ten years. Cualha won’t admit to knowing much about possession, but she has her own ideas about what went rotten in the Order.”
	Kleark’s voice was back in that room now. “When did you first start to think things were going wrong?” 
	Cualha was ready with the answer. “You remember two springs before last, there was that disastrous flood at the beginning of the planting season in west Kengda,” she said. “And then the partial failures in harvest season, in wheat and barley.”
	“I remember,” Kleark answered.
	“I’m a shriia, so I can’t tell you that Kengdan weather is not weird as hell under any circumstances. It’s a notoriously unstable place, in spite of everything we try to do for it. Which is of course why it’s so interesting to speculators.”
	“Speculators?” Kleark prompted.
	“You know, that bunch of parasites in the City that gets rich off buying and selling crops that haven’t grown yet,” she said. 
	“The promise traders.”
	“Yeah. Them.” Cualha spat violently onto the floor, then seemed to react to something on Kleark’s face. “I’m sorry--I know it’s not polite. I’m country stock, and it’s an old Kengdan tradition--you spit after you speak of evil.”
	“What evil?”
	“When you work in Rainmaking in the City, speculators are the bane of your existence,” she said. “They’re always trying to get you to make predictions, and any shriia will tell you we hate having to say anything about the future. They just worry and worry you and because you’re a shriia you have to answer them if they’re persistent enough. Harani’s developed the art of brushing them off to a high degree--she’s beautiful to watch. I’m still trying to get to that level of expertise, or maybe just of brazenness. So against my will I usually end up knowing a lot about what’s going on in the promise market.”
	“And?” Kleark prompted.
	“The way it works,” Cualha said, “is that someone buys a contract for a certain amount of grain or cattle or whatever at a certain price, on the theory that he will be able to sell it later at a higher one. Understand these people don’t give a rat’s BLEEP about the actual crop, they never see that. It’s just another form of gaming, to them. The way you make money is by guessing what’ll happen. Say it looks like a good year for grain, which according to the insane logic of money means that the prices will be low. People are selling the contracts for a song, you load up on a whole raft of them. Then the year gets worse, there’s more scarcity, prices go up, and closer to harvest you sell the contracts you bought for twice what you paid. You have a pile of cash, the farmer gets to hedge his bets, someone else has grain they can sell at a markup. Everyone’s happy, right?”
	Kleark’s voice said, “Something makes me think you’re about to say different.”
	Cualha nodded.
	“Dark users can’t make weather better,” Cualha said. “But they can make it worse.”
	“And?”
	“So before all that rain came out of nowhere and put west Kengda underwater,” she said, “I heard from one of these speculator lice that rumor had it a few deep pockets were quietly buying up contracts on grain in Kengda. He wanted to know did I know anything I wasn’t telling. I said no, looked to me like it would probably be a normal year but of course anything’s possible.”
	Kleark let her pause while her anger gathered.
	“So the floods came,” she said. “One in three west Kengdan farmers had their wheat or barley fail that year. It wasn’t severe enough that there was ever hunger. But there were evictions, seizures, and of course a huge rise in the price of grain.”
	“You suspect...” Kleark said.
	“No. I accuse.”
	“Who?”
	Cualha’s anger isn’t as flashy as mine, maybe, but it was certainly visible.
	“I accuse Hlos ni Nhym and Ygren ni Fhodor of intentionally bringing disastrous rains down on the region of west Kengda in which they were stationed that year,” she said. “I accuse Barant of concealing this fact by transferring both of them to Border Control soon after I mentioned my suspicions to her, and by burying a report I submitted to the Council. I accuse Wous mac Lir na Preofat, Twil mac Derin na nOg, and Lefray mac Dykla na Seonna of bribing Hlos and Ygren to organize a crop failure that would inflate the value of promises they had bought. I accuse all of them of fattening their own pockets by sucking the heartblood out of the tenants and smallholders whose crops, holdings, and farms were lost.”
	“Strong words,” Kleark’s voice said. “Do you know this for a fact?”
	“It’s hard to say anything is a definite fact,” Cualha said. “I have done some independent inquiring, and verified the history of the deal that made the three of them richer than they were. I cannot prove that Hlos and Ygren were responsible for that flooding or that Barant knew about it. But my heart, my gut, and yes, my head so far as it can be sure tell me that they were all in on it. And if this corruption is not stopped, Idair alone knows what will happen to all of us.”
	The tape ran on, but my mind wasn’t on it. I was thinking about my father.
	I didn’t know much about what he did for a living. When I was small he took me down to the Exchange, the home of what Cualha had called the barter pit, and explained to me how it worked. I had promptly forgotten; my mind has never been able to hold that kind of information very long. But the more I thought, the more likely it seemed that he probably worked in this area. Because whatever it was he did, it was imaginary; money made more money off in the shadows, but there was never anything you could touch.
	Cualha hadn’t mentioned him by name. But he worked with all three of those men.
	Aine, who had been at the party and met them all, was looking at me anxiously. <I’m sure your athi isn’t in it, Theamh. He seemed like a good man.>
	I shook my head.
	In the globe now, we were all in the parlor milling about, the shriias and Taric and Viecter. It was night, and we were hanging globes and talking about supper. 
	“This is Viecter mac hIrbirt,” said Kleark’s voice, as the camera focused on Viecter. “Well-known in Amranth for his patronage of the arts and his fabulous parties, he’s become an integral part of the resistance. In return for the assistance he provides--a place to stay, food, support for the relievers--these women are willing to tolerate his eccentricities.”
	The camera was now on Eorna, who had just finished hanging a globe. “I think he’s a little touched, certainly, but not in a dangerous way,” she said. “You often see that with children in very wealthy families--they don’t need to work, so they have to come up with things to do with their time. I don’t mind him at all, except for this dressing for dinner business.”
	“Dressing for dinner?” Kleark asked.
	Viecter was now passing by carrying a bottle of something toward the kitchen. “Hey, Viecter!” Eorna called. He stopped, turning around as if lost in thought. “You’re not going to make us wear all that formal stuff tonight, are you? Because I really don’t want that caught on video.”
	Viecter blinked, and then said, “No, it doesn’t matter.”
	He headed toward the door to the kitchen. Eorna said, “Thank Idair. You just get used to the hreapa, and anyhow fancy things make me uncomfortable.”
	“It’s Theamh has the worst job,” the image of Umrin put in. “Here, Theamh, how are you doing on ‘A Shriia’s Way?’”
	“It’s not nice to mock me,” said the image of me. “I’m almost finished. Spirits almighty has it been a task.”
	The real Viecter, watching from the couch, took this without a sniffle. I’d had a long talk with him about it, and to hear me say that was unwelcome but not unexpected.
	In the globe, a little bitty Viecter came back from the kitchen looking just as preoccupied as ever. The little me hailed him. “Viecter!”
	“Yes?” he said, turning slowly.
	“I’m almost done with your poem,” I said.
	“Oh, that’s nice,” he answered. “Dinner’s ready.”
	Eorna, who had been watching, turned back to Kleark. In a corner of the image, the little me said, “Viecter, come here a minute, would you?”
	“Why?” said the little Viecter.
	“Just come here.”
	And a moment later the image lurched again as Viecter exploded out toward the screen, running as fast as he could, with me in hot pursuit behind him.
	“Go, Theamh!” shouted Cualha from the couch. “Run like the Amstian wind!”
	Kleark’s camera was trying to keep up. When I finally tackled Viecter it was in the concert hall, so that when the image came to rest I had him flat on his face on the little stage while Aine and Kelah were to be seen trotting up the aisles toward us. 
	“All right, that’s it!” shouted the image of me, wresting one of those gray tentacles out of Viecter’s head. “From now on, everyone gets scoured twice a day before breakfast!”
	Kelah brought her vigils out. “I think once before breakfast and once after, maybe,” she said.
	“Yes,” I added as Aine fired up. “That would probably make more sense.”
	“And another battle was joined,” said Kleark’s. “Theamh says that the more the others know about her methods, the easier it will be for them to thwart her. So instead of showing you how she banished this arani, let me show you what happened afterward.”
	Suddenly it was the kitchen, and Umrin and Japthil were sticking their hands into a stewpot that had been taken off the stove.
	“What is it?” said Eorna, her cheerfulness having evaporated.
	“Calzan,” Umrin said. “Would you not say--” Japthil nodded. “It’s a metal, it’s something produced when they process iron ore, there must be plenty of it around. In small doses it helps with blood ailments; in this dose it’s lethal.”
	For a moment we all stared at the poisoned dish, and then the little me said, “Viecter, did you make anything for the guard outside?”
	Viecter, who even on the globe looked positively gray, said, “I...yes, I made them a big jug of spiced punch...”
	“Spiced with the spirits know what,” Istria muttered, running for the door.
	There was another of those moments of darkness. Then we were outside now with a number of light globes bobbing around shedding yellow light over the forms of the men--who were gagging, doubled over, lying prone, or convulsing--and Umrin and Japthil, who were ordering the rest of us around with a snap you didn’t ordinarily see in them.
	“All right, him, him, him, that one there, and him, every one of you take one of them and make him bring it up. Then keep him quiet till one of us gets there. Japthil, you take Abiard, he’s worst off. MOVE!”
	 At this critical moment, the image suddenly began wavering, then shivering.
	“No!” Cualha shouted, leaning forward.
	She fell silent, obviously directing Eorna through the link. The rest of us just hovered, leaning off the seat, hoping it would hold.
	But what we saw next was Barant.
	“AAAGH!”
	When our collective shout of loathing and frustration died, Barant was in mid-speech. “...this outrageous act of sabotage. Control over the waterglobe projection system has been returned to the Council. Please, we urge any of you who have seen these images to report to your local shriia immediately for scouring. These women are dangerous and we don’t know for certain that they are not capable of overtaking, thralling, or mindforcing you through this transmission.”
	“Mo gleacha!” Istria shouted. “You can’t do that fnaa over a waterglobe any more than you can do it over a VB or a--”
	But Istria stopped, because suddenly the image of Barant fell into a thousand unconnected droplets and when the image pooled again, it was Kleark.
	“We apologize for the unscheduled interruption,” he said. 
	It was eerie hearing a ghost of our own shout of triumph echo behind him as Kleark went on.
	“We now return you to the real story.”
	His face, which wore a slight smile of triumph, was replaced by an image of Umrin, sitting alone in that room. 
	“With the help of Idair we got them back out of danger,” she said. “It’s a miracle we lost no one--it’s a good thing Theamh figured Viecter as soon as she did. She says it must have been an arani the relievers tracked in from Amranth.”
	“And the arani tried to poison you?”
	Umrin shook her head. “They tell me the arani wouldn’t do that, because it wouldn’t benefit the arani to kill off its hosts. Someone else was directing it. One of the BLEEPes from the dark Council who’s up directing the siege, I would imagine.”
	“So what happens now?” Kleark asked.
	“Well,” Umrin said, “I think you better wrap this up, because we need to evacuate. They must know through the arani where we are.”
	My image replaced hers. “On the bright side, Kleark, it doesn’t matter now what you show them. The other side knows where we are and who’s among us. Go nuts.” The laugh I gave sounded thin in the globe. “Tell the truth. Spread the word. Hope it matters.”
	Kleark paused. “And what’s next for you?”
	“Next? You mean literally next?” The image of me appeared to see him nod to go on. “Well, next I have to go tell Viecter what I thought of his poetry.”
	Kleark laughed, and said, “Is it that bad?”
	“It is true that I have read worse,” said the little me. “But I like Viecter, and I owe him a great debt, and I wish I could just say, ‘It’s great, Viecter, I liked it a lot.’”
	“Why can’t you?” asked Kleark.
	The image of me smiled.
	“I’m a shriia,” I said. “I tell the truth and I keep my promises. This is part of the job, just like facing death is.”
	Cualha’s face now appeared. “Yes, I do know where we’re going and no, I won’t tell you. We have to try to preserve some secrets from them.”
	“Do you think you’ll succeed?” from Kleark.
	Cualha looked at him.
	“I think we have a chance,” she said. “But even if I didn’t, I’d keep fighting.”
	It was back to Kleark alone. “And if you ask any of these women, that’s what they’ll tell you.”
	To Eorna now, and Kleark’s voice asking, “What are your plans for the future?”
	“I plan to fight on until we overcome, or until I die. After that...it’s hard to imagine what it will be like when it’s all over. It really is.”
	Kelah appeared in the globe. “I’ve been on the Council too long,” she said. “I have, how did my esteemed colleague put it, ‘pissed away my career on petty political--’”
	“Oh, I’m sure that’s not--” began Kleark.
	“Young man, it is true. Don’t contradict me, especially when you don’t know what you’re talking about. These past years on the Council all I’ve been working for or worried about is myself.” There was something grim and almost frightening about the gray granite edge of her sudden self-assessment. “This is my last chance to show that I still deserve to wear this hreapa. I’m grabbing it with both hands. It’s no credit to me, young man. I’m an old woman, and death doesn’t mean so much now.”
	“But it’s not just Kelah,” said Kleark’s voice. “Even Aine ni hEmer, who has had her fire barely a week, is ready to make the ultimate sacrifice, if that’s what it takes.”
	Now Aine was on the screen. “Do you ever think about whether you’ll survive all of this?” Kleark’s voice was asking her.
	“I do think about it,” Aine said. “I try not to, but it happens.”
	“And yet you’re willing to die at nineteen?” Aine nodded. “Why?”
	Aine paused before answering.
	“You’re born into the world as pure possibility,” she said. “It’s your challenge, it’s your gift, to try to make something out of that. I saw Daire haled out, before Tifni and Hern burned her to death.” Nobody said anything to fill that pause, even Kleark. “She gave her life so that her people could know, for one minute, beyond doubt, absolutely, that there was good in the world.” I felt my throat constricting. “The Dark One may take my life from me but it won’t take what I’ve made. If I die at nineteen I can die proud of who I am, proud and happy to have brought more magic into the world. I’d rather die proud at nineteen than die at ninety in shame and fear knowing I betrayed the light and the truth and the women who’ve brought me to it.” 
	I was ashamed to be actually tearing. But I was comforted to see that Istria was too. Viecter had been dabbing his eyes for a long time now.
	“And anyway,” said Aine, with a laugh. “I’m twenty next month, so unless something very terrible happens very soon, I won’t die at nineteen anyhow.”
	 Aine’s face remained, although she was no longer talking. Kleark’s voice went on.
	“Theamh says Aine ni hEmer is the future of shri. Anyone who spends time around Aine can see what she means. Young, brilliant, brave, and on fire with the desire to do good and do well. And if she’s the future of shri, then maybe shri’s going to do all right.” 
	On the screen, Aine’s eyes blinked, and it was obvious she was lost in thought. 
	“Unless, of course, she dies at nineteen.”
	The image returned to Kleark at the baths. 
	“You’ve seen a lot of Barant and her followers in recent weeks,” he said. “Now you’ve seen the other side. It’s up to you to decide what you believe. I don’t make the truth. I just repeat what I hear.” He paused. “And all I can do with the gift I’ve got is what Theamh ni hUlnach suggested I do. Tell the truth. Spread the word. Hope it matters.”
	There was another long, heavy pause.
	“This is Kleark mac Caille, sending the sceal from the Sharptooth Mountains, third day of the first week of the harvest season.”
	The image wavered. It reformed; but not as Barant. As Riina.
	“When the Council began the program of waterglobe installation, we did not foresee this eventuality,” she said.
	“Well, that at least is probably true,” Istria muttered.
	We didn’t hear what was next, because Eorna and Kleark came running back. 
	Eorna asked, “Did it work?”
	Our answer was a deafening cheer which eventually broke into a whole lot of congratulatory embracing all round. It was such a relief to finally know that someone was at least hearing our story. I wasn’t even angry any more about it having been titled “The Rebel Stronghold.” Viecter didn’t seem to be so upset about his poem; at least now he would be achieving some sort of fame. And it mattered to Istria to have seen what Cualha said about her. She had been nervous talking about this to Kleark but decided that it would be damning enough for Barant that she had to do it. She was glad it didn’t seem to have made a difference to the others--even to Kelah, who seemed to have mellowed a lot.
	When we could finally hear Riina again, she was saying, “...in the interim, for your own safety, we have no choice but to destroy the waterglobes in order to prevent the enemy from using them against you. Please listen very carefully and follow these directions. Take a large cloth and put it over the waterglobe. Put another around the base of the pedestal. Then leave the room.”
	“What on earth is she...” Kleark said.
	“They’re going to shatter the globes,” Eorna suddenly shouted. “Get out!”
	We ran for the exit.
	A piercing, high screech rang out from the parlor, followed by the sound of breaking glass.
	When we returned, the globe was a pile of shards and a puddle of water.
	“Tch,” said Viecter, sadly. “What a mess.”
	“The one at the baths will be worse,” Eorna sighed.
	We looked at each other. It was time for us to go our separate ways. The guard had already been dispersed--some with the Relievers, some heading off to find Larc and Merth and the rest of the Flying Hart Four. Umrin and Japthil were heading back to Mypril, not because we thought that was a good idea but because it was their city and their Council and they weren’t going to leave it in the clutches of evil. Viecter would be traveling with them, and would ultimately be hidden away by Ethir in whatever hideout he had stashed the witnesses of the Back Three. And Istria, Aine, Cualha, Kelah, Eorna, Taric and I were headed for Amranth to execute what I thought was the most outrageously dangerous plan in a series of extremely dangerous plans I had already executed. It was highly unlikely that all of us would survive.
	“This is goodbye then,” I finally said. “Viecter, we owe you much, you won’t hate me for not liking your poem--”
	“Oh, shriia,” he said, giving me a close and somewhat stifling embrace. “You have to tell the truth, it’s better I know.” He released me. “Thank you for talking to me about it. And I will think about what you said.”
	<What you said?> Istria inquired as we went about our goodbyes.
	<I just suggested...well, I asked him if he’d ever thought about ransa.>
	<And what did he say?>
	<He burst into tears.>
	<In an I-can’t-believe-you-would-insult-me-like-this sort of way?>
	<No, more in a I’m-so-relieved-someone-has-finally-brought-this-up sort of way.>
	<You think he’s right for it?>
	<Chara, I don’t know, it would take a lot more studying. It could be he’s not. He doesn’t prefer men, for instance.>  
	<Well, that doesn’t mean he’s not a woman, now does it.>
	I tried not to smile as I gave Umrin her parting hug. It surprised me how much I didn’t want to see them go. I hadn’t known them long. But prison attaches you to people.
	“Stay alive,” was all I could think of to say.
	“You too,” she answered. “Come on, Japthil.”
	Viecter wasn’t the only one who looked behind him at the house as he left. It was a strange place; impossible almost, and it had been a strange time there. But it had been--or at least felt--safe. And where we were headed was anything but.
	“You have the wings?” Istria asked Eorna.
	“Right here.”
	I groaned.
	“It will work,” Istria said, with a smile at me. “I promise.”
	“Nobody can predict the future,” I said. “Except for Taric, maybe.”
	“Well, Taric, what do you say?” Istria said. “Will it work?”
	Taric looked at her stolidly. “I see nothing one way or the other,” he said. “But I’m with the shriia. Flying is crazy. I’m glad I’m not trying it.”
	“Oh come on,” Istria said, good-naturedly starting off. “We’ve plenty of time to practice before we get there.”
	“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Aine murmured.
	Istria just laughed and began walking. 

XXI.
Shriia’s Rules

	Amranth is impressive from the ground, but it’s even more impressive when seen from the air.
	How do I know this, you might well ask.
	The shortest, vaguest answer would be, because I am a woman in love. More specifically, because I have discovered that yes, in fact, if Istria ni Vharen told me to jump off a cliff, I would do it.
	Let me back up.
	Really, I need to go back to the night that we finally arrived at the top of Mount Bulten. There’s a whole string of adventures that led up to that, but even danger was starting to get tedious to us. The arani, for instance, were lamentably uninventive in terms of battle tactics, and I was positively looking forward to getting a chance to fight something else. Aine was still enjoying the work, being young; and Kelah seemed to be kept interested by the novelty of actually practicing after years of administrative duty. But I was bored, and so was Istria, since both the arani we encountered were what I was starting to call “orphaned”--under the command of a woman who had died, and thus turned loose into the world to drift around with no other aim besides gluttony. Which meant that the army was much less a problem than before, and consequently Istria had little to do but stand by and wish she had her fire back. So things didn’t get interesting until we were standing on top of that mountain looking down on Amranth.
	Amranth is built around two of the shorter mountains in that range; toward the sea the shoulder begins to slope and the city is there to do the job that, further east, the Sharptooth Mountains do all by themselves--make it difficult for the Cretids to enter. We were on the southwestern face of the last mountain taller than Amranth, looking down in the fading light and realizing that we had our work cut out for us.
	“So this is why the war is going so well in the east,” said Istria.
	We got regular updates from Dahern and Wriana, who told us that since the trial the Volunteers had been encountering much less resistance from the Amstian Army. Even allowing for the companies we had turned from enemies into allies, the refugees had been resettled with unexpected speed; Dahern hoped she might be back in Ancinte with the last of the refugees by tomorrow. Wriana was planning to move on to High Winds, since Tifni and Hern were now dead. They were suspicious of all this good fortune; and so were we, until we saw Amranth.
	The Army wasn’t in the east because the Army was surrounding the city. Whoever was directing the war had given the east up for lost and was concentrating on maintaining the siege at Amranth. The walls and the lake were surrounded by a cordon of men, tents, equipment that stretched as far as the view went in any direction. Even on the north side, which was the least defended, the Army clustered like a swarm of bees between the city walls and the border. And in the middle of this pool of hostility swam the city herself.
	We could see fires dancing along the top of the city walls, but they looked ordinary--torches, lanterns, the regular business of standing watch. Inside the city walls it was quieter than a city should be. The homes were dark and the streets empty. People had turned in early. Saving fuel, maybe; saving strength. Conserving. Hunkering down.
	There had to be thousands of them camped down there, armed to the teeth and not in their right minds. There were only seven of us. It got darker, and the wind rose, and even Istria was starting to look a little daunted.
	“Well,” she finally said. “Let’s get camp made. Hang fire, and damn the army; it’s the wolves we need to worry about.”
	Istria had been told frequently as a child that if she was not good and did not mind her elders, gray wolves would come down from the Sharptooths to eat her. Lots of families in Amst did this. However, most children don’t grow up with a father whose own cruelty and violence match what was projected onto those invisible wolves, and so take it somewhat less to heart. Wolves don’t like fire; we would be all right as long as we kept the globes hanging. But I knew Istria started getting nervous when the sun went down. And being as I am a soft-bred City girl, so did I.
	So with the Amstian Army opening its jaws below us, and an unknown number of wolves lurking in the dark outside our ring of fire and stone, maybe it wasn’t surprising that I didn’t like the idea any better here than I had when Istria first came up with it.
	“Eorna has tailored a set of wings for each of you,” Istria said, as Eorna began pulling bundles of cloth and sticks out of a bag. “Taric, of course, doesn’t need one, and neither do I. Eorna, show them how they work.”
	Eorna took up one of the bundles and shook it out. She slipped one hand into each of the straps, tied the belt around her waist, and stood up with arms outstretched. The sticks, one in reach of each hand, extended the span of the cloth beyond the width of her arms. The tail, with its strange wooden fins bristling, flopped around limp by her feet.
	“Now what you do,” Eorna said, “is take the jump, and when you’re prone in the air you say the spell like I taught you. Out loud or in your head, it doesn’t matter. And when you do...here, one second.”
	Eorna climbed onto a boulder so that the tail was no longer dragging in the dirt. She said the words. The cloth suddenly stiffened into a rigid arc that curved from her outstretched arms over her back to the tail, which now stuck one cloth fin up vertically like a fish’s while two others stuck out to the sides. It was in a kind of an arrowhead shape, with notches along the backsides of the wings where the cloth was cut into flaps.
	“You’ll have to wrap the tail to your feet first, of course,” she said. “So your body follows the line. I couldn’t make it a physical strap because you have to be able to get loose from it at landing, or in case anything should happen. Now when you’re all straightened out, that’s when you start with the fire along the front of the wings. That’ll give you the lift you need to stay airborne. When you want to dip, rise, or turn, you use your mind to move the flaps on the wings and the tail. To land, you say the other spell...” Eorna said the words, and the cloth went limp again. “The air you trap with the wings as you fall will drag the tail forward so the fins catch at the belt, and you’ve got yourself what the Cretids, apparently, call a parachute.”
	“It’s not a very effective parachute,” Istria warned. “Be close to the ground when you say the words.”
	“So,” said Eorna. “Once it balloons up above you, you just hold the ends together and you drop to the ground.” Her failure to use the word ‘drift’ alarmed me somewhat. “The cloth and the wood have been fireproofed. Any questions?”
	Kelah spoke up. “What happens when they shoot at us as we go over?”
	Istria answered. “That’s why we’re doing it after sunrise instead of at night. You, Theamh, Cualha and Eorna will all be in hreapa; that should keep them from doing anything much to annoy you. Aine will be borrowing mine.”
	“What about you?” Aine asked.
	“I’ll ride with Theamh. That way she can sort of shield me, and I can operate the wings.” Aine nodded. “Any other questions?”
	“Are you sure we need to be doing this?” I asked.
	It was more of a Kelah question, as I realized; but I was just starting to understand how thoroughly terrifying this prospect was to me.
	“Theamh, you heard what Virmant’s men went through on their last trip,” she said. “Running through on the ground has gotten nearly impossible even for armed men who have no problem killing their enemies. We can’t go over the lake because they’ve got that surrounded as tight as the City. This is the only way I see us getting in there.”
	“You’re sure, are you, that we’re not just doing this because you think it’s a neat idea?”
	Istria was hurt, and angry, and I couldn’t blame her. I regretted having said it immediately. But I too was angry, and didn’t rush to apologize.
	“I do happen to think it’s a neat idea,” Istria said coldly, “but I also believe it’s a practical one. If you all don’t agree, then let someone else come up with the next plan.”
	“We do agree with you,” Eorna said. “We’ve already voted on this, Theamh, it’s settled. It’ll be all right.”
	“She’s right, dhiaoc,” Aine said, a little cautiously. “This is the best way to get in there--as long as the wings work.”
	“Well, you see, right there--” I began.
	“Theamh, there is an element of risk to anything,” Istria snapped. “For Idair’s sake, you’re now fighting 3000-pound arani like it’s a stroll in the Pharc, I would think you could handle this!”
	“I understand how arani work,” I shouted, realizing I was on the verge of a tantrum and desperate not to go over the edge. “I don’t understand how this works.”
	“It’s not because I haven’t explained it to you,” Istria replied.
	“Look,” Kelah broke in. “We’re all agreed we’re doing this and that we probably are not going to die. If Theamh’s the only one who has a problem then why don’t you two just take this outside. I’m sure you can bring her around.”
	“And what’s that supposed to mean?” I demanded, venting on Kelah the anger I was trying to deflect from Istria.
	Kelah wanted to shrink, but she didn’t. She did decline to elaborate, however.
	I looked around at Cualha, Eorna, Aine, and Taric, who were all avoiding my gaze. I realized with sudden embarrassment that I was making a scene. Not knowing exactly how to unmake it, I stormed off past the fires into the darkness.
	“It’s all right, Aine, I’ll go,” said Istria’s voice as I tried to get away from the fire before incurring further embarrassment. She caught up with me in no time at all, and when I felt her hand on my shoulder I turned but didn’t run.
	“Light something, will you?” she said, after we’d looked at each other for what seemed like a long time. “The wolves. You know.”
	I hung a globe, but said nothing.
	“Why are you mad at me?” Istria began. 
	“You know how I hate heights!”
	“That’s no excuse!”
	“For what?” I demanded, even though I knew.
	“Why would you do that to me?” she burst out. “Question my motivations like that in front of everyone? All this time I’ve been trying to live down being dark, and now--”
	“I didn’t say there was anything dark about it, Istri, I just--I know how you’ve always wanted to do this--”
	“Theamh, if you don’t trust me to know the difference between my own pleasure and what’s right, then how do you expect them to trust me?”
	“I do trust you, Istri!” I shouted, upset now.
	“Well you have strange ways of showing it!”
	“You’re asking me to take a flying leap off a mountainside--”
	“Damn it, Theamh, this is the first time this whole trip that I’ve been able to make myself actually useful and then you of all people--”
	I had been about to interrupt, but the look on her face stopped me. At no point, ever, except right after her nightmares, had I seen terror like that in her. 
	“Istri--”
	“Get down!”
	It was a hoarse whisper. Before I could turn to see what she was staring at, something huge collided with me, sending me rolling on the ground. When I leapt back to my feet the thing had abandoned me and gone for Istria, who was at that moment crashing to the earth under the weight of its four-pawed frame.
	I had the fire singeing a trail along its shaggy dark spine before I had time to think about what it was. When the head lifted in its howl of pain and anger, I saw the rows of canine teeth and the pointed ears. I had never seen a wolf, but if a wolf looked like an enormous, muscular dog with sharp black claws, a snarling, fanged muzzle and a thick gray coat, then that was probably what this thing was.
	The burns on its back and flanks distracted it into snarling at me, which fortunately meant it couldn’t bite her. But it wasn’t running away, and it wasn’t letting her up. 
	“Damn it!” I shouted, sending another ball of fire toward its rump and tail. “This is why you’re scared of fire, you stupid animal, because it hurts! Will you RUN!”
	The wolf decided that although it would not run, it couldn’t do much to Istria until it dealt with me. It leapt off her body and onto mine.
	It didn’t at all seem put off by the fire I started in the fur on its underbelly. Fortunately we hadn’t undone yet so he couldn’t spread it to me, even if he was clawing up my torso to worry my throat.
	There was a sharp, higher-pitched howl and he faltered enough for me to throw him off. Now Istria and I were both up, with the singed and bleeding wolf still, amazingly, on its feet and growling at both of us. Istria was still holding up the knife she’d stabbed it with. I fired a little burst at the wolf’s muzzle and tried telling it off in its own language.
	Of course, we don’t speak wolf very well; it’s hard to get close enough to them to learn the nuances. Basically you take a variant of dog and deliver it very aggressively. Or at least that was what I was trying. It made no difference to the wolf, who went bounding toward Istria again.
	Before it could reach her, it let out a yelp and keeled over in the dirt. Istria and I were not inclined to approach it. Taric appeared, the crossbow still raised ahead of him.
	“I hope that finishes him,” Taric observed, as the others came running. The wolf was still whimpering, but Taric’s arrow had gone into his side and pierced something important; blood was dribbling out over those panting jaws. He stood at a respectful distance, waiting for it to expire. Istria let the knife drop, and ran to me.
	“Theamh--are you all right--”
	She was shaking all over when I held her, and trying to keep her hands in the air so she wouldn’t get blood on me. “I’m all right, chara.” My arms tightened around her as she started shaking harder. <And you?>
	<I’m...I’m all right...>
	“What...” Taric sounded suddenly very disturbed. “Shriia...will you look at this...”
	I was reluctant to let go of Istria, so it was Kelah who said, “Sweet spirits of the outer planes. Theamh, you have to look or you won’t believe it.”
	Istria dropped one arm so we could turn around, keeping the other tight around my waist. The wolf still lay bloodied and burnt on the stones. Except it wasn’t a wolf.
	It was still clenching its four legs like hurt animals do, and twitching in pain. But that muzzle was blunted, and as we watched it was getting blunter. The thing was transforming before our eyes from the body of a wounded wolf to a different wounded body whose breath bubbled through those filling lungs with a fear that sounded human.
	“Name of the spirit,” Aine said, as the ears shrank and the face metamorphosed. “Am I going insane? Or is that Bric?”
	“If you’re going insane, I’m traveling with you,” I said.
	In the ghastly silence, Kelah said, “We should...”
	Now that he was no longer a wolf, the seven of us clustered around Bric’s convulsing body to see what we could do. There wasn’t much. The burns weren’t recent enough to draw, and Taric’s arrow had torn through an awful lot of Bric’s gut. So had Istria’s knife. Cualha got down by his head to start the empathic transfer. 
	“Bric,” I said, kneeling down to look at his bleared eyes. “Bric, can you hear me?”
	Yes.
	“Bric, you’re dying,” I said. “All we can do is ease the pain and watch you out.” I thought it seemed like he understood me. Kelah was already hanging tiny globes in place of candles around us. “If you have questions, if you have anything you want to say before you go...send them out, we’ll try to answer.”
	Hopelessly awkward at the best of times, I was making a terrible hash of this deathbed; but he had worked for Lythril for so long, and he had just tried to kill both me and Istria, even if he obviously hadn’t been himself. 
	What...It seemed like he was looking at me. What...happens...now?
	“I don’t know,” I said, glancing around at the grave faces of the others. “Nobody knows.”
	Don’t...let her take me.
	“She’s gone from here,” said Kelah, pausing in the chant. “She must have left you when you started to change. The place is clean.”
	Bric closed his eyes. His labored breathing continued.
	Tell Geraine...
	I waited; but I never found out what he wanted to tell Geraine. His spirit left while he was collapsed in silence. We sat watching his body change, on guard for interference in spite of Kelah’s assurances.
	“Shriia,” Taric began, unwilling to ask but certainly interested to know.
	“I didn’t know they could do that,” Aine said, her voice low.
	“They can,” Istria said. “So could you, probably. But I’ve never seen it done.”
	“Could we really?” Aine asked me.
	I shrugged. “There are spells for metamorphosis on the books, left over from the first kyelran before they established the rules,” I said. “If the subject were willing, or if it were the only way to prevent a greater harm, I suppose we could use them. We just don’t.”
	“Why not?” Taric asked.
	“It’s too dangerous,” Eorna said. “They had to practice on animals first, back before animals were included in the Life Rule. If it doesn’t work, you end up with a terrible and unholy mess. We can’t practice with animals now, and for Idair’s sake you’d have to be out of your mind to try it on a human.” Eorna shook her head. 
	“Even for dark users it’s a waste of effort,” Istria said. “There are almost no circumstances under which metamorphosis is the most efficient way to get something done. I’m surprised at her.”
	I sighed. “It was a way to track us,” I said. “Once we got rid of her emanation and Coel’s and that arani, she needed some way to follow us. He could travel faster than we can as a wolf and he could follow our trail. And as a wolf, he could scare the living fnaa out of Istria, which he never could in a human skin.” I looked at her. “You know how she kept saying she wanted to kill you while I look on. To have attacked you herself would put her at risk. Here, she wins either way--since she wanted revenge on Bric in any case.”
	“So,” Aine said. “Lythril’s had enough of harrying Barant, and is back to harrying us.”
	“So she is,” I agreed.
	“We better move then,” Istria said. “She knows where we are and she probably knows our plan. We’ll have to get in tonight.”
	In the dark. Through the air. After a very long day. Not how we’d wanted to do it; not a good idea. Istria looked at me, braced for a renewal of hostilities.
	“You’re right,” I said. “Let’s go.” 
	We stood. Aine was the one who took on the unpleasant task of sending home this already-charred ruin of what was never much of a man.
	“Farewell,” she said. “You worked for gain and greed all your life, and there isn’t much good to be said of you. But nobody deserves death, and nobody deserves to go like you did. We hope you find some kind of peace.” She sent her fire over his body. “Slan abhaile, Bric mac Chlos.”
	We watched him burn.
	<Istri, I’m sorry for what I said.>
	<Please, Theamh, it’s forgotten...I’m just so glad you’re all right.>
	<I hate being angry with you, I don’t mean to be, I was just...I’m just frightened.>
	<I’m scared too, Theamh, but I think it will work.>
	<All right then.>
	Bric’s final remains crumbled into ash and Aine cleaned up the fire.
	<You ready to fly with me, chara?> Istria said, looking at me.
	<Yes,> I answered, because when I looked at her I was.
	“Everyone break camp and go down to the platform,” Istria said. “Either we’ll plummet to our deaths, or we’ll enter Amranth in style.”
	
	Eorna was the first to take off; she was the only one who had the confidence. She’d made the stuff, and I suppose she trusted herself. While the rest of us hung back, she raced along the plateau and flung herself headfirst into the abyss.
	I didn’t have the courage to look until it was past the time we should have heard the splat. By then Aine and Istria were already at the edge following her progress.
	“Look, dhiaoc!” Aine called. “She’s rising!”
	I could hardly believe it. But there was Eorna, that contraption stiffened out along her back and the fire streaming back over the wings, floating along through the upper air out toward where the city lay twinkling under the darkness like a reflected constellation.
	“Ah well then,” said Taric prosaically. “I’m easy in my mind now. I’ll stay to see you safe off.”
	Taric was invisible, as he would be for quite a while. He was going to be our man on the ground. He had allowed me to link with him so we could get news about the army. He’d committed to shriia’s rules, and he was confident in his ability to stay undetected.
	Cualha went next. I watched Aine take off with a knot in my stomach; but she was soon rising along with the two of them, gliding out toward that ring of light. Kelah brought herself to it, and then it was just me and Istria.
	<I love you,> I said, as we backed up for the run.
	<I know, chara.>
	<I just don’t want to say goodbye angry,> I said.
	<It’s not goodbye, chara. Have some faith.>
	Istria projected into me so that we could do the runup together. She was behind me, strapped into the wings just as I was. And it was lucky she was doing the running. It was all I could do not to close my eyes.
	For a sickening instant we were dropping. Then I finished the spell. The wings stretched out above me and I was snapped into a horizontal position, my arms spread out and my feet hooked to the tail, my white underbelly exposed to the dangers below.
	We stopped falling. Istria made adjustments to the wings, and we began gliding after the others.
	<It’s working,> I said, as the ground slipped by beneath us. 
	<Well, you know, as Aine said,> Istria answered. <Anyone can fly downwards.>
	Which, after that initial climb, was really all we were doing. Istria and Eorna had planned this out very carefully. Rise on lift and updraft until a certain point, then glide down and out till you reach the city walls. Istria had explained to me what lift was a hundred times but I still didn’t get it. That was why she had the control of the wings.
	And if it was terrifying to be suspended on nothing but air and magic hundreds and hundreds of feet above an entire world that could at any moment become nothing but a giant stone on which to shatter your body, it was also beautiful. It was like discovering an entirely new universe that had been invisible to me before. Finding out that air is real, that it moves and breathes like anything else, that the sky like the river is fluid, full, something to move through. Released for a little while, if only a little while, from the jealous grip of the earth. Shooting through the darkness like a star itself, learning what to make of space.
	I could see the others up ahead of me, burning through the night sky in almost identical patterns. I wondered what the people below would make of it. The firelight wouldn’t necessarily pick out enough for them to recognize us, at this distance, as human. Bats grow to an enormous size in some of these mountain caves, apparently; but they don’t grow this big, and they are not usually on fire.
	<You all right, dhiaoc?>
	<So far so good,> I said. 
	<Are you having fun at all? I am.>
	<I wouldn’t call it fun. But it is beautiful.>
	Aine shut the link. I raised Istria.
	<I’m proud of you,> I said. <Even if I do still think this whole idea was crazy.>
	<You can tell me that again after we land.>
	We began moving out over the army. Things suddenly got more complicated. The presence of all those people, and all their watching and cooking fires, shook the air up and made it harder to ride. I had one heartstopping dip before Istria found us another updraft or something and I rose up to where the others were grimly hanging on to their altitude. We were realizing, as we saw the city start looming toward us, that if we were too low when we got there we would simply crash into the city walls. And then drop like rocks to the bottom, which would take care of killing us if the crash itself hadn’t. 
	There was a sharp sound on my left, like metal on metal. Then something jabbed me suddenly in the stomach. The pain was sharp, but temporary.
	<They’re shooting at us,> I said.
	It was unnecessary to remark upon; down below we could see soldiers looking up and taking aim. They didn’t seem too surprised. Except for the few we could always make out, wherever we were, who were gesticulating and shouting orders. The Aivs, who alone had enough wits about them to realize that something was very wrong with this picture.
	<We’re almost there,> sent Eorna. We had set up a group link before we split up. Once we linked in with the Amranth council--assuming they were still alive--we’d have our own network, including Wriana, Dahern, and through Cualha Harani. <Stay high till we clear the walls, then drop as fast as you can do it.>
	It sounded easy enough, until the fireballs started.
	Since Eorna was in the lead they went for her first. Sizzling streaks of red-orange that could only have come from one place. Whoever was directing the arani on this half of the army was still very much alive. And judging by the number of shots being fired, there had to be more than one of them, on site and beginning to realize that whatever we were, we had to be stopped.
	We couldn’t fire back without disturbing the flames along the wings, and although the fire couldn’t do our bodies much damage it played hell with the air currents. Eorna rocked from side to side, trapped almost motionless for a few moments, and then began to drop.
	My heart dropped with her. But Istria had more presence of mind.
	<Get your minds on her! Pull!>
	It wasn’t easy. But with the five of us we managed to at least arrest her fall, even if it meant we weren’t for the moment going anywhere. For a sickening instant it seemed as if we were all going to lurch and go down with her, and then the wind changed and we wafted upward together. 
	<Thanks.>
	Eorna sounded pretty badly shaken. I couldn’t blame her. They were still firing at us--with arrows as well as actual fire--and although we were closing in fast on the city walls, we didn’t have as much height as we wanted. We’d make it. But only barely.
	<Sons of bitches!> 
	It sounded like that was Kelah, although I wasn’t used to identifying her voice. <Kelah?>
	<It’s all right, they just got an arrow into me.>
	<Where?>
	<Where else, the shoulder. Thurk me this hurts.>
	<Bad luck,> said Aine, commiserating. <Try to think of something else.>
	<Lucky bastards,> she snapped. <Well, at least this’ll keep my mind off my rheumatism.>
	<Look out!> Eorna was coming over the walls now, and with only about six feet to spare. Aine went over next, as Eorna’s wings ballooned up above her and she dropped out of sight over the other side of the walls.
	By the time we were coming in, the others were all dropping, at a speed which if not gentle was at least not liable to cause grievous bodily harm, toward the roofs of houses. I couldn’t pay much attention, however. As we came to the walls I realized that I was moving a lot faster than I wanted to be and was down a lot lower. And that we were careening toward a stake-and-canvas tent that had been set up for the wall guard.
	<Fnaa-->
	<Say the words, Theamh-->
	I got started, but in my haste I finished the spell early. And landed, not on the other side of the walls, but smack in the middle of that tent, which rolled up and entangled itself with me, Istria, the wings, and whoever had happened to be resting in it at the time.
	“Mo linn agam!” At least now I wouldn’t be igniting things, even if it did take a while to figure out how to release me and Istria from the bundle of sticks and cloth we were enmeshed in. If I had to be sprawled all over a pile of wreckage of my own creation, it was pleasant to have her sprawled right on top of me. At least once she cut the straps that were attaching us to the wings and was able to wrap her arms around me.
	<Chara?>
	<I’m all right, Istri.> I turned around and pulled her in to me, ignoring for a moment the welter of fabric in which we were now swaddled, and which seemed to be moving somehow. <You’ve done it, Istri, you got us in.>
	Our elation was tempered somewhat when a blade sliced through the cloth close to where we were lying. We scrambled to our feet, backing away from this angry mound of tent until the canvas fell away in a number of neatly sliced scraps and what emerged was a woman in full leather armor, leveling a sword in our direction.
	“Hold!” she shouted, anger bringing the blood to her pale face. “Move one inch and I’ll cut you down where you stand.” We didn’t offer to move, and she became somewhat calmer. “Take off the chain and throw it down on the stones.”
	“I’m not wearing a chain,” I said. “I don’t have one.”
	“Who are you?” she barked.
	“I’m Theamh ni hUlnach,” I said.
	“Right,” said the woman. “And I’m Istria ni Vharen.”
	“I’m Istria ni Vharen,” Istria snapped.
	“Tell me another,” the woman shot back.
	“Look,” I said. “I’ve been here before, there are people in this city who know me by sight. Any one of the women on your council can vouch for me--”
	“Oh, we’ll get to the bottom of this long before we let you anywhere near them,” the woman snapped. “All right, if you’ve been here before, who let you in?”
	I thought for a moment. “Adra ni Chirin.”
	The woman looked over the wall and shouted to someone on the other side. “Hey! Someone get Adra up here!”
	While we waited for something to happen, I contacted Aine. <Did you arrive alive?>
	<We’re all fine, except Kelah’s shoulder looks bad,> Aine answered. <That, and we’re surrounded by all these women in leather. I think they want to arrest us but they’re not sure exactly how best to go about it. Meanwhile we’re stuck here on the roof.>
	<Kelah?> I switched to the group link. <How’s the arm?>
	<I’m a little worried. It’s not hurting any more.>
	<Can you not feel it?>
	<Not real well.>
	Adra had now appeared in the distance and was running toward us, blade drawn. 
	“This woman says she’s Theamh ni hUlnach,” said the woman who had us treed. “Do you recognize her?”
	Adra looked at me.
	“Of course I saw her from a distance,” she said, “but it seems to me that’s her. If it’s not her, it’s someone wearing her hreapa.”
	“Seems,” said the other woman, obviously unsatisfied.
	Adra turned to me. “We’ll do it this way then. Where did you come from?”
	“The City. The big one.”
	Adra nodded; so far I had remembered my answers correctly. “Who did you bring with you?”
	“Aine ni hEmer and Gwilna ni Bhatan.”
	“Why did you come here?”
	“To turn over Gwilna ni Bhatan to the local council, to rest awhile before continuing on our journey and...wait, it’s coming to me...”
	<To take in...> Aine could hear the conversation, and was prompting me.
	“To take in a few of those natural wonders and points of historic interest for which Amranth is so justly famous.” <Thanks, Aine.>
	<Anything to get me off the roof,> she said.
	Adra smiled slightly. “And if it comes to a fight, who would you fight for?”
	This I had no trouble remembering. “For Idair, the right, and what I love.”
	“It’s her,” Adra said, turning to the other woman.
	“Well, I’ll be boiled in oil,” she said. “I’m sorry, shriia--you understand we have to be careful. So who are all those other women?”
	I leaned over the walls to point them out. “My apprentice, Aine ni hEmer...and Cualha, Kelah and Eorna, they’re all from the Council. The good part of the Council.”
	“And how is it that you know how to fly?” asked the woman.
	“Istria’s been working on it for a while.”
	The woman stared at me.
	“You’re telling me that’s really her.”
	“Yes.”
	“Welcome back to the land of the living,” said the woman. She leaned over to give directions to the other women who had surrounded the rest of our party. They helped the four of them off the roofs and onto one of the stairways that led them up to the walls.
	“I’m Chierna ni Thrilion,” she said. “On behalf of the Daughters of Amranth and all of our citizens--the right-thinking ones, anyhow--welcome to Amranth.” 
	“We’re glad to be here,” I said, since she seemed to be addressing me.
	“And now,” said Chierna, as the others drew their blades, “you’re under arrest.”
	The Daughters of Amranth are even more formidable than the Amstian Army. Before any of us could do a thing about it Adra had me in a lock hold with the edge of a blade against my unfortunate neck. The others were all in similar plight. We hadn’t been expecting this, of course; but even so, it was a swift and very efficient operation.
	“What the thurking hell is this?” I demanded.
	“Follow me,” said Chierna. “And don’t struggle; you’ll get cut.”
	We had little choice but to do as she asked. Which meant being paraded along the walls, in full view of the hostile army camped out below, until we reached the Damp Quarter and the Pharc.
	“Over the wall,” said Chierna. “One at a time.” Adra released me. “Remember we’ve got the others.”
	I scrambled down onto the roof. Adra followed and resumed her hold on me. The others were got down, and then we were hustled through the door in the roof and down the stairs to the first floor of the Pharc.
	They pushed us into what must have been their Courts. Chierna left, closing the door and locking us in there with the others.
	“What is the meaning of this?” Cualha demanded. “Can you not figure out that we’re on your side?”
	“We know,” said Adra.
	“Then are you insane, or thralled, or what?”
	“Be patient,” Adra answered. 
	The door opened, and Chierna came back in. She was followed by a woman in a shift. It was dark in the room--the only light was what spilled in from the hallway--and at first all I could tell was that she was thin with short hair.
	“Of course I know them,” she said. “That’s Cualha, that’s Eorna, that’s Kelah--Kelah, you should be in a plaster or a sling, I’ll get Lilea to look at you when we--Theamh! Great Idair’s wrath, have you been starved or sick or what?”
	“Both,” I said, aware that I wasn’t quite able to pull off the jauntiness I was striving for, because I was suddenly choked up. “It’s good to see you, Morat.”
	My eyes were adjusting to the deceptive and unstable light, and I could see her face now. It looked stoic and impassive enough, but I thought that was probably not a perfect match with how she was feeling.
	“It is, isn’t it, although I could wish for better circumstances. And Aine ni hEmer, of course, the scoilin, and--”
	Morat suddenly stopped talking.
	Even the women holding us felt the shock and reel, even if all that happened was silence.
	“Oh no,” Morat said, as that stone face began crumbling. “Oh no, no, tell me it isn’t.”
	“It’s me, dhiaoc,” Istria said, in a very small voice.
	Morat brought her hands up to her face, but it didn’t cover the cry.
	“Oh child.” Her voice broke up in tears. “You were--all that time--”
	The Daughters of Amranth were almost as shocked as we were. I had lately come to understand better the fact that Morat had emotions, but to see them actually burst her open like this was close to horrifying. My first response was not compassion, but alarm--as if she had suddenly received some terrible wound, and we had to get it wrapped.
	“It’s all right, Morat, she’s back now--” I began.
	Morat fell heavily onto a nearby bench, crying with her hands clenched in her lap. She didn’t speak right away, but she shook her head in refusal.
	“I left you there,” was the first thing we could distinguish. “Alive and suffering...”
	Now Istria was crying. I don’t know exactly what she had imagined Morat was thinking for those four years. Maybe that whatever happened to Istria was her own fault for going off on a mission that Morat had spoken against long, hard, and loudly. I had been as harsh as that, harsher in the first smart of the pain, in my estimation of her. Now that I was a diaoc myself I could suddenly appreciate how hard she must have taken it, and what a sacrifice it must have been for her to give her up for dead. I had assumed, in my own arrogance, that she had done that because it was easier for her. Perhaps it was; perhaps it wasn’t. But even if it were easier, it could never have been easy.
	Istria forgot about having a blade to her neck and ran forward. The woman behind her let her go. She crouched down by Morat’s feet, trying to get Morat to look at her.
	“It’s not your fault,” Istria said. “It was my decision...you warned me against it...”
	“I thought you were dead,” Morat said, doggedly ignoring all attempts to comfort her. “I thought...you had to be dead...”
	Istria shook her head, not knowing what to say.
	“We left you there!” Morat repeated. “We closed the book and left you there...”
	“You didn’t know,” Istria cried. “It’s not your fault.”
	“When we took her...and didn’t find you...” Morat finally looked at her, although her face was as red, broken and wet as ever. “Where were you that we couldn’t find you?”
	“Morat, that’s a long story...” I began.
	Istria had different ideas. “Dhiaoc.” Morat’s head dropped again. “Dhiaoc, please, look at me.” Morat lifted her head to watch Istria’s face now undergoing further breakdown. It took her a long time to make the speech.
	“I wasn’t there, dhiaoc, I’d--I’d already--” She was crying too hard to speak, and in too much distress for anyone to read. Morat understood the intensity of her anguish if not the reason or the meaning of it. Morat has done a lot of brave things, but I still think the bravest thing she ever did was not look away. 
	Istria couldn’t frame the words. She thrust a hand into her pocket, finally, and pulled out the chain. Istria lifted her hands up to Morat, with the chain trailing limp across her open palms. Showing what she couldn’t say, crying harder, holding her hands up as if in surrender or supplication.
	It was as if she saw the whole story in that one instant--all of it written right on the chain. Istria saw her reading it and her cry rose louder. 
	Morat slid onto her knees on the floor, and threw her arms around Istria.
	“Ainm na ghaist.” The chain slipped onto the floor.
	“It’s all right,” Morat said, stroking her back like you do with a fretful child. “It’s all right, it’s over, you’re back with us.”
	“How do you know?” Istria cried, her hands fisted up where they pressed against Morat’s thin shoulderblades.
	“Because I do,” Morat said. 
	Istria finally collapsed into an embrace she had resisted, sobbing uncontrollably.
	Feeling that I shouldn’t be watching this any more, I looked up at Aine. The woman holding her had released her. In fact, all the women had dropped their holds and sheathed their blades, except for Chierna, who had shut the door behind her and was guarding it. It was a strange kind of arrest, a strange reunion, all around a very strange day. Made stranger yet by the sight of Aine wearing Istria’s hreapa pinned around her.
	Reading me, Aine began unclipping the brooches and bundling it up. Kelah, Eorna, and Cualha were trying to pretend this wasn’t happening, since they had no idea what to do about it. Aine put the hreapa on one of the benches, resting her hands gently on it.
	<I understand,> she said.
	Because if I was watching this from Morat’s point of view, Aine was thinking about what it must be like for Istria. Which I couldn’t do, because of course nothing like this would ever happen for me. When I next saw my diaoc, it would be in battle, and Idair willing she might well be on her knees to me but it would be in a very different context.
	I decided to distract myself by taking it up with Adra. “So what is all this, then?”
	Adra sighed. Chierna answered for her. 
	“It’s for your own protection,” she said. “Once the shield went down we put them all under house arrest in the Raed. You’ll be joining them, as soon as...” She trailed off, with a half-made gesture at Istria and Morat.
	“Why?” I demanded. 
	“Look,” Chierna said. “I don’t like it either. But what can we do? Those bitches out there have a standing offer on the table that if the Amranth Council will give themselves up, they’ll lift the siege, whereas if they don’t, they’ll continue starving us into submission. So of course if we let them they’ll give themselves up to stop the war, and we haven’t gone through all this mess just to let the Dark One slaughter them.”
	Suddenly this made sense. If they believed the offer was real, they would be bound to agree to it because otherwise it would mean more death. And there was no reason it shouldn’t be real, because it was the shriias that this army wanted. But the Daughters of Amranth, who were not amused by the outrage the other side had perpetrated on Amst and the army, were not bound by shriia’s rules and were not about to surrender. So they’d put them under constraint, which on the one hand deprived them of their freedom but on the other hand prevented them from walking out of the city to certain death. Saving shri from itself. A phenomenon I was encountering with depressing frequency.
	Morat finally let go of Istria and got to her feet. She was looking at the others, and if she was feeling her embarrassment she hid it.
	“We’d better get you to the Raed,” Morat said, looking at Kelah. “That ought to be looked at and I’m not the woman to do it.” She turned around to Chierna. “You needn’t keep up the farce, I’m sure they won’t offer to run until they’ve seen the others.”
	“It’s dead serious, Morat,” Chierna said. “You know that.”
	She opened the door all the same, and we trooped through it, the women in armor surrounding but not actually holding us. There was another guard outside the door, who registered only mild surprise as Chierna gave the order to open up and put us inside.
	At least in here it was bright. It was the main council chamber, but it looked a little different from usual. The floor had been divided into two areas, with one apparently reserved for sleeping. That part was dotted with the white bundles of hreapas among the piles of bedding that had been made up into temporary pallets. A set of light globes hung from the ceiling, shedding light onto the women who were sitting around on the benches talking, and who looked over their shoulders at us as we were thrust into the room.
	One by one they got to their feet. They all recognized me, and Aine, and of course most of them would know all the Council members by sight. But clearly, they were amazed to see us still alive.
	“Theamh!” Cera was the first to find her voice. “Idair’s hair, you’re safe. Are--”
	Lilea leapt right off her bench onto the floor. “Istria?”
	Istria walked forward, uncertainly. Lilea ran to her, followed closely by Dalen.
	“You’re alive,” Lilea cried, hugging her. “Spirits of everywhere. I--how are you? Are you all right? What hap--no, never mind, you’ll tell the story when you have time. Theamh, forgive me, I didn’t mean to treat you like cold liver--”
	“I’m glad you’re all right, Lilea,” I said, as I was abruptly enfolded.
	“You found her after all,” Lilea said, her eyes watering. “Ah, it’s beautiful to see you both--and you too, scoilin--”
	“Uh--she’s not a scoilin, any more,” I said.
	Lilea looked at the charred edges of the armholes on Aine’s fraying check shirt.
	“You’ve got your fire!” she cried.
	Aine nodded, shyly.
	“Congratulations!” Aine disappeared into a large heartfelt hug, and then Lilea seemed to be just about everywhere hugging everybody. Dalen followed in her wake, a little more restrained but just as pleased to see us.
	“I wish it had been me found you,” she said to Istria. “It should have been.”
	Istria shook her head. “You’ll understand better when you’ve heard the story.”
	Cera looked the same as before, although a little less formidable out of hreapa. “I was worrying you might never make it back,” she said. “You remember Puela...”
	It took us a while to try everyone. This alerted them to the fact that Istria was shrimarbh, which they all seemed to feel was understandable. 
	“Well,” Cera finally said. “You’re the first news we’ve had in ages--they shattered all our waterglobes early on, and the Daughters are very down on us wanting to make new ones.” Puela laughed sharply. “And the Daughters must be humored, mustn’t they. We’ve come to a sad pass,” she explained, as we ranged ourselves on the benches for what was shaping up to be an informal meeting. Lilea took Kelah over to the sleeping area while she and Eunem began looking at her wound. “The shield was the last useful thing we were able to do for them. Since they put us in here...”
	“But if you explained to them about the army--” Aine interrupted.
	Morat shook her head. “Of course it’s obvious they’re thralled, but...”
	Dalen picked it up because Morat appeared to be too discouraged. “We gave it a shot, of course. We managed to capture one soldier and we freed his company. Who were then promptly massacred by the surrounding companies.” The memory of this disaster effectively wiped out the elation of seeing us again. “So you can understand we gave up on that plan. Anyhow, with Hern and Tifni and who knows who else out there making and controlling these arani, they can re-thrall them faster than we can de-thrall them--”
	“But--” Aine interrupted. “I’m sorry--I shouldn’t interrupt--but--”
	“Hern’s dead,” I said. “Tifni too, and Vrila. Didn’t you hear?”
	They stared at us for a moment in stunned silence, which then exploded.
	“Dead?”
	“How?”
	“By who?”
	“When did this happen?”
	“Why weren’t we told?”
	Morat finally sent out a signal to quell the confused shout of surprise. They fell silent. I looked at her and realized she had already, as far as they were concerned, assumed her position as head of the Council. She wore the authority well.
	“Why don’t you start at the beginning,” Morat said, “and go through it once, so we don’t kill you with questions.”
	“You mean the very beginning?” I asked.
	“Start with the part we don’t know,” she replied.
	“I better start then,” Istria said.
	The others turned their silent gaze onto her. She stood up, a little self-consciously. Cera took off the silver star pendant she was wearing on its brass chain around her neck.
	She stood and walked to where Istria stood on the half-moon of the Council chamber floor. Istria bowed her head, and Cera put the star pendant around her neck.
	“Istria ni Vharen has the eye and ear of Idair, and of this Council,” she said, stepping back from her up to her seat. “Tell your story.”
	Istria put her hands in her pockets and fixed them all with a silent stare.
	“Once upon a time, two shriias met with their two apprentices to propose a mission,” she said. “The apprentices were to leave the scoil and present themselves to Lythril as recruits for the Dark One. She would take them in and train them, and once she was captured the apprentices, now become shriias, would use the knowledge they had gained from her to convict her of practicing dark magic.” She lifted her head and looked at Morat, then at me. “The apprentices agreed, and off they went.”
	The others waited, puzzled. After all, they already knew this part.
	“That was six years ago,” she said, her voice hard and challenging.
	Istria drew the chain from her pocket. I felt the reaction swimming around the room. 
	“I’m Istria ni Vharen na Craic,” she said, looking out with that hard stare. “At long last, I have returned from that mission.” She dropped the chain onto the stones at her feet. “I’m ready to give my report.”

	I have to say that for the first hour or so they were very patient. Istria told the whole story, and until the battle by the Ubh they were good about not interrupting--although Morat couldn't help getting a few digs in at a woman she had been hating for much longer than we had.
	“...and she said, ‘You’re still wearing the chain!’ like that’s supposed to break my spirits, and I just told her to bite my gleacha.”
	The assembled audience broke up laughing--those who weren’t ashamed to be thought irreverent. Morat laughed too, but her hilarity evaporated quickly.
	“But you were still wearing the chain,” she said, gravely.
	Istria looked at her. “Yes. I was. But not for long.”
	“So what happened?” Lilea prompted.
	“Well...Theamh put Aine out, and talked to her about what had happened and how she was a shriia now--same speech you gave us, after the fact.”
	Morat nodded. 
	“Theamh was--is--really good with her,” Istria said. “If only Barant weren’t a triple-dyed blackveined bitch she would have been proud to see it. I was.”
	She looked at me and her throat constricted. “That was what I was thinking...and then I was thinking, ‘So I can’t touch Aine now, I must remember.’ And that...”
	I was surprised that it was here that she started having trouble. “When we were rescuing Theamh, and I was in her body and she was in mine, I could touch Theamh without hurting her or myself. It...to be able to help her up when she fell, and...I know it makes no sense once we were back in our own bodies, but as I could still touch Aine, it was as if in some way I wasn’t completely separated from Theamh. Knowing I was poison to her now...it got to me. Especially since I had...I’d gotten to respect her, so much.”
	This was all news to Aine, who I think still cherished the fear that Istria was only tolerating her because of me. Istria went on.
	“So we were all camped out along with NightQueen--Sonnia--and Theamh was showing Aine how to make fire come when she wanted and I just--lost it. I knew I couldn’t stand for another minute to be around her and not be able to touch her or tell her how it was with me...so I ran away, as I’ve been running away from things, one way or another, all my life. And because she’s good and she loves me, she followed me.”
	Istria was definitely starting to find this difficult. “And...so I told her...look, it doesn’t matter exactly what I told her, except that I said I still loved her and always would.” She stopped for breath. “To say that you love someone, and mean it, is a loss violation, on the dark side. Lythril told me that. But when I said it I wasn’t thinking about that, I just--even if I was going to leave her I couldn’t not say it.” Her breath came harder. “And I was going, but she grabbed me and said, ‘You don’t have to leave,’ and--and--”
	Her throat had finally choked off her speech, and she was looking up at Morat with large frightened eyes. <Theamh, you have to do this part, I can’t.>
	I stood up, but looking up at Morat, Lilea, Dalen, Eunem and all those Amranth Council women turned me to stone. <Istri, I don’t know if-->
	<She’s my diaoc, Theamh.>
	Istria looked at me as pleadingly as any being could, and I couldn’t refuse her.
	“Here,” I said, walking shakily forward and stretching my hand out for the star pendant.
	Istria whipped it off her neck and handed it to me as if it were molten.
	<You owe me big,> I said, putting it on and turning to them.
	“Ah...” I began. “It’s...well, how to start...”
	Kelah, her spirits unfortunately unquashed by her now-dressed shoulder wound, piped up. “Come on, Theamh, when you were telling it to us you never minced words.”
	“Yes, well, you’re not my lover’s diaoc, all right?” I snapped.
	There was some startlement among the Amranthians, and I saw Lilea lean over to Cera. “She means in the metaphysical sense,” Lilea murmured.
	“No, I don’t,” I cut in.
	Cera froze in mid-nod.
	“Please,” I said, while the storm-clouds gathered on Morat’s brow. “Please just listen till I get to the part about the rosebush.”
	“Rosebush?” Morat demanded, in high temper.
	“Just listen!”
	Again, Aine attributes the sudden silence to a higher power. Here, I am almost inclined to agree with her. I don’t know who else but Idair could make Morat back down.
	“All right--so--well--we talked about it, and we decided--well, it wasn’t as rational as that sounds but we--made the choice--to--” This was stupid; they all knew what I was talking about and horrification was already in progress. “We did it. We had sex. I went to sleep thinking I would wake up the next morning and begin life as an ordinary woman.”
	They were still flabbergasted enough that I could go on without interruption. “I was thinking of being a fosterer, that would probably be what I’d be best at...anyway, it was all moot because when I told Aine I was shrimarbh she didn’t believe me and she made me test myself to see if I still had my fire so I--I called the fire--and it came.”
	I was holding my hands out now as I had then, and I brought the fire into them for emphasis. They had all just tried me a couple hours ago, but it would be seriously difficult for them to get their minds around this.
	“But--” Eunem said.
	“I know, I was amazed to see it,” I said.
	“Me too,” Istria agreed.
	“Well it just--you can’t have really done it then,” Lilea said.
	Istria and I met this one together. “What?”
	Lilea drew back a little before the vehemence of our anger. “We don’t exactly do empirical testing on this. We know there’s a line somewhere but we don’t know where it is, especially for two women. You must not have gone all the way, that’s all.”
	“Lilea,” I said, not enjoying the bitterness of my anger. “Trust me. Wherever ‘all the way’ is, we’ve been there.”
	“I’m sure you believe that, Theamh, but you’ve had no experience, and--”
	“Look!” Istria suddenly burst right back into the discussion, angry as ten disturbed hornets. “Stop telling us what we did or didn’t do. You weren’t there.”
	“But if you still have your fire--” Lilea insisted.
	“I’m not going to argue about this!” I shouted. “For Idair’s sake--I would think I would know whether I’ve had sex or not!”
	“Lilea’s just saying--” Eunem put in timidly.
	“Well Lilea’s talking rot,” Istria snapped. “I’m not going to stand here and be patronized like this, even if you are the closest thing we have to a Council. Theamh knows what she’s talking about. She’s not a child and she’s not one of those God-stunted Cretid women who doesn’t know where her achmor is!”
	They all sat up a little on their benches, looking like startled fish.
	“If I may continue,” I finally said, trying not to die of embarrassment.
	“Please,” said Morat dryly.
	I told the story of the meeting with Idair word for word, exactly as I had told it on every other occasion. It was the one part I never altered or paraphrased. And maybe that was why it was the one part no one interrupted. They let me get all the way to the rosebush.
	When I stopped, there was a lightning-struck silence. Finally I said, “Say something. Please.”
	“You met Idair,” Lilea said.
	Her voice wasn’t a whisper, but it was lower and closer to breath than usual. I had never seen this expression on her face and I wasn’t sure I knew what to do with it.
	“Yes,” I said. 
	“And here you are,” she said, still in that same tone of voice, “going around about your business on earth as if the universe were still the same.”
	“I...no, Lilea, I’m not,” I said. “My whole life is--I mean--I’m a different woman. Istria’s a different woman, Aine is, we’re all different women. After hearing this story.”
	Dalen nodded, saying nothing. I looked at Morat. I couldn’t read her.
	“I know you must believe what you’re saying,” Morat began.
	“Are you saying you don’t?” Lilea asked.
	Morat shook her head. “I...it just seems a little too convenient...”
	“No, convenient would be if Idair appeared before they did it,” Dalen said. “We’ve both known her a long time, and to me it sounds like her.”
	Cera nodded. “I know it’s incredible,” she said. “But it’s got her stamp.”
	Morat was still shaking her head. “I just...it seems like too much to...”
	“Oh, come on, Morat!” Dalen suddenly shouted.
	I looked at her in astonishment. I didn’t know her well, but she had always been reserved, even more so than Morat. Now suddenly she was angry, and I couldn’t tell why.
	“I can see why it’s hard on you. You fought your own apprentice over this, you fought Theamh, you said and did hard things to them because you thought it was your duty because you believed that instruction was valid. They know that. They understand you were doing what you felt you had to do. You don’t have to do it any more.”
	Morat was looking at her now, not at us. Dalen went on.
	“You’re afraid to accept the new instructions. Of course you are. We all are. We gave all of that up when we joined and for a lot of us it was a relief. Turns out now suddenly we can get into that mess, if we want to. Of course you’re scared about what that will mean. I know I am. But fear is not a good reason not to face the truth.”
	I couldn’t believe anyone was eithanta enough to talk to Morat that way. But Morat let Dalen do it. And what was more incredible, she seemed to be listening to her.
	Lilea saw her softening and moved in. “Morat, you were doing your level best to protect both of them. I know how it hurt you to have them turn on you because of it. You went on with what you thought was right because you wanted them to do good and do well and to be safe.” Lilea’s eyes watered. “You never wanted that fight, you just took it up because someone had to. You can lay it down now. They have what they’ve always wanted. And you can have something you’ve always wanted.” Morat’s hands clenched in her lap. “You can stop fighting them.”
	Morat turned back to me, irresolute, one hand moving to her wrinkled throat.
	“Say the saying again,” she said.
	I repeated it.
	“Well,” Morat said, clipping off the syllable. “Now at least we won’t have to worry that once this war is over the Council will have nothing to do with its time.” She blinked at us, still dry-eyed. “We’ll have a lot of doctrine to change.”
	“You believe me?” I said, unwilling to accept implication.
	“Yes,” Morat said, contained and masked now. “I do believe you, Theamh.”
	I looked at Istria because a wave of something had hit me from her. She was looking at Morat, and trying not to cry.
	“So then what happened?” Morat said.
	“Then...well...” I passed a hand over my forehead.
	“Here,” Aine said, getting up. “I’ll finish--I mean, if you’d like, dhiaoc.”
	“Be my guest,” I said, handing her the star pendant.
	“So,” Aine said, as Istria and I sat down gratefully. “I was very happy for them, of course, although I was a little worried about how long my shirt was going to hold up, without the sleeves and with the charring and all...”
	
	Two hours later, Aine had really warmed up to the task, and was rattling on at breakneck speed. The others were following, although I can’t say I understood how.
	“...and you would not believe the lies, it was outrageous, as soon as Bric opened his mouth practically he was lying on us, and then Ethir told me if I didn’t sit down and keep quiet they would hold me in contempt--”
	“That’s our Ethir,” said Lilea. “Is he all right? They haven’t gotten to him?”
	“Lilea, please, try to keep to the subject,” Morat said, a little more indulgently than she might have earlier. We had passed through the high drama and the great emotions on to the sceal, and everyone was getting a little punchy.
	“We don’t know,” Aine said, answering anyway. “I hope so, he’s a very nice man, he was very good to me, anyhow so...a lot of stuff happened but the important thing is, they had Lythril testify, and when Bric was examining her she spun out a big string of lies just as they had planned. And then when Ethir crossed her--she started telling the truth.”
	“You’re not serious?” Morat exclaimed.
	Aine nodded. “It’s Idair’s truth, Aiv, she just started saying about how it really was an undercover mission and Theamh would be no good to the Dark One anyhow because she’s unbiddable--”
	“So she was telling the truth,” said Lilea in amazement.
	“Thank you so much--” I put in.
	“--and how she knew I was on the bright side too and she thought the other two probably were since they weren’t dark, and how the stuff she said before was just a bunch of tarbhfnaa--I’m sorry--lies--”
	“She’s left her mark on you right enough,” Dalen observed.
	“Never mind her,” Morat said, with a smile. “Continue, child.”
	“--and so then Ethir sat down and he kind of looked like he’d been hit over the head with a frying pan. So then Hern got up to redirect her--”
	“Oh no,” Morat said, having jumped there ahead of her. “You mean she--”
	Aine nodded. “Hern was getting in her space, you know, like the mean lawyers do when they cross people, and Lythril got a hand around her neck and just--”
	Morat was confident that she knew what was coming next, so it was pretty funny when Aine finished the sentence.
	“--just kissed her, right there, in front of everyone, smack on the mouth.”
	There was a moment of stunned silence.
	“No way,” Lilea finally said.
	“She did, I saw her,” Aine insisted.
	“I’m not questioning your veracity,” Lilea hurried to add, sensing her hurt. “I’m quite sure you’re telling the truth. It’s just...oh, that’s a rough image.”
	“Tell me about it,” I answered.
	“And so then she looked at Hern and she said, ‘Now we know, don’t we,’ and she broke her neck with one good twist, just like that.”
	There was another silence.
	“What a way to go,” Cera finally murmured.
	“Well...” Lilea shook her head. “Then what happened?”
	“So then we escaped, and we went to this weird house up in the mountains run by this nice man that Theamh thinks may be a ransani although she’s not sure, and we stayed there for a little while, and Theamh told the story about seeing Idair to everyone, and then she and me and Kelah and Taric and Sinal and Sonnia and Istria went to go find Istria’s family and show Kelah how we dealt with the army, and then we found those two companies whose arani went orphaned after Hern was killed and they’d fought each other and so we unthralled the ones left alive and burned the dead and then Istria and Theamh went to go find Istria’s family and then Sinal and Sonnia went to go stay with their parents and Theamh and Istria came back and then a whole bunch of stuff happened with arani and so now we all have to get scoured twice a day like clockwork so they’re teaching me how to do it which is good even though it’s hard having to be scoured so much but anyway Istria knows how to fly and Eorna knows how to make wings so we went up a mountain and flew into the city and got arrested by the Daughters of Amranth and here we are.”
	She stopped, taking a few deep breaths. The others waited to be sure she was done, and then burst into applause.
	“You’d better have something to drink after all that,” Morat finally said. “The session’s over, not that it ever really formally started. Give them the rest of whatever we’ve got for tonight, they’ve certainly earned it and they certainly need it.”
	The meeting broke up. Once the food had been shared out Morat, Lilea, and Dalen came over to where we were crouched down wolfing it. 
	“That’s a hell of a story,” Dalen began.
	“It does sound like a lot, when told all at once,” I answered.
	“So,” Morat said, settling down for a long sit. “Vrila, Tifni, and Hern are dead, and the part of the Amstian Army that’s still under thrall is now clustered around Amranth.”
	“That’s right,” I said. “Taric--you remember Taric--he’s down on the ground now, gathering information for us about who’s there and how they’re deployed.”
	“So you’re thinking what I’m thinking, then,” Morat said.
	“Tell me what you’re thinking before I agree to that.”
	Morat smiled. “I’m thinking that with what they’ve lost and what we’ve gained, we can finally lift the siege.”
	“All right then, I am thinking what you’re thinking.”
	Istria broke in. “We’ll need to have help from the Daughters,” she said.
	“We’ll make the pitch when we have the plan,” Morat said.
	“Not another plan...” I groaned, butting my head against Istria’s shoulder.
	Istria laughed, and ruffled my hair. “Theamh doesn’t like strategy,” she said. “It’s all right, chara, you just sit by and if you have a thought bring it in. Otherwise Aine and I will handle it. Aine likes plans, don’t you, Aine?”
	“Oh yes,” she said, eagerly.
	Morat looked at her, and then at Istria, and at me starting to curl up in Istria’s lap.
	“Idair is good,” she said.
	Lilea swallowed a lump in her throat. 
	“Just make the plan, Morat,” she said. “I’ve cried enough today.”

	We decided by voice vote to have Istria present the plan to the Daughters. She had wanted to be one herself as a child, but given that up in favor of shri once she got more interested in learning. At any rate, as an Amstian and as a woman who had proved she could handle a sword she commanded a different kind of respect. She had asked Chierna to bring a map of the city with her, and drawn on it as best she could a representation of where the different companies were disposed, based on what Taric had told us.
	“...our informant in the field tells us there are ten different companies deployed around the city,” Istria was saying. “That apparently squares with what your scouts have told you?” Chierna nodded. “Unfortunately, they’re the ten biggest. Each has between five hundred and a thousand men in it. That makes your job easier and their job harder.”
	“You haven’t explained yet what our job is,” Chierna said.
	The other Daughters of Amranth nodded. Chierna had decided the Daughters could better make an informed choice if they heard the presentation for themselves, so she had invited a few representatives from each cohort. There were about twenty women there, ranged along those benches, looking incongruous in their armor and gear but no more so than the makeshift beds littering the floor.
	“For this to work...We need to cleanse all the companies at the same time,” Istria finally went on, aware of the enormity of the task. “That way we won’t have a repeat of what evidently happened with the Hawk’s Eye Six.” The Daughters nodded. “That means we need simultaneous access to one man from each company. Your job...is to capture the men we need.” 
	She waited for this to sink in. I felt them register it.
	“We can’t go out and do this in the field, we’d be slaughtered by the men before we even got to the arani. We need the men to be brought back here, inside the city, so we can do that in safety.” The others were watching her keenly now. She returned the stare.
	“I know what we’re asking of you,” she said. “We’re asking you to go out into enemy territory and bring back ten different captives, and we’re asking you to do this having committed to shriia’s rules.” One of the Daughters was already shaking her head in disbelief. “I know this is far beyond dangerous. If you agree to help us, you will lose people. That’s a fact. But if you can do this successfully...” Her hands lifted to underline the point. “If you can bring us those ten men, we can lift the siege. In a day.”
	They were silent, considering this.
	“And how are you proposing we go about doing this?” Adra asked.
	“I was thinking you would want to organize that yourself,” Istria said, deferentially, “but I have some ideas.”
	“Let’s have them then,” said Chierna. “It’s as well we should know whether you’re mad, or have no idea on earth what you’re talking about, before we make the decision.”
	“If you commit to shriia’s rules, we can make shields for you,” Istria said. “You can’t get out through the gate, that would tip them off and make the place vulnerable. But if you can drop over the walls--and I know you train for that--” Chierna nodded. “You can get to your positions and pick your men before they have any idea you’re there. Now, you’ll have to get back in through the gate. So if you send out two details--one to get in position to defend the gate once it’s opened for you, and the other to take the men--”
	“If we put them around here and here, say,” Chierna said, drawing on the map.
	“Right. So you’d be linked to coordinate, and split up into ten different parties--I don’t know how many you’d think it would take for each captive, and I don’t know how many volunteers you’d have. But each party would take one company and pick out the captive closest to the gate. You’d all attack at the same time. When you had the man subdued, each party would retreat back toward the gate--say, one woman restraining the captive and the others fighting off the others. You’d get behind the gate detail, push through the gates, and lock them. The gate guard would get back in up over the walls.”
	Istria looked up at Chierna and waited while she thought.
	“Well,” she said. “You’re not a tactical genius, but you’re not mad, and you do know what you’re talking about.”
	Istria, who had been rather proud of her plan, took this backhanded and extremely qualified compliment as well as she could.
	“An operation like that would need a lot of women,” she said. “Fifty, at least. With fewer it wouldn’t even be worth trying.”
	The others sat quiet behind her.
	“I know it’s dangerous,” Istria said. “I know death is certain for some. I’m willing to go, myself. I’m sure the others would go with me but they can’t.”
	I was not surprised, although I was highly alarmed, to hear her volunteer first.
	“Our force isn’t anywhere near their size,” Chierna said. “To lose fifty women would be a serious thing, to us. Tactically speaking.”
	“I know,” Istria said. “I told you. I know what I’m asking.” 
	One of the Daughters finally spoke up.
	“I don’t mind dying,” she said. “What I mind is fighting with one hand tied behind my back.”
	The others nodded. We had all known this would be the major problem. It is difficult to sell anyone on shriia’s rules in a combat situation. We don’t like following them ourselves. But Istria pressed onward.
	“I don’t expect all of you to be willing,” Istria said. “You work for Amranth and you work for Amst. I know you’re willing to die for this place. We need...if this is going to work...we need women who will die for shri. I know you’re not promised to that.” 
	She looked from one face to the next, trying to meet each one’s eyes at least once. 
	“I swore myself to that a long time ago,” Istria said. “I did it because I believed that shri was the best protector of everything we love about life, about the world, and about Amst. I still believe that. I’m willing to go out there without my fire, just with my body and whatever weapons someone lends me, to do what I can. I can’t--we can’t expect that fifty of you will be willing to commit to this. I only ask because I know who you are.”
	By which she meant that the Daughters of Amranth were the descendants, figuratively if not literally, of the women who had crowded onto the walls of Amranth eight hundred and ten years ago with bows and arrows and boiling oil and everything else to hold it against the Cretids. The women who had stopped an invasion by being willing to keep saying no and never. Women who believed there were things more important than a long life and a full stomach, including their men, their lovers, their children, the stories they had learned, the fire they had witnessed, the light they had been given. Women who were proud that in some regions of Amst people would say as part of their daily talk, “A fool trifles with a son of the army; a great fool trifles with a Daughter of Amranth.” 
	“It is a terrible sacrifice,” Istria said. “To fight by shriia’s rules. I know that. None of us would ask you to make it if it were not necessary.”
	Chierna looked at her.
	“You say you can lift the siege in a day, if we do this.”
	“Yes.”
	“Let me hear it from someone who’s still a shriia.”
	Morat stepped into the breach.
	“We cannot talk about the future as if it is fact,” she said. “I cannot say that I am certain sure that we can lift the siege in a day if you do this. I can say that if you can find us these men, and if most or all of us are not killed in the ensuing battle, we should be able to unthrall the army. The success of the plan depends on our not being defeated, and on the army--once it’s been freed--turning over their leaders and surrendering.”
	“And what are the odds of enough of you lasting long enough to execute this plan?” Chierna inquired.
	Morat didn’t blink. “I would say half and half. No better.”
	Because they were big arani. It had taken three of us to subdue one four-hundred-leg arani; most of these had five hundred or more. With the fifteen Amranth Councillors, the seven refugee Councillors, and me and Aine, we had twenty-four women, only eight of whom were possession specialists. That was two and a half on an arani. We could hope it would be enough. But no way could we be sure.
	There was a silence.
	“I’m willing,” Chierna finally said. “I’ll plan it, and I’ll lead it. But I will not order any of my women to join it.”
	“You won’t have to order me,” said Adra. 
	“My cohort’s voted,” said another woman. “We’re in. All of us.”
	“Mine too,” said another.
	“And mine,” said a third.
	After more women volunteered themselves and the women they were linked to, Chierna finally quelled them. “All right, that’s already seventy-five, you don’t all have to throw yourselves on the pyre. Go home and talk it over with your cohorts. I’ll see the learfeiceanns for the cohorts who want to go in my tent at the noon hour. We’ll figure out how many we’ll need and who we’ll take. No sense wasting more life than we have to.” 
	Chierna stood up. “Daughters of Idair, the Daughters of Amranth thank you for the compliment you’ve paid us. It takes a strong woman to fight by Idair’s rules. I’m proud to be leading so many of them.”
	She and Morat bowed at each other. They began leaving. On their way out I heard some of their minds running on the mission. Fifty my gleacha...we’d need a hundred...we’ll have a hundred...but you know Chierna, she won’t want to risk us all...shriia’s rules, I must be out of my mind...ah, why die in bed anyhow... And then suddenly I caught one of them saying, with a knowing look at one of the others, To hell with the details...I’d die for her any day.
	The other glanced at Istria and then back at her companion with a smile. I hope Chierna will get her some armor. I can’t wait to see her in leather.
	HEY!
	I couldn’t help it. All I could do was try to look away as if I hadn’t just started acting like a bull defending its heifer.
	They were on their way out, mercifully. 
	What’s her problem?
	That’s Theamh ni hUlnach, you moron. Don’t you know the story?
	I was very grateful when they finally left. Even though that meant tackling Istria.
	She saw me coming. “Theamh, don’t be angry--”
	“Don’t be angry?”
	“It’s not like you haven’t been risking your life every day since you found me--”
	“But that’s different--”
	“How is it different?” she demanded. “You think I like watching you being thrown around by an arani ten times larger than it has a right to be? You think the blood stays cool in my veins when Cretids are trying to blow your head off? You think it was easy on me watching you spend a month committing suicide?” 
	She was now a lot more angry than I was, especially since I had stopped my tirade upon being stunned by the vehemence of hers.
	“I’ve had my heart in my mouth so often and so long--don’t tell me I don’t have the right. I know I belong to you but damn it you belong to me too and I don’t stop you from risking your life and my heart every other time you take a breath!”
	We were aware that we were attracting some attention. I switched to the link.
	<I’m sorry,> I said. <I never thought about it that way.>
	<You just...> Her anger was melting into pain. <You’ve always been careless with yourself, I was always afraid something would happen to you. And watching you...starve like that...you don’t know...>
	I decided to hell with the others, and took her in my arms.
	<This is the only way I can fight,> Istria said, clinging to me. <I watch you wrestle those beasts knowing I can’t do a damn thing. This is one thing I can do. I know it’ll be hard on you, Theamh. I don’t want to hurt you but I need to be in the fight.>
	<I know.> I held onto her as if we were both falling. <Idair knows I don’t want you out there. But it’s your right.>
	<I will be careful,> Istria said.
	I released her, and tried to laugh. <Anyhow, I bet you will look good in leather.>
	Istria looked at me, puzzled and a little startled.
	<You’ve got admirers in the Daughters,> I said. <I heard them on their way out.>
	Istria blushed. <You know...>
	<Of course I know, Istri. And it’s a good thing too.> I laughed. <Because if one of them did move in on you, no way could I kick her gleacha.>
	Istria laughed and turned to Aine, who had been sent to interrupt us. They were getting a little more tactful.
	“Morat says, she wants you to come show your vigils to the others,” she said. “So they won’t get all scared when they see them. I think it’s a good idea.”
	We began walking back to the group. “You know, Aine, it’s hard to believe you used to be so petrified of them,” I said.
	“They still scare me, dhiaoc,” Aine answered frankly. “I just deal with it, now.”
	I took Istria’s hand. The next morning I would be confronting a whole different kind of fear. And hoping I could deal with it as well as Aine had learned to deal with hers. 

XXII.
Necessary

	“Of course being under house arrest we can’t do siulin,” said Cera. “But since we can’t walk out, they walk in. The Daughters graciously allow us into the shriin and we see the people there. So we’ve been able to keep up the important part of the work, anyhow.”
	I was glad to hear it, but I was not entirely sure why she was telling me this. We had just finished going over, for the hundredth time, our end of the plan. Istria was off drilling with the Daughters. Aine was helping Lilea change Kelah’s dressing; she was still interested in learning outside her specialty. It was a good sign. Everyone else was making themselves busy or resting as the mood took them.
	“So we do readings just as usual, in the shriin. Not Morat and the Council refugees; it would be too dangerous for them to go among the people, there are bounties on their heads. The Daughters who are helping us have asked us to pray with them before we go out; we’ll have to do that here, of course, otherwise word will get around that something’s up. The city is lousy with informers.”
	“Really?”
	“Really. Nobody wants to work against us or the Daughters openly; ‘collaborator’ is still the worst thing you can call an Amranthian. But there are a lot of people in town who in their hearts just wish the Seated Leaders would turn us over and be done with it.”
	“Why don’t they?” I said. “Last I was here, you were complaining about the corruption the trade had brought...”
	“That’s the business community,” Cera said. “The Amranth Leaders are different. Amranth is a funny place that way,” she went on. “People want their wallets fat, but they want their traditions intact. They talk honor and Idair while selling themselves to the tourists. It’s sickening in some ways, but it means that people have kept up the traditions in the Seat. Women usually win over men, and a woman who spouts a lot of rhetoric about Amstian culture and history wins over one who wants to talk about renovating the sewers. It’s hurt us in the past but by the spirits it’s come in handy now.”
	Cera passed a hand over her braid and sighed. “In the interest of secrecy, we’ve decided that the fifteen of us will go do siuilin and reading in the shriin as always. The Daughters who are going out tomorrow will come here to the Council chamber beforehand--we’ll pray with them, and then you all will stay behind to do the reading.” I nodded, still wondering why she was delivering this explanation to me and not Morat. “They’ve asked for you.”
	“Me?” Cera nodded. “Why?”
	Cera shrugged. “You’re a celebrity, Theamh; even before all this happened people knew you and your story up here. News about some of your recent exploits has got round since you flew in here, and basically it would not surprise me to hear ballads sung about you in taverns, if I ever got out to taverns any more. Soldiers are superstitious. I think they think you’ll bring them good luck. Since you by rights ought to have been killed by any hundred things that have happened to you lately. Will you read for them?”
	“I--of course,” I said. “I just am surprised.”
	“You shouldn’t be,” Cera answered. “She’s marked you, no mistake.” She seemed genuinely surprised and amused by my puzzled expression. “You’re not an ordinary woman. You’re not even an ordinary shriia. You’ve been touched. You’re necessary.”
	It’s difficult to explain to people who don’t do shri what we mean when we say “necessary.” It can apply to people, to things tangible or intangible, to events. The easiest way to say it is this--if you look at the world as a story being told, as we do, then there are certain things that, if you took them away, would change the story so much that it would cease to be what we know as life. Idair is the only one who’s really necessary, that way. But there are some other things that get talked about, in the endless debates we have about things like this, as being necessary. Sometimes we don’t mean necessary to the whole world, but just to the story of one life. For instance, much as I loathed her, I had come to realize that in relation to me, Lythril was necessary, just as I was necessary to her. But what’s necessary to us isn’t necessarily necessary to Idair.
	If I was reading her right, Cera was trying to tell me that I was necessary--not to one story but to the story. Which frightened me more than anything else I had ever heard.
	“I--I’m just one woman, Cera.”
	“So you are,” she said, sensing how much she had just disturbed me. “But not one that gets lost in a crowd. Speaking of which...”
	The Daughters had arrived. In an act of optimism, the shriias had rolled up the bedding and stashed it, hoping that Chierna would lift the house arrest that night. Since, come what may, things would change the next morning, and the plan had already been agreed on, we could give word to Chierna that we would not be running off to surrender between now and tomorrow morning. There hadn’t been actual battling in a while, the siege having settled into a surly fight to see who attrition would break first. If all went well, we’d be staying up in the Raed where the quarters if not palatial were at least private. Which was good, because if Istria was going to scramble into a suicide mission in the morning, I damn well wanted to be alone with her the night before. So when they trooped in they had plenty of space to sit in on the floor. Istria broke ranks to find me.
	She was wearing the armor. I was glad she had some, but it struck me as pitifully inadequate. It covered almost as much of her as a hreapa would have. But it was just ordinary leather. It had been treated by some kind of special process that made it durable and tough, but I would have felt better if it were in some more rigid and impenetrable material. Stone, perhaps.
	Istria embraced me, wordlessly. She had said nothing and I had said nothing but as the day wore on we were both starting to get a better sense of what it would mean for things to go wrong, and it scared the living fnaa out of both of us. I couldn’t figure out whether it would be worse to be the one who died or the one left alive. I don’t know if she ever figured it out either. But in front of all those people there wasn’t anything we could do but hold on, briefly, as tight as we could.
	Cera called the others. We stood around the edge of the council floor, in front of the first row of benches. There were twenty-four of us and seventy of them. Chierna had decided that was a good balance between wanting to have enough women to make it work and not wanting to decimate her forces in case it didn’t. Seven women for each company. Perhaps the number made them feel better. If, as Cera said, they were superstitious.
	“So how does this work?” Chierna asked.
	They had never been prayed over. Nothing like this had ever happened in living memory. Most of the time the Daughters are just glorified gardai, training for battle but mainly keeping the city safe from its own inhabitants. The last time we fought a serious war was three hundred years ago. And even then we didn’t pray over the armies; we couldn’t. With the Cretids in it, nobody was willing to commit to shriia’s rules.
	“We make the circle and start the song,” Cera said. “You take turns, and each of you asks Idair for what you want. We do it in verse and in Old Tongue but for you that doesn’t matter. Say what’s closest to your heart. It’ll go up to Idair with the fire.”
	Cera stepped forward and raised her arms. We raised ours, flashing the fire from hand to hand to make a ring around them. We began the song.
	The others seemed a little intimidated; for a while nobody started. Then Istria spoke up, out of habit putting it in the old form.

	giver of our truth and light
	maker of the land we love
	guard us here and also guard
	these your children we must fight

	if my life becomes the price
	that must buy my people peace,
	take it then; but if you can,
	spare my love the sacrifice

	each who falls will fall alone,
	though we stand and fight as one;
	Idair be there if I fall,
	Idair see us all safe home.

I wanted not to look at her; I couldn’t cry because I was doing the song. But I couldn’t help it. Anyhow she was looking at me, as if tears were useless for this kind of thing, as if the usual forms of grief were inadequate and meaningless now.
	After Istria stopped there was a short space, and then Chierna jumped in.
	“Idair...I can’t do poetry and I’m not used to speaking out loud to you, but...” The sound of the song seemed to make her less self-conscious after a while. “Idair make it a quick fight, without much life lost on either side. Keep my women safe from harm and...if you can...bring me home whole for Hurrich and Little Apple.”
	So Chierna had a man, and an unnamed infant. How bitter it would have to be to know you might die before you discovered the child’s name...but before I could read the expression on her face someone else had started.
	“Idair make me strong enough for what I need to do for you,” said Adra. “If you need my life, take it. I can better afford it, single as I am.” Some of the others laughed a little at this. “But whatever you do with me and my life, give us success. Lift the siege.”
	“Idair, if I die, let me die well and let my death matter,” said the woman who had wanted to see Istria in leather. “And if I don’t die, may I walk back into a free city.”
	“Idair, if someone has to die, take me and not Niamh,” said another woman.
	“Idair, don’t listen to her,” said another quickly. I supposed she must be Niamh. 
	The first woman took the second woman’s hand. Finally she said, “Then take us both, or take neither, Idair.”
	It went on like that for a long time. Women asking for victory, for strength, for safety for themselves and their loved ones at home or with them in the battle. Finally one of the last remaining women spoke up.
	“Idair, two of my brothers are in the White Hare Seven,” she said. “Please help the shriias restore their minds to them, and keep them away from my part of the fight.”
	For some reason that one got to me most. It seemed to have made an impression on the others; at least, nobody else spoke up. They sat each in their own thoughts, looking across the circle at their comrades and at us behind them, singing in a language unfamiliar to them, holding up the fire they had learned to trust even if they couldn’t wield it. Here and there you saw what might be a pair of lovers, holding hands or just sitting closer together. And in the middle of it Chierna, thinking of her man and her child and all the women who would be following her into this.
	Finally one of them said, “And Idair protect the shriias who are faithful to you and to us, and scourge the ones who aren’t.”
	Istria looked at me, and judging the rite to be just about over, decided to close it:

	fire of love and truth and right,
	run through us as now you run
	through the women blessing us
	send us burning to the fight

	help us as we battle be
	true to you and true to them
	as we are to this our home
	keep us all from harming shri

	Though the wind of war is blowing
	Idair keep your story going
	Make this storm one we can weather
	Idair keep the world together
	
	As we struggle through tomorrow
	Idair bring us joy with sorrow,
	Idair help us in the fight,
	Idair make the darkness bright.

The song we were singing was due to be over. Usual procedure is for each of us to drop out singly until only the leader is left. But when it was Aine’s turn to drop out, instead of just stopping she took up the end of Istria’s song, working it into the texture. I was afraid the others would be angry about this--it was her first communal rite, and who was she to be improvising--but Morat took it up next, and gradually I realized that they were all following suit. When it came my turn I did the same, until in the end we were all weaving it into a different pattern, bringing the rite to a different end.
	 I know Istria understood what was happening; since she had sung in Old Tongue I’m not sure how many of the others did. They would all have spoken Amstic, which is related, so perhaps they knew more than I think. But whether they did or not, it seemed to me that something happened. The heaviness that had settled over them as they all sat with their own private griefs lifted, and it seemed to me that they were, not happy, but content--able to take comfort in the knowledge of doing good and doing well, ready to meet whatever Idair sent them, trusting she would do her best to keep them safe.
	We took the fire back and dropped our arms. There was a long time of silence. It was Cera who finally broke it.
	“Daughters of Amranth,” she said. “We’re all children of Idair, and we’ve all promised ourselves to a long day of hard work and great danger.” 
	She paused, and I wondered what she was thinking. Most of the women in that circle were hers as much as the Daughters belonged to Chierna--her Council, the women she had suffered with through both this last siege and that other, more grueling battle against corruption and the power of gain. She was at least as old as Morat; both of them knew they hadn’t much time left, and that this was exactly the kind of battle that could well shorten what time they had. 
	“The world is not as Idair would have it,” she said. “But may the Spirit give her the power to at least grant us success and lift the siege--and to bring as many of us safe home as she can.” She turned to Chierna. “If you’ll let us into the shriin now, as usual...we can look to whoever’s come to us.”
	Chierna got up with a small detachment and went to let them in. The rest sat as they were, talking with or without their voices, waiting for Chierna to come back. I followed Cera and the other councilors out, so that I would be able to come back in.
	The fifteen of them walked away down the hall to the shriin, filing in through the door Chierna unlocked. I looked through it to the shriin and the windows that were reddening in the setting sun’s light. Almost dark.
	Chierna locked the door again. Looking at me in the dusk of the hallway it seemed that she was seeing something new in me, that she hadn’t the night before.
	I waited, but all she said was, “Do you suppose the sun is down yet?”
	“It must be,” I said.
	“I’ll open up then,” she answered, unlocking the door to the Raed.

	“What are you going to read us today, shriia?”
	“I don’t know.” I put my hands in my lap. “What do you want to hear about?”
	I had taken up my seat in the middle of the floor; the Daughters were ranged around on the benches, with Aine and the Council fugitives mixed in among them. Candles, like everything else, were scarce since the siege so I had hung a number of very small light globes in the air above us to simulate the effect. They dangled bright in the darkness of the room like close and pulsing stars, shedding their light on all of those faces watching me.
	“Anything but the Cretid wars,” said one.
	Nobody argued. Someone said, “The Burning?”
	“No,” cut in someone else. “No battles. It’s enough.”
	“All right, so no battles,” I said. “It’s easier if you say something you do want to hear about...process of elimination could take a while.”
	There was a rippling little laugh, and finally someone said, “Tell us about Idair.”
	“They’re all about Idair,” someone objected.
	“She’s in them but they’re not all about her,” Istria corrected.
	“Same difference--”
	“bout her power,” the first woman put in. “Tell us one that shows her power.”
	“Well, that’s specific,” someone else carped.
	“Actually,” I said. “You asked for something that shows her power, but you’ve all asked for one that has no battles. There aren’t many stories that fit both those criteria.” This seemed to interest them, which quieted the naysayers down a little. I thought it over.
	“All right,” I said. “From the middle of the first scroll, the story of the First Flower.”
	They seemed surprised, but not averse. The First Flower is a story requested mostly by children. In general children are very fond of what we call the “ceard a bfhuils”--the stories where someone asks Idair what something is, and she shows them. They identify with Sincil, I think, because they too are always asking questions, and they like to see things appear like--well--like magic.
	“Sincil was much with Idair in those first days, because Sincil’s little house was remote and she lived in it quite alone, her parents having both died without giving her any brothers or sisters. And so one morning when the sun was warm and the leaves of the trees were a sunny green, Sincil walked with Idair down to the brook that ran through the forest, and they happened to pass through a clearing.
	“Sincil was continuing on, but she realized that Idair was not behind her, and turned to look after her. And Idair was standing in the middle of the tall grass, which stretched unbroken in a yellow-green carpet from one edge to the other, and she said, ‘I am sorry--I am just trying to think of what it is that is not right.’
	“And Sincil was patient, for in the time that she had known Idair she had often seen her stand thus perplexed, and although she thought that Idair must be a very strange woman she was fond of her. So she waited until Idair said, ‘I see now what it was. Never mind, lead on.’
	“But Sincil was curious, and she asked, ‘What is it about that field, that you thought was wrong?’
	“ ‘It is a small thing, and does not matter,’ Idair said. ‘It is just that a field like that ought to have flowers; and there are none, which is strange, for it seems to be springtime.’
	“Sincil had many questions, but the first she asked was, ‘What is a flower?’
	“Idair looked at her in astonishment, and she said, ‘You have never seen a flower?’
	“And Sincil was a little daunted, for it seemed as if Idair expected her to know what this thing was, that she had never heard of, and she said, ‘If you tell me what it is, then perhaps I will know how to answer you.’
	“Idair paused, and it seemed as if she were about to speak, but had stopped, and started again, and stopped, as if she were worried to choose the right words.
	“ ‘A flower is something that...for a plant to bear fruit, it must be made fertile, and the bees must help, and so there is the flower...’ And as she saw that for all her kindness and wish to be courteous Sincil was none the wiser, Idair stopped and began again. 
	“ ‘Where I come from, 
	When the sun is warm,
	And the young shoots
	Stir in the loosened earth,
	Reaching thin and sharp
	Into the light,
	You can see, closed up 
	Inside the green skin
	A hard knot of color;
	Leaves but not leaves,
	Softer and brighter,
	Held tight and secret
	Against the cold world.
	This is a flower,
	A jewel hidden bright
	In its green veil,
	Waiting to bloom
	Into something new.

“And Sincil thought she understood now, and would have spoken, but Idair went on:

	“ ‘When the time comes,
	The leaves part,
	And give up the bud
	To light and the air;
	And the closed fist opens.
	Among the petals
	Fragrance moves;
	Light dips its brush in
	Their brightening colors.
	But loosening circlets
	Of silk and scent
	Still cup that center,
	Uncountable petals
	Folding soft and hard
	In on themselves.
	This is a flower;
	Magic half-ready,
	Holding and held
	In your eyes, open now
	To your curious hands and
	The breath of the breeze,
	Curled around power
	Unshed and unburst.’

“Sincil wondered was she finished, but her hands were still moving in the air, and it seemed as if she would go on, and Sincil found herself held by the words, even if she was not sure she understood, and rather hoping she would continue. And so she did:

	‘And then when those layers
	Unfold from the center,
	In ring after ring, in the
	Flush of wide bloom
	And that hidden inside
	Spreads itself on the wind
	That ruffles the riot
	Of loose-shaken petals--
	What laughs itself into
	Bright joy, having opened
	Its heart to the magic
	That only it answers,
	Beautiful now in
	Abandon, abundance--
	Beautiful always,
	As bud, bloom, or blossom--
	
	This is a flower,
	A thing with no reason
	To be, an extravagance
	Nobody needs;
	Brief-lived, a month in
	Its birth, a few days in
	Its death, scattered out
	On the wind...
	I called it a small thing
	That did not matter;
	I think now that was
	A mistake; though your world
	Does go on, it may be
	That what’s fragile, what’s born
	To be lost, and what nobody
	Needs, the way bodies
	Need food, is what’s most
	Necessary...’

“Sincil expected more, but Idair was still in thought, and so she cast her eyes about as she was waiting. And she saw, in the middle of the clearing, that there was a thicket of brambles, and she saw also that among the dark green leaves there was yellow, gathered into clusters at the ends of some of the stems. And she went to the brambles, and when she reached them she saw that there were little islands of soft yellow leaves that were not leaves. And so she turned, and as Idair was still quiet and not speaking, Sincil ventured to say, ‘These here among the brambles, would these be flowers?’
	“Idair looked up, and she saw the brambles, and suddenly it was as if she were greatly astonished, or mightily afraid, and she said, ‘Yes...yes, those are flowers.’ And Sincil smiled, pleased that she had known them when she saw them, and said, ‘They are very pretty; I have never seen anything like this before.’
	“And after a moment Idair said, ‘Where I come from, these are called roses. It is a name for a kind of flower; there are many kinds, and each kind has its name. Some must be cultivated, but some grow wild, scattered profligate over fields like this one...’
	“Idair gestured wide with her arm, and Sincil saw that flowers appeared in the field, tall and short, purple and pink and red, hidden among the grasses or nodding above them. And she said, ‘I am glad to see them; I will look for them more carefully.’
	“And then as Idair seemed to be frozen as if with some kind of dread, Sincil became worried, and asked her, ‘But what is wrong? They are very beautiful.’
	“And Idair said, ‘I am frightened.’
	“Sincil said, ‘Of the flowers?’
	“ ‘Of myself,’ said Idair.
	“Sincil looked at her, and said to her, ‘I see that you are; but I do not see why. I am not frightened of you.’
	“ ‘That is lucky,’ said Idair. ‘I am grateful.’
	“Sincil turned to walk on, and Idair followed her. And Sincil said, ‘You say that it seems to be springtime?’
	“Idair said, ‘Yes.’
	“ ‘What is “springtime?” ’
	“But Idair shook her head, and said, ‘Please, ask me later.’ And they walked on.”
	I rolled up the scroll. I was aware that the story had stirred something in me that I wasn’t able to mask. And anyhow during a reading you’re not supposed to mask, you’re supposed to lay yourself out to the people like the scroll you just closed and answer the questions with the naked truth. But looking at them I was beginning to think that maybe they were reading more than was quite good for me.
	Finally one of the women put her hand up. 
	“Tell me your used name, will you, since I don’t know it?”
	“It’s Niamh, shriia,” she said, and I recognized her from the prayer.
	“All right then, Niamh,” I said.
	“This was the first thing she made, wasn’t it?”
	“The first thing she made after coming to us. She made everything that was there beforehand too, you know--”
	“Yes, yes,” said Niamh, nodding. “What I mean is--it was the first time one of the First Followers saw her power.”
	“That’s right.”
	“Why do you think it was flowers, shriia?”
	People often ask that, but in a way that lets you know they don’t expect a definite answer. It’s one of those things every shriia has a different take on. But Niamh’s voice seemed to say that she thought I might have a definite answer, and that somehow she was really interested to know what it was. And I was wondering what my answer would be, because all I knew was that it would be different from the one I was used to giving.
	“I think it was...well, the practical reason is, it was the first thing Sincil got Idair to describe to her. But of course that’s not reason enough. The real question is, why does Idair spend so much time describing the flower, why is this the first thing that she speaks of so long and so lovingly that it comes into being right where they stand. And the answer--well, my answer, every question like this has different answers...”
	They waited for me to get started.
	“She says that nobody needs flowers,” I said. “She says it twice. Strictly speaking it’s true. We can’t eat them; the bees seem to like them but Idair could just as easily have made plants reproduce in some less extravagant way. But then the last word she uses, to create them, is... ‘necessary.’”
	Istria was looking at me, I knew, but I had a responsibility to stay engaged with the others and frankly I was afraid of what might happen if I made eye contact. I went on.
	“There’s something about flowers that makes them necessary,” I said, my hands coming into play. “Despite their being useless. I think that’s what--I think that’s--”
	I swallowed the catch in my throat and went on with a voice that was a little raw.
	“It’s a powerful saying, a powerful lesson,” I said. “That it’s precisely what can’t be turned to some kind of material use, that is crucial, that is the stuff of life, that is necessary.”
	Someone else raised her hand. “But did it have to be flowers, shriia? Would some other thing have worked just as well?”
	I shook my head.
	“I think it was flowers because...because...”
	Morat’s eyes were on me, and Aine’s. Aine’s because she had seen that rose bush and was now starting to think that maybe it had meaning for me that she hadn’t understood. Morat’s because long years of experience had alerted her to the fact that I was about to start treading forbidden territory.
	“Idair asks Sincil what love is in the sixth scroll and Sincil says she doesn’t know,” I said. “It’s one of the uafach freagair--how can she be in love before they know what it is, when usually a thing that no one knows has to be described by Idair before it comes to be. It seems from that story as if Sincil and Anron create love themselves, and Idair merely recognizes it. And indeed...I...think that’s probably true, partly...”
	The other shriias knew I was saying this because Idair had told me so; I suppose Morat was grateful to me for not getting into that.
	“But I also think that love does exist, it enters the world, before Sincil meets Anron,” I went on. “That Idair brought love with her when she came, that she made the world out of love, and that the flower...the flower grows in that field to show us how that works, to show us how love is made, how love makes us.”
	There was a heavy pause.
	“I don’t understand, shriia.”
	This was from Adra. And it wasn’t an argument or a challenge; it was a request.
	“I’ll try to explain...of course, this is just me, you understand, ask a different shriia you’ll get a different answer...”
	“We’re asking for yours, shriia,” Niamh said.
	I went on, feeling less and less that I had a grip on what I might or might not say.
	“Idair starts with what you might call the botanical description of what it is that the flower does for the plant, and that gets her nowhere. She doesn’t get to the point of going on and on about stamens and pistils because she sees that’s making nothing happen. Instead, if you look at the saying...it’s not about pollination and fruit, it’s about the bud opening. And about how at every stage it’s beautiful, there’s a different magic to the green bud, to the just-opening bloom and to the ripened blossom. It’s about...it’s about the heart. How the heart begins as a closed fist, with all its passion pressed together into that tight bead, and under the right touch, it opens, a little at a time, the scent and the feel and the look of it changing every instant while the petals unfurl...beautiful for what you can touch and what you can’t, the open petals softer and the scent more heady because you know there’s more, that as you turn down the silk of each soft circle there will always be another inside. And when the heart opens, you haven’t found your way to a jewel or a stone or some definite thing--you realize that the heart is not an impenetrate core but the blossom itself, that the whole flower is the heart, open glorious and bright like a star...”
	I stopped. They were looking at me, and I wasn’t exactly sure how. I was too involved in my own emotions to read them very successfully. But I had a strong suspicion that I was making an ass of myself. I changed tack.
	“The flower is...it’s love made visible, sensible to the touch and the smell. It’s what shows Sincil that there is such a thing as love, that teaches her what love is, before she knows a name for it. It has to be a flower because nothing else would show her what love looks like. And it has to be first because love is first. It’s what we’re made of.”
	I was really hoping they would leave it at that and let me get out of the public eye where I could feel the stir and the grief that came with it without embarrassing myself in front of my apprentice, half the Council, and seventy-seven total strangers.
	But no, someone’s hand was up. It was the woman who had made that crack about dying for Istria.
	“Why do you think it frightens her so much?” she said.
	“I...well, you must know as well as I that Idair was often frightened of her own power,” I said. “Especially so early in the story. But...I think also...”
	This took me a little while to get to.
	“If you listen to the end of the saying,” I said. “That what’s fragile, what’s born to be lost...these things that are ephemeral, hard-won and hard-kept, that can be a lifetime in the making but can be torn from us in an instant...those are the things that are necessary to us,” I said. “At the end of that saying she comes to the knowledge that everything we love is in danger. Born to be lost.” I was startled to see that on some of their faces, tear tracks shone in the light from the hanging globes. “We are all about to go out...to send what we love onto the battlefield...” I swallowed. “Death is part of life, we are all born to be lost, and yet we love each other, we join with another life, we cling to another body knowing that someday that body will be cold and that life will be over, not because it makes sense but because it’s simply, crucially, necessary...” Well, so much for not crying. “Of course she’s frightened. Frightened for us, frightened for herself. Just as we sitting here are frightened for our lovers, our husbands, our children, our dear ones...and ourselves.”
	I hastened through the tears to wind this up as swiftly as I could. “The first time I came to Amranth Adra asked me what I would fight for, if it came to a fight,” I said. “And I said, ‘Idair, the right, and what I love.’” My voice was coming back under my control, slightly. “It’s come to a fight. I’ll fight for all of them. Knowing they’re necessary. Knowing, because they’re necessary, that they may all be lost tomorrow.” I closed my hands on each other. “Hoping, because Idair is good, that they won’t be.”
	I let the silence persist. Finally Chierna stood up.
	“Have we heard enough to keep us?”
	I had the feeling that not everyone wanted to say yes. But nobody contradicted her. Perhaps they saw how desperately I wanted out of that scrutiny. Or maybe they were just afraid of Chierna.
	“Yes,” said a number of voices.
	“I have given you my fire,” I said. “Let me return bearing yours.”
	I took the flames back, until they flickered out and the room entered the darkness. Then I fled into the corridor.
	I heard the sound of fire being hung inside, and people began milling around. I was trapped. All the rooms off the corridor were locked and I didn’t want to get into the shriin anyway. I had to duck back into the Raed, passing the first Daughters who were pushing their way out. 
	“It was a good reading, shriia,” one said.
	“Thank you, shriia.”
	“May you live long and die old, shriia.”
	I acknowledged them as briefly as possible and snuck into the room, attempting to skirt the crowd. It would not allow me to skirt it. It is custom for the people at readings to greet the shriia on the way out, and they were all bent on doing this. And bent on making chat with me, despite the embarrassment they could surely read off me.
	“I’ve never heard it read that way, shriia,” said the woman with Niamh.
	“That doesn’t surprise me,” I said, diffidently.
	“I like the way you read it,” Niamh said. “Good rest to you, shriia, till tomorrow.”
	I was kept busy greeting the others, but something floated over to me from that pair that had been checking Istria out, and who evidently had a habit of silent gossiping.
	...which heart she was talking about, came from one.
	I continued the greeting I was in the middle of, although hearing this sent something cold right through me.
	You should be ashamed, said the other, although more with scandalized delight than real outrage. This is the Chronicles we’re talking about.
	Tell me you didn’t see it in there.
	I was much relieved when they decided to give me a wide berth, even if they were unfortunately underestimating my mindstrength.
	Who knew Idair wrote erotica?
	Oh will you just stop it.
	Eventually there was no one left in the room but the shriias, Chierna, and Istria.
	“Thank you,” Chierna said, bowing to Cera first. “I know it meant a lot to them.”
	“I hope Idair will grant what they asked for,” Cera said.
	Chierna nodded, and turned to me. “And thank you,” she said.
	“No need,” I answered, still deeply embarrassed.
	“It was the right story,” she said. “For us, now, I mean. I don’t know reading, like you do. But...” She recovered her command demeanor. “My women and I are grateful for your time and trouble, and for putting yourself out so much for us. We’ll see you up on the roof an hour before dawn.” I nodded. “Good rest to all of you, and Idair help us all.”
	She left. I looked fearfully over at Morat.
	“Theamh...”
	Morat saw me already beginning to quail before the expected wrath.
	“You’re right,” she said.
	Kelah snorted. Morat chose to ignore this.
	“I’m...what?”
	“You’re right,” she repeated, sounding both astonished and yet somehow exasperated. “Your reading. I see it.”
	“I don’t,” Kelah said.
	“That’s your prerogative,” Morat answered. “Truth is beautiful, Theamh. What I mean is,” she said sardonically, “don’t look at me that way, I’m not going to hurt you.”
	I tried to stop.
	“Now,” she said. “Can I tell you one other thing that’s necessary, that you’re not going to like.”
	“Yes,” I said, warily.
	“People are already talking,” she said. “About the two of you. I mean ordinary people, who don’t know about the new instructions. You know how delicate the balance is and what a slight hair it can turn on.” I nodded. “What we do not need is a bunch of the Daughters suddenly starting to wonder if maybe you’re dark. Now, I wouldn’t have gotten into this, except that I think after this reading there may be a few of them wondering if maybe you know more about the heart than you’re supposed to have a right to.” She went on before I could object. “When the war is over, we will change the rules and make the new instructions known. For right now, we all need you to keep it under wraps as best you can, in front of ordinary people.”
	“I understand,” I said, still chafing.
	“I don’t like it,” Morat said. “This silence feels like a lie to me even though it isn’t. And when right and light are back in the Pharc, believe that my first action will be to break it.” She looked at me hard when she said this.
	“I believe you,” I said. “I do.”
	Because I did. Morat did what was right, no matter how much it might embarrass her or how mistaken it might make her look.
	“But we have to have their confidence,” she said. “At least until after this battle.” She tossed me a key. “Tonight, you’ve got the run of the guest house. Whatever lovers do before parting at a time like this, do it before you get out there.” She turned away. “All right, Chierna’s given back the keys, let’s go up to the apartments and get settled.”
	The others packed up and began drifting out. Lilea paused before leaving us there.
	“It was a beautiful reading, Theamh,” she said. “I have a lot to ask you, when we get time.”
	“All right, Lilea,” I said.
	She hugged each of us once, and left.
	Istria was the only one left now, watching Lilea go through the doorway. She turned around after Lilea went, with a look on her like someone drowning.
	“Ah Istri,” I said, not sure myself whether I was getting enough air.
	When her arms were wrapped like cables around me and her quivering mouth pressed against mine, I still felt like crying, as if there was more misery in the world than I could well stand to bear. But I also didn’t want to let go of her.
	ah ghaisti mo ghra mo stor
	chara alanna mo chohir mo ghaist
	With the words flying incoherent around us we clung there crushed into one desperate thing. Through the armor I couldn’t get the feel of her, and her hands pressed into me as if trying to feel through my hreapa. It was sundown, and I could take it off, and suddenly that became an absurdly intense desire, to undo and be out of it.
	Istri let’s go
	She planted her feet firmer, and gave no indication of leaving off or letting go.
	Istri I want to undo
	“All right.” She drew back, keeping one hand around my wrist. “Let’s go, only from now until this wretched morning comes I don’t want not to be touching you, ever.”
	I remembered the way to the guest house, and we traversed it with unusual speed. I got the door open, and shut, and turned the key, which I am afraid then went chittering into a corner as I dropped everything and began undoing.
	I finished before Istria had a chance to take off her armor. It still kept her away from me, as close as I was trying to press. And if those Cretid trousers were a problem, all of these knotted leather thongs were worse.
	Istri
	I’ll do it, give me space
	Her hands went behind her back, working too fast maybe, so that she fumbled almost as badly as I had. But eventually it fell away from her and got kicked in a heap to join the key and my bundled hreapa. 
	ah Theamh
	Istri
	I could feel her now as she could feel me, my breasts loose under the shift, my hands slipping over the smooth second skin of the silk undergarment they all wore under the armor. It was meant to keep the armor from chafing, although Istria told me there were all kinds of jokes about what else it was good for. And for about a second my hands were pleased with the feel of it, and then I got impatient that it was silk and not her.
	she can’t take you
	Istri no one lives forever
	she can’t take you, there’s nothing else in the world like you
	or you either
	Now we were both trembling, and my throat was clenched in a permanent sob, and if both my hearts were crying out for her my one and only gut was churning into a boiling mess. I slid out of her grasp and onto my knees on the floor, sobbing my lungs raw.
	Istri what will I do if
	she’ll bring me back to you
	I can’t live without
	Theamh she won’t
	I could keep breathing and
	Idair is good, she wouldn’t
	thinking and all but 
	Theamh
	it wouldn’t be living
	ah Theamh
	She was crouched down near me, not sure what to do, since I didn’t seem to want her to touch me. I wasn’t sure what she should do either. I didn’t know what had snapped in me, to make me not want to hold her.
	Istri if you go away from me again
	I’ll never go away from you
	but what if you die
	Theamh
	She sat for a while and watched me cry, at a loss.
	“I’m sorry,” I said, when I could use my voice. “I just...I know it could be our last night...and...I want to...but...I just...feel this dread...crushing it all out of me...”
	Istria sat on the floor and took my chin in one hand, lifting my head so I had to look at her.
	After what seemed like a long time, she said, “I know, I feel horrible too, like my entire gut wants to be inside out. It’s not going to be like it can be, Theamh, with both of us miserable it can’t. I don’t expect that, I just...” Her mouth quivered. “I just want to go out there with your touch on me.”
	I knew, looking at her, that it was too late to think about safety, that love had eaten me whole. I had thrown myself into the fire and would burn till there was nothing left of me. I might burn up in a day, or in fifteen years. But there was no single part of me that was left unscathed, nothing that wasn’t given to her, nothing that wouldn’t be consumed by grief. And since I was going to burn, I might as well burn bright.
	Istri
	mo chara
	how do I get this off you
	poor Theamhin, you are hopeless
	well what business do you have wearing clothes
	there are practical advantages, you know
	when you are so beautiful
	We had been trying to lighten it, but of course it failed. Once we were naked, there was no way around it. Because when you’re holding someone you love, who is going into battle tomorrow, it strikes you what a miracle her body is. That there is no reason in the universe why a shape should be this beautiful, why it is that it’s only this body you love, that your heart has seized on this one person and your body grown around this one form. No reason, no reason at all, and still you know it’s true, and that if this body suddenly is no more, then the world will be empty, a pattern of shadow and light that will never touch you and in which you will not truly live. It’s an insane way for things to be. This unreasonable, unlikely, irrational attachment to one single being for whom you will throw over the entire wide universe. Insane, unreasonable, terrifying. Necessary.
	Theamh
	Istri
	mo bheanin
	mo ghra
	no regrets
	except for
	every minute of my life that I didn’t
	spend with you
	In the tales, or in the love poetry, you’ll see sometimes people making love ‘as if for the last time.’ It’s meant to be very romantic. And I suppose it is. But it’s not the kind of romantic people go looking for. It’s the kind of romantic that shakes you from your bones to the hair on your head, that throws you smack into the maelstrom and shows you just how it feels to be a twig in the river of your own passion--which at the moment is dropping you straight down over the falls and into the rapids. The kind of romantic that makes you know you’re in danger, that you’ve let loose things you can’t control and you are no longer your owner. That makes you hold on to your lover as if she were dissolving, harder and closer and longer than a sane person would think was good for either of you.
	We got no sleep. It might have been better to try, but even after we had finally run it all through we didn’t want to go apart from each other. So I lay there on one of those pallets in the guesthouse, looking up at the ceiling while Istria sprawled on top of me, one hand at my breast and the other teasing that flame-colored rose out of my hair.
	“What was the first time you remember noticing me?”
	I looked up at the ceiling and tried to remember.
	“I think it was in the dormitory,” I said. “I think I remember you sitting there on your bed, in your shift, dead quiet. No, I do remember--it was the night after the first test in Old Tongue, and everyone else was talking about it but you. I remember thinking you must either have really nailed it, or were certain you’d failed.”
	“I don’t remember seeing you look at me,” she said, twirling the rose thoughtfully in her fingers. “You must have been more than usually discreet about it. If I’d noticed, I’d have...well. It’s embarrassing.”
	“What?”
	“That night you came and woke me up,” she said.
	“Yes?”
	“I’d already...” She sighed. “I’d been noticing you, for a long time.”
	“Since when?” I asked.
	“There was a day I saw you walking in the courtyard,” she said, promptly, without having to think. “I was looking out the dormitory window, and you were walking through the rose garden. The sun was in your hair.”
	“I was alone?”
	“You were. You sat, and then I think it was Slythe went over to talk to you. It made me jealous.”
	“Of what?”
	“That you had a friend, and I didn’t.”
	I stroked her hair. “I didn’t yet, Istri. She was just being nice to me.” 
	“I thought you were helping her with Old Tongue.”
	“So I was, but...wait, you were listening to us?”
	“I told you it was embarrassing...” I smiled, but that only made her more embarrassed. “I didn’t know why, I just...wanted to know about you. It made me happy to watch you sort of...just...going about.”
	I turned to look at her, the timing having just struck me. “But Istri, that had to have been...well, weeks before that night I woke you up.”
	Istria sighed.
	“I was afraid to talk to you,” she said. “You were so smart, and you read so well, and everyone was always trying to sit near you.”
	“They were just hoping to read off me, Istri.”
	“Still. If you hadn’t come over to my bed, that night...”
	I hugged her closer. “I’m very glad I did,” I said.
	“Such a slight thing,” Istria said, her voice quiet. “Your waking me up from a nightmare. And then neither of us would ever be the same after.”
	We lay together for a while in silence.
	“Did you know?” she finally asked. “That it was the beginning of this?”
	“I don’t think so,” I answered. “I just knew it mattered.”
	She nodded, her dark head moving over my bare breast.
	In love before we had a name for it; falling with no idea in the world of what was happening. Knowing nothing except that we had just found something necessary.
	“It’s time,” I said.
	Istria stood up. I put on my shift, which was cold and felt damp. She got back into her undergarment and started tying on the armor. I wouldn’t be able to put mine on until dawn. But I put my ropesoles back on, and did up my hair, as Istria’s hands went behind her back to plait hers out of the way.
	I took the rose that had fallen down next to the pallet, and put it in her hair. She picked up the other and settled it in mine. 
	“Funny how they’ve stuck with us through all this,” I said. 
	“I don’t think they have, Theamh.”
	“What do you mean?”
	“It’s strange, I know, but I think they...come and go.”
	She seemed a little hesitant saying this, and I guess it’s not something everyone would believe. But we knew it was a magic bush, it shouldn’t have surprised us.
	“You mean they just...appear and disappear, at random.”
	“I don’t think it’s random, Theamh.”
	Now she was definitely embarrassed, and I couldn’t figure out why, until I looked at the rose in her hair and remembered the last time I’d seen it there. Which had been right before I ran down to confront Kelah and company in Viecter’s kitchen.
	“Oh no,” I said, backing up suddenly with a hand to my mouth. “You don’t think they...show up when we...”
	“I know it sounds crazy...”
	She started laughing, I think because I suddenly looked so mortified. And then I started laughing, because I was glad she was laughing, even though I was still mortified. 
	“Good spirits, Istri, do you think anyone else knows?”
	“I don’t see how, they don’t know when we’re--”
	“Well, they will if word gets out, won’t they?”
	“Well, why not?” Istria demanded, suddenly taking me by the shoulders. “Why not? Why not wear it like a badge. I’ve never been prouder of anything than of being loved by you.” I felt my heart filling up, looking at the pride on her clear face and the rose in her hair. “All the same, though, what say we just keep this theory between ourselves.”
	“I like that plan,” I said.
	She kissed me, and it was all right. We would go out to the battle. And Idair willing and able, we’d both come home. And if the worst happened, at least I knew what it was to face life with an full heart and open hands and a rose in my hair.

XXIII.
A Good Day’s Work

	When we got to the roof of the Pharc it was still almost totally dark. And we couldn’t hang lights; that would alert the general public. Secrecy was of the essence. It was the only thing we had on our side, apart from Idair and the Daughters.
	The Daughters were there; a backup force to manage things from inside the walls and the seventy who were going out into the field. Which group included Istria, who left me and went to stand with her cohort. I was somewhat irritated to see that her cohort included the two women who were always gossiping; but it also included Adra, and three other women who looked sound enough.
	Eorna and the practical magicians from Amranth were crouched in the middle of the roof consulting with Chierna. I realized once my eyes adjusted that they were attending to the equipment, which had to be as invisible as they were. This kind of work is very tricky indeed, and it looked as if Eorna had been up pretty much all night at it. 
	Morat was surrounded by the other shriias, answering some last-minute questions. Aine had been one of them, but when she saw me she broke away from the group.
	“And so this is it then, dhiaoc.”
	Eorna had finally put together a learner’s tunic for her. The construction is simple--really, it’s just a long strip of wool or some other fabric with a hole cut in the middle for the head, tied at each side. There are no sleeves, and it’s fireproofed. I should have done it for her a long time ago, but I was hopeless at things like fireproofing. I realized looking at her that it would take me a long time to get used to the idea that she wasn’t an apprentice any more. It would be strange to see her in a hreapa, strange to see her surrounded by her own vigils. Although maybe I wouldn’t see either of those things. Since neither of us could say with certainty we’d live through the day.
	“This is it,” I said. “The second battle of Amranth. We can only hope it works out as well as the first.”
	“Dhiaoc--”
	“You’ve gotten back into the old habit, Aine,” I said. “Use my name.” Aine nodded. Something came to me, and I said, “I’ll always be your diaoc, even though you’re not a scoilin. That won’t change just because you call me something different.”
	I wasn’t exactly sure what I meant by that, but it seemed to make a difference in Aine. She hovered on the point of emotion, and then she said, “Are you scared?”
	“About today?”
	She nodded.
	“I’m terrified,” I said. “I don’t want to die, I don’t want anything to happen to Istria, or to you, or Morat or...anyone. And I don’t want us to lose. And all of those things might happen.”	
	Aine nodded, but with I thought a hint of a smile. “And then again, they mightn’t.”
	“Are you scared?” I said.
	It was a second before she answered.
	“It’s funny,” she said. “The arani don’t frighten me now. I’ve got used to them.”
	“That’s lucky,” I said.
	“I’m still scared,” she answered. “Of the battle, and of what might happen. But I’m not worried about myself. I was trained by you. I’ll be all right.”
	Before I could figure out what I wanted to say, I heard the summons from Morat.
	Form up. They’re going over.
	Sixty-nine Daughters of Amranth and Istria were standing in formation in the middle of the roof. The rest of us took up the positions we had already agreed on. All told, there were twenty-four of us; but only Kelah, Morat, Cera, Puela and I had vigils. We were divided up into ten groups, each group assigned to a company. The biggest companies, with the biggest arani, got three shriias instead of two. The shriias in possessions had to be spread out among the different groups. Morat would be directing the battle, using her vigils and her fire to help wherever they were needed most. We were arranged so that we could all see each other and Morat. So when we took up our positions we were in a kind of broken circle around the Daughters. I was facing the walls, along with Cualha and Lilea. They had both had time to get used to my vigils and would be less spooked by them; for the same reason Kelah was with Eunem and Eorna, and Cera and Puela were teamed up with other members of the Amranth Council. Aine had been put with Dalen. The two of them would be tackling whatever was thralling the Knifewind Seven. My own lucky band had been assigned to the Not Quite Nine, which had eight hundred and seventy-five men in it and was going to be a real bastard. Although probably not as much as the one Kelah’s group was taking on, which would be coming out of the heads of the West Country Thousand. I wouldn’t have thought you could scrape a thousand military-age men out of the country west of Amranth, but apparently the WCT was recruited from all over; it was a veteran regiment, like the Flying Hart Four. Which would make it all the more fun for Istria’s company to try to swipe one of them.
	Eorna was still crouched down talking to Chierna. Chierna finally stood to face her troops, Eorna by her side next to what had to be a mighty big pile of nothing.
	Can you all read me, said Chierna.
	Everyone nodded. She waited for a moment to go on.
	Daughters of Amranth, daughters of Idair, she said. This is the first time in history we’ve really worked together. Idair send it will be the last.
	She got no argument from any of us. She went on.
	I know my women, she said. Whatever happens, we will be worthy of the trust you have put in us, and the trust of the women, men and children whose happiness we guard. And I know you will be worthy of the trust we put in you. Morat nodded to her. Daughters remember, drop slow when you reach the ground--it’s easy to misjudge the distance when you can’t see your feet. She looked at them, and I think she realized that if she started handing out advice she would never be done. She drew her sword out of its sheath and raised it into the air above her, which was just beginning to lighten into gray.
	Amranth, Idair, and our desire!
	An answer broke out from the others’ minds. Chierna sheathed her sword. Eorna threw some nothing at her, and she disappeared.
	One by one they ran past Eorna, who fitted them up with their shields as they went by. It was so quick and seamless it was eerie--as if instead of running to the walls, they were running into thin air. When Istria jumped into invisibility I felt my throat tightening. My eyes were on Eorna as the rest ran past her, but I wasn’t really watching any more.
	There was nothing for us to do now but wait for them to get into position, and meanwhile shake out our hreapas and turn toward the east.
	The last time I had done this in Amranth had been before the Order split. We had all been standing in a ring around the walls, held together by overlapping sound and an unbroken tradition. Now, we were in a much smaller ring on the roof of the Pharc, facing east and dreading the dawn. Not an improvement. But Aine was there with me; she hadn’t been then. And so were Morat, Lilea, Dalen, Cualha, Eorna, Eunem--even Kelah, who had never been anything more than a thorn in my side, was now someone I was glad to have around at a time like this. More power than we used to have. Maybe enough. Maybe.
	We finished the song. And I couldn’t see it happen; but I knew that was the cue, and that the Daughters were dropping on their invisible cables over the outside walls.
	Nobody else seemed to be noticing. The city was still silent, except for the birds. The only roosters who greeted the sun were far away, in the army camp. I’m City, and I’m slow; but even I found that disturbing. I didn’t know why until it occurred to me that the ones inside Amranth weren’t crowing because they’d already been eaten. The city was, if not on its knees, definitely at the end of its tether.
	<Theamh.>
	<Istri?>
	She could sense my agitation. <Theamh--will you feel better if you can see what’s happening?>
	I thought about it.
	<Yes,> I said.
	<All right, you can look if you promise that when it’s time for you all to get into it you’ll close it down. I don’t want to distract you.>
	<I promise.>
	<Come in then.>
	I projected until I could see what she was seeing. Which was not herself, of course, or the other women in her cohort. She was looking at the lake.
	This I had expected. The West Country Thousand were camped in around the part of the lake that didn’t border the walls of Amranth. There were a number of boats moored to the far edge; they hadn’t come within a hundred yards of the walls, just as the other companies had to leave that much space between their camp and the city, what with the Daughters having recourse--before the new rules--to boiling oil, flaming arrows, and other methods of discouraging approach.
	The lake began to move. Actually, it was Istria moving, in the wake of her cohort. Moving silently across that empty space that belonged to no one, along the coast of the lake. And confronting finally the men who were ranged along that coast.
	I should have been able to hear what she heard; but there was nothing to hear. In terms of craft, the Daughters of Amranth made the Dairc Volunteers look like Sonnia. Or, at the very least, me. Istria wove her path in among and around the men who were standing at attention along the curve of the beach, their unseeing eyes fixed on the part of the walls nearest them. Watching for danger because that was what they’d been told to do, waiting to see something burst out of that city. Unaware, apparently, that the threat was among them, moving as slow as they had to but as fast as they could.
	I knew that all around the city, the same was happening in different places. They had dropped over the walls at ten different points and were fanning out to ten different spots. They would make no move until they knew everyone was on their marks.
	Chierna had decided not to use Istria’s plan of getting the captives in through the gate, which she thought was too risky. Instead, the captives would be tied to the cables and taken up the walls. Which meant they’d have to be subdued and bound first. That made things more complicated, but Chierna had decided it was the easiest and safest way. And it probably did make things safer for the city, although I’m not sure it made things safer for the daughters. Certainly it didn’t make things any easier on Istria’s cohort.
	The men whose stock-still, silent forms Istria was negotiating around weren’t the West Country Thousand. They were the Blue Hill Five Fifty, and were guarding the southern edge of the lake. Over on the other side, the River Run Six were deployed along the northern edge. The company Istria’s cohort was targeting was camped between them, along the western coast, as far away from the city and safety as they could possibly be.
	I had said it would be better if I could see; and I’m sure it was. But it was still a terrible thing to see those stone faces swimming by, one by one, swerving into view and then swerving past, unmoved in the middle of a landscape that seemed always to be changing as Istria’s position in it changed.
	The Aivs weren’t around. No reason for them to be. Intelligence could be gathered from their thousands of mindless suborned watchers; and it was the stage of a siege when nothing much happened anyway. Smoke rose from the chimney hole in a tent off to the west where the West Country Thousand Aivs were no doubt enjoying breakfast. Meanwhile Istria had stopped moving.
	The stillness just made the silence more eerie. In front of her, a young man of about twenty stood staring up at the walls. His armband showed the company emblem--two mountains with the sun setting between them. It was the only thing to distinguish him from the men Istria had already left behind on her way up the coast, or from the thousands of others who were all wearing the same expression and under the same--or at any rate very similar--thrall. Behind her, little waves slapped gently against the side of a boat tied up to the end of a pier that stuck out a few hundred feet into the lake. And somewhere around her were six women I couldn’t see. In position, and waiting for the word.
	There was one good thing, and only one good thing, about Istria having been assigned to the West Country Thousand. It meant that her cohort took longer to get into position than any of the others, since they had the greatest distance to travel. Which meant that once she reached her position, I didn’t have to wait long.
	I didn’t hear the word given; but Istria must have, along the link Chierna had set up. Everything lurched forward, and the boy she had been looking at disappeared.
	They had thrown a shield over him, and were dragging him back up the pier to the boat. But his being invisible did not prevent him from struggling enough to make noise, especially when he was dragged over the boards of the pier, his heels kicking out a drumrattle that brought the Aivs suddenly out of that tent. Along with a woman in hreapa.
	His struggles began tearing the shield, so that he became partially visible. He was a completely different creature now--twisting like a mad cat, doing anything an animal could do to stop them taking him. The Aivs and the woman in hreapa who had gathered outside the tent were now pointing directly at Istria, and the others, as they piled themselves into the boat. The soldiers put arrows to their bows.
	The knot on the mooring rope was giving them some trouble. As the first arrows went into the air, Istria drew her sword, whose edge cut through the shield so that she was visible when she slashed the rope in half. And followed by a shower of arrows, they rowed furiously across the lake.
	There were shouts going up all around the city, which I could hear through my own ears as well as Istria’s. All the cohorts had made their moves at the same time. And quick and silent as they had been, it was impossible they should go unnoticed. The Aivs were on the alert, and now so was the army.
	But I could only really see what Istria was doing, which was something very specific and concrete. To get the captive back into the city they would have to subdue him long enough to get the bonds on him; and that was Istria’s job.
	No matter how necessary it may be, punching a man a dozen times as hard as you can in the head while three of your comrades hold him down on the floor of a rowboat is rotten work. Thrall makes people almost impossible to wrap--the strength of obsession gives them strange powers of resistance. And so she had to keep drawing her fist back and smashing it into the side of this man’s head, until he finally was so battered and dazed that he submitted to having his hands and feet manacled and to being put in a large burlap sack. Istria cinched the sack up at one end with a special clip that would hook onto the cables. 
	The arrows didn’t seem to be bothering anyone in the boat much--I supposed they were used to it. Aside from the women rowing, who were still invisible, they were crouched down in the boat dealing with the captive, and most of the arrows went over them. The first time I felt Istria getting really nervous was when the fireball ripped across the water and slammed into the side of the boat.
	The woman in hreapa was too far away to identify. Almost too far away to hit them, too. But almost was, in this case, not enough. The boat was on fire.
	“Just keep rowing!” That was Adra. “Istria, can you put that out?”
	“Depends,” she said. She examined the side of the boat long enough to be satisfied. “Thurk it, Adra, it’s shri fire.”
	“Which means what?” demanded Adra from her invisibility.
	“We can’t put it out,” Istria shouted. “We have to go ashore, the thing will crumble.”
	I could feel the pitch of Istria’s frustration. If she’d had her fire, she could have settled and drawn and kept the boat afloat until they reached the walls. As it was, she could do nothing. 
	“You want to go ashore?” Adra asked dryly.
	Istria looked. The shore was swarming with Amstian soldiers, many of whom were clustered around something I couldn’t see, but which was probably the cohort assigned to abduct one of the Blue Hill Five Fifty.
	“It’s the lesser of two dangers,” she said.
	By which she meant that the wall where the fire was had already started to give, and wouldn’t hold up much longer to the strain the oarlocks were putting on it. Adra gave the order, and the boat made a beeline for the nearest point on the shore.
	As they approached, Istria looked anxiously around the scene she was moving toward. I got a short, momentary glimpse of the walls, and a burlap sack being hauled upward at the end of an invisible rope. One of the other cohorts was delivering their prisoner. At least for them, then, the plan was working.
	When the boat cracked in half a few feet from shore the women abandoned it, dragging the captive in his sack through the shallows. They were all visible now that weapons had been called into play. Istria was in charge of the captive; the other women were ranged around her, fighting off the army as the group lurched back toward the walls. 
	The Daughters had always been a defensive force, and although Daughters lore has it that the best defense is a good offense, shriia’s rules were easier on them than they would have been for the Amstian Army. I couldn’t see very well what was going on. But I saw that Adra and the two gossipers, all of whom were trailing tattered shreds of their shields, were beating a path toward the walls, Istria following with the sack and the other four formed around them fighting off attacks from the rear. And with all that had happened, I still watched the Daughters in jaw-dropped amazement. Thralled as they were, the men they were fighting were still forced to keep their distance--the desire not to be maimed is more basic than the human will, and the Daughters had Istria and the captive surrounded in a ring of flashing steel and iron that no sane person would put any portion of his body into. The ring got smaller as they were pressed harder, so that by the time they finally drove the last few men out of the space between them and the city and backed up hard against the walls, it was not so much a ring as a knot. 
	“Down here!” Istria shouted up at the walls, where some of the Daughters were manning the ropes. An ordinary visible cable dropped to within Istria’s reach. I could almost feel the tremor in her arms as she struggled with the thing, hooking one clip to the cable at the top and another down at the bottom near the feet. It’s not easy to do complicated mechanical tasks when you’re surrounded by flailing limbs and sharp objects. But she got him clipped, tested the cable, and then released it. “PULL!”
	The sack began disappearing up the walls, jerkily, as the women hauled in the line. Istria now turned her attention to the battle itself. 
	I don’t know much about warfare. All I knew was that it looked bad. The seven of them were clustered in a knot with their backs, literally, to the wall, as the hordes surged in on them. They couldn’t come back up the way the captives had; unless there was someone on the ground to fight off the attackers, they would simply swarm up the ropes after the Daughters. And there was no question of having some go back up while others stayed to give them cover; leaving your sisters in the fight while you haul your gleacha to safety was not what being a Daughter was about. Which I sympathized with, even though it meant that Istria was still down on the ground clashing her blade against all those others.
	All they had to do, as Chierna had put it, was stay alive until we cleansed the army. It sounded simple enough. But on the ground at that moment it wasn’t simple at all. All bodies tire; they couldn’t keep that steel barrier up forever.
	I must have been in farther than I realized, because when the first blade got through one of Istria’s gauntlets to her arm I felt it. I must have staggered or flinched or something because someone put a hand on my arm.
	“Theamh?”
	Through the fog of the other vision I could see Aine looking very concerned.
	“I...I’m watching through Istria...she’s been wounded.”
	“Oh no,” Aine said. “I’m sure--I mean--it isn’t serious?”
	I looked back to see. Things had changed. The fighting around them had stopped, although the Daughters were still at bay, looking around the suddenly cleared space with deep suspicion. I could see the blood on Istria’s armor as she kept her sword arm raised in anticipation. And on Adra, and the two gossipers. They’d all been wounded, somewhere. All breathing hard, all starting to tire. And yet the men were just standing there.
	The ranks of the army parted, and one of the Aivs came through. He looked at the seven of them, then pointed at Istria.
	“Take her alive,” he said. “Kill the rest.”
	Against all reason, Adra smiled.
	“Thank you, my brother.”
	The Aiv looked puzzled, but not for long.
	The thralled soldiers charged. With a collective scream of rage and release, the women of Istria’s cohort surged forward to greet them. Under shriia’s rules, that order gave them the right to fight to kill. 
	“Theamh!” 
	I couldn’t answer; I was too transfixed by the sight of Adra’s sword going through the neck of one of her attackers.
	“Theamh, they’re here!”
	I shook myself back to the world I was standing in. One of the Daughters was handing the first sack full of struggling Amstian down to the roof we were standing on. 
	<Istri, I have to go-->
	<I know. Stay alive for me.>
	<You too.>
	I closed the link. It was a very lucky thing that I had work to do.
	I took the first one, ripping into the sack and pulling out the captive. I knelt down and went after him with the vigils. While I was working at him I got a look at his armband. Another sack had been handed over, inside which was another captive now being worked at by Kelah. Morat started on the next.
	Some of the Daughters were up on the walls now, shouting out from points all around the city to the men below.
	“Men of Amst! You are under thrall to minions of the Dark One, betrayed to them by your false Aivs!”
	Zott crackled into the air with the thing in its grasp. I fired showdust at it to make sure. An ugly gray line snaking back over the walls into the mess on the other side.
	“River Run Six!” I shouted.
	“Here!” Puela shot out one of her vigils, which took the tentacle from Zott and anchored it to her waist. 
	“Blue Hill Five Fifty!” shouted Kelah, having cleared and dusted the arani from her captive.
	“Here!” shouted one of the Amranth teams. Kelah sent one of her vigils over to wrap around the waist of the woman who would be in charge. Which meant she was now one light, and I’m sure she didn’t like that any more than I would have.
	“Knifewind Seven,” shouted Morat, as another gray tentacle snapped straining into the air on the end of one of her vigils.
	“Here!”
	And there was Aine, with one of Morat’s vigils wrapped snug around her waist, a little perturbed to have it so close up to her, but dealing with it well enough. I was pleased to see it, but another captive had presented itself and I didn’t have time to watch.
	The woman on the walls was still declaiming at them. “...when your minds are free, remember what we have said. If you love your home, if you love Idair, or if you believe in the right, show that by releasing our women, by withdrawing from the city grounds, and by delivering your Aivs bound--and alive--to the gates.”
	“Split Oak Six Fifty!” I shouted.
	“Here!”
	“Morning Star Six!”
	“Here!”
	“Eagle Fall Seven!”
	“Here!”
	“Not Quite Nine! Oh, wait, that’s me.” I turned to Cualha. “Hold him for me?”
	Phredi went to curl around Cualha’s waist. She watched a little apprehensively. I went back to the next captive. “Here, Kelah, he’s West Country.” 
	Kelah sent the arani from the Harvest Moon Eight over to Cera, who was waiting for it with her vigils, and went to work on this man’s head. I had only a moment to reflect that this was the man Istria and her cohort may or may not have died to bring us, before turning my attention to the next captive. It was also the last. Which meant he should be from the White Hare Seven, which his armband showed he was. I remembered there was a Daughter who had two brothers in this company. Who also might, or might not, be dead at this very moment, just like their sister. But at the moment the important thing was getting his head clear, which Zott did very handily. He and Phredi were all I had left. I had sent Jayla and Shaineen to one of the Amranth teams, just as Kelah, Puela, Cera and Morat had each parted with two of theirs for the time being so that the five other teams could have something to fight with. So now I handed the thing from the White Hare Seven off to one of the Amranth teams, and Kelah got hers out of the West Country Thousand man. We returned to our places in the circle, Eorna leaping to her spot near Kelah and Eunem. Cualha was very glad to see me take Phredi back from her and put him around my own waist. Morat stood in the center, taking one swift look around her.
	“On my mark!” she shouted, her two vigils bristling puce and lightning-green around her. “Together...strike!”
	Each team sent a bolt into the thickest part of each arani that was visible. The gray threads we were hanging onto convulsed. Morat began firing showdust into the air.
	She was doing it so fast it looked random--but it wasn’t. Every blast hit and every hit showed another set of tentacles rushing into the battle. We were far enough apart that it was relatively easy to keep the arani from getting confused--and they helped us by being so interested in the people who were bothering them that they didn’t mess much with the other women. So we were just trapping the tentacles and trying to keep count.
	For the first minutes, Lilea and Cualha weren’t doing much aside from watching me. But once they had a sense for how I was doing it they joined in. Cualha had gotten a taste of this during our journey and was actually a lot handier than she had a right to be.
	“One hundred West Country!” shouted Kelah.
	Damn it, even with that wounded shoulder she was doing this faster than I was. Lilea saw me suddenly pushing myself and I think she would have laughed if it wasn’t so much effort. Lilea wasn’t used to making this much fire--you don’t have to do it much in Comings and Goings--and she was already breaking a sweat. 
	“One hundred Not Quite!”
	Aine wasn’t long.
	“One hundred Knifewind!”
	Other cries followed, slowly or quick depending on skill. The ones who weren’t used to it took longer. That was all right, though, because they had the smaller companies. The more we could synchronize this process, the less likely it was that one company would be able to wipe out another. So we wanted the arani bodies to rush us all at the same time, which meant that those of us on the larger ones had to outpace the others. 
	“One fifty Not Quite!”
	“One fifty West Country!”
	“One hundred Blue Hill!”
	Morat was somehow able to keep all this straight. In fact, she was a miracle, as far as I was concerned. It seemed like she and her two vigils were everywhere at once. 
	“Puela, hold off! Cera, hold at two fifty! Hold off, Blue Hill! Theamh, bring it to three! Kelah let Trexin help you! Don’t give me trouble, you need to get to four and you need to have gotten there yesterday!”
	One of Morat’s vigils lashed out at the arani Kelah was fighting, tying down another clump of tentacles. She was worried about speed for a number of reasons. One, the longer companies were in a state of partial thrall the more death was liable to result from infighting. Two, the faster we got this over with the sooner the Daughters could get back, and three, those of us who were holding off were in danger from the loose tentacles that were lashing around us. Morat’s other vigil--the puce one--was fighting for us like ten mad cats, zipping around the circle slapping back any tentacles that were trying to do mischief. The air above us was an unholy confusion of gray tendrils, angry vigils, and the occasional lucky arrow that found its way over the walls.
	“All right, sing out what you have!” Morat finally called.
	“Blue Hill one fifty!”
	“River Run one eighty!”
	“Harvest Moon two fifty!”
	“Knifewind two!”
	“Not Quite three!”
	“West Country four!”
	Morat nodded as the numbers came in, tallying them up against the total in each company. We were more or less at the right stage--about a third gone. Morat paused for one second.
	“Well done. So much for the easy part.”
	I think I heard Lilea laughing; I wasn’t looking. I was looking where Morat was looking--at the gray lines roiling thick above her. I’d never seen this much spirit in one place. Neither had she. But she didn’t let it stop her.
	“Together....STRIKE!”
	More fire flashed out at the gray seething sky. And more arani legs bore down upon us, in an audible rushing wind.
	I would swear the sky was starting to turn black in sympathy. It seemed to me as if we were working under the threat of an angry thunderstorm. Maybe the sky really had gone gray; or maybe I was just unable to see through the thicket of arani. Or maybe in extremity everything always looks dark.
	The first stage had gone well enough. But the vigils can only hold so much at one time, and after that I had to try to tie the new tentacles down with my own fire. This is a complicated process involving a lot of delicate adjustment, and I couldn’t expect Lilea or Cualha to be able to do it. So it was up to them to trap the tentacles and me to wrap them to the strands the vigils were holding. And those things were coming at us all right--in screeching, wind-tearing clusters, ripping through the air like the unbraided end of a whip, ready and willing to knock any or all of us right out of the mortal world.
	“Damn you--damn all the tiny little bits of you--”
	Lilea is a mild-spoken woman. But battle changes a lot of people. She wasn’t much like what she normally was, with that blond hair flying everywhere and the sweat running down her neck. And turning too late to face a group of tentacles that were whistling at her broadside, so that the only reason she wasn’t knocked off the roof was that Morat had swept her fire out and grappled them away from her before they got there.
	“Here,” Morat shouted, handing the tentacles off to me. “Look alive, Lilea, for shri’s sake. Aine, ease up, you’ll get the shakes!”
	I had to trust Morat to take care of her; I was occupied with this beast. I was up to five hundred and something, and that was bigger than I’d ever fought. And since Phredi and Zott were both wrapped around me, and there were now five hundred and something arani legs attached to them in one way or another, I was getting tugged at pretty hard.
	“Weight down, now!” Morat shouted.
	Cualha took a break from tentacle trapping to grab the cable that had already been wrapped around one of the biggest pieces of rock we could get the Daughters to haul up to the roof. We had prepared this system in advance but had decided not to use it unless absolutely necessary. The cables would restrict movement and possibly entangle and endanger the people they were attached to. On the other hand, flying two miles through the air would endanger a person worse than most things, and it was apparent now that if we weren’t secured, that was probably going to be what happened to some of us.
	Cualha put the cable around me and snapped the closure. It did, sure enough, chafe and restrict me; I hadn’t realized before, but evidently I like to move around a lot when fighting large ugly spirits. But I was glad to have it the first time the thing jerked my feet off the ground, even if I could feel my hips bruising as they bumped against the cable.
	“Son of a bitch!”
	Kelah’s tether was holding; but her arani now had about six hundred of its tentacles on her and she was pulled a lot harder. I could see the pain on her face as she kept working, slicing about in the air as the thing jerked her back and forth. But hurt as she had to have been, she wasn’t letting up or relaxing her hold.
	“Blue Hill four fifty!” shouted one of the Amranthians.
	Now the teams with the smaller ones were outstripping the larger ones. Once you get above five hundred the going gets pretty tough. Aine was bobbing in the air too, like a fly on the end of some demented angler’s line, held down by the cable and boulder. Cera managed to preserve a little dignity, even if her feet were just as much in the air. 
	Morat, having taken in the total situation, decided to throw her lot in with Kelah for the time being. A thousand is too much for two vigils. Trexin--the lightning-colored vigil--took on the tentacles Eorna and Eunem were trapping, easing some of the weight off Kelah. Morat, of course, did not have a boulder to be attached to. I was none too easy in my mind about this.
	“River Run five fifty!” 
	“Split Oak--ah for the love of Idair--Split Oak six!”
	“Knifewind six fifty!”
	Aine’s voice didn’t sound good. Strained beyond the limit, well into exhaustion.
	“Eagle Fall six fifty!”
	“Harvest Moon six eighty and I’m thurked if I can do more,” shouted Cera.
	“To hell with that,” Morat shouted. “Cera, if Theamh can handle six you can handle seven!”
	“I’ve got seven hundred of these thurking things attached to me, I will have you know,” I shouted back.
	“Well then you should be able to get to seven fifty,” Morat returned to Cera, while her own hands were trapping and wrapping and tying down and trapping again as the thousand-legged thing she and Kelah had by the tail began struggling in earnest.
	Cera went cursing back to the fray. Kelah was no longer cursing. She didn’t have the energy. She was going white in the face, and her bad arm shook. I was meanwhile working on trying to bring the beast I was wrestling up to quota. I was meant to get it to eight twenty-five. I was only at seven fifty.
	“Come on, you stinking whey-souled bastard!” I shouted, when the cable wasn’t cutting off my air supply. “Bring it on! Everything you’ve got! Kill me if you can! If you can’t, then get out of my plane!”
	Around the circle I heard the taunts going up, in variations but with the same sense of desperate exasperation. I don’t know whether they understand us well enough to know when they’re being taunted. Vigils can; but vigils are different. I do know that Cualha, Lilea and I were suddenly faced with a new barrage of snaking and lethal things that seemed to rush at us out of nowhere.
	“That’s it...that’s it, you fetid puddle of the Dark One’s voidra...”
	“Harvest Moon seven fifty!” Cera shouted, with a faint note of triumph under the exhaustion and dread.
	“Not Quite seven seventy five so sucks to you and your stinking arani!” I shouted.
	Lilea, for all her exhaustion, laughed. So did Cualha. And even Kelah, half-suffocated at the end of that tether, forced out a sort of wheeze.
	“Come on then, Kelah,” Morat said. “Don’t let the scoili show us up.”
	It was only later, when I had time to really think about it, that I fully appreciated what Morat was doing. It was, of course, not a competition. But Morat knew, I guess the way wise people know things, that we could all do more than we thought we could. Making it interpersonal stopped people from worrying about what their own limits were and focused them on surpassing someone else’s. She was getting more out of us than we would have been able to give on our own, just by being who she was. I wish Istria could have been there to see it. It would have reminded her of why, despite all the anger and tears I knew her apprenticeship had involved, she had all the same come to respect and even love Morat. Because different as we were, Morat believed in Istria the same way I did, and if she made things hard it was by refusing to accept Istria’s ideas about where her limits were. Just as now she refused to believe that Cera couldn’t hang onto an eight hundred leg arani, or that Kelah was going to snap in half in the next thirty seconds.
	“Not Quite eight twenty-five!” I shouted.
	Now the only one not there was the West Country Thousand. They had to get it to nine hundred; and that was a hell of a lot. Even with both of Morat’s vigils now engaged along with them, it was a struggle getting much beyond eight fifty.
	“Fnaa!”
	“Would you like to gloss that, Theamh?” Morat snapped, still struggling with the West Country arani. “It sounds important.”
	“They’re coming!” I shouted. “At least mine is.”
	But mine wasn’t alone. The sky really was going black. Because the flaccid, quivering, yellow-gray bag-bodies of nine arani were rushing down from the skies, blotting everything out in their way.
	“Theamh, you direct,” Morat shouted. “Kelah still needs help.”
	Not a responsibility I relished, but there was no time to argue. “Regular first! Ready...together...STRIKE!”
	One regular blast into the heart of each arani, to repel it far enough to give us time. They rebounded back against the sky, looking depressingly unaffected.
	“Gather!” I kept an eye on them, watching them hover and then finally return as everyone but Kelah and Morat crossed their arms. “Reveal!”
	At the flash, the arani recoiled again, becoming smaller and more agitated. I waited for them to make the return.
	“Wait...wait...”
	They were shrieking toward us out of the sky, and I don’t know how we had the nerve to wait as long as we did, or why they trusted me to give the word so late.
	“STRIKE!”
	White fire stabbed from twenty-two pairs of hands into the close-up bodies of ten arani. I waited to give time for a recoup.
	“STRIKE!”
	Another burst of white fire. I heard, somewhere far from me, a blackening sizzle, and the familiar smell came to me.
	“Teir abhaile arani!” shouted two voices. And, finally, “Blue Hill gone home!”
	“Great,” Morat snapped. “Now come help with this bastard.”
	“Hold off, River Run, Morning Star and Split Oak,” I called. “The rest of us...ready....STRIKE!”
	Because although it was convenient for some extra hands to be available for Kelah’s assistance, we wanted them all banished at more or less the same time. Now that the bigger ones had been hit again it might be more or less evened out.
	“All of us...together...STRIKE!”
	“River Run gone home!” came the cry from Puela
	“Puela, help Cera,” I shouted. “And together...STRIKE!” 
	“Eagle Fall gone home!” 
	“Teir abhaile arani na Split Oak!” 
	“Knifewind gone home!”
	So Aine was out of the woods, even if it sounded as if the battle had nearly killed her. But Cera wasn’t, I wasn’t, and Kelah and Morat certainly weren’t. 
	“Rest a minute...save up...” I cautioned, watching the two bodies hovering above us. Watching them so hard I didn’t see a whip of about fifty tentacles lashing out toward the web of vigil and gray that was attached to Kelah.
	“Name of the Spirit!”
	That was Morat. Kelah never had time to shout. The cable holding her snapped. Before anyone could do anything about it, she was airborne. Flung across the Pharc roof and down onto the street below.
	Even I was surprised by the stream of cursing that burst forth from me. Surprised too that despite my other commitments I was able to throw a rope of fire around those gray trailing legs--whose flight was hindered by Kelah’s vigils, doggedly holding on to the tentacles even though they had no Kelah left to anchor them--and drag them back to where Morat could get a grip on them. Kelah’s vigils twined around her waist, answering to Morat at least for the time being. I had to give the command.
	“Together...STRIKE!”
	The smell was now overpowering, as was the smoke. “Harvest Moon gone home!”
	It was a victory, but Cera wasn’t taking any joy in it. She was looking after her teammate, who had gone over the ladder in search of Kelah.
	“Help me out who can,” I shouted. “Together...STRIKE!”
	Aine, despite her exhaustion, had scraped together a blast, and it went into the body of my arani along with my fire, Cualha’s, Lilea’s, and Puela’s. 
	“Come on, you bastard...”
	It toyed with me. But in the end I was gratified to see, finally, the thraller of not quite nine hundred turning in on itself, burning up into black light and a bad smell.
	<Shaineen, Jayla, to me now.>
	They left the women they had been helping and twined around me, taking up the task of fighting the last remaining arani. Kelah’s abrupt departure had set the process back some. But with Morat’s and my vigils all working in concert with Kelah’s, and the pull spread out over two of us, it was easier. 
	When the body came bearing down on us we lashed out at it with a burst so angry that I think it went home more from shock than from anything else. Certainly it disappeared, finally, with a precipitation that was almost anticlimactic. 
	We had a second, only a second, to stand there gasping with the effort and choking on the smoke and stink. And then the cry rose up from the ground below us. 
	The four strange vigils which had been wrapped around me suddenly left me, pouring across the roof and down to the street. From where I stood I could see the light thrown off them as they gathered around something down on the ground.
	I can’t say I rushed to the edge of the roof; I was too tired to rush anywhere. But I got there as fast as my body would drag me, even though I knew there was no particular hurry. I was pretty sure what I would see.
	Aine sprawled on her stomach next to me, still half-collapsed. Kelah lay below, dashed onto one of the cobbled streets. Her body was bent and broken into a shape that could not support life, and her hreapa was soaked through with her own blood. I saw this through a multicolored and shifting haze made by her vigils, who were twining and curling along and into her dead body, flickering with inhuman agitation.
	We don’t know much about vigils, considering how closely we work with them. We don’t know why they speak languages that used to be human, why they have the powers they do, or why they allow themselves to be bound to us. And we don’t know how, or if, they feel things. But my four vigils were all still clustered around me, and I felt them thrilling with something new, and something that wasn’t pleasant for them. Something in sympathy with the dance Kelah’s vigils were doing on the street in the cleared space around her. Something like, maybe, grief.
	One by one, each of Kelah’s vigils detached itself from the others, floated for a moment above her, and dissipated into that same diffuse, faint tinge of light that heralds their forming. And then into nothing. The bond had broken with her life, and they were going home. Back out to the encircling planes, where they would do whatever it is that they do when they’re not protecting us. Maybe in a hundred years, or five, they would answer another shriia whose call meant something to them. Or maybe they were done with us and our world, and would never be heard of by mortals again. But they would remain, wherever and however they did it. Just as my vigils would outlast me, and someday they too would be clustering around my dead body, saying their inscrutable goodbyes.
	With all the death I’d seen, I still found myself unable to understand what I was looking at. She had been alive ten minutes ago. I had memories of her more recent than my last memories of Istria. Now suddenly she was gone, without even time to be watched out. Life to death, in an instant. A transformation I couldn’t seem to make myself grasp.
	Lilea had gone over the roof as soon as the battle was over and now stood up next to Kelah’s body, looking small and foreshortened to us.
	“Her neck’s broken,” Lilea said, addressing herself not to the crowd that had gathered deep around the Pharc, but to us on the roof. “She can’t have suffered long.”
	Nobody answered her. Even the crowd was silent, as crowds hardly ever are. The only thing I could hear was Aine crying.
	“Theamh,” Morat said heavily, “why don’t you find out how the Daughters are doing.” 
	She turned away from me to call down at the crowd.
	“All of you remember,” she said, her voice sounding distant and remote as I walked away toward the walls. “That on this night, the second day of the second week of the harvest season, the day the army was freed, Kelah ni Mhulan, after fifteen years’ service on the Council, became the eighteenth shriic martyr in this war.”
	Eighteenth. So between Daire and her there had been sixteen deaths that I didn’t know about. Council members, maybe; ordinary shriias out in their practices who had stood, fought and lost. I wondered who they all were. And what I would find when I got up on the walls.
	I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting. But I could never have imagined this.
	Where the army had been camped, there was nothing but debris. Abandoned tents, still-smoldering cook fires, broken stakes and wandering horses. If I strained I could see just on the other side of the hills what looked like the withdrawn army. Or at least that portion of the army that had lived to withdraw. Because the ground between the city walls and the edge of that withdrawn cordon was littered now with the bodies of the dead.
	I had always been bad at guessing numbers, but it was a melancholy thing to realize that I was getting much handier at assessing the damage after a battle. I could say, looking over that dismal sward, that it was not as bad as the field after the fight between the Flying Hart Four and the Star Sight Two Fifty. The bodies were in isolated clumps where the fighting had been particularly hard, instead of spread out in a carpet that covered the whole ground. Most of them had fallen near the walls, although there were some that seemed to have been killed further back, probably when the infighting started to break out. And I was so engrossed in all of this that it was a long time, it seemed like, before I saw that there were some bodies down on that ground that were moving.
	It was the Daughters, what was left of them. Moving over the field looking for their dead. I could see their dark brown forms traveling from cluster to cluster, crouching down in the mud to examine the corpses. They had won the battle. The siege was lifted. I saw Chierna out there, calling out to the others. And I knew that they weren’t coming back to the city until they knew where each of those women had ended up.
	<Istri.>
	There was no answer.
	<Istri.>
	Still nothing.
	No. 
	It came out so loud that a Daughter standing far from me at one of the posts on the walls looked back to see what had happened.
	No. No. Not like this.
	Chierna had now marched up to the gates, and stopped in front of them.
	“Chierna ni Thrilion sues for entry!”
	Her voice carried farther than you would think possible. One of the Daughters stuck her head out of the gate window.
	“Where do you come from?” she shouted.
	“From the field of battle,” Chierna shouted back.
	“Who do you bring with you?”
	“My women, my wounded, and my dead.” She paused for a moment. “And peace.”
	The woman at the gate received this with the gravity it deserved.
	“If it comes to a fight, who will you fight for?” she finally resumed.
	Chierna took a moment before she gave the answer.
	“For what is necessary.”
	It was something the woman at the gate seemed not to be completely expecting. But she answered all the same.
	“Amranth opens her gates to you.”
	It was an amazing thing to hear. Amazing certainly to the crowd behind me, whose roar rose up like a river breaking the ice as for the first time since that dark night so long ago the gates to the city swung open.
	Chierna began moving in, the women following. Nothing else was on their heels.
	I scrambled down the stairs into the Pharc, running past Lilea as she emerged from the Mathair. They must have just finished laying Kelah down. I hoped she would understand why I charged past her without a word and burst onto the choked street, where I began fighting my way through that crowd of sudden celebration.
	The frustration of not being able to see was something that very nearly made me cry. I knew they were coming through the gates but it was a long time before I had wedged my way to the edge of the space that the crowd had opened up for what was turning into an impromptu procession.
	Chierna was at the head of it, although she wasn’t walking as if she were the head of anything. Her armor had been hacked and bitten and was hanging in pieces around her; she had cleaned and sheathed her sword but the rest of her was streaked with blood and dirt. She moved like someone who has forgotten why she’s moving but knows she has to keep on. Behind her came the others. In groups, each group carrying someone. Some of the women carried were stumbling along supported by one or two less wounded comrades or groaning in someone else’s arms; but an awful lot of them weren’t moving at all.
	I’m afraid I didn’t notice at the time who was being carried or who was carrying; all I cared about when I looked at them was whether they were Istria or not. It wasn’t until afterward that I matched the memory with names or people. Stories were told about them all. I would know, later on, that Niamh had been killed defending her lover, that the lover herself had been killed a moment later. I would realize that the woman who had died while the others were getting the Harvest Moon Eight captive safe up the walls was the same woman who had the brothers in the White Hare Seven. I would hear about all kinds of other deaths. At the time, even if someone had been telling me those stories, I wouldn’t have heard them. I was torn between relief that the corpse I was looking at at the moment was not Istria’s and the fear that the next one I saw would be.
	I know it sounds horribly selfish, and probably it is. But it’s only the truth. Until I knew what had happened to Istria I was poorly equipped to appreciate what had happened to the others. Although something did go through me when I saw them carrying Adra.
	Maybe because she’d been the last thing I saw before I closed the link; maybe because I knew she had been leading Istria’s cohort. Maybe because she was the first person I’d spoken to in Amranth. But to see her carried on the shoulders of the others, with gore still leaking from the rent in her side and her arms dangling limp and bloody, broke the thin shell that was the only thing holding me in. Kelah was dead, Adra was dead, all those other women were dead. Anything could happen. All things were possible.
	The last silhouette to appear in the narrow rectangle of light that the gate had opened up was different from the others--cruciform, and strange. As it got closer I saw that it was Taric, carrying a woman limp in his arms.
	“Taric!”
	I could have used the link, but I didn’t think of it. I tore through the front row of the crowd and out onto the street.
	“It’s not her, shriia,” he shouted as soon as he saw me. I didn’t take that in until I had seen for myself that the body he was holding belonged to one of the gossipers in Istria’s cohort. Whose breast had become a torn bloody mess and who was very dead.
	“Taric, did you see what happened to her?”
	I was trotting along with him now, oblivious to what any of the people watching might be thinking.
	“No, shriia,” he said. “I went to find where they were fighting, to help...but when I got there it was over.”
	There was a kind of cobbled open courtyard that spread in a semicircle about the Pharc, and the procession was headed there. Lilea, Eunem and the other Comings and Goings women were attending to the wounded. Chierna was supervising the laying out of the dead in a different spot. She was going among them identifying them--some by their insignia, if their faces had been too badly damaged.
	“Chierna,” I said, feeling ashamed for bothering her but unable to stop myself.
	She looked up at me, and spared me the pain of asking.
	“She’s not here,” she said. And, as she saw I was still in agony, “The only woman who survived from her cohort is Sicaela. Lilea’s with her now.”
	I ran over to the other side. I recognized the woman lying with her head in Lilea’s lap as the other gossiper. Lilea had her hands on her head and was making blood for her. Her armor had already been cut off and the wounds washed and wrapped. She was pale, but she wasn’t too far gone to recognize me.
	“Shriia,” she said.
	“How...how are you doing?” I asked, ashamed to go straight to my question.
	She grimaced. “I’ve been better, but ten minutes ago I was worse.” 
	“She’s lost a lot of blood,” said Lilea. “But otherwise she’s not hurt too bad.”
	Lilea had projected into her and gotten into her bones and was making more blood to replace what she’d lost. It’s a strain on the patient but it’s worth the risk. I don’t know exactly how it works, having never advanced that far in that line.
	“Is Istria back all right?” Sicaela asked.
	I was much disappointed to hear her ask. “I--no, nobody’s found her and she hasn’t come back.”
	Sicaela sighed. “Idair’s teeth I’m sorry for it, shriia,” she said. “Last thing I remember she was the last one fighting--trying to keep them off the wounded. I fainted,” she said, “but from what I remember...I’m pretty sure that I owe her my life.”
	“You didn’t see what happened to her then,” I said.
	“They said they wanted to take her alive,” Sicaela said. “And I didn’t see her die. You can still have hope, shriia.”
	I could; and Idair knew I’d kept hope alive in far more discouraging circumstances. But I was still sick all the way through my body.
	Lilea lifted Sicaela’s head up and pushing a folded-up pallet underneath it. “You should start feeling better, but it may take a while. If you start feeling worse, call me.”
	“All right, mathi,” said Sicaela.
	Lilea patted her on the shoulder. “Joke if it helps,” she said. 
	She stood up and looked at me. I felt, suddenly, how much I had missed her, how important she was to me and to everything. Especially now, where she could help all of these women who were far beyond the reach of my powers.
	“You should ask Morat,” she said, knowing what was troubling me. “She’s over with Kelah in the Mathair. I’m sorry to say it, Theamh, but I can’t talk now.”
	“I understand,” I said.
	I went back into the Pharc, feeling very much alone and very frightened. Inside the Mathair it was hard to find the right room; I had to follow the voices and the light.
	“...knew this would be the last thing she did,” Cualha was saying.
	“Maybe,” said Morat. 
	“It’s not your fault.”
	That was Dalen. I walked into the room with them.
	In any Mathair there are some rooms for birthing, and some for curing, and some for dying. This was one of the dying rooms. The sheets on the bed they’d laid her out on were red, and there were a lot of sconces around the walls which had been lit. If she had been an ordinary woman dying of an ordinary illness, her family would have been sitting around her on the cushions. But since nothing was ordinary now, it was the three of them sitting with her, grieving over a woman none of them had really liked much.
	They looked up when I walked in. Kelah’s face had been battered by the fall and was unrecognizable; what looked familiar was that healing wound on the shoulder. Lilea had been so careful about wrapping it and dressing it and now all of that was for nothing.
	“Dalen’s right,” I said. “It isn’t your fault. It’s only thanks to you we didn’t lose Lilea, or Aine, or anyone else.”
	Morat sighed, looking out at her with that dispassionate face.
	“I wonder, did I look out for her less because I didn’t like her,” she said.
	“Oh for Idair’s sake don’t,” Dalen retorted. “You had a hard job and you did it as well as any human being could have.” Dalen looked at her. “She made a good end, and I would never have thought it would happen that way with her, from what she was like on the Council. Her story is a lot better now than it would have been a year ago.” 
	“She rose to the occasion,” I said.
	Morat looked at me. She knew what was on my mind.
	“I’ve asked,” she said. “Nobody knows anything.”
	I nodded. 
	“We’ll get her back,” she said. “We’ll find out who’s holding her and we’ll go after her. I don’t make mistakes twice and neither does Dalen.”
	I was determined not to cry, and so was she. Aine appeared in the doorway.
	“Theamh,” she said. “She’s not with the dead--and nobody knows where she is--I asked Taric...”
	She was still white with exhaustion, but she had been making her own enquiries. I was suddenly ashamed to realize I hadn’t been thinking of her at all.
	I hurried out to talk to her in the hall, noticing that she was leaning against the doorway for support. “Aine, are you all right? Do you want Lilea to take a look at you?”
	She shook her head. “I’m not wounded. I’m just...that was a lot of fire.”
	“I know. You did really well, Aine, you’re fighting just like an old hand now.”
	She colored a little bit. “I’m glad to have helped.”
	Puela suddenly came running in.
	“They’re bringing the Aivs back,” she panted. “They want us to go scour them and see were any of them thralled. Some of them are claiming compulsion.”
	Morat joined us and we trotted out through the Pharc and up the road to the gate, Cera joining us on the way. Kelah would have come too; only Kelah was dead now.
	“You think they’re lying?” Puela asked.
	“It’s possible they aren’t,” I said. “We met with one under-Aiv who’d been thralled, and there must have been others.”
	“But probably some of them will lie to try to get out of it,” said Morat, “and it may also be a trick--you know, an ambush, for when we scour them. Be very careful.”
	When we reached the gates we saw them. About half the Daughters were there as guard, ranged around a square on the main thoroughfare where about a hundred Amstian men were sitting. They were there to keep them quiet; but they were also there to keep the crowd away from them. Because as I passed among the throng on our way to the prisoners, the language I heard shocked me. And, as Lilea had once observed, abuse that can shock me would kill most people.
	“They’re set out by company,” Morat said. “Aine, do River Run and Blue Hill; Puela, take White Hare, Knifewind and Split Oak; I’ll do Eagle Fall, Harvest Moon and Morning Star; Theamh, take Not Quite and West Country.”
	We split up. Morat had assigned Aine the two smallest companies because she could tell that despite Aine’s determination she was half-dead on her feet. And she’d assigned me West Country because it would give me a chance to find something out about what had happened to Istria. I started with Not Quite.
	“Who in the Not Quite is claiming compulsion?” I shouted, looking them over.
	There were only eight of them. Generally, a company has one Aiv and an under-Aiv for every hundred soldiers. Two had gone missing somehow; dead or run off. The eight remaining were looking at me with faces as inscrutable as rock. I could make little of what I read off them, other than that it was extremely hostile.
	“None of you claim that you did what you did under a spirit’s influence,” I said.
	They said nothing.
	“Then may none of you ever have a day’s luck or a minute’s peace, and may the Spirit blight and wither you all,” I said, passing through the ranks.
	I felt something wet strike me on the side of the face. I stopped in my tracks, wiping it off with my hand. One of them had spat on me.
	I found the one who’d done it--it was easy enough, because one of the Daughters had seen it, and was administering a swift blow to his head.
	“Don’t,” I said.
	She withdrew to the margins. “Sorry, shriia,” she said. “It’s been a long day.”
	“Have you got a kerchief about you, or anything?”
	She handed me a square of linen she’d pulled out of her sleeve. I wiped my face with it. Then I went over to the man whose spit it was, where he sat with his hands bound behind him in a pair of manacles that were designed on the same lines as the mittens. The sight of them didn’t improve my mood.
	I balled up the kerchief so that it was phlegm side out, and stuffed it down the front of his tunic.
	“Sit in your own filth for a change,” I said. “Idair knows we’ve gotten sick of it.”
	I stood up.
	“Don’t waste your time,” I said to the Daughter who had struck him. “A man who would void all over his own country isn’t fit to be touched, even in anger.”
	She nodded. I think she knew that this exchange was mostly for the benefit of that crowd. But also for the Daughters, who maybe needed to be reminded that the crowd was a lot larger than they were, and wouldn’t need much encouragement.
	I moved on, looking for the West Country Aivs. I found one in the rear corner with the armband, and moved to where he was.
	“Who in the West Country is claming compulsion?” I called.
	“I am, shriia.” It came from more than one man.
	Four of them. I knelt down by the first one and went in, cautiously. I was expecting an emanation at every turn, but I didn’t find one. What I did find was clear evidence of very recent and long-standing thralling.
	“What’s your used name?”
	“Comha mac Gollic, shriia.”
	I moved on to the next. It was the same with him, and with the other two. They were all under-Aivs, and they had all been thralled.
	“Well, friends,” I said. “Fortunately the signs are recent, and unmistakable.”
	The relief I read off them was cut with other less pleasant things--shame, pain, everything that goes with trauma. Tears came unbidden to Comha’s eyes, and he seemed very bothered not to be able to wipe them away. I realized that it was a relief to them to have it confirmed by someone who ought to know. In so many cases there is always that lingering doubt--even if you do see it cast, it’s hard not to think that you may have imagined it, that you are just making this up to protect yourself from your own evil. 
	To spare them embarrassment, I looked around for the rest of them.
	“Comha?” I finally said.
	“Yes, shriia?”
	“Where are the rest of your Aivs?”
	“I don’t know,” he said, trying to keep control of his voice. “They ran off with the captive, before we could--”
	He was a little startled to find me suddenly crouched down in front of him and seizing him by the front of his tunic.
	“WHAT CAPTIVE?”
	Comha was now too flustered to get it out. One of the others answered.
	“There was a woman--one of the Daughters--Lacgon wanted her taken alive. I don’t know why. But they took her, after they’d killed the others. I--came back to myself, right as they were going, but I couldn’t get to them. And then our men went after us, and small blame to them.”
	“This Lacgon,” I said. “He was your Aiv?”
	Comha nodded. One of the others cursed in Amstic, and spat on the ground.
	“May Idair send me the chance to kill him,” said one under-Aiv, a fair-haired man named Hirc. “I’ll do it slow, and it’ll hurt.”
	“I’ll fight you for it,” said Ibnef, one of the others. 
	“Look,” I cut in. “I’m sure you all hate him very much, and I have a feeling that pretty soon I’ll be hating him even more. I look very much forward to attending the cursing he’s sure to get when he’s brought back in chains.” They brightened a little as they imagined this picture. “But right now I need you to tell me any ideas you might have about where he and his six minions have skived off to, and why he wanted her alive.”
	“I think it was Hlos’s idea,” ventured Sialta, the fourth under-Aiv. 
	“She’s the woman in hreapa who was with you in the field?”
	Comha nodded. “She and Lacgon were--”
	“She was a cat in heat, and he was her tom,” snapped Hirc. 
	This was more than I really needed to know, but at least now it made more sense. Istria had knowledge about all three of the sides in this war, and would be valuable as an informant--also as a hostage, if it came to that. A dark shriia would have realized that, whereas the Aivs probably wouldn’t. Although I couldn’t remember any reason why Hlos should have known Istria by sight--certainly I didn’t remember having met her, since she would have been in apprenticeship by the time I was going through scoil.
	“Did you hear anything--anything--that would give you any idea of where they would take her, or what they wanted her for?”
	They all shook their heads. 
	“Thank you, friends,” I said, standing up. “After a while, you may start having trouble, in your minds. It often happens in the wake of something like this. If it’s aftershock, you come to me or to Morat or Cera. If it’s just...memory...look up Lilea, she does miracles with this kind of hurt.”
	They nodded. “Thank you, shriia.”
	“I’ll speak to the Daughters about separating you out from the others,” I said. “They may still want to hold you. I’m sure there will be a trial.”
	“We understand,” Comha said.
	I looked over at Aine. She was still going through the Blue Hill Five Fifty, and tiring fast. I went to help out.
	“These three have been thralled,” she said, sitting down heavily on the cobbles. “The other two haven’t.”
	“I’ll do River Run,” I said. “You rest.”
	The fact that she didn’t argue spoke loudly about the extent of her distress. She just closed her eyes and put her head in her hands.
	“Who in River Run is claiming compulsion?”
	“I am,” said one. Nobody else answered.
	“Dhiaoc,” she said, as I moved over.
	“Yes?”
	“Can I tell my family? About the siege being lifted?”
	“Yes,” Morat called, having overheard. “Spread it to everyone you can reach. The other side will know through their spies already; it can’t do harm, and might help.”
	Aine sat back, relieved. I bethought myself of Dahern and Wriana. They would both be glad to hear the news.
	The one in River Run turned out to be a lying weasel, so after cursing at him for a few minutes I opened my link to Dahern.
	<Dahern.>
	<Theamh? What happened?>
	<It worked. The siege is lifted and the army’s clean.>
	<Thank Idair.> There was a rush of emotion over the link. <Hang on, I’ll tell Wriana.>
	I looked over the captives. Morat had picked out a couple people in the Harvest Moon eight as legitimate victims; none of the other companies seemed to have any. 
	<Theamh?>
	<Still here.>
	<She’s thrilled. So am I. Did you lose many?>
	<The Daughters lost...I don’t know, a lot. We lost Kelah.>
	Dahern paused. <I didn’t know her. I know Wriana never liked her. But I’m sorry she’s dead.>
	<At least the siege is lifted; they’re making plans for provisioning the city, and we’ve got the Aivs penned up--most of them, anyhow. All the companies that weren’t in the east were out here, so we’ve made a pretty good start on rounding up the traitors.>
	<Good,> said Dahern.
	<Theamh?>
	Wriana had decided to call me herself. <How are you, Wriana?>
	<Much better since this news. Listen, Theamh...>
	I waited. It felt to me like she was going to say something about what had happened to her, and I didn’t want to startle her.
	<Dahern tells me the men who attacked me are probably captive with you,> she said grimly.
	<It’s highly possible,> I said.
	<I know you promised not to tell anyone about that,> she said.
	<And I haven’t.>
	<I know.> She paused. <I release you from the promise, Theamh.>
	<Are you sure?>
	<Yes.> Sure, although not by any means easy in her mind about it. <This may...for all I know, it’s happened to others, ordinary women or shriias, and they might be afraid to speak of it. I want these men found and brought forward, if only to shame them and give courage to the others, if there are others.>
	<All right,> I said. <Do you know were they all from one company?>
	<I know at least three of them were,> she said. <I didn’t get a good look at all the armbands; but all the ones I saw had the same design.>
	<Which was what?>
	<Two mountains and a sun setting behind them.>
	The West Country Thousand.
	I looked back at the four men I had been talking to. A thousand men in that company. Ten hundreds. One under-Aiv for each hundred and one over-Aiv. Eleven, minus the four who’d been thralled, left seven.
	<Idair with you, Dahern, Wriana, I have to go.>
	I shut the links without caring whether they were puzzled by my abrupt departure, and went tearing over to Morat.
	“Morat!” I shouted.
	“Theamh, what’s the matter?”
	“She’s with the West Country Aivs,” I gasped. “The ones who’ve run off--the others were thralled--they told me they had a captive--”
	“Excellent,” Morat said, hearing the news with satisfaction but with insufficient alarm. “Once things settle down here we’ll have Dalen go out and look for the trail.”
	If I hadn’t been half out of my mind I probably wouldn’t have grabbed Morat quite so hard. “You don’t understand!” I shouted. “We have to go after her right now!” She was still looking at me as if she were trying to be patient with an understandably excited child. “She’s with those bastards who raped Wriana!”
	“Who did WHAT?” Morat shouted, her face, demeanor and voice instantly transformed into something very, very terrifying.
	“While she was on the run--seven of their Aivs came on her and raped her--”
	“How long have you known about this?” Morat shouted, while Aine got to her feet and came halting over.
	“She had me under promise not to tell it,” I said. “She’s only just released me.”
	“I’ll come with you, Theamh,” Aine said quickly. 
	“The hell you will,” I said. “Your strength still hasn’t recovered--”
	“But--”
	“Theamh’s right,” Morat cut in. “Run back to the Pharc and send Dalen out here. The three of us will go. Hurry, child.”
	Aine, who still had that scoilin’s fear of Morat, trotted off.
	“You know it may be a trap,” I said. “They’d know that you’d want to go, after not having found her the first time.”
	Morat put a hand around the back of her neck, fingering the scar. She looked suddenly much older.
	“The entire world is a trap, Theamh,” she said. “Most of the most evil people in this country want me dead. Idair and Dalen have kept me alive this long. If it’s a trap, we go in and spring it, that’s all. I can’t be bothered with trifles.”
	Dalen arrived, having run the whole way but not looking in the least winded.
	“Take me to where they were fighting,” she said. “Quick, while it’s recent.”
	We ran through the gates after her.

	Dalen might not have been quite as naturally sensitive as Aine, but she had an awful lot of practice, and it didn’t take long. From what must have been a whole knotted tangle of very bad very recent place memories, Dalen managed to isolate the memory of Istria’s capture, and follow the trail they had taken. And even thought they were both twenty years older than I was, it was me struggling to keep up with Dalen as she bounded over the bare bleak foothills that sloped up toward the border to the northwest of the city.
	They had gone in that direction because there were very few people living there. If they’d tried to drag her through one of the surrounding towns, there would probably have been trouble. A siege is hard on the city besieged; but it’s worse on places like Eala, too far outside the walls to be protected and therefore open to the depredations of the besieging army. So they’d hightailed it into the barren rock of the northwestern mountains, which meant that the trail was easy to follow. No cover, and not many humans passing.
	Dalen suddenly stopped short, so abruptly that I almost ran into her from behind. But Morat had stopped with her, and was listening.
	You hear them? Dalen said.
	I didn’t, in fact. But I was willing to take Dalen’s word for it.
	On with the shields, she said.
	At least practice had made me slightly less awkward with these things. We stole invisibly forward over the rock. Until I could see the cleft between two bare outcroppings in which the group had clustered.
	Dalen was out front and had the best view the earliest. So she warned me first, switching to the link we’d set up so as not to be overheard.
	<You have to keep your head, Theamh,> she said. <She’s depending on it.>
	I swallowed. <I will. At least till she’s safe.>
	<All we can ask for,> Dalen said philosophically. <Come up here then. Don’t stick your head too far over the edge; it might cast a shadow.>
	I inched very carefully along the slope of one of the rock faces. When I got to the edge, lying flat on my stomach along the rock, I could look down into the wedge-shaped space that the two hulks outlined, and onto the ten people who were gathered there.
	The woman in the hreapa had to be Hlos. She was only a little older than I was--still a good-looking woman, with curling blonde hair and delicate features. Except that right now they didn’t look quite so delicate, as she stood there at the broad end of the cleft with six of those brutes ranged behind her, blocking off the exit. She was faced toward the narrow end, which was where Istria was slumped.
	She’d been hit so hard on the side of her head that the bruise was already appearing, standing out yellow and black against her pallid skin. I could see her chest rising and falling, or I would have been afraid that she was dead. Her armor had been cut off, and she was just in that underclothing, which was soaked and spattered with the blood from wounds in one arm and the opposite leg. Of course they had taken her sword from her, her shield, and the mace that she hadn’t wanted to take into battle in the first place, not knowing much about how to use one. So that was why she hadn’t answered my calls; she’d been knocked out and kept out. Probably by what looked to be Lacgon, who was standing over her watching her begin to move.
	Even when she was only half-conscious she knew she was in danger. She made an effort to get up, which was foiled by a kick to the gut from Lacgon. When she fell forward with a groan, she looked broken enough. But I knew, just from the way her body moved, that she was all the way back now, and she was a long way from broken.
	<Dalen’s going to scout and see if there are any of Hlos’s colleagues in the vicinity,> Morat said. <We’ll move as sure as we know what we’re dealing with.>
	“Let her up,” said Hlos.
	Lacgon withdrew slightly. Istria got to her hands and knees first, then finally rocked unsteadily to her feet. Her hands had been bound in front of her. She looked down at the bonds, and then up at Hlos. She had just realized she’d been blocked.
	“We haven’t been formally introduced,” Istria said. “Are you one of Barant’s bitches, or is it Lythril’s gleacha you’re licking these days?”
	“Not to the head, Lac,” Hlos said. 
	Lacgon obliged, and punched Istria in the side.
	I had promised to keep my head, and I knew I had to. But it was a very hard thing.
	“You’re not in a position to ask questions,” said Hlos. “That’s my prerogative.”
	“Ask till you choke,” Istria said. 
	“You misunderstand,” Hlos said. “I’m not going to ask you to betray your friends. Of course you’d let us kill you before that happened.” She dropped her arms, trying to sound reasonable. “This is a business transaction. I’ve got a proposition for you.”
	Istria evidently found this not worthy of response.
	<Dalen says it’s clear,> Morat said. <No evidence of the others. Either Hlos is freelancing, or the reinforcements haven’t arrived yet. Dalen’s going to get into position on the other side, and when we all have a clear shot we’ll block Hlos. We need to do it in one stroke so she doesn’t have time to start incinerating people.>
	<All right,> I said.
	If Dalen was moving, I didn’t hear her. Hlos was still talking.
	“I know Lythril’s been on your tail for a long time,” Hlos said. “Barant too. And I happen to know they’re both after the same thing. It’s not your hide. It’s your head.” Istria still didn’t answer. “You have knowledge about the spirit world nobody else has--knowledge Barant would dearly like to use for some plans she’s making, and which as you know Lythril is keenly interested in. Neither will negotiate directly with you, of course; they couldn’t trust themselves. Too many emotions involved.” Hlos smiled. “But I don’t have all those big dark ambitions that bother them both so much. I’m just in this for the money. And the sex, of course.”
	“Please,” said Istria. “My stomach is already upset.”
	“No, don’t, Lacgon,” said Hlos. “Save it till we need it.”
	Lacgon refrained from hitting Istria again.
	“I’m not like them.” She shrugged. “Your head is only useful as something I can sell. Which means I’m interested in leaving it attached to you. I just want what’s inside.”
	Istria laughed. “You’re crazy.”
	“What’s crazy about it? You tell me what you know, and I let it be known that I’ve got the secrets they’re so very concerned about. You’re no longer the only human on earth whose mind holds those thoughts, and consequently you become far less interesting to them. Instead they can invest their energy in pursuing me. And it’s possible they’ll try to kill me; but it’s just as possible they’ll save themselves the trouble and just buy me off. Which would be much easier for them, and very profitable for me.”
	“And you expect me to trust you,” Istria said, disbelieving. “Knowing that you are, if I am not mistaken, one of those rainmakers who ruined half of west Kengda just to line the pockets that hreapa shouldn’t even have.”
	“Why shouldn’t you? It’s safe enough with me. I have no interest in or talent for the whole possession line.”
	“No,” said Istria. “Just a proven history of whoring yourself to all and sundry.”
	“All you have to do is tell me how those creatures of yours were made,” said Hlos. “Then you can go back to the warm embrace of a grateful city, and I can go on my way with something to trade in.” 
	“I will never tell another soul living or dead and certainly not you,” Istria insisted.
	“Yes you will,” Hlos said, as the men behind her stepped forward. “Or else--”
	“Or else what, you venal bitch?” Istria shouted. 
	<Dalen’s there,> Morat said. <Take off the shield, and take your aim. Wait for the word.>
	“What could you possibly do to me?” Istria demanded, her voice ringing out over the bare rock. “Beat me? I hate to tell you, but that’s been done. Imprison me? It’s been done. Torture me? It’s been done. Rape me? It’s been done.” She swung around from the man behind her to Hlos.
	“There isn’t a thing you could think up to do to me that hasn’t already been done by someone crueler, stronger, and more evil than you. The only thing you could possibly do to impress me would be kill me.”
	Hlos smiled in silence. The men waited. Istria stood upright and unafraid, weak as she still was.
	“I admit it’s no very great achievement to be more evil than Hlos,” she said. “But it’s touching to know you still hold me in such high regard.”
	<Oh no.>
	Morat’s answer was almost simultaneous. <I might have known.>
	When Istria spoke her voice was level and calm.
	“I was referring to my father, Lythril.”
	There was a pause, and then Lythril said, “I’m surprised Theamh isn’t out here yet. I wonder did I not leave a broad enough trail. I know she’s City, but still.”
	I, personally, was surprised Lythril couldn’t tell I was out there, unless it was because she was working out of Hlos’s mindspace and Hlos probably had not spent the past few years honing her mindstrength. It does matter whose mindspace you’re in, and Lythril had handicapped herself by choosing someone in whom evil was simply a matter of greed and laziness.
	“I have to thank you for doing this,” Istria said. “Up until now, in spite of everything, I had about that much respect for you. Because I thought you had some standards.” Not giving Lythril time for a response, she forged on into full-blown anger. “Is this what you’ve come to? Suborning a gang of men to do what you can’t?”
	<On three,> from Morat.
	“I was going to give her another half-hour,” Lythril said, looking critically at the sun. “But I won’t wait. Anyhow, I’m sure Aine will describe your death to her in very vivid terms; and that’ll be almost as good.”
	Just as Hlos’s hands lifted into the air, blocking fire shot out from three sides of that crevice, and Hlos’s body disappeared behind a wall of white.
	We kept it up strong, but I could still see fissures of red appearing like cracks in plaster or seams in a garment--Lythril, or Hlos, struggling to find her way out from under the blocking fire. But nobody gave ground. The edges fused again as those cracks disappeared, and the seal that all three of us had made set and sank. Blocking fire leapt off Istria into the air, and I heard the snap of the chain between those manacles and the sound of her foot connecting with Lacgon’s groin.
	While Morat attended to Hlos and her fellow-prisoner, I dropped down behind the other six men. Together Dalen and I began hammering at them. I was grateful for all the practice that had been afforded me in recent months--disarming them was tricky, but once we’d done that it didn’t take me long to get three of them down in the dirt with their hands wrapped behind them. Dalen had handled another three quite effectively, and Morat took Hlos down after a brief, intense but, I felt, very satisfying struggle--satisfying for Morat, at least. Istria, meanwhile, was doing her best to take care of Lacgon; but she was still weak from the wounds and the beating, and he had recovered from his temporary incapacitation. When I looked up I saw him knocking her to the ground.
	I don’t remember the next few minutes. I do recall being pulled off Lacgon’s prostrate form by Morat, who was saying, “It’s enough, it’s enough, he’s already out.”
	He certainly was--he was lying on one side with his head pressed onto the rock, very limp but still breathing. I realized I had blood on my knuckles, and wiped them self-consciously on some moss growing out of the rock. Dalen was kneeling down by him putting the manacles on him. Istria had backed up into the narrow end of that cleft, leaning up against the rock walls for support.
	“Istri--”
	She was shivering when I held her, and her arms rested loose along my shoulders. <Theamh...I feel sick...>
	<We’ll get you home safe,> I said, holding onto her as her legs started shaking. <Lilea’ll see to you, you’ll be all right.>
	“Istria, do you have a link to the Daughters?” Morat asked.
	Istria nodded.
	“Call them, will you, and ask them to send some people out here.”
	Istria closed her eyes and made the connection. “They’re coming.”
	“We’ll wait then,” Morat said, leaning with one foot on one of the low outcroppings and looking down at Hlos’s body, which was wrapped into a bundle at the foot of one of the rock walls.
	“Must be a little cramped with the two of you in there,” Dalen observed.
	Even with the block you could tell how steamed she was. She looked away.
	“You may as well tell us where you left your body,” Morat said. “You wouldn’t want anything to happen to it while you’re away.”
	“I’m not worried,” Hlos’s voice said. “You’ll have to let me go anyhow.”
	“I don’t see how that follows, Lythril.”
	“If I’m out of my body more than twenty-four hours I’ll never be able to get back in. You’re killing me by imprisoning me.”
	Morat looked at the sun.
	“Not yet we’re not.”
	“I have enemies,” Lythril said. “Any one of them could come upon my body and kill it while I’m away.”
	“Well, you’d better tell us where it is then,” said Morat.
	“If I don’t tell you, you’ll have to release me,” said Hlos’s voice.
	“You know what,” I said suddenly, “It could be she’s not in there at all--maybe Hlos is bluffing. If she can get you to lift the block to let her out...”
	“It’s possible,” Morat said. “Lythril’s not a hard character to do.”
	“I was hard enough to throw you, Morat,” growled Hlos.
	Morat shrugged. “That whole episode has become scoil history--anyone might have learned about that.”
	Hlos’s eyes narrowed in anger.
	“You’re none of you serious about this,” she said. “You know it’s me. You’re just trying to get something out of me.”
	“Maybe,” said Dalen. “But maybe not.”
	“If we’re not sure Lythril’s really in there,” Morat went on, “it would certainly be a great piece of stupidity to lift the block.”
	“But you are sure,” Hlos insisted.
	Morat shook her head. “I think she might well be, but then again she might well not. If you really want to convince me, you’ll have to do better than this.”
	Hlos stared at her in silent fury.
	“Her personality tells against it,” I said, seriously. “It’s a little out of character for her to be associating herself with this particular kind of scum. But then again adversity changes people.”
	It was a very strange place to be in. Now that the thought had occurred to me, I really couldn’t make up my mind as to whether it was her or Hlos pretending to be her. One moment I was sure it had to really be Lythril, the next I wasn’t. Morat was in a similar frame of mind. Istria was huddling up in my arms trying to stay warm.
	She must have seen all this on our faces, whoever she was, because there was a new note of desperation when she spoke again.
	“All right,” she said. “Ask me one question, that you think only I can answer.”
	Morat made a great show of pondering. I watched Hlos’s face get more and more anxious. I was starting to think maybe it really was Lythril. Being out of your body, even for someone who does it as much as Lythril does, is very nerve-wracking; to be out of it and not have the power to return is much, much worse.
	“How did you get to Barant?”
	Hlos stared.
	“Wouldn’t it be more effective,” she finally said, “if you asked me something to which you knew the right answer?”
	“I don’t think so,” Morat said. “Anything one of us knows you might have read, seen, overheard, spied out of someone.”
	Hlos waited, watching Morat.
	“She came to me,” she finally said.
	Morat smiled skeptically.
	“And why would she do that?”
	Hlos smiled back at her.
	“She’d discovered the returners.”
	The silence was filled up with Hlos laughing.
	“Theamh was so proud of having uncovered that whole plot herself,” she said. “Unraveling it bit by bit, putting it all together...when it was work Barant had already done years ago. She kept it to herself, is all.” That face was certainly unpleasant, whether it was Lythril’s or Hlos’s. “She was smart. She let me know she knew, without letting anyone else know. And of course I knew she’d told no one. So when I heard she was looking for me, I let her find me. I knew she was ready to be reasonable.”
	“And by ‘be reasonable,’” Morat said, “you mean betray Istria, tell lies, and sell shri to the highest bidders.”
	“More or less,” said Hlos.
	We saw the Daughters marching in on us. I didn’t recognize the woman at their head. It should have been Adra; but of course Adra was dead.
	“We’ll take them in, shriia,” she said. Her women began hauling the men to their feet.
	“Before you do that,” Morat said. “Theamh, will you ask Wriana to have a look at them?”
	I called Wriana. She agreed. I walked up to the first one and looked into his face.
	It wasn’t a particularly deep link, but I felt the sudden chill my gut.
	<That’s one,> said Wriana.
	I moved along the line. Wriana recognized all of them. Then I turned to Lacgon.
	<Ah ghaisti na hoell.>
	<You recognize him then.>
	<Turn away. Turn away.>
	I turned. It was a while before she answered.
	<Yes. I recognize him. He was the leader.>
	<I’m sorry, Wriana.>
	<It’s not your fault. But those are definitely the men.>
	I said goodbye to Wriana and was left looking at Lacgon out of my own eyes. It seemed like evil that great should be legible on a face. But I couldn’t read anything there.
	“She says these are the ones,” I said.
	Morat turned to the daughters.
	“These men are under shriia’s arrest,” she said.
	The leader of the cohort laughed. “Shriia, they’ve already been charged with treason, it’s a little redundant.”
	“Humor me,” Morat bit off.
	“All right then,” said the Daughter. “What for?”
	“For the rape of Wriana ni Vholin, shriia for High Winds in western Dairc.”
	I heard the shock rippling around us in the Daughters. Even Istria, sick and weak as she was, looked up. Finally, the woman in charge spoke.
	“All of them?”
	It was almost a whisper--as if she couldn’t genuinely believe it.
	“All of them,” Morat said.
	“Name of the Spirit.” 
	“Don’t let it get about,” Morat said. “It’s a good victory, we don’t want it stained.”
	“Right, shriia.” She glared at Lacgon, who was being held a little more roughly now by the two women on either side of him. “Forward.”
	Hlos had been hauled to her feet and kept behind with the four of us. She was watching the men go, surrounded by their armed escort, and Morat, Istria and I were all watching her. I had told the story of Maerin’s death to the ones on our side, but Hlos wouldn’t have known it. So she wouldn’t have known that this news should make a difference in how Lythril looked at them. And we could tell that it did.
	“Let’s get moving,” Morat said. “Come on.”
	Morat and Dalen split the job of walking Hlos. Istria had to lean on me. She shouldn’t have been walking at all; but she knew I wasn’t strong enough to carry her all the way home. 
	<Theamh...>
	<It’s all right, Istri, it isn’t really all that much farther.>
	<Theamh...I’ve taken life.>
	I tightened my arm around her shoulders, not knowing what to say.
	<It’s over for me.>
	<But they gave the order to kill, Istri.>
	She was too drained to cry. <I’ve been waiting so long...>
	<And it may still happen. If it was ever going to be self-defense-->
	<Three of them.>
	<You were fighting for the wounded. Sicaela told me.>
	Istria shook her head.
	<Istri...I’ll always love you. No matter what.>
	<I know,> she said. <I just...I miss it. And...beyond any of that...>
	The taking of life, itself, was a wound in her, which would take healing even if Idair decided it wasn’t a permanent violation. She had so many others--in her body, in her spirit and her mind. But we were heading back to a free city, and finally after what seemed like an unending day of anguish and pain, the chance for rest.
	<You came for me,> she said.
	I smiled slightly. <All three of us.>
	<Thank you.>
	<Ah well,> I said. <At least we got it right the second time.>
	Ahead of us now we could see the city walls. It was broad afternoon, and the sun was strong in the cool air. The gate was open, with a stream of commerce now going in and out of it, flowing up and down the narrow path among the rocks. People going to visit their kin in the surrounding towns, provisions being brought in to the exhausted city--people walking about, maybe, just because now they could. It was noisy, crowded, boisterous, animated. Everything a city should be.
	We stopped to wait for the path to clear. The walls were crowded too, with Daughters and with ordinary people. And outside the walls, in a field, I could see a camp that had been set up for the wounded of the Army, with Eunem and a few Amranth shriias moving around in it. They hadn’t been brought into the city; probably people weren’t ready for that yet. But the shriias were out there. Setting the example, trying to start people up the road back to normal.
	The Daughter at the rear of the procession was gazing up with something very like tears in her eyes. I looked at her, but they never fell. Instead, she swallowed, and kept her eyes on the city as she spoke.
	“It was a good day’s work, wasn’t it, shriia?”
	“Yes,” I said.
	She nodded, once. Then we began the long climb up to the gates.

XIV.
Breaking the Chain

	“Theamh, they want you to go and--oh, no, is she asleep? I’m sorry--”
	“It’s all right, Aine,” Istria rasped, turning on her side. “I’m not asleep. Not now, anyhow.”
	Istria had been in bed in the Mathair since we got back to the city--Lilea had taken one look at her and hauled her off to a curing room. After an hour of silent, hard work on Lilea’s part during which she answered none of my questions, Istria had finally started looking like herself, and been able to get some sleep. During which Lilea delivered to me a silent harangue for a solid half-hour about making sure Istria understood exactly how close to death she had been and impressing upon me the fact that if I disregarded or allowed Istria to disregard a single one of her instructions about her care she would personally hunt me down and kick my gleacha and that was a shriia’s promise. Now, apparently, she was out of danger. But Lilea’s warning still loomed very large in my mind.
	“They’re going to have to lift the block on Hlos, they want you there to help,” Aine said.
	“You never found the body, then,” I said.
	Aine shook her head, and seemed pained. “We looked and looked, but Dalen said it was like looking for a needle in a haystack, and the longer we took the more danger of death she was in. So we gave up.”
	“You can’t expect to win all the time, Aine,” Istria said. “Don’t take it to heart.”
	Chierna appeared behind Aine in the doorway. “How is she?”
	“Well enough she doesn’t need to be in the third person,” Istria said.
	“I was going to look in on you in any case,” Chierna said, pulling up a chair. “I’ll keep you company while they deal with the traitor.”
	Istria looked at me with some suspicion. She was right; I had asked Chierna to talk to Istria about having taken life. I had remembered, as I would often remember later, what Abiard had said to me up in that poisoned orchard--that there are some things only the fallen know. And that although killing an opponent in battle is not the same thing as murder, Istria would probably get more out of talking to her about this than talking to me.
	“All right then,” I said. “Istri, I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
	“I know, chara,” she said, with a brave little smile. 
	Even for the short time it would take to get this done, I didn’t like leaving her. She didn’t like it either, even though she was trying not to make it obvious. In the strange way the heart works, once each of us knew the other was safe, the fear we’d had to crush down in ourselves during the battle was starting to spring back, and the magnitude and intensity of it was a little much for us to handle, especially in front of other people.
	Aine, who had a better head for direction than I did, led the way back to the Raed. She had recovered most of her strength. Those hours of searching with Dalen had fatigued her; but it was ordinary fatigue that’s put right with a little sleep and some good food. Fire fatigue is different, and dangerous for new shriias--often they push themselves to the point of collapse because they overestimate their endurance. I’d done it myself a few times.
	“You’re sure it’s really her?” Aine asked, pushing the door open.
	“Not sure sure,” I said, “but pretty sure. Anyhow if it’s just Hlos, we’ll just block her again. There’s enough of us.”
	There certainly were. Eunem, Lilea, and the Amranth Comings and Goings contingent were still attending to the wounded; but everyone else was in one of the meeting rooms, with Hlos standing wrapped and blocked in the middle of the floor.
	“All right,” said Cera, as we walked in. “Theamh and I will make sure that once Lythril’s out she leaves without doing harm. Dalen and Morat will replace the block on Hlos. Her naming shriia’s long dead so we’ll have to wait for the permanent one until we can consult the Book, if that’s ever possible. For now we’ll have to rotate. Any of you who see anything going wrong, step in and help.” Dalen and Morat took up their positions around Hlos, at the ready. Cera and I ranged ourselves in the benches around them. 
	Cera and I released our vigils, which twined around us ready to fight her.
	“Mo linn abu!” the three of us shouted. The fire leapt out around Hlos’s body.
	“Goodbye, Lythril,” I said.
	Hlos looked up at me with an unpleasant smile. 
	“See you later, Theamh.”
	“Mo linn agam!”
	My fire flew back to me, opening an area over Hlos’s head. Dalen and Morat kept the block up on the rest of her body. A stream of red and black light hissed out into the council chamber. It took no notice of us, or of the vigils, shooting right out through the open window. She disappeared in the distance, stopping to interfere with no one.
	“She must have been in a terrible hurry,” mused Cera.
	“It’s been a while since she left it,” I said. “Even Lythril can’t resist the pull.”
	Morat and Dalen were re-sealing the block on Hlos. Hlos looked at us out of her own face now. It didn’t improve her aspect much.
	“Now,” said Morat, as she and Dalen took their seats. “What to do with this pitiful object?”
	“I’m not responsible,” Hlos said promptly. “I was possessed.”
	“For the past several hours,” Morat answered. “Unfortunately, you have about three years of evildoing to account for.”
	Hlos’s answer was quick and defensive. “You can’t prove anything.”
	“Oh now,” said Morat. “Surely that’s an exaggeration.”
	Hlos was for the moment at a loss. Morat nodded to Aine.
	“You might do us the favor, child,” she said. “You probably haven’t tried anyone dark since you got your fire, and you should know what it feels like.”
	Aine had seen enough intentional and unintentional touch-tests to know that this was not something to look forward to. Still, she seemed to accept Morat’s rationale, and walked up to Hlos, doing what she could to brace herself.
	“Give me your hand.”
	Hlos wouldn’t. Aine touched Hlos’s shoulder.
	Braced as she was, Aine still leapt back so far and so fast she ended up crumpled on the floor. Hlos’s scream shifted quickly into whimpering, as she rubbed the spot Aine had touched in the hope, apparently, that this would make it stop hurting faster.
	I went to help Aine up. 
	“You all right?”
	Her face was red with pain and there were tears in her eyes. “Spirits of hell, dhiaoc,” she gasped. “No wonder.”
	The others maybe didn’t know that what she meant was, no wonder my touching Istria, all that time ago down in Lythril’s lab, had undone me so fast and so completely. I got her to her feet. Hlos was left on the floor, drawing her limbs into a ball and looking around at us with still-wet eyes.
	“So,” Morat said. “We’ve proved one thing, which is that you’re dark.”
	“No, you are,” Hlos spat back.
	Morat shook her head. “I hope you’re not planning on trying that out with the repeaters,” she said. “Your righteous anger really isn’t very convincing.”
	She was right; it wasn’t. Hlos knew she was beaten, and that made her attempts at denial all the more infuriating. “I’m not afraid of you. Idair will stand by me.”
	Morat said nothing. Instead, she walked up to Hlos, pulling her to her feet and wrapping her arms by her sides.
	“At a minimum,” Morat said, “you are one of the women responsible for the direction of the siege, during which more than seven hundred Amstian soldiers and a hundred and fifty Daughters of Amranth have been killed in the fighting, in addition to another hundred or so Relievers who have been killed trying to provision the city. Unless you have hidden talents someone else has to have been actually controlling the arani; but testimony from thralled Aivs shows you were in the chain of command. It’s unfortunate that Ygren and whoever was actually working the arani have escaped us; but for the time being we’ll make do with what we have.”
	Morat looked her over critically.
	“The charge Cualha has made about your role in the disastrous Kengdan harvest of three years ago will have to be substantiated through independent investigation before we can bring you to public account for it. But I can tell you, I believe it, and so do the other women in this room.”
	Hlos looked around at us, and if she had any sense of anything, she must surely have realized the depth of our disgust.
	“I’d like to believe you had nothing to do with the attack on Wriana,” Morat went on, setting her teeth. “I’d like to think that was a bit of uncharacteristic initiative on the part of your lover. It would make a sick kind of sense, since by all accounts he seems to have been very much your creature. Perhaps having asserted himself in this particularly brutal way over another woman in hreapa made him feel better about crawling to you. Then again, perhaps he was acting on orders you gave him. Which would make you a piece of evil so foul I would think the earth would refuse to let you walk on it.”
	Morat paused. Finally she said, “Have you anything to say for yourself, Hlos?”
	Hlos looked at us, and then back at Morat.
	“I’m innocent,” she said. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”
	I could almost see Cera wrinkling up her nose at the smell of the lie.
	“Let’s go,” Morat said. “Your public is waiting.”
	Morat and Cera marched Hlos between them out of the room and up the stairs onto the roof. It was about an hour before sunset, and a slight breeze had blown up, laden with the beginning of the cold air of harvest season, and moisture from the lake. It was hard to believe that only that sunrise we had been standing in the same place fighting arani, and Kelah had been alive. Hard for us, and for the people gathered in the street below and on the walls above, being kept in check by the Daughters on duty.
	We stood in a semicircle around Hlos, exposing her to the view of the public gathered in the streets, on neighboring roofs, and along the walls. Hlos saw the throng and began to quail in earnest.
	Morat advanced so everyone could get a good look at her. Until that morning, the Amranth shriias had kept her presence in the city--along with that of Lilea, Dalen, and Eunem--a secret from everyone but the Daughters. Now that the battle was over and the city was being guarded by the army that had formerly been besieging it, she could afford to go public. Indeed, she had to. We couldn’t fight, or win, a military war. We’d have to do this by getting the people behind us. Once they accepted us as the real Council, it was only a matter of time before the others would be brought down. While she was hunted and in danger Morat couldn’t discharge any of the duties normally handled by a Council head. But now that she was in relative safety she could begin performing public rites. And I suppose it didn’t hurt that Hlos’s expulsion and shaming would be the first one.
	“I am Morat ni hArloh na Bearr,” Morat called. “Four months, two weeks and three days from this day, the shriias of the Order voted by a three-to-one margin to install me as the new head of the Council. What happened after that is, unfortunately, history.” She waited for the angry murmurs to die away. “I know there are people listening to me who will report what happens here to our enemies in the City. When you do, tell them that their days are numbered, and the time is swiftly coming when they will be called to account for the evil they’ve done. This battle is the beginning of the end for Barant and her minions, and the beginning of a better day for Amranth, for Amst, for shri, and for all of Idair’s children.”
	The volume and length of the cheer that greeted this stunned me. It was as if the roar and clatter came from the stones themselves, which seemed to vibrate in sympathy with this human cry of relief and release.
	“There is a lot left to do, and much of it will have to be done by the people,” Morat said. “But one thing we in the Order can do is start cleaning our own house.” She nodded to Dalen, who dragged Hlos forward. “The law may or may not be able to touch these women. But we of the Order are within our rights to make our own determination and take our own action. And this we do now, on the spirit and body of Hlos ni Nhym na Greol, who was taken with the seven false Aivs of the West Country Thousand.”
	Morat turned from the angry crowd to Hlos. 
	“Hlos ni Nhym,” Morat called, in a voice loud enough to carry without being sharp. “By trial by touch, you have been found false to the Order, to shri, to Idair, and to Idair’s children. Through your actions and your words you have proven yourself unworthy of trust, love or respect. Here before the people you have injured we strip you of them.”
	Morat undid the brooches on Hlos’s hreapa one by one, tossing them away. They skittered across the flagstones in the silence. She seized the front of Hlos’s hreapa and ripped it off her in one violent movement.
	Hlos staggered backward a little. The crowd gasped. Hlos had wound her chain twice around the calf of her leg, for all the world like a garter. And now that her hreapa was off, it was visible under her short shift.
	Morat threw Hlos’s hreapa down on the roof. She dragged Hlos forward and forced her onto her knees on top of her hreapa.
	“Eight years, ten months, and two weeks from this day, on the first day of the Burning, the Order accepted you as a daughter of Idair,” Morat said. “Today, we reject you as a minion of the Dark One.”
	Dalen stepped forward with a shallow bowl. It was lumpy and discolored, but I knew what it was. Blood taken from one of the dead of Istria’s cohort. I didn’t know who and I didn’t want to know. 
	“Here’s the ink,” Dalen said. “Write your crime so that they can all see it.”
	Hlos shook her head.
	Morat and Dalen worked her together. Unwilling, Hlos’s hand went into the bowl, and unwilling began tracing letters in blood on that hreapa.
	The blood glowed redder and brighter when it touched the wool. When they had finally finished making her hand trace the letters, Dalen yanked Hlos to her feet, and Morat lifted up the hreapa. On it was Hlos’s name, and underneath it the words I had seen on Gwilna’s all that time ago. Feicidh me marbh. I have killed.
	“People of Amranth,” Morat called out. “Read the words and remember.”
	There was a long, unnatural silence.
	“You have long since ceased to be a shriia,” Morat said, turning to Hlos. “You will never be one again.”
	Dalen took out a pair of shears and cut the fabric of the defaced hreapa. Morat took hold on either side of the cut, and with one grim effort tore it in half.
	Hlos’s gasp was lost in the crowd’s. But I didn’t really hear either. The violence of that rent was repeated in Morat’s face, which was angrier than I had ever seen it. 
	I had thought maybe the crowd would hoot or hiss or something, but they seemed to have been hushed by this awful moment. Hlos stood shaking on the roof of the Amranth Pharc, wearing nothing but her shift and the Dark One’s chain.
	“This is Hlos ni Nhym,” Morat called out. “Look and remember.”
	Dalen came forward with a long sleeveless tunic made out of black cloth, with the seams done in red thread. Dalen stuck it over her head and pulled Hlos roughly into it. Then she unscrewed a tin of ashes which had been mixed with uisce.
	“You have chosen to serve a different power, and you burn with a different fire,” said Dalen. “We cast you out forever from amongst us, and mark you with the sign of your new ruler.”
	Dalen dipped two fingers into the ash and drew the proscription slash across Hlos’s face.
	The ash was black on Dalen’s hand; but as it touched Hlos’s skin it turned red. 
	The crowd watched this in terrified silence. We on the roof were not surprised. And yet there was something horrifying about seeing that ash change color. We all knew that was supposed to happen when this particular preparation was applied during this particular rite to a shriia who had turned. But none of us had ever seen that done.
	“Your expulsion is complete,” said Morat. “What happens next is up to the law. We have done with you. Go your ways.”
	Hlos looked around her at the crowd on the walls, at the crowd in the streets, at the hard faces of the Daughters ranged around them.
	The silence ended abruptly. Totally, annihilatingly, with the instantaneous explosion of the blood-cry I’d heard in Dunta, magnified by a hundred hundred.
	If you have never actually heard a crowd baying for blood, you perhaps won’t understand the effect it had on Hlos. She dropped to her knees with her hands behind her back, shaking from head to foot.
	“I throw myself on your protection,” she cried.
	Morat looked at her with such utter and withering contempt I felt scorched just watching her.
	“If I extend it to you,” she said, “you are bound to cooperate. You know the rules.”
	“Yes, yes, anything,” Hlos said, no longer worrying about trifles like pride. “Just don’t let them at me.”
	Morat advanced past Hlos to one of the points of the star, so that she was almost in the middle of the crowd.
	“Listen to me,” she called.
	They fell quiet.
	“Idair told us that no one deserves death,” Morat said. “Hlos has thrown herself on the Order’s protection. We extend it to her on the condition that she cooperates with our efforts to bring down Barant.” Morat swept her stare along the assembled crowd. “We are bound to protect life. Even such a life as this. And remember, you who are murmuring,” she said, with that voice that had terrified so many scoili, “that this is why you wanted us to prevail in the first place. Because we are not evil, and are bound to protect what matters. Including life, no matter what miserable thing it inheres in.”
	Whatever strange magic Morat had, it worked on the crowd as well as it had worked on all of us in the scoil. They waited for her to finish.
	“If you have heard the story of the battle at Dunta, you know the lengths to which we will go. Hlos will be locked up, for everyone’s protection including hers. Leave her alone, and leave vengeance to the earth and Idair.” Morat extended her hands over them and made the sign of protection. “You have suffered for a long hard time, but that time is over. Tonight, we will send home our dead--all of our dead.” Including, as they knew she meant, the dead of the Amstian Army. “Tomorrow, the sun will rise for the first time in a long time on a free Amranth.”
	During the cheer that broke out after this we took the opportunity to withdraw into the Pharc, dragging Hlos along with us. We went back to that room in the Raed. Morat sat Hlos down.
	“Now,” said Morat. “You’ll tell us what you know.”
	Hlos attempted to scrape together a last shred of self control and pride.
	“I won’t. You can’t torture me--and you can’t release me to them, they’ll kill me.”
	“I thought you said we were dark and you were bright,” Morat said.
	Morat’s gray eyes bent on hers, and Hlos’s lip began quivering again.
	“I’m saying nothing,” Hlos repeated.
	“You’ll tell us what you know,” Morat said. “Not because we torture you, or threaten you, or bribe you. You’ll crack without our having to do a thing to you. Just because you’re hollow inside, and that’s all you can do.”
	And indeed, Hlos was crumbling as we looked at her.
	“Who was controlling those ten arani?” Morat said.
	We waited.
	“I was,” Hlos said.
	“So, Theamh,” Morat said. “Truth, or tarbhfnaa?”
	“I’d have to go with tarbhfnaa,” I said. “You’re a rainmaker, Hlos; you never trained for this. I doubt you could control a beldaman, never mind ten giant arani.”
	“I was,” Hlos insisted.
	“With whose help?” Morat pressed.
	Hlos mumbled the answer. “Barant’s.” We waited, skeptically. “I let her watch through me, and she took control when she needed to.” For a moment she brightened. “So it really is her fault, not mine, what happened.”
	“Projection isn’t possession,” Cera said. “The blood proved that. You cooperated, you pay the price.”
	“And whose idea was it to capture Istria?” Morat asked. 
	“Barant’s. At first. Then Lythril overtook me, and the link broke. But Lythril went along with the plan anyhow.”
	I could see Morat thinking. Probably Lythril had taken advantage of the distraction of the battle to overtake Hlos in an attempt to get to Barant; if she’d been watching her in the field she would have realized they had a link. But Barant must have been able to shut down the link before any real damage was done. Lythril, opportunist that she was, then followed through with the capture thinking if nothing else she could get something out of Istria. Or, if that failed, kill her in front of me as she had long been trying to do.
	“And what’s Barant’s next move?” Morat asked.
	“I don’t know,” Hlos said.
	Nobody felt that this deserved a response. We stared at her until her discomfort finally provoked her to go on.
	“The INDF,” she finally muttered.
	The Ideiren National Defense Force. Back on the VB in that bar in the Cretid Nation we had seen its leader promise that it would soon be combat-ready. Enough time had gone by that it might well be. Now that the new regime had lost the north, they would try to use this new army to get it back. It was highly unlikely that they would succeed against two forces so long-established and well-trained, fighting in territory they knew from childhood. All that would happen would be a lot of death and bloodshed.
	“And this army is thralled too, I suppose.”
	Hlos shook her head. 
	“Why not?”
	“There wasn’t need to. Alepha and the other leaders really believe Barant’s true.”
	Alepha was the woman put in charge of the INDF. How Barant had managed to bamboozle her to this extent I was not sure. But I was starting to have some ideas about what to do next.
	“Will they head for Amst, or Dairc first?” Morat asked.
	“That I really don’t know,” Hlos said. “Barant told me only what she thought was absolutely necessary.”
	“Wise move,” said Morat. 
	After Hlos had looked down at her bare feet in silence for a while, Morat said, “Who are the other agents of Barant’s still in the north?”
	Hlos shook her head. “Lythril’s killed most of them,” she said. “I don’t know what’s become of Ygren. Coel I heard was burnt badly up in Mypril. Vrila, Tifni and Hern were the real leaders. I just did what they told me.”
	“While lining your pockets and rutting with rapists and murderers,” Cera said.
	Finally stung into reaction, Hlos shouted, “At least I’ve had pleasure, which is more than you’ll ever know, you ugly frozen-blooded bitch!”
	“If that’s what you call pleasure--” Cera shouted.
	“Now, now,” Morat interposed. “Remember, there’s nothing wrong with rutting, in itself. Context is everything.”
	Hlos, as surprised to hear this as I was, stopped in mid-retort.
	“You knew about the rape,” Morat said.
	Hlos said nothing.
	“If you did order it, I certainly don’t expect you to admit to it. But you did know.”
	“How do you know?” Hlos demanded.
	“Because Barant must have known,” Morat said. “That’s why she ordered you and your minions to take Istria. She knew they were willing to do the one thing Lythril wasn’t, and she was hoping it would be enough to break her for real.”
	If Hlos was surprised to hear Morat spinning out this hypothesis, so were the rest of us. Not so much because it was farfetched, as because it was horrifying. That line of reasoning, if indeed Barant had followed it, would have to have been so cold and so calculating--it was hard to believe her capable of it, even after all this.
	“He told you about it, didn’t he?” Morat said.
	Hlos kept a nervous, uneasy silence, chafing under the weight of our stare.
	“He asked me, one time,” she said, not looking at anyone, “whether it would still be a loss violation, if it were forced and not willed.”
	In her black shift with her head bent while she studied the floor, and the cloud of her own evil beginning to coalesce around her, she looked almost like a different kind of creature, hardly human at all.
	“And you said what?” Morat pushed.
	“All I said,” Hlos answered, the words taking on an edge, “was that I didn’t know. Since that had never happened.”
	Hlos seemed to be struggling with something other than mere shame--fear, a kind of uneasy revulsion at the memory. Probably she hadn’t consciously meant to encourage him to try the experiment. Nevertheless, that was what had happened.
	“And as it seems,” Morat said drily, “Lacgon takes suggestion extremely well.”
	Hlos’s head snapped up and for the first time she really looked at Morat.
	“It was not my idea,” she said, her voice shaking. “Do you think I wanted him to develop a taste for it?”
	She was blocked; but it came to me in the sound of her voice and the way she held her body. The nightmare Wriana had lived through was the beginning of a longer, less violent but still devastating nightmare for Hlos. Lythril might have been able to keep her lovers in subjection without effort and without any conscious fear of failure; but Hlos didn’t have that confidence. Knowing that Lacgon had led this kind of attack on Wriana had made Hlos afraid of him--too afraid to break it off, but too afraid to trust her mastery over him. She had, for a long time now, been playing with powers far beyond her control; but it was only after Lacgon’s mission that she really began to understand how out of her depth she was. Which was maybe why she had cracked this fast. It was a relief for her to finally be out of it--to be closer to safe than she had been in a long time. And she was starting to realize that if she wanted to stay safe, she needed to help us bring them down.
	“So you didn’t order it,” Morat said. “But you found out after.”
	Hlos nodded.
	“Well,” said Morat. “That’ll be useful for the trial.” Hlos dropped her eyes again. “Take her to her cell, Puela. We’ll have more questions later. But it’s been a long day.” Puela nodded, replacing the wrap on Hlos. She walked Hlos out, and the door shut.
	“Now,” Morat said. “We’ve got other business. Cera, I think you had the energy to draw up an agenda?”
	Cera stepped forward. “First thing, the departures.”
	Morat nodded. “All the Comings and Goings women are still needed by the wounded. The responsibility falls to us. I know most of us don’t like this work; but it has to be done.” Nobody argued. “Cera, I’d like it if you and some of the senior Amranth women would take care of the Army dead. The honor would be some consolation to their families, and it would send the right message.”
	Cera nodded. “I was going to suggest it myself, Aiv.”
	“You don’t have to Aiv me after all this time, Cera,” Morat said. “The Daughters have been claimed by their own families; we’ll have to do them individually, at their homes. Apparently some families have already made requests.” Some of the Amranth shriias nodded. “All of those will be honored. The rest of us will take care of the others. Cera’s got the names; she’ll give each of you a list with addresses. There are twenty-eight dead, all told,” Morat said, with a sigh. “A little less than half. Chierna, apparently, is pleased with the numbers. She was expecting them to be much worse.”
	Aine shook her head. All of us were a little stunned in the face of it.
	“After that,” Morat said, “we’ll send Kelah home. I’ll do the departure, unless anyone else wants to.” Nobody volunteered. “I’d like it for all the Council members--the City council--to be present for that. She was one of ours, and she deserves it.” 
	“Who’s going to send her home?” Eorna asked.
	There was a silence. Finally, I said, “I’ll do it.”
	“Thank you, Theamh,” Morat said, over the ripple of surprise sent up by Cualha, Eorna and the others who knew our history. “So. Next item, Cera?”
	“Asylum,” she said.
	“Ah. Yes. We’ve been talking to the Seated Leaders about extending the City’s protection to some of the people still in danger--particularly Ethir, the survivors of the Back Three, and those who’ve been active in the resistance in and around Mypril. Some of these people may need our protection as well as that of the Daughters. If you’d like to help, please talk to Cera as soon as possible; we expect some of them to be arriving as early as tomorrow afternoon.” People nodded. “I will assign duties if I have to, but I thought I’d call for volunteers first.” Cualha smiled. “What’s next?”
	“The celebrations,” Cera said.
	“Ah, that’s right. The Seated Leaders are planning a formal celebration for a week from today--it will take them that long to get organized. They would like us all to take part. Tactically, that may not make sense, since I’m sure our former colleagues will see this as an opportunity to strike. Lilea has represented the dangers to me very vividly, as has Cera, and I appreciate their concern.” Morat looked at Cera with that level gray stare. “I have considered the dangers. I feel I must run the risk. One difference between us and them is that we’re not afraid or ashamed to mix with ordinary people. I feel I have to show myself in public and not seem nervous about it. However, the same does not necessarily hold for all of you. It might make more sense for some of us to be elsewhere. We don’t want to put all our eggs in one basket, maybe.”
	She left it there, a question that hadn’t been phrased as a question. Finally Cualha spoke.
	“If you really see a danger, we should be there to protect you.”
	Dalen followed her in. “Anyhow if we all desert you, that will look just as bad as if none of us went. I think we should all go.”
	“And tactically,” Cera said, “it’s safer for us all to be in the one place. As long as we have the numbers advantage we can take them. If we split up, we’re liable to ambush.”
	“If we’re all agreed,” Morat said.
	Everyone nodded.
	“All right then,” she said. “Well, I’m sure it will be some kind of party; maybe we’ll even have liberty to enjoy it a little. Anything else?”
	Cera thought. “Istria.”
	“That’s right,” Morat said. “Aine and Theamh have spoken to me about holding a restoration rite for Istria. I’d like to hold it in the shriin before the celebrations. We’ll have to wait until she’s recovered, and until the refugees arrive. The more shriias we have involved, the better it’s liable to work. You who don’t know Istria don’t necessarily care as much as we do. But I would be grateful for help. Are any of you interested?”
	Puela was first. “I am.”
	“I am and I know Lilea and Eunem are,” Cualha said.
	“So am I,” Cera said.
	By the time it was over, everyone had volunteered. I watched Morat while this was happening, and there was no change in her face. But I was getting better at reading her. I knew it touched her to see them supporting her. She seemed surprised. I wasn’t, particularly after witnessing Hlos’s performance. Cualha was right--dark is as dark does, and all of them had now had the chance to see the difference between Istria and Hlos.
	“Well then,” Morat said. “I thank you for your willingness, and I hope it works.” Aine swallowed a little nervously. “What else, Cera?”
	“That’s it,” Cera said. 
	“Then this meeting is over,” Morat said. “See you at haons linn tomorrow--on the walls.” I could see the Amranth women starting to smile. She stood up. “Sundown’s in an hour. Get your names, and go and send the dead home to Idair.”
	
	The sky was darkening fast when I finally made my way out to the Lakeside Quarter. Cera had told me the name of the street and given me a description of the house, but of course there was nothing to tell me which street was which, and I had the feeling that I had failed to follow Cera’s directions. I stood at the intersection between a cobbled road and a muddy cartpath, looking around me in consternation.
	“What is it you’re looking for, shriia?” 
	The voice came from a woman in a leather blacksmith’s apron, who had put down a hunk of stone and iron she was unloading from a covered cart. It was probably the first chance she’d had to take in any new ore, and even though it was dark out she, like a lot of people in the city and its vicinity, was still trading, making up for lost time.
	“I’m looking for Ewenham Close,” I said. 
	“Ah, of course,” she said. “Poor Niamh. Let me finish up here, I’ll go with you--you’ll never find it yourself.”
	She was right, of course. I waited while she paid the delivery boy and lugged the store into her shop. “I was going down anyhow, to pay my respects. I knew most of them--the trade, you know.”
	Like a lot of Amranth neighborhoods, it was a warren of narrow, crooked streets lined with a patchwork of buildings, some nine hundred years old and some put up in a hurry last winter. People were out on their front steps, sitting on the curbs, or standing around in the streets, moving grudgingly out of the way for the carts and horses that tried to squeeze through these choked passages. 
	In a neighborhood like this in the City, I would have been afraid. I always had been as a child, accompanying Iela on her errands. All those people in such a small space, looking at me as if they knew I didn’t belong there. And people were certainly looking at me now; but with a much friendlier aspect.
	“Welcome to you, shriia.”
	“Where you headed, shriia?”
	“Life and health to you, shriia.”
	I tried to answer them all; which meant that if the blacksmith who had charge of me hadn’t kept me hurrying, I might never have got there. A crowd attracts a crowd; and by the time we reached the beginning of the street that led onto what my guide assured me was going to turn into Ewenham Close eventually, people were opening windows and leaning out of them to wave at me. “Good for you, shriia! Idair abu!”
	I was a little worried about arriving at the poor family’s door at the head of this impromptu parade; but once they saw the door they all fell silent. Someone had chalked the shape of a flame on the outside of the family’s door, to show that there would be a departure soon. They recognized the symbol, and it dampened the spirit of celebration.
	“Ah, poor Sincil,” murmured one of the women. “I should have thought. Be good to her, shriia.”
	While the crowd began dispersing, the blacksmith rapped on the door. I heard footsteps coming along the creaking boards of the hallway, and then the door opened.
	“Myta,” said the woman who answered it. “It’s good of you to come.”
	“I’m so sorry for your trouble, Sincil,” said the blacksmith. “I know I can’t do much, but at least I’ve brought you a shriia.”
	She looked at me with the city woman’s amused condescension toward the rube. The woman who had answered the door had a slight frame, and light brown hair pulled back from a face which was showing its fifty years.
	“I’m Theamh ni hUlnach,” I said. “Cera said you had asked for me?”
	“Yes, please, come in, shriia,” said Sincil, holding the door open. I squeezed awkwardly into the narrow hallway. “You’re good to come out all this way.”
	“It’s...it’s not much to do for her,” I said, embarrassed. I have never been good with grief; my sense of my own powerlessness makes me awkward and I’m always afraid my shyness will give offense. I didn’t know why she would have asked for me. I didn’t know the family and I would have thought they would prefer one of their own shriias. “I’m sorry this trouble has come to you.”
	“Sure it had to come to someone,” said Sincil. “We knew when she went into the Daughters we might lose her young. We...” Her voice failed, but she rallied. “We’ve always been so proud of her.”
	“You were right to be,” I said.
	A door swung to at the end of the hall, and a man came walking toward us. “Peace to you, shriia,” he said, touching his lips to me. “I’m Patrin, Niamh’s father. This is my wife Sincil--oh, you’ve met.” He began ushering us down the hall and into what I supposed was the kitchen, since it contained a stove and several chairs. “Thank you for coming. It was Niamh’s wish...she told us last night that...in the event...”
	He pushed open the door at the back of the kitchen, so that he wouldn’t have to keep talking, and led us out into the small square yard behind the house.
	Half the yard was a small garden, with some flowers and a few vegetable plants. The other half was paved, with grass growing up between the flags, which were tilting as the roots rose and sank them. On a sheet spread out over the ground there were two women lying side by side, their hands touching. One was Niamh; the other was her lover.
	“This is Dearg mac Douel, and Rial ni Thikai,” said Patrin, introducing me to a man and a woman who were standing in the yard. “They’re Uilann’s parents.”
	Uilann being, evidently, the woman lying next to Niamh. “I’m glad to know you,” I said, bowing at them. “I’m very sorry for your loss.” I looked at Rial, as something clicked. “Tikai...you’re not related to Caitin and Batan?”
	“I am,” she said. “We’re all sisters. Caitin sent word she would have come, but she’s very ill. She took Gwilna in, you know, and it was hard on her constitution--she caused no end of trouble before she ran off. Kehan’s tending her, or he’d be here too.” Rial sighed, and looked down at Uilann. “Batan is Big House now; she wouldn’t be seen dead with us, or with our dead.”
	“Ah well,” I said. “From what I saw she was a nasty piece of work anyhow.”
	Rial smiled briefly; Dearg laughed, once. I looked at the women on the sheet. They were both washed and laid out in their red departure dresses. But it was clear they hadn’t died peacefully. I looked away from the evidence of their wounds to the needlework on the dress, and saw that each dress had an emblem stitched on the breast, right under the collar, in flame-colored thread. The emblems were different; sewn on by different hands, and in a hurry. Niamh’s was almost too shapeless to identify. But not quite.
	“It’s meant to be a rose,” Sincil said.
	Hearing it confirmed gave me a brief quease in the stomach.
	“I made the dress,” Sincil went on. “I gave it to her the day she joined up. It’s custom; you join up, you make up a departure dress. The Daughters give you the cloth. But all the embroidery is Niamh’s. Before every battle, she’d tinker with it--add another figure. They all did that. It’s one of those things they thought would bring good luck.”
	Odd logic. Or maybe it wasn’t about luck at all, but about history. Since Niamh and Uilann had a lot of figures on their dresses, scrolling up the sleeves or around the hem. Probably almost all of them recent. It hadn’t brought them luck, any more than their prayer had. Except that Idair had taken both of them, and not just one.
	“I...” I put a hand through my hair, feeling very much lost. “I wish it hadn’t happened to them. I wish it hadn’t happened to anyone.”
	“It was a battle,” Patrin said. “Someone had to die.”
	We stood in silence for a while. Finally Sincil said, “Are you ready, Rial?”
	Rial nodded. 
	“I’ll get the children,” Patrin said, heading back into the kitchen.
	Because of course there were other brothers and sisters--all younger, as I noticed when they spilled down the back steps. Niamh and Uilann were both in their early twenties; the oldest sister was about Aine’s age and they went down from there to a boy of seven who hung back on the steps looking around him very silently. They were all introduced to me, and all shy of me, preferring to cluster around their fathers as the two mothers went to stand by their dead daughters.
	I started the song. Before I got far I saw that the composure they had all been more or less keeping was staring to crack. Strangely--or perhaps not--it was Patrin who began crying first, followed swiftly by Dearg and the older children. The mothers said nothing until it was their turn to send them home.
	Rial went first. She took out what had to be the smallest naming dress I had ever seen--a tiny yellow frock whose sleeves she folded carefully over as she lay it down on top of Uilann’s chest. Uilann evidently hadn’t been a very robust baby.
	“You were my first daughter,” Rial said, kneeling by her body with one hand on the dress. “The first child I carried.” Her face twisted, and she swallowed. “I was afraid from your birth I would lose you. Then we put the name on you, and I knew you would stay...” 
	Rial was lost in a long, painful cry, and could say nothing. Sincil crouched down next to Niamh, laying across her body a kind of short tunic in natural wool, worked with unskillful stitching in a number of very bright, not to say garish, colors of thread.
	“You remember this, Niamh,” Sincil said, while Rial went on crying. “You made it for me, when you were all of seven...” Sincil brushed away the tears. “Idair help you, you were always hopeless with a needle, but I wore it anyway, until the holes came...”
	Rial took it up when Sincil flagged. “I fought with you over the Daughters, over Niamh, over all kinds of foolishness, but I always loved you, more than my heart...chara, mo hinion, mo stor...”
	“I know it was partly to please us you joined, but we would have been proud, always, just to be your parents...”
	“You grew to be a good strong woman, you’ll leave a name and a good story behind you, and someday that will comfort me, but now...” Rial burst out into real, violent, angry tears, clutching Uilann’s departure dress with one hand and pounding on the earth with the other. “My grief, my grief, my daughter gone...”
	“You left no children,” Sincil cried. “Don’t be angry that I wish you had--that something of you was still living here--” She broke up into those red, angry tears. “My grief, my grief, my daughter gone...”
	I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was watching my first Grieving. This only happens in Amst, and so it’s no wonder I wasn’t prepared for it. At most departures, the person sending the departed home may break down or cry, and often they ramble on for a good long while before reaching the point where they’re ready to give the word. But they generally don’t explode in the torrent of anger and grief that was now bursting out of those two women as they clutched onto their daughters’ garments and called out their pain in this heartbroken chant that was not quite spontaneous and not quite scripted. They generally don’t hammer on the earth, tear at their hair, or break frequently into high, unarticulated, ululating wails. Even at Dunta, the horror of the deaths and the communal nature of the funeral had apparently prevented the families from doing this. But here in the yard it was just Niamh and Uilann, and their entire families convulsing around me in a wave of emotion which I was too stunned by to share.
	I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. I felt that it would be out of my place to try to bring it to a close, and anyhow I was pretty sure I couldn’t. All I could do was watch this and think about Istria’s departure ceremony. No wonder Varen hadn’t cried. If this was how Amstians said goodbye, that ceremony in the shriin must have seemed cold and unmoving, a thing done by strangers for someone they didn’t care for. Maybe she had gone up into the hills somewhere, after they got home, and poured all of this out to whatever was listening. Or maybe she had kept it all inside until the night Istria had finally returned, and that was what came rushing out of her after that slap in the face. 
	Finally, pale and exhausted, Rial got off her knees and stepped back from the body.
	“You know what you were to me,” she said. “There is too much to say. I will never stop missing you. Slan abhaile, chara.”
	Sincil got to her feet a moment later, still snuffling up her tears.
	“You died like you lived,” she said. “Proud and beautiful, the best daughter I could have wished for. I hope you and Uilann will be happy in the other place, wherever that is. Peace with you, Little Apple, my Niamh, my heart. Slan abhaile.”
	They and the brothers and sisters drew back to the steps.
	“Your city, your people, and shri owe you a debt we can never repay,” I said, lifting the fire in my hands. “Slan abhaile, inghinidhe na hAmranth. Slan abhaile, Niamh ni Shincil. Slan abhaile, Uilann ni Rhial.”
	The flames took quickly. I watched them burn, looking through the fire and smoke at two families clustered on the steps, watching these two women go up to Idair together.
	I waited until there was nothing left. I took back the last of the fire. The ashes were still there on the flagstones. As we do when the departure is at home, I swept the ash up into a ball and into a bowl that Sincil had given me for the purpose. What they would do with the ashes after that was up to them. For now, Sincil set the bowl in a corner of the garden among the last of the summer’s fading flowers, and opened the kitchen door.
	“Will you stay for supper, Rial?” Sincil asked.
	“No, thank you, Sincil, athi’s coming up from the country tomorrow morning and I have to get ready for him. Thank you, though...I’ll...”
	Sincil had walked her out to the front door, and Rial was standing in it. She fell suddenly forward, grabbing onto Sincil. Sincil put her arms around her and somehow found her way to more tears.
	“Come and see me soon,” Rial said, miserably.
	“I will, chara. Safe home. Safe home, Dearg.”
	Rial, Dearg, and their sons and daughters filed out, leaving me in the narrow hallway with Patrin and the other children.
	“Will you stay and have something with us, shriia?” Sincil asked.
	I looked at them all gathered together, the eldest daughter holding the youngest boy, and I could hardly bear things.
	“Please don’t think I don’t want to,” I said, “but there are two other women I’m to give departures to tonight...”
	“Of course,” said Sincil quickly. “You mustn’t keep them waiting. You’ll come back, won’t you, though?”
	“Yes,” I said. “I’ll come tomorrow, if you like.”
	Sincil looked pleased. “I’ll see you an hour before sundown, shriia.”
	“Till then, then,” I said.
	“Idair with you, shriia,” said Patrin. “Say goodbye to the shriia, children.”
	“Goodbye, shriia,” they mumbled.
	I made the sign of protection over them, and walked out the front door, letting it swing shut behind me. It wasn’t until I stood on the cobbles that the full horror hit me.
	I was going to have to go through that again. Twice.
	I walked off through the dark streets toward my next destination.

	“Chara,” Istria murmured, turning in her bed. “You’re back.”
	Lilea stood up and took back her globe. “Well, my shift’s over then,” she said. “I put Aine to bed in the next room, just to be on the safe side. She’s still pretty wiped out.” Lilea smiled as she saw me drag myself across the threshold. “So what do you think of the Grieving, Theamh?”
	“You might have warned me,” I said.
	Istria smiled, sleepy but not too sleepy to be amused. “What, and ruin the surprise?”
	“You,” I said to Lilea, “have the hardest job in the Order. Never let anyone tell you different.”
	“Sleep well, Theamh,” Lilea said, closing the door behind her.
	I undid quickly, with Istria watching me from the bed.
	“I heard Niamh asked for you,” Istria said.
	“Apparently.”
	“You should be proud,” Istria said. “Around here that’s a great compliment.”
	I wriggled out of my shift and crawled into bed. Istria was still bandaged, and I had to be gentle about where I put my limbs; but it did me a world of good to be next to her.
	“Can you do something for me, chara?” I said.
	“What?”
	“Never die.”
	She wrapped her good arm around me and kissed me.
	“I’ll do my best not to die before you do,” she yawned. “How’s that?”
	“It’ll have to do,” I said.
	“Don’t you die on me either,” Istria said.
	She was half-asleep already, so she didn’t notice that I didn’t answer.

	“I’m not sure I like this idea, Theamh,” Lilea said.
	“I’m damn sure I don’t!” Istria shouted.
	Istria wasn’t technically supposed to be at this meeting, not being technically in the Order, but Morat had insisted I bring her. As she put it, “I don’t want her finding out we made this decision behind her back. Neither do you.” So there she was, back on her feet and back in her Cretid clothes, which I had started to become fond of despite their strangeness, glaring at me with an expression that was not at all fond.
	“Istri--”
	“This was your idea?” Istria demanded, almost in tears.
	“How could it have come from anyone else, Istri, nobody would ever suggest it, but it could stop a war that would kill hundreds of--”
	“It could but it won’t necessarily,” Cualha said. “That’s my problem with it. Suppose it doesn’t make a difference to the army?”
	“I saw what happened to those people when we haled Daire out. It makes a difference.”
	“And I saw what happened to Daire,” Aine put in. “It’s too dangerous, dhiaoc. With all of them out there?”
	“We’ve got twenty-four shriias--”
	“Twenty-three,” Morat interrupted.
	The memory of Kelah’s departure flashed back on me, and I paused for a moment. Which was all Istria needed.
	“Even suppose nothing goes wrong,” Istria insisted. “It’s five years off your life.” 
	“I know, Istri,” I said. “Don’t think I haven’t thought this over.”
	I had, in fact, been up most of that night thinking it over. And the night before that. In fact, I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since I came up with the idea. I was hoping that at least now that I’d finally told Istria I could sleep again. Once she stopped being mad at me. If that ever happened.
	“Obviously Barant has gotten to this woman, and she has gotten to the army, and they are not going to believe a damn thing anyone says to them. As long as they think they’re fighting for the right they’ll never give up. And you know that the Amstian Army and the Volunteers will slaughter them.” Nobody could argue with this. “This army has people in it from all five provinces and the Vicinity. If they see one of us haled out, the story will spread all over the island. With any luck the army’s leaders will call a truce. Even if they keep on with the war, their people will know it’s for the wrong side. When things get bad the rank and file will desert, they’ll mutiny, they’ll do a lot of other things besides continuing to die for what they know is the wrong side.”
	“She’s right,” Aine said. “Look at what happened with the Back Three. Even after seeing so many people killed they were willing to testify--because they know how good Daire was. We want people to know what’s real, and haling out is the best way to show them. I think it would be a good idea to hale someone out. I just don’t think it should be Theamh.”
	“Why do I get the feeling I know what’s coming...” Lilea murmured.
	“It should be me,” Aine said. “I’m the youngest--”
	“Forget it,” I shot back.
	“Now see, look!” Istria cried. “As soon as it’s not you on the pyre--”
	“It has to be me,” I said.
	“Why?” Istria demanded, furious.
	“Because of the new instructions.”
	This finally made her pause.
	“Everyone I’ve told has believed me because aside from Ethir everyone I’ve told has been a shriia,” I said. “We all know Idair well enough to recognize her words. Ordinary people don’t. Ordinary people will assume that this is a lie I’ve made up to convince people that I’m not dark when I really am, and since we’re all on the same side that will darken you in their eyes. We know it’s the truth and because we know it’s the truth we’ll have to speak it and we need people to believe us and not decide that after all this time we’ve been lying to them about who we are.” 
	I looked at Istria, and the anger on her face was turning into pain. It meant she was starting to see my point. It made it hard for me to go on.
	“Before we do it, I’ll write out the story of the new instructions and how I got them and swear to the truth of it. You all will witness it. We’ll seal it and get people outside the Order to witness the date. We’ll leave it in someone else’s keeping--the Daughters, maybe--and then we’ll hale me out. Then everyone will know, once we open the seal, that before I was haled out I told this story and so it has to have been true.”
	They were all watching me now. I was too wrapped up in my own emotions to read them very well.
	“I’m the only one who can say that I’ve broken that rule and kept my fire. I’m the only one who can make people believe in this.” I looked back at Istria. “It isn’t that I want to die young. You know I want all the time with you that I can have. But I’ve thought and thought and there’s nowhere else to go. If we want them to accept the new instructions we have to do this, and it has to be me.”
	“You’re the only one here who’s gone through it, Lilea,” Morat said, after the long silence. “What do you think?”
	Lilea shook her head.
	“I think there are reasons you haven’t given,” she said, looking at me.
	I swallowed. 
	“You’re tired of having to prove yourself,” Lilea said. “You want to put an end to it once and for all. I know what that feels like, but Theamh,” she said, the lines on her face deepening in compassion, “you can’t get the whole world there to see it. The lies are out there. There will always be someone who’ll doubt you. Your doing this won’t stop that. Believe me, I know.” She leaned forward, clasping her hands in the skirt of her hreapa. “I’m willing to be persuaded, Theamh, but I want to hear from you that you’re not doing this just to show everyone you’re all right. Because you don’t need to do that.”
	I thought about it. For a long time, while they all watched me.
	“I admit,” I finally said, “that I am very, very tired of being thought dark. And maybe that’s partly why I’m willing to make this sacrifice. But if it were just that, I wouldn’t put myself through it and I wouldn’t put Istria through it. I want people to believe what Idair told me and I want there not to be more fighting. I think this is the fastest, the best and the most--economical--way to get those things done.”
	Morat finally said, “Does anyone else want to debate this further?”
	What could be said had been said. Nobody spoke further.
	“Before we vote on the proposal,” Morat said, “I think we should vote on whether we give Istria a vote. I think she ought to have one; it’s her life too. But you all may not feel the same way.”
	“Here, do it this way,” Lilea said. “Does anyone not want Istria voting.”
	“But will it put her in a hard position,” Aine said. “To have to make a difficult decision like that--”
	“Oh, it won’t be difficult,” Istria said.
	“There you are then,” Lilea went on. “Let’s vote.”
	“We’ll do it by link,” Morat said. “All in favor.”
	Looking around, I couldn’t tell who was voting and who wasn’t. Morat was the only one who would know, in the end, how everyone had voted.
	“All against.”
	I looked at Istria. She was closed to me, and I couldn’t guess one way or the other.
	“The plan’s adopted,” Morat said, finally. 
	Istria looked away from me, down at the floor, her hands around the back of her head as she leaned over her knees, trying to hide her reaction.
	“We’ll be in contact with Chierna and Filim,” Morat said. “This session is over. I’ll see you all in the shriin tonight for the restoration.”
	She stood and the meeting broke up. Before I could leave Aine collared me.
	“You lost so much time looking for Crann,” she began. “And all that not eating--that can’t have been good for you--and you never sleep--and now you’re going to lose five years--”
	“We don’t know for sure that it works out that way, it’s just an estimate...”
	“Dhiaoc--”
	“Aine,” I said, “face it. Unless something terrible happens, you are going to outlive me. Whether you outlive me by twenty years or twenty-five will make little difference.”
	“It will to me,” Aine said, not cowed even by the brutality of my tone.
	“Aine, Idair knows I don’t want to lose it,” I said, suddenly unable to keep it up. “My life was liable to be short enough already. But I just--if it means that in the years I have left, we can be together, in the open, without fear...it’ll be worth it.”
	“Theamh,” said Istria, looming up behind her with a face like a thunderstorm. “May I speak with you for a moment?”
	“I’m leaving,” said Aine, making off like a shot for the doorway.
	When it closed behind her we were the only two people left in the council chamber. She took me by the shoulders and turned me around, and saw the tears already on my face.
	It’s hard to explain, how things pass back and forth in an instant like this. How what you read changes what you send, and how anger and sorrow fight with each other, and how finally the mouth that was taking a breath to argue folds onto yours in a kiss.
	<She promised us at least fifteen years, Istri.>
	<It won’t be enough.>
	<She could give us a hundred and it still wouldn’t be enough.>
	She was still kissing me, with her hands in my hair and her body pressed up against mine. I could feel her warmth through my hreapa, and through the thinner fabric of her trousers as I held tight to her hips. It was the first day she’d been allowed to be up and about; with rest and uisce her flesh wounds had healed and we no longer had to worry about anything bursting open. 
	<You know it’s only because I love you so much-->
	<I know, Istri-->
	<To think of not having five years we could have had-->
	<We’ll just--we’ll just have to use our time wisely.>
	<All right, Theamh, but not in the middle of the Raed.>
	I laughed, which made me lift my mouth off hers for a moment. It wasn’t until then that I quite realized that I had her shirt half-open and she had my hreapa hiked up around my waist. We sorted ourselves out and left the room trying to look nonchalant.
	<Where should we go?>
	<We’ll try the guest house.>
	It wasn’t too long before we were holding hands again, and then there was some time in the stairwell when we weren’t climbing the stairs, and with one distraction and another we didn’t notice that there were voices in the hallway once we got up there.
	“...just dangerous, it’s near suicidal,” one of them was saying. “We cannot protect you in a crowd like that.”
	“We’ve been over this. I have to start doing the public duties now. I don’t like it either, but it’s necessary.”
	“Necessary,” said the first voice, in what was almost a growl.
	<Ah damn,> said Istria, as we rounded the corner. <It’s Morat and Dalen. Well, no matter, we’ll just-->
	Istria stopped so suddenly and completely that I almost ran her over. But then I stopped too. Because the two figures up ahead of us were standing very close together, and Morat’s gray cropped head was tilted back in Dalen’s hands as their mouths met.
	<Say nothing,> I said, grabbing her hand. <Say nothing. Let’s go.>
	She didn’t, in fact, say anything, until we were back in the stairwell.
	“AAGH!”
	“Maybe one of the storage rooms above the shriin...”
	Istria’s mind was still back in that corridor. “Did you see--”
	“Yes, I saw, Istri.”
	“AAGH!”
	I couldn’t help being amused. “Come on. It’s not like she was kissing Lythril.”
	“But...”
	“Well, now you know how Aine feels,” I said. 
	Istria shook her head. “But it’s Morat, Theamh!”
	“I can’t say I wasn’t surprised,” I said. “But...you know...why shouldn’t they? I guess...probably a lot of people will start things up now they can.”
	“I just...I don’t want to think about it...and they’re both so old!”
	“We’ll be old too, someday,” I said. “If we’re lucky.”
	I moved a stray strand of dark hair back behind her ear.
	“You’ll be beautiful when you’re gray,” I said. “You won’t cut your hair short, will you, like they all seem to?”
	Instead of answering she kissed me again, letting the emotion turn into this instead of something more frightening. <Live to see it, Theamh, that’s all I want.>
	<I’m only twenty-eight,> I said. <We’ll have time.>
	We started off in search of an empty room. “You know who’s running out of time, though,” Istria said.
	“Who?”
	“Barant. If this all keeps up, in a couple weeks she’s going to be facing an army of lovers. And then she’ll really be thurked.”
	
	An hour before sundown I went down to the shriin. Istria had stayed behind; she wanted to be alone for a while before the rite. She knew some of what was going to happen; there were other things we hadn’t told her. For instance, she hadn’t realized that her convalescence wasn’t the only thing that had postponed this rite for a few days. We had been waiting for people to travel to the city. And now there they were, milling around in the shriin and--most of them--looking a little nervous.
	Especially Abiard. He had been proscribed; he wasn’t supposed to be in the country. But nobody had recognized him by sight, and nobody was liable to. He was standing behind Ilean, who was holding the baby up to the glass wall.
	“It’s so that people can see the light,” Abiard was saying, speaking into her ear as he put one arm around her waist. “At least that’s what mathi told me. So everyone can see what they’re doing, and the fire lights up the place around it.”
	“Well, that’s one reason,” I said.
	He looked very relieved to see me. “Shriia, I’m glad it’s someone I know.”
	“You’ve spoken to Morat, haven’t you?” I said, pointing at the broad end where she was standing on the dais scouring Umrin one more time, just to be on the safe side.
	“Yes,” Abiard said, a little warily.
	“How’s Little Apple?” I said.
	Ilean waved one of the baby’s little arms at me. “Look how she’s put on flesh, shriia. She’s getting stronger.”
	I thought she might be a little small for her age, but at least she was the right shape for her size--pudgy, with that extra flesh folded and creased like a baby’s body should be. 
	“Hey,” said a diffident voice behind me.
	“Sonnia!” She submitted to being hugged. “I’m glad you came--we were afraid after a couple weeks with Varen--”
	Sonnia shook her head. “She wasn’t so bad, after we broke up.”
	“After you what?” I asked.
	Sonnia looked at Sinal, who was talking with Puela. Sonnia said, “We broke up, a few days after you left. He was really nice about it.”
	“But why did you break up?” I said.
	“It’s too much right now,” Sonnia said. “He’s a really nice guy, but he just was getting way too excited about me. I had to tell him how I really felt. He took it well.”
	“And how did Varen take it?”
	“Like I said--she was much nicer afterward. Well--less mean, anyhow.”
	Because Sonnia was no longer a threat. “But you stayed there?”
	“Where else was I supposed to go? I tried to get Sinal to take me to Amranth, but he said it was too dangerous, and I kind of thought after all that had happened it would be stupid to go back to Mypril. I figured if you guys won, you’d come get me, and if not, I’d just...I dunno, live there and help out with the sheep. I wouldn’t have minded.”
	I wasn’t sure I was hearing properly. Then again, in some ways she didn’t look like the same girl. For one thing, she’d evidently got tired of the two-color look and cut her hair short, so that what hair she had was an acorn-brown color. For another, along with her Cretid clothes she was wearing a pair of old leather boots that must have been kicking around the cowshed somewhere and carrying a traveling cloak folded over one arm. Her face had browned in the sun, like her arms. She even smelled more like one of us.
	“You enjoyed it, then,” I said.
	“Oh yeah--I’ve never been on a farm before. I love the sheep. How do they get them to be red?”
	“I’m glad you made out all right,” I said, thinking that the novelty would probably have worn off after a while. “Because you know, Sinal never told Istria any of this.”
	“I know,” she said. “He’s still trying to protect me--he’s afraid she’ll kick my gleacha. Plus nobody likes to hear ‘I told you so.’”
	“I guess not,” I said. “You’re all right with the ritual? You know what you’re going to say? People do make it up on the spot sometimes but you’re not used to this--”
	“No, I know,” she said. “I wrote it out, but they wouldn’t let me bring it in here.”
	“You remember it well enough, though.”
	“I think so.” I began moving away. “Theamh?”
	“Yes?”
	“Do I have to say that part in the other language?”
	“Yes.”
	“But I have no idea what it means.”
	“That doesn’t matter.”
	“Why not?”
	“Because that’s how magic works.”
	“Well then I better go outside and look at the cheat sheet,” she said.
	“I’ll help you,” Sinal said, coming over. “It’s easy, we’re all saying the same thing...”
	“Do it out in the hall,” I said. “We don’t want it said in here until the ritual.”
	They went out together. I guess it had been an amicable separation; after all they hadn’t been together long, and if it had lasted, things would have gotten very complicated.
	“Theamh!” Aine called from the entrance. “Theamh, look, she made it!”
	“Wriana!” I ran forward to greet her. “I was afraid you wouldn’t get here in time.”
	“I’m glad I did,” Wriana said. “It would have hurt me badly to miss it, when--all right, Morat, I’m coming.” She nodded toward the dais. “Sorry, Theamh, I have to get cleaned out, we’ll talk later.”
	Wriana assumed the position. Morat insisted on scouring everyone who traveled from or past Mypril, since she knew it was a hideout for some of the minions. So most of the travelers were clustered in that corner, leaving me and Aine looking at each other.
	“Are you nervous?” I asked.
	She nodded, emphatically.
	“That’s natural. Next time you won’t be so anxious about it.”
	“But...what if it doesn’t work?”
	“It will.”
	“How can you be sure?”
	I looked around at the people gathered in the shriin. “I think the chants and the order you’ve come up with are really good, and I think the whole rite is based on sound principles. And the other thing is, Aine,” I said, taking her aside, “that there’s working, and there’s working. We want this to accomplish a particular, concrete thing; and that may or may not literally happen. But there are other levels on which a rite can work. I’m pretty sure that in that sense, the thing is foolproof.”
	She nodded. “I know, dhiaoc. But I--really--want it to work. In the literal way.”
	“Me too, Aine,” I said.
	“Shriia?” 
	I turned around to greet a woman I’d never seen before. She was tall and broad-framed, with dark hair cut short around her head and the kind of drab dress most Amstians wore. But she was wearing a blue jacket over it, with a sash running diagonally across her worked in silver and gold thread. “I’m Elef ni hAoife, town leader for Amranth.”
	I bowed at her. “I’m  Theamh ni hUlnach,” I said. “I--they told me you would be here, but I’d forgotten. Thank you for coming.”
	“Thank Cera for inviting me,” said Elef. “Of course as soon as she told me about it I knew I had to be here. I’m very much looking forward to meeting her.”
	Elef was a politician, and that was obvious. But at least she was a politician with some spine. She had somehow held out under severe pressure from some segments of her own community, and her persistence had at last been rewarded. Her handling of the siege was going to win her many, many more terms as leader. But she deserved them, after all.
	Cera clapped her hands for silence. “Everyone come listen, it’s almost time. Aine, go get the two youngsters out in the hall, will you.”
	Shriias and participants alike gathered around the dais, for all the world as if it were story time. Cera stood in the middle of it. It was her shriin, so it was her show; Morat would have the star role in the rite itself but it was up to Cera to direct.
	“You’ll all need candles, even those of you who will be making your own fire. Puela will give those to you before we get started. You all know which shriia you’re partnered with.” The ordinary people nodded. “Remember, don’t be scared of the fire, it’s practically all light and it won’t harm you. Which of you is also speaking for the baby?” she said, looking at Ilean and Abiard.
	“I am,” said Ilean.
	“The baby’s too young to hold the candle and you’ll be holding the baby, so Muile will just hang a couple globes near you, will that be all right?” She nodded. “Which of you is the Cretid?”
	Sonnia put her hand up. You could hear the noise as the others turned to look at her. 
	“We’re going to be making fire in here. Have you ever seen that happen before?”
	Sonnia discarded the first few responses that came to her, and simply said, “Yes, I have.”
	It was a step forward, even if Cera probably heard the smart-mouthed answers anyway. “So, then, you’re up to speed. Kehan--where’s Kehan?”
	“Here, shriia.”
	“You don’t bother with the candle, because you’re speaking for all Slieve. Pillcrin there will just hang about a hundred little tiny lights all around you. Don’t be alarmed.” He nodded. “Elef, I know we’ve talked about this, so you know what to expect.”
	“I do, shriia.”
	“But shriia--” said Abiard.
	“What is it, friend?”
	“I’m speaking for all of us from Seppleton Farms, too.”
	“Oh. All right.” Cera was a little surprised, having heard the story and knowing that most of those people were now either dead or interned. “Well then don’t you mess with the candle either--Eilnibh, you hear that?” One of the Amranth shriias nodded. “Now. When it comes to the speaking, Sinal’s going to start and Theamh’s going to finish. You all know Theamh, right?” Everyone nodded. “When Theamh’s done, all the people who aren’t shriias go forward till you’re making a circle around the center. The fire will follow you. It’s natural to want to join hands, but you’ll be holding candles, so don’t.” There was a faint laugh from the listeners. “There’s going to be an awful lot of singing, and it may take a long time. The important thing is that you stay there until we give the word, and that while you stay there, you think about what you’ve said. That’s important.” They nodded. “Morat will let you know when to leave. Any questions?”
	I was a little dismayed to see Sonnia’s hand going up.
	“Yes...Sonnia, isn’t it?”
	“How come you wouldn’t let us see her beforehand?”
	“That’s a good question, Sonnia, but I think it would take too long to explain it to you right now. We’ll talk afterward if you’re still curious, all right?”
	Sonnia took this meekly enough. “All right, shriia.”
	Cera looked through the glass, over the heads of the people who were standing around outside watching us. They didn’t necessarily know what would be going on in here, but often people will stop and hang around if they see us getting something ready. It’s funny how we don’t mind, when it’s our own people.
	“Well,” she said, as the light changed from golden to gray, “the sun’s down.” She turned to us. “Take half an hour to sort yourselves out in the hall, and then let’s break it.”
	Puela was in charge of lining everyone up. “Sonnia, you’re counting from when now? All right, then you’ll be right after Aine, but she’s joining the circle late, so for now just go there...Abiard, where do you fit in all this?...all right, now Slieve was before all that stuff with the trial, right? So Kehan...but wait, is it you first or Wriana?...so, Wriana first, then Kehan, then Umrin and Japthil...”
	I stood at the end, next to Elef. Sicaela leaned past her to accost me. “A lot of people turned out for it, eh shriia?”
	“Yes,” I said. “It makes me happy to see it.”
	The line, in fact, stretched away down the hall for some little ways. Taric, walking down the hallway on his way to the shriin, paused to look it all over.
	“You’ll be well set then,” he said nodding. “I told you they’d come.”
	“Thanks for coming, Taric. Anyone else on the way?”
	“Chierna’s bringing the survivors,” he said. “And you know what’s strange, they brought some of the captives.”
	“What?” I demanded.
	“Not by force--they asked,” Taric said. “And even some of the plain soldiers. Look--you see him--” He pointed at a young man who was just going through the doorway. “That’s the captive from the West Country Thousand--the one they put in the sack. I guess a beating’s better than being thralled, in his book.”
	I guess it was. Morat was having her vigils check out all the spectators as they entered. Whatever strange way all this worked, a lot of the men the Daughters had spent all that time fighting were here at Istria’s rite, even though some of them had never seen her. Chierna nodded at me as she trooped her sadly depleted band of volunteers down to the entrance, along with the four West Country Aivs who’d been under thrall.
	“I hope it works for you, shriia,” he said, hesitating.
	“Have you ever been in a shriin before, Taric?” I asked.
	“Not since I quit the Tiach.”
	I had noticed he seemed nervous. “It’ll be all right, Taric,” I said. “You’re not a child of the Order any more; nobody’s going to scold you.”
	He almost smiled. “See you in there, shriia.”
	I heard Cera calling to the spectators. “We need to start in as close to complete darkness as we can, so we’re pulling the globes now. Also, we need it to be silent.”
	She closed the door behind her. It was crowded in the hallway, what with all the participants lined up and the rest of the shriias milling around. As always, at times like this, there was a lot of back and forthing at the last minute--Puela running to fetch more candles, Muile dragging the tilu staff out of the storage room, and a short but extremely excited conversation about where the star pendant was and who had seen it last. Finally the star was on Morat, the staff was with Cera, everyone who needed a candle had one, and we were all in the right order.
	Morat took a look around to make sure we were all set. She paused afterward, and I was afraid something was wrong. But all she said was, “Thank you all for being here. I think it’s dark enough now.” She turned to Aine. “Go and find Istria. Theamh will let you know when we’re ready for her.”
	Aine hared off down the hall. She didn’t really need to hurry, but I think it made her feel better. It had turned out to be a very big deal, and she was worried that if it didn’t work, it would make things worse for Istria. Not to mention disappointing Aine hugely. 
	Cera shushed us all, and we took back our lights. The hallway was now almost completely dark. We heard the door to the shriin opening, and Cera walking out to the dais. I heard the hiss as she pulled out a globe to light herself with.
	She struck three times on the floor with the tilu staff. The people in the audience who had been whispering stopped.
	“Idair, you wanted to believe the best of us,” Cera began. “Even after we’d proved you wrong. Time and again, in the stories you left us and the stories we live, you show that there is such a thing as recovery. That even if there is no remedy, there can always be restoration. It was your hope and wish that nothing and no one be lost forever. Help us prove you right.” Cera’s voice rose. “Be with us now, and bring a good woman back from darkness. Undo your enemy’s work. Help us break the chain.” 
	The globe winked out.
	That was our cue. A very nervous Sinal led us into the shriin and onto the dais, where we stood around its edge facing the center. The shriias who weren’t speaking for her followed, moving more easily in the dark. Cera withdrew to the outside circle. Morat advanced to the center, facing the spectators from what to them was the far side of the dais.
	Once she was in place, Morat started the song. The rest of us picked it up, while the ordinary participants waited.
	<Aine, bring Istria down now.>
	The glass walls meant that it inside the shriin it couldn’t be quite pitch dark. I could see the silver star glinting around Morat’s neck, and I could distinguish the shapes around us, if not the faces. I could also see the big dark shape that was the crowd at the narrow end sitting on the cushions, waiting to see what would happen.
	Aine led Istria through the open door. She had been blindfolded, so Aine was holding onto her arm. Istria held her hands clasped in front of her, with her chain wound loose around them. And even though she couldn’t see anything, she seemed to know where she needed to be, taking up her position in the center of the dais and turning to face Morat, with her back to the spectators. Morat’s face was obscured in the dark, and she was too far away from me to read. But even after the song had ended, it was a few moments before she started the questions.
	“Who are you?” Morat called.
	“Istria ni Vharen.”
	“Where are you?”
	It was only now that her voice got troubled. “In the dark.”
	“What do you want?”
	This answer came back promptly, if still a little troubled. “Freedom.”
	Aine undid the blindfold. She backed up to take her place in the inner circle. 
	“Ask,” Morat said.
	With her eyes on Morat, Istria began in Old Tongue.

	after all that holocaust
	after everything I burned
	after all the dark I made
	you would not let me be lost

	as at last you brought the light
	where no light had ever been
	as you kept alive within
	all my darkness, something bright

	as I pledge to remedy
	all that can be still undone,
	help with what cannot be helped
	lend your strength and faith to me

Istria’s hands moved as she took a firmer grip on the chain that still wound around them.
 
	forged in darkness, worn in pain,
	it haunts my mind and galls my heart;
	Idair spite the Dark One’s art,
	Idair help me break the chain.

Istria finished. She lifted her joined hands to Morat, as the faint diffuse light picked out the gleam of the chain.
	“What are you bound with?” Morat said.
	“The chain that I forged.”
	“Why does it bind you?”
	“I cannot break it.”
	“Why can’t you break it?”
	“I do not know how.”
	There was a very slight pause, and I thought I could detect just a faint little bit of amusement from Morat. She knew what was coming next, and she knew Istria didn’t.
	“That’s where you’re wrong.”
	I couldn’t see Istria’s face very well, but I felt her surprise. We had told her nothing about what would happen next. Istria had probably tried to imagine what it would be; certainly she had pestered me with questions about it, partly for the fun of seeing me try for once in my life to keep a secret from her. But she was still puzzled as to why suddenly Morat was quoting from the Sincil and Anron story in the middle of this rite.
	“What shatters darkness?” Morat asked, still looking at Istria.
	Istria didn’t know what answer had been scripted, so her response was tentative, even though it was a simple enough question. “Light?”
	“Break the chain,” Morat said.
	Istria thought at first this was directed at her. But she turned her head when she saw flame spring out of the candle Sinal was holding. It had been dropped there by the shriia standing behind him, who kept her hands on his shoulders as he spoke.
	“You know what I was born to,” he said.
	The candle didn’t give off that much light, but it was enough for her to see his face, and him to get some idea of hers. And for a moment it was too hard for him to go on; but he swallowed the tears and forged ahead.
	“Because I was young, you protected me,” he said. “I didn’t even know until later what you saved me from. You did everything you could to save for me the peace and safety you never had, even when it meant taking pain and punishment that would have come to me.” 
	The light spilled on his hands and face, and a little bit over onto the hands of the shriia behind him, on his shoulders; he stood out as a lone bright spot on the dais. But the light found its way, diluted and thin, to all the corners of the shriin, and the blackness inside it got a shade closer to gray.
	“You never told me that I should have been grateful,” he said. “I learned that myself. You just thought it was what--that this was just what everyone does.” He shook his head. “It isn’t, Istri. Not everyone would have done that for me. Not every sister would have loved me at all--youngest son, twice the favorite, with our mother being so soft on me and nothing but hard to you.”  
	He lifted the candle a little. “I was the first to know the good in you. The first to be saved by it.” He cleared his throat, and wrinkling his brows in concentration launched into the Old Tongue.

	with no hope of breaking free
	still you rose and fought for me
	trapped yourself in dark despair
	still you would not leave me there
	
	because you worked for truth and right,
	because you brought me back to light,
	because your love relieved my pain
	I give my strength to break the chain.

Muile hung a globe in front of Ilean and the baby, about where the candle flame would have been if she’d been holding one. The baby waved her little arms, trying to catch the fire. Ilean had to keep shifting her she spoke.
	“Little Apple can’t speak yet, so I speak for her,” Ilean said.
	Istria was greatly startled to see Ilean there; as far as she knew, they were all hiding out somewhere outside of Mypril with Ethir and the witnesses of the Back Three. She looked at the baby, struck maybe by how much improved she was.
	“If she could speak, she would tell you that she owes her life to you,” Ilean said. “Without your help, she would have left us. Now she’ll live to get her name, to grow up into a good woman.” Ilean resettled the baby so that the flame was further out of her reach. “I know little about magic; I didn’t even know what that chain was. But I knew you were in great trouble when you came to us. And I knew you were helping her not because you expected anything, but just because you saw that she was--we all were--suffering.” She held the baby up so that her dark eyes were on Istria. “She’s the first life you saved. I’m the second. I knew that if she died, part of me was going to die with her.”
	You could tell when she spoke the final chant that she wasn’t used to Old Tongue; the words sounded unfamiliar and stiff in her mouth. But Abiard must have coached her, because they were the right words, and said with almost real inflections. The globe in front of them added its strength to the candle Sinal was holding, making more light around Istria and lightening the gray beyond us.
	“You saved me along with them,” Abiard said, as the shriia behind him hung a shower of tiny little lights around his head. “More than that, you saved our people.” He seemed to realize that Istria found it strange to hear him say this. “I know you made the things that killed those Cretids, and I know that’s part of the evil you want to undo. But I also know that you stopped my people from following them to more evil, and you did it at risk to yourself. Our story didn’t end happy. But if we lost our battle, we didn’t fight it for hatred and vengeance. That matters.”  He put an arm around Ilean’s shoulders. “What you’ve done for the three of us is enough. But I want that put into the reckoning. For what it’s worth.”
	He repeated the Old Tongue, with considerably more fluency. The air was now bright enough around them, what with the constellation meant to represent the people of Seppleton Farms, for Istria to see that the next person in the circle was Aine.
	Aine brought a puff of fire out of one hand, and after some hard concentration managed to hang it. 
	“Theamh tells me that when we landed in that Cretid river, after your first experiment with flight,” she began, looking at her with a kind of rueful amusement, “it was you brought me back from drowning. It was maybe the first time you actually saved my life; but it wasn’t the first thing you’d done for me, and it wasn’t the last.” The globe drifted down a little, but she pegged it back up. “You helped me get Theamh out of that horrible place. You got us safe into Dairc, and maybe most important...” Her face looked pale in the yellow-white light of the flames, and for the moment she looked as young as she used to, scared and lost. “That day in Keanrih’s bedroom, a nightmare broke into my life, and I could never shake myself out of it. Because of you, this ‘gift’ of mine has become something other than a curse. Maybe since you have it too, you know how much that means to me.” The flame spurted up a little brighter. “You’re a good woman, Istria ni Vharen. I’m proud that you were with me when I got my fire, and I hope I’m with you when you get yours back.”
	I had felt emotion rising in Istria since this got started, but this was the first time I really saw it on her face. She held it back with difficulty as Aine recited the Old Tongue part, clear and strong with that single-minded conviction. 
	By now it was bright enough in the shriin that I could distinguish some of the faces in the audience. Taric was as engrossed as I had ever see him be by anything. The Daughters looked on a little less intently; they had now determined, as had most of the audience, that we were going around the circle, and some of them were beginning to wonder exactly how long this would take.
	I wasn’t wondering that, though, because it was Sonnia’s turn, and I was worried that she would thurk up the chant.
	“You were the first person I ever met who’d...who had lived through what I have,” she said, holding out the candle the woman behind her had lit. “At least the first one who would talk about it. And even though I didn’t think you liked me--and sometimes I still wonder--” Aine cracked a smile, even though she knew this was all supposed to be very solemn, and I’m not sure Istria wasn’t smiling too. “I’m a stranger, I’m all backward, and I’m a pain in the gleacha. But you took me seriously, and I know that even when you’re yelling at me it’s because you’re looking out for me. I never had a big sister.”
	Some of us had been joking beforehand about who would be the first to cry, but nobody had picked Sonnia. As they say, nobody can predict the future.
	“I never had a big sister,” she repeated, wanting to wipe her eyes but afraid to let go of the candle. “You’ve been that for me, and I didn’t even know before I knew you how much I’d wanted one.” She was about to launch into the Old Tongue part, and then suddenly had a thought. “Oh--and you saved my life when I got hit with that poison arrow. That was the whole point, and I almost forgot it.” She saw me looking at her, and decided to hurry on before anyone else laughed. “Anyway, well, here goes.”
	She did it pretty well, considering. All the words were recognizable. It was also clear that she hadn’t an idea in the world of what she was saying.
	Some of the people on that dais and in the audience laughed a little at Sonnia’s bumblings, but that all evaporated quick, because the next person in line was Wriana.
	Wriana’s flame softened the light so that the shadows weren’t so sharp on people’s faces any more. Her own face didn’t look as haggard as it had when we last saw her--she’d had a chance to eat better, and her features weren’t as sharp. She had effaced almost all the traces of that time in the woods, except for the ones that couldn’t be seen.
	“When you first met me I was lying half-dead on the floor,” she said. “Because two weeks and three days before then, something had been done to me that I thought was too horrible to ever speak of.” When she went on, her voice was clear. “If you hadn’t guessed the story, I would never have been able to tell it. And if you hadn’t looked at me with the compassion you learned through your own suffering, you would never have guessed it.” The flame glowed brighter above the palm of her raised hand. “Theamh and Aine kept me from dying. But it was you who brought me back to life. By making me know that I could tell the story. That there was a way to live with this.” She dropped her hand, letting the globe hang in front of her. “They thought they were destroying me. But I’m alive. I’m still here. And I will be whole again. Thank Idair, and thank you.”
	Wriana said her chant. The room was now as bright as any ordinary room in a house with a lamp lit at night. And it got brighter. Kehan, with a network of lights twinkling around him, thanked her for saving his town; Umrin and Japthil for their rescue from the Mypril trial. Sicaela added her light to the others with what was the shortest, but for the Daughters it seemed the most compelling speech. 
	“You fought like a real Daughter. There’s no better thing I could think of to say about anyone. I know you had to take life to save me and I know that lies heavy on you. But battle makes things necessary, and the fault of it’s not with you. I thank you for what you did for us all on that field. And the dead of our cohort stand with me to thank you.” 
	Elef delivered what I thought was a needlessly florid tribute on behalf of Amranth itself, which at least was rendered more interesting because the shriia behind her kept firing up more sprays of little tiny flames in a futile attempt to represent the whole city. It was Istria’s invention that allowed us to get in there in the first place, and without our help the others probably wouldn’t have been able to lift the siege; so she deserved it all, long and politic as the praise was.
	Elef finished the Old Tongue and folded her hands. Now it was my turn.
	I had told Sonnia that some people make it up on the spot; and I wasn’t kidding. I had been turning it over and over, and even so I had no idea what I was going to say. I lit the globe anyhow, hanging it a little bit higher than my head.
	“I...Istri, if I try to list all the ways you’ve saved me and the good you’ve done me it will take until dawn and after,” I said. “Even if I limit it to what you’ve done for me since you were turned. You brought me out of hell when you thought you had no hope of following me. You loved me even when you thought that could only bring you pain. You gave me back my heart, my body, my life. I am the woman I am because you are who you are. Every good thing I do is half yours. Every good thing I have, I have through you. I love you more than anything in the world. I know you’re good. I want you free.”
	 Since I was crying, I figured that was a good place to stop. Istria stood there looking at me, the center now of a blaze of light that was casting bright patterns through the glass walls onto the crowds that had come to watch the rite. Because it was a rite, she said nothing, much as I knew she wanted to. Instead she watched me with water filling those wide deep eyes I had so often been lost in, as I repeated the chant for the last time.	

	with no hope of breaking free
	still you rose and fought for me
	trapped yourself in dark despair
	still you would not leave me there
	
	because you worked for truth and right,
	because you brought me back to light,
	because your love relieved my pain
	I give my strength to break the chain.

Aine, Wriana and I backed into the outer circle; the others walked forward with their lights to gather in a smaller one around Istria. Morat lifted a hand and flashed fire out of it. The shriias in the outer ring lifted their hands full of flame, joining them above our heads as the fire leapt from hand to hand to ring the dais. Morat stood inside the circle, lifting that one burning hand over Istria.
	“Listen to me, Istria ni Vharen,” she said.
	Istria looked up at her, in what you could only call awe. And in me too, something was happening. Morat wasn’t just Morat, and we weren’t just us. There was something else there, something above and beyond us. I felt my heart rising until it was liable to burst. It was real. She was with us. It was going to work.
	Morat spoke in Old Tongue, and I don’t know how many in the audience really got it. But for sure they were paying attention, whether they understood the words or not.
	this is the secret
	the power you wield
	it’s love and it’s mercy
	that masters the field
	you’ve broken the power
	of punish and pain
	now lift your hands
	now break the chain.

We hadn’t told her what to do at this point. Aine had been certain that if it was working, she would know. And she did. Wrapping each loose end of the chain once around the back of each hand, she raised her arms above her head, drawing the chain taut as she pulled her hands apart, putting as much strain on the links as she could.
	We started repeating the chant. Morat began, and each of us joined at a different time, coming in at random, our voices overlapping. Like the light, now shedding golden and bright over everyone in the shriin and falling paler over the faces of the people outside it, the sound built up little by little. Rising, growing, different words and different parts of the song interweaving until they couldn’t be heard and you could hardly remember your place, resonance building and building as if we were inside a struck bell, the noise climbing with my pulse, the beat of my blood and the tension in my throat as I watched Istria’s arms trembling with the effort of trying to pull that chain apart.
	It lasted longer; it got louder; I wondered why the glass walls didn’t shatter. And then, at what you would think would have to be the last possible moment, it started to happen.
	From one of the links on that chain, there leapt a little red spark. Then another, and a cluster of them. Then in an instant a river of tiny crackling red flames was running up and down the chain, spitting and sparking in what seemed like anger. Istria’s mouth was open, but I couldn’t distinguish her cry from anything else. Our voices rose higher, and the sparks danced faster and angrier. Until with a crackling burst loud enough to be heard above everything else, the red flame leapt out of the chain into the air. And the chain itself crumbled into a million motes of silver dust. 
	In less than an instant, the red flame burnt itself to nothing. The shower of pulverized silver floated gently down through the heat-disturbed air, landing in Istria’s hair, brushing her face, dusting her shirt. So that finally she was silvered all over, shimmering with the reflected light from our fire.
	Istria brought her hands down and looked at them, amazed to find them empty, unbound, streaked with that bright dust. She was stranded between laughter and tears, unable to do anything but stare, stunned by wonder so great it was almost fear.
	Morat withdrew her globe. We dropped hands, so that the ring broke, each withdrawing into our own fire as one by one we dropped out of the song. The noise subsided, until we were all silent again, except for the sound of our breathing. Istria was gasping like a winded runner; but she wasn’t the only one. We had all been there with her, bending our strength on that chain, willing it to come undone.
	Morat walked up to where Istria was standing. She took Istria by the shoulders.
	“The last link is broken,” she said. “You’re all the way back.” Her mouth quivered, just a little bit. “Welcome home, Istria.”
	Morat embraced her. Istria held onto her with her eyes closed, the tears making tracks in the silver dust on her face. I realized that I was waving my hands in the air and cheering, and that so was everyone else. That even the people sitting on cushions outside the dais were shouting in triumph. Because they’d seen the Dark One defeated, even if only on the very small battlefield of one human life. And because even if to them Istria wasn’t as beautiful at that moment as she was to me, even if they weren’t all weeping with joy like I was, they could still tell that something good had just happened.
	Morat led Istria back out of the shriin. Puela directed the participants to the door. The rest of us followed them out. The spectators streamed out the other side door, while we clotted the hallway.
	I dug through the mess of people trying to figure out whose flame was on which candle until I found Istria and Morat, who had ducked into one of the side rooms. 
	“...I don’t thurking believe it...I thought I would die before I could get rid of it...”
	Istria was half-laughing, half-crying, and using language that in ordinary time she would never in a million years utter before Morat. Morat didn’t seem to care.
	“I knew you could do it.”
	Morat was calmer, but just as--what would you call it--translated. Not quite in the real world yet. I stepped in through the doorway, not wanting to interrupt.
	“Congratulations, Istri--”
	“Theamh!” She bounded over, and suddenly without my quite noticing how we were deep in one of those kisses that doesn’t stop at the mouth, with every part of her trembling all over every part of me. I would say I was hoping none of the people who weren’t in on the story yet would come by; but that would be untrue, because my mind was nowhere at that moment, or else it had just gone right into my body so that I could only think by touching her.
	chara
	Istri
	thank you
	I’m so happy for
	it all is possible, isn’t it
	<Theamh.>
	I regretted for a fleeting instant having reestablished my link with Morat, but then I remembered she had a right to my forbearance. Especially since she had broken in on me only to distract me long enough to see Aine in the doorway, looking on with a combination of elation and anxiety.
	“Aine!” She ran toward me. “It worked, it didn’t just work, it was beautiful. I could never have done anything like it on my own. Thank you. So much.”
	“Oh dhiaoc...I was glad to help...”
	Istria suddenly remembered that Aine had created the whole rite, and then could not hug her fast or hard enough. “Thank you, Aine,” she said, grabbing her by the hand and shaking it in what was meant to be a congenial way. “I can never repay you for that.”
	Aine shook her head. “It was you--if we hadn’t had all the people--and so many of them--and--” She plumped suddenly down onto a nearby chair, looking a little faint.
	“Aine?” I asked, sober now and afraid she was having a recurrence of fire fatigue.
	She looked at me sort of hollowly. “Did...did I really make that happen?”
	I didn’t laugh, because she was so disturbed in her mind by it, even though I sort of felt like it, not out of mockery but just because I was happy.
	“Well, you had a lot of help,” I said. “Always acknowledge that, it makes things less scary. But basically...yes, you made that happen.”
	Aine was still a little shaken. “And...it really broke.”
	“That’s right.” I clapped her on the shoulder. “Guess what, Aine? Shri works!”
	Istria laughed, and I laughed, and finally Aine was laughing too, although still rattling out her disbelief.
	“I just thought--I was just thinking it would snap in half--I didn’t know it would--disintegrate like that--just--whuff--gone, in an instant--”
	“Where’s the birthday girl?” Lilea had found her way in. “Istria, I’m so happy for you, I can’t even tell you. Come on up to the roof, you’re missing your own party.”
	I was as puzzled about this as Istria was. But we all followed Lilea to the roof of the Pharc. Where all the participants, and others, had gathered on the roof around some makeshift cookfires that had been set up for the things that people seemed to be cooking.
	“We took the liberty,” Viecter said, lifting a large jug of something. “Since the city’s been re-provisioned now.” He poured the punch out into cups, which he handed around to everyone on a tray.
	“Morat!” I called.
	“Yes?”
	“You scoured him, right?”
	“Of course, I scoured all of them.”
	“It’s all right,” Umrin said, having examined the punch. “To Istria.” She raised the glass. “Here’s to freedom and the light, and to kicking the Dark One’s gleacha.”
	“I’ll drink to that,” Morat said.
	It was kind of Viecter to organize the party; and he hadn’t even made people dress up. It gave Istria a chance to thank everyone, and gave everyone a chance to congratulate Aine, and unfortunately gave Sonnia the chance to assail me with questions.
	“Why couldn’t you let her see us first?”
	I was sitting with my back to the wall, watching Istria talk to Lilea and smiling shyly as Lilea said something heartfelt to her, while Morat and Dalen looked on proudly. 
	“Part of the point of this thing,” I said, “was to show her that she’d already done what she needed to do to break the chain, she just didn’t know it. We thought we could bring that home to her better by surprising her. And that worked out well, I thought.”
	“How come we all had to say that stuff in the other language?”
	“Because that’s the language magic is done in.”
	“Why?”
	“Because it’s sacred.”
	“Why?”
	“Because it doesn’t get used for just anything.”
	“I don’t get it.”
	“Well, you don’t need to know everything to be happy.”
	Undaunted, Sonnia pressed on. “So how did you get the chain to break?”
	I looked at her, not sure I’d heard the question right.
	“What do you mean, how did we get it to break? You saw what we did.”
	“No, but I mean how did you actually break the thing.”
	“That’s what I’m telling you,” I said. “The rite broke the chain.”
	She was skeptical. “How?”
	“By bringing all the good she’d done to all those people to bear on it.”
	After a moment I said, “That’s all the answer there is, Sonnia. There’s no trick. You just saw words, light and love crush a solid object into dust. That’s magic.”
	“Yes, it is,” said a new voice.
	“Ethir!” I leapt to my feet. “Oh, Ethir, it’s so good to see you, I never got to thank you for everything you did for us--”
	“Ah, I did nothing,” he said, sitting down with me. “All I had to do was talk. It was your damsel in shining armor, or whatever she is, who did all the hard stuff.”
	I glanced over at Istria, who was standing with Wriana and having a conversation without words, bending those serious eyes on her and listening to what she wasn’t saying.
	My hand tightened suddenly around Ethir’s wrist. “Ah, look at her, Ethir--isn’t she beautiful?”
	“Yes,” he said, after a pause. And, as I kept looking at her in my besotted way, I heard him thinking. I wish I were dead.
	My head swiveled abruptly in his direction, and he immediately started backing up.
	I don’t mean it--I just--
	So it wasn’t a joke, what you said to me before I left.
	Theamh...He shook his head. How could I not love you? I don’t understand why everyone isn’t in love with you.
	That’s ridiculous, Ethir.
	Well never mind then.
	Ethir...I sighed. I’m sorry. I know you want me to be different toward you. I just...whatever way I’m made, I can only love her. It’s not personal.
	He shrugged, still looking downcast. I know.
	You’re one of the best friends I have in the world, I said. I’m truly sorry that you’re being hurt through me.
	It’s not your fault.
	You know, Ethir, there are probably hundreds of women in the country who would be happy to hear you talk love to them.
	So naturally I pitch on you. Story of my life.
	Ethir stood up. “Congratulate her for me; I’m going down to the guest quarters. It’s been a long day and I’m tired.”
	Both those things might have been true, but on the whole, he was lying.
	“Ethir--”	
	“Tomorrow, Theamh,” he said, not looking over his shoulder. “I’ll be just fine tomorrow.”
	I had my doubts about the veracity of this statement, but I left them unvoiced.
	“Boy,” said Sonnia, as he climbed down the stairs. “Has he got a crush on you.”
	“I wish he didn’t,” I said.
	“He looked very sad,” Sonnia said, standing up. “I’ll go talk to him.”
	“Sonnia, you know don’t you that he’s almost thirty.”
	As if this had nothing to do with anything, Sonnia waved the information aside and began going down the stairs after him.
	Whatever. I found Morat, who had wandered off over to the basket of rongos.
	“You did it all beautifully,” I said.
	Morat looked at me with something that wasn’t quite a smirk. “Thank Aine. I don’t know how you managed to teach her that; you weren’t much good on that end of things yourself.”
	“No,” I said.
	Morat smiled, almost kindly. “It’s nothing against you, Theamh. But I’m glad to see Aine’s gone her own ways, too. You know you’ve had an influence on that child.”
	“I hope it’s been a good one,” I said.
	“You make a great diaoc,” Morat said. “I knew you would. That’s why I assigned her to you.”
	I looked at her.
	“I know what you’re saying must be true--”
	“Give me some credit,” Morat said. “I judged you too harshly and I believed a lot of things about you that weren’t maybe true. Or--that were true, but didn’t mean what I thought they meant. But I like to think that I was also able to appreciate some of your good points.” She looked at Aine, who was nodding a little bashfully as Eorna praised her to Cualha. “Aine was an exceptional scoilin with exceptional gifts and exceptional problems. She didn’t need an ordinary Council-minding mild-mannered sort. She needed someone like you. And since there is no one like you, really, there was no alternative.” Morat sipped her punch. “And she asked for you, specifically. Besides, if I hadn’t assigned her to you I would have had to give her to Kelah. That would have been a disaster.”
	I almost laughed, and then didn’t.
	“Thank you for sending her home, Theamh,” Morat said. “You saw her most, there at the end. You were able to say more than we would have.”
	I was about to say something, but Morat’s eyes had moved off me. “That child from beyond the border,” she said. “Are you really thinking of training her?”
	I followed Morat’s gaze. Sonnia had returned to the roof and she was leading Ethir after her. He was half-willing and half under protest.
	“It was Istria’s idea,” I said. “Frankly I don’t have much hope.”
	Morat nodded. “Has she made any progress at all?”
	“Hard to say,” I said. “Sometimes it seems to me that she can receive, but that she doesn’t realize it. Aine’s been working with her, and if anyone can do it it’s Aine. She’s got a lot of determination--and a lot more patience than I have.”
	Ethir was talking to Wriana and Istria now. Suddenly he was looking very serious.
	“Even so,” Morat said.
	“I know.” Getting Sonnia to the point where she had some mindstrength would be one thing. Getting her scoil-ready would be quite another. “And it’s not just mindstrength. She hasn’t even read the Chronicles all the way through.”
	“And she clearly doesn’t have the language skills,” Morat said.
	I sighed.
	“Do you think it might not be better to refuse to train her?” Morat suggested.
	It said something about how much she’d changed that she phrased this as a question. “It isn’t my decision,” I said. “Aine told her she would teach her the basic skills--and she has to do that, until Sonnia releases her or until she actually learns them. Istria still wants to try. I think...well, there are all kinds of reasons why Istria would identify with her, and she won’t be persuaded there’s no hope until there’s clear-cut evidence.” I looked down into my empty cup. “And I don’t want to discourage hope in her, Morat.”
	Morat nodded. Wriana was walking over with Ethir.
	“Ethir has offered to prosecute,” Wriana said. “If he can work out the jurisdictional issues. I thought I should talk to you. This was done on the Order, not just on me.”
	“What jurisdictional issues?” Morat said, after a long look at Wriana.
	“The crime was committed in Dairc, by Amstians, on a shriia who properly speaking has no provincial status,” he said. “It would be possible to try it either in Dairc or in Amst, and really that might be a good idea if we can clean out Mypril. The problem is that this is ordinary crime, and so the rules for ordinary criminal prosecution apply. I can’t prosecute an ordinary criminal case in the Provinces, because I work out of the City.”
	“But you say it could be tried in the City,” Morat said.
	“I would have to make the argument that because it was done on a shriia it’s a slan phoblacht matter. It might be a bit of a problem, but I think I could swing it.”
	 “Of course we’d have to wait, Aiv,” Wriana said. “There are still a lot of people who want to kill Ethir, and he’s been dismissed from his job in the City. I’d want to wait until things get sorted out. But after. Which do you think would be better--to try it in the north or try it in the City?”
	 Morat thought.
	“I think, if you can take the publicity, we should try it in the City,” she said. “It is a slan phoblacht matter. We want to deal with it openly and to be as hard on them as it’s legal and right to be, and we want everyone to see us doing that.”
	Wriana nodded. “That’s what I want.”
	“Ethir has done us a lot of service in the past,” Morat said. “If he wants the case I don’t think you could do better than to give it to him. Once he gets his job back.”
	“Thank you, Aiv,” Wriana said, bowing. “I’m very happy for Istria, Theamh, and I’m glad you thought of me.”
	“Of course we thought of you,” I said.
	I wondered if she could tell, from looking at me, how much I had been thinking of her, and if so whether she liked that or not. Because I hadn’t really known her, before any of this. But somehow she was in my mind a lot. I couldn’t imagine what it would have been like; I couldn’t imagine how she had been able to pull herself together and stay alive for those two long weeks out in the woods by herself with that memory. I suppose being able to talk to Dahern had helped; but that couldn’t be much against a wound like that. 
	“Do you mind if I ask you a question,” Morat said.
	“No,” Wriana answered. And it looked like she really didn’t.
	“Why do you think they didn’t take your hreapa? That would have been the most effective way of putting a stop to you, really.”
	Wriana blinked, just once. Then she said, “I suppose they thought I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to wear it again, after what they did to it.”
	When she said that, flashes came to her that we could read. I tried not to show how my stomach was lurching. I suppose she had lived with it for longer and maybe that was why she could stand there looking almost normal while Morat and I were sick to the viscera just looking at fragments of that shattering memory.
	“I’m all right,” she said, reading us. “I’ve been talking to Lilea. She’s a big help.”
	Morat nodded. “You’re best to stick to her; Theamh and I are both useless on that score, aren’t we?” I must have looked perturbed. “Don’t bother answering. I think sometimes maybe it should be her in this job and not me,” Morat said, looking over at Lilea. “I think the Order needs her gifts more than it needs mine, right now.”
	Wriana shook her head. “I’m proud I voted for you,” she said. “You’re what we need. Now take care of yourself. Good rest to you both.”
	People were beginning to drift away home to bed. It was, after all, dark night and evil was, after all, abroad. Morat watched Ethir helping Wriana down the stairs.
	“Idair’s mercy,” she said. “What are we ever going to be able to do for her?”
	The pain and anger she’d been keeping in around Wriana burst out now.
	“Lilea will find out, maybe,” I said. 
	Morat nodded. For a long time neither of us said anything.
	Dalen headed over. “I’m turning in now,” she said. “Congratulations, Theamh, you should be very proud of them both. Good rest to you.”
	Dalen went down the steps. Morat would be waiting a decent interval before following her.
	“I’m...” I thought better of it, and looked away.
	But Morat is better at reading people than that, and her eyes were still on me.
	“Go on,” she said, shortly.
	“I’m happy for you,” I said, meeting her gray stare.
	A bark of laughter broke out of her.
	“Don’t rush to judgment, Theamh,” she said. “I’m a stubborn old woman and I take a lot of persuading.”
	But she was kind of smiling, not actually on her face but sort of in the air around her, and I thought, well, Dalen’s always been a very convincing speaker.
	“You better go along to bed before anything happens to you,” Morat said, with that steel coming back to her gaze.
	“I’d better,” I said, and went off to collect Istria.
	I couldn’t extricate her for a while; she was still being congratulated by those who hadn’t drifted off to their beds in the guest house. I didn’t mind. I was glad Istria was finally being appreciated by people other than me. And I was glad Aine was getting the recognition she deserved. Even if she was a little overwhelmed by it, even after the party had broken up and we were saying goodnight to her outside the door to her room.
	“It worked, didn’t it?” she said, as if she was still not sure.
	“Yes,” I said, trying to impress it on her without sounding too didactic. “It worked. Better than we could have hoped.” Istria nodded. “You have real power, Aine.”
	She stared at me, and I was glad that she felt the weight of the responsibility.
	“You just brought more magic into the world. It’s a wonderful thing to see.” She nodded, a little vacantly. “Good night, Aine.”
	“Good night, Theamh,” she said.
	She closed the door, and I felt a little twinge of sadness. The time was coming fast when she wouldn’t need me any more at all. It was the right way for things to go. But I would still miss teaching her.
	But then I looked at Istria, shining in the light of my globe with that silver still dusting the ends of her hair, and it seemed like I wouldn’t have the patience to wait until I could get into the room and get myself undone.
	  Impatient as I was I found myself still rooted there looking at her, caught in the throb of so much love that I couldn’t move or speak. Istria moved first, taking my hand and drawing me into our room across the corridor.
	I started undoing before the door shut. And it wasn’t until we were both twined naked on the bed with the sheets twisting around us that either of us paused for speech.
	“It’s gone,” she said, her mouth following the tears she left along my breast and up the side of my neck. “Idair’s mercy. It’s gone, and I’m back, and--I’ll be able to love you better, even more than now--”
	“Are you sure that’s possible--”
	“Anything’s possible now,” she said. “I--it makes such a difference--”
	“You’re so beautiful--”
	“You and freedom and a whole heart to give--there’s nothing else to ask for--”
	My heart went out to the happiness in hers, and for a while we said nothing.
	“Ah Theamh,” she said, finally lifting her mouth off mine for a moment. “How did we use to celebrate, before the new instructions?”
	“I don’t think we celebrated much in those days, Istri.”
	And as I thought about it, and she thought about it, we realized we hadn’t. That along with the future we might not get, there was the past we hadn’t had. So that there was nothing for it, really, but to burn the night into the dawn, and begin the hopefully long and drawn-out process of making up for lost time.

XXV.
Inside Out

	“I tell you I have no head for strategy.”
	“Nobody’s disputing that, Theamh,” Morat said. “The fact remains that you’re central to this plan and you have to understand it. So look at the map and pay attention.”
	Istria looked a little angry with her, but it didn’t bother me. Morat was only snapping because she was worried about me. Even though I think she had voted for the plan in the end she was too experienced not to see the many dangers it presented. And even though Chierna had agreed to help us, she was also very dubious. My repeating that plans made no sense to me wasn’t increasing Chierna’s confidence. So I made up my mind to try to do as Morat told me. Which was perhaps the first time that had ever happened.
	Besides, we were all nervous. Under ordinary circumstances, shriias and military people have nothing to do with each other. Because under ordinary circumstances battles involve killing, and we would be bound to try to stop any battles we knew about, and since it is actually impossible to stop a battle once both armies are dead-set on having one the only result would be our being destroyed. So it didn’t feel good to be sitting in the Daughters’ war chamber.
	The only reason this conversation was even possible was that we were actually going to stop this battle; that was the whole plan. But looking at that military map Chierna was leaning over still sort of gave me the shivers.
	“I’ll start with the basics,” Chierna said. “I’m in touch now with both Filim and Kealp, who is directing the Army in the east. Your man there,” she said, nodding at Taric, “has already given us a lot of very useful information about the INDF’s movements.”
	“Mna got Owdan to join up,” Taric said, explaining.
	Ilwath’s father. “And she’s linked to him?”
	Taric nodded. 
	“So what does Owdan say?” I asked.
	Taric nodded at Chierna, who answered for him.
	“As far as Owdan’s reports go, what Hlos told you appears to be true,” she said. “All of the people he’s talked to, anyhow, joined up because they need the money, or because they believe in Barant, or both. They’re persuaded that they’re on the right side.”
	“But how many people has he talked to?” Aine asked. Which was a perfectly good question, since Owdan as we knew him was not what you’d call the life of the party.
	“Quite a few, it seems,” Chierna said.
	“He takes it seriously,” Taric said.
	In that one sentence I could suddenly start to see, dimly, the outline of a whole different story that was playing out back in the Vicinity among the ordinary people. A different battle with different armies--this one being directed by Mna, with Taric as one of her Aivs and Owdan as a soldier. And Owdan was making the effort he would never have made on his own account.
	“Owdan tells us that so far the army has been marching up the road to Mypril. Now there’s no guarantee they’ll keep doing that, but at least it gives us some idea of what they might be planning. Also, from my own contacts I’ve found out a bit about this Alepha woman who’s in charge.” Chierna sat back for a moment in her chair to expatiate.
	“She’s from Kengda, and until her appointment she was high up in the Swamp Raiders. The Swamp Raiders train for a very specific kind of terrain. Most of Kengda’s flat, and boggy. Where it’s not boggy, it’s cleared and drained farmland. Amst has just about no terrain that fits any of those conditions. By all accounts Alepha is a smart woman, but her tactics will be completely unsuited to this place. That’s her first problem. Her second problem is that the rank and file are overwhelmingly drawn from Naucht, Kengda and the Vicinity. There’s been much made by Barant’s bought repeaters of the fact that this army represents the whole country, but in reality there’s nothing more than a token presence from Amst, Dairc or Jipran. Naucht breeds sailors, not foot soldiers; the Kengdan recruits, if they have any experience at all, will have it through the Swamp Raiders. So she’s going to want to avoid trying to fight in heavy tree cover or on mountains. If we were going to do this war for real, of course, we wouldn’t let her.”
	She trailed off, looking at Morat a little darkly, and then got up to lean over the map again.
	“If we offer them the chance to fight on open ground,” Chierna said, “they’ll take it. Alepha would be insane not to. That answers your purposes, since you want everyone to have a clear view. Now the only piece of ground big enough and open enough to give her the kind of battle she wants is here.” She pointed to an irregularly shaped patch on the map between the Ubh and the Tsraid. “Folim Dha Bannai. The plain between the two rivers. That’s where we’ll do this.”
	I nodded, trying to look intelligent.
	“This is our idea,” Chierna said. “I expect you all to have opinions, of course.”
	“Of course,” Morat said dryly.
	Chierna began, moving her gaze from one of us to the other.
	“You say it’s absolutely essential that Alepha witness this thing you have planned. That means we have to have some measure of control over the situation. There’s only one thing we can think of that would give us that kind of control.”
	“And what is that?” Morat prompted.
	Chierna’s face made it clear she didn’t like even saying the words. “Conditional surrender.”
	Morat returned her gaze. “Of us.”
	She nodded. “We let it be known that in return for a truce between the Army and Volunteers and the INDF, we are ready and able to turn over you, Theamh, and the rest of the Council refugees. We’ll put together a rationale that makes that decision plausible. However, we impose the condition that Alepha must be present at the meeting, and we specify that it take place on Folim Dha Bannai.”
	“But if we require her to be there--won’t she suspect a trap?” Aine said.
	Chierna nodded. “Of course. They’ll impose their own conditions, and one of them will certainly be that Alepha be allowed to bring a large detachment of her own troops for protection. That’s exactly what you want--a big crowd to witness the haling out.”
	“You think she’ll agree,” Dalen said.
	“I think so. One, because they can’t pass up a chance like this, and two, because it gives her the chance to do what she wants--fight it out on open ground.”
	Morat nodded. “And then what, once they agree?”
	“We take a small force--say, about two hundred--and march all of you City folk down to Folim Dha Bannai. Alepha shows up with her muscle. We’ll have four Amstian companies in the tree cover on either side of the plain--two along the Tsraid banks and two along the Ubh.” She spread pebbles from either hand along the rivers to represent them, having dropped a handful in the middle to represent us and Alepha’s force. “You’ll be fitted with false mittens--they’ll look like the real thing, but you’ll be able to break them at will. We march you out as if we’re going to turn you over. When they’re in position, you announce your intentions, and then circle up and do whatever it is you need to do. Our smaller force will surround you. Alepha’s people will probably try to get through your guard to you. If they look like succeeding, the Army will come down from the hills and surround Alepha’s forces. That should distract them long enough to allow you to do your business.” Morat nodded. “All the companies who have volunteered for this have committed to shriia’s rules. To tell you the truth, I think they did it because they have so little respect for this new army. Most of the Amstian veterans and the Volunteers feel that even without being able to kill at will they’ll have no problem trouncing this bunch.”
	Morat, who like the rest of us had been listening in silence, nodded. “It sounds very well thought out, Chierna. If you think it’s the best way, then we trust you.”
	Chierna looked very surprised; she had seen enough of Morat to expect more contention. Instead, she was forced to raise all the objections herself. “What I don’t see is how you can be sure she’ll be looking at the right moment.”
	Morat shook her head. “A haling is like any other terrible trauma,” she said. “There’s something about it--people can’t look away. Once we get her out, we don’t need to worry about Alepha paying attention.” She leaned forward. “All we need from you is the guarantee that we’ll be allowed to take her out in relative peace and quiet. It’s very, very important that we be able to concentrate.”
	Even Chierna was scared of Morat, evidently. “Of course, shriia. We can guarantee nothing, you understand. But the two hundred who will be your personal guard have been handpicked from among the most experienced soldiers in the Volunteers and the Army. You’ll have the chance to scour each of them before you go. What precautions we can take, we’ll take.” Morat nodded. Chierna looked at me.
	“You see the diagram,” she said.
	I looked down at the space between these two rivers. Groups of different-colored pebbles were arranged in concentric circles around a single piece of quartz at the center.
	“This,” Chierna said, pointing to the outer circle, “is the reserve guard. This circle inside it is Alepha and the INDF. The one inside that is your personal guard. Inside that is the Council. And here in the middle...is you.” She shot me a keen, challenging glance. “You’re the bull’s-eye.”
	“So,” I said. “That’s the safest place, isn’t it?”
	Chierna and Istria exchanged glances.
	“You’re right,” Istria finally said. “You have no head for strategy.”
	“But with all those people around me--”
	Chierna shook her head. “Everyone on that field will be looking for a shot at you; and you’ll be visible from most vantage points. You won’t be in hreapa, so you’ll be an obvious target. This is what I want you to understand. We’re all going to be, to some extent, trapped. But you, especially, are a sitting duck.”
	 “Well,” I said. “I knew that going into this.”
	“No matter what we do it will be very dangerous,” Chierna added, when she was satisfied that was all I would say. “If they keep on fighting after you’re brought out, we may not be able to protect you for long. If I were you, I would reconsider.”
	“But you’re not us,” Morat said. “You’ve never seen anyone haled out?” 
	“No.”
	“So there’s no way of explaining it to you. But if we can just get her out in safety, I don’t think we need be too worried about what happens after.”
	“Unless,” Dalen objected, “Hlos was lying, and Alepha knows that Barant is dark and is all right with that.”
	Chierna shook her head. “Hlos isn’t lying to you. Have no worries about that.”
	“And you say this why?” Morat said, on the alert now.
	Figuring I suppose that she wouldn’t be able to hide it anyhow, Chierna answered her. “Myself and one or two of the Daughters went to have a chat with Hlos yesterday,” she said. “We explained that if it turned out she had given you false information, so that Theamh lost five years for nothing, we would see to it she got a beating that took at least five years off her life.” 
	As Chierna clearly expected, Morat was angry. “That was completely inappropriate, Chierna.”
	“According to your rules,” Chierna said. “But we did it without your knowledge, and we haven’t so far had to lay a hand on her, so no harm.”
	“And suppose she turns out to have lied,” Morat said, challenging.
	“Some business is our business,” Chierna answered, stony.
	She and Morat had a brief, unspoken, and inconclusive face-off.
	“She’s telling the truth,” Chierna finally insisted. “It’s not in her to bluff out a threat like that.”
	I had the feeling Morat agreed with her, but she still wasn’t happy.
	“Let’s hope she is,” she finally said.
	There was a tense silence, and Chierna finally said, “So you assent to the plan.”
	Morat, Dalen, Lilea, Eorna, Eunem, Cualha, Aine, Istria and me. We were all sitting around that table and that map, all looking at those rings of stone, all being asked to run this risk. And all accepting it.
	“That’s it then,” said Chierna. “Pack up what you need. We need to be ready to move as soon as the pact is sealed. We’ll send someone out to parley with Alepha.”
	We got up from the chairs and left the room gratefully. Once we got outside I saw that Morat was clogging the hallway in conference with Lilea, Dalen and Cualha.
	“...unconscionable to let them do that,” Morat said.
	Dalen interposed. “We’ll talk to Cera, we’ll let her know. Don’t worry.”
	“They can handle it,” Lilea agreed. “It’s their city, and they’ve been managing things like that since the surrender. You don’t have to take on all the world’s responsibility.”
	Morat sighed, and shot Lilea an aggrieved glance. Lilea just smiled.
	“What’s mine by right will be enough, won’t it,” she said ruefully.
	“That’s right.” Lilea nodded.
	As Morat was still looking upset, Istria ventured in.
	“Amst is a rough place,” she said. “The law never reached as far here. Disputes are often settled with a blow and not with a court order. What Chierna did is beyond the boundaries of the law but it’s not outside the orbit of common practice.”
	Morat shook her head.
	“It doesn’t mean she’s weak or ripe for darkness. Things are just different up here.”
	“I’ll take your word for it,” Morat finally said.
	“Do that,” Dalen answered. “Come on, we need to get ready.”

	Lilea pushed through the tent flap and dropped gratefully onto a cushion. “Idair’s hair I’m glad to be done walking.” She raised her hands up and stared hard at the metal fastenings on the mittens. The latch clicked and she began taking her hands out of them. “Ahhhhh. That feels better.” She looked around at the rest of us as she rubbed her sore hands. “You really wore those things for all that time out in Mypril, Theamh?”
	I nodded. “Aine too.”
	Lilea looked at Aine. “I’m sorry. It must have hurt.”
	“My hands are smaller, so it wasn’t so hard on me,” Aine said. 
	She was curled up on one of the cushions and making efforts at sleep, but even after a day’s march she was too on edge, and her eyes were still wide open and bright. I was lying with my head in Istria’s lap, having stopped worrying about what the rest of them thought. Anyhow Morat and Dalen were sitting next to each other, even if they weren’t touching, and undoing at the same time.
	I didn’t have to undo because I was being marched out of hreapa. I would have to be undone for the haling and so I’d have to go into battle out of hreapa anyhow; we couldn’t afford to wait until after sundown. If their spies saw me in hreapa one day and out of it the next they might get suspicious; and we were assuming that we were being watched, if not by the army then by Barant and the minions. 
	Lilea, Eunem, Eorna and Cualha began undoing, each on her own time, the murmurs overlapping in the close air of the tent. The parley had been successful; Alepha had agreed to the terms. She had also insisted on bringing two divisions with her. Owdan wasn’t sure how many soldiers she had all told; he knew there were twenty-one divisions and that his division had seven hundred people in it, but he couldn’t say the same for sure of the others. To me, it sounded like a pretty big army, and a pretty big detachment for Alepha to take along with her. Kealp hadn’t seemed too worried. I suppose the Amstian Army deserved to be confident, but I wondered if they might not be underestimating.
	Lilea rolled up her hreapa and put it under her head as she lay down. “You’ve been through the fire right enough,” she said. “I hope Morat’s planning to give you a vacation, once this is over.”
	“Don’t give her ideas, Lilea,” Morat called back.
	Lilea smiled, but her eyes were back on me, and serious. “I should let you know what to expect.”
	I swallowed, and sat up. Istria took my hand.
	“It only hurts when they’re taking you out,” Lilea said. “After that you won’t feel a thing--I mean that literally. You will have no idea what’s happening to your body and you won’t be experiencing anything through it. It’s--” She moved her hands in a futile gesture. “You’ll know what’s going on, but not through any of the usual ways. And when they put you back in--you may not want to go, at first.”
	“I’m pretty sure I will, Lilea,” I said.
	She shook her head. “You say that now, but...” Her eyes detached themselves, looking inward. “We don’t know what happens after. But I think...that being haled out gives you a taste of it. Partial and incomplete. But it’s still a...way of being...” Her eyes came back to our world. “It’s different from being in the here and now, and I’m not at all sure I can describe it to you. But it’s something you may not want to give up right away.”
	Istria took a firmer grip on my hand.
	“I’ll come back,” I said.
	“You better,” Istria answered.
	Lilea turned that gentle yet penetrating gaze on Istria.
	“You did a good job with Wriana,” she said.
	Istria looked down. “I was the only one there.”
	“Don’t make little of it,” Lilea said. “What you did for her made my job a lot easier.” Istria shrugged. “I know Morat will say you’d have been wasted on Comings and Goings. But it wouldn’t have been so bad a choice for you.”
	Istria was startled to hear it. Nobody would ever have suggested, in the old days, that Istria go into that branch; she was too prickly, too difficult, too closed off. 
	“So she would have been,” Morat called.
	“Come on,” Lilea said. “Didn’t Idair tell Theamh we should have some respect?”
	“No, I believe that was the rainmakers,” Cualha corrected.
	“Still,” Lilea said.
	She was half laughing, and Morat answered in the same spirit. “And indeed you have--some respect.”
	“Seriously now,” Eunem said. 
	“Seriously,” Morat answered, “you’re right, of course. We take you all for granted, but we shouldn’t. Idair knows it’s hard work and takes a talent as rare in its own way as Istria’s, or Aine’s.”
	“Or Theamh’s,” Aine piped up.
	“Or what about mine?” said Dalen, mock-injured.
	Morat suddenly flushed for no reason, so that Cualha and Lilea burst out laughing.
	“What are you laughing at?” Morat demanded.
	“Don’t ask me a direct question,” said Cualha.
	“No, honestly, Morat,” Lilea said, unable to stop herself from finding this funny even though Morat was getting angry. “Whatever rare talents Dalen may have--”
	Morat was fuming so hard she couldn’t get the retort out. Dalen, who seemed to be taking this much more in stride, simply turned to Istria.
	“Have you had to take a lot of this tarbhfnaa?” she said.
	“We’ve had to take a lot worse,” Istria said.
	Lilea stopped laughing. Morat was distracted by what she read off Istria, and stopped being angry.
	“Poor Kelah,” Eorna said. “She felt badly about it after, Istria, I’m sure she did. We were very hard on her for it. I wish now we hadn’t been.”
	Kealp stuck his head into the tent. “Excuse me. Can you keep it down? We are supposed to be delivering you to certain death, and if you all are having a party in here it may start the spies thinking.”
	Morat nodded. “Of course, Kealp.”
	“Good rest to you,” he said. “It’ll be a long day tomorrow.”
	He disappeared. Lilea, apparently, was reading something off me.
	“He intentionally deceived me,” I said, after she’d looked at me for a while. “He’s on our side right enough, but I don’t like being duped.”
	“Nobody does,” Lilea answered.
	“Now come on,” Cualha cried as Kealp’s head reappeared. “We’ve kept it down-”
	He didn’t bother responding. “They’re coming upon us.”
	“What?” Morat shouted, leaping to her feet. “Now? Why?”
	“Never trust a bog woman,” Kealp snapped. “Taric just heard from Owdan. That entire army is coming this way. They’ve broken the agreement. They’re going to try to take us by surprise and capture or kill us all.”
	“Is Alepha with them?” Morat demanded.
	“She’d bloody well have to be,” Kealp said.
	“How long before they get here?” Morat asked.
	“We figure we have half an hour’s warning.”
	“All right,” she said, decisively. “You show me where you expect them to approach from and then you and your men clear off.”
	“Shriia--”
	“Do it!” Morat shouted. “We’re not going to have this turn into a pitched battle. I want no double-dealing and no tarbhfnaa from you. Get the army out of here, far enough away that they can’t be found and can’t engage. We’ll meet them alone.” Kealp hesitated. “NOW!”
	“All right, shriia.” He passed the order along in his mind, evidently, because outside the tent we heard the sound of tents pulling up and people getting underway. Morat followed Kealp out.
	“Come on,” Dalen said, grabbing her hreapa. “Get as done up as you can, and come with me.”
	The others slung their hreapas around their bodies and pinned them on as best they could. We tumbled out into the brisk night air, running over to where Morat was waving to us from the top of a little hillock.
	“Best place for it,” she said. “Theamh, you stand right here. Make the circle.”
	It was unbelievable to me how fast things were changing. By the time we got to the hill Morat was standing on, the Amstians who had come with us had pulled up stakes and were gone from the plain, disappearing into the forests that ran along the banks of the Tsraid. The only sign they had ever been there was our tent, which we had left standing. The Amstian Army would trickle upriver back to the north. While we would be left alone on this field of grass and rock, waiting for the new army to surprise us.
	“Shriia!” Taric had detached himself from the others, apparently. “I’m staying with you.” Morat was about to argue, until he said, “I’m the one linked to Mna and Owdan; you won’t know what’s happening if I go.”
	Morat nodded. “All right. You stand by inside the circle.” She turned around; the others had arranged themselves in a ring around me, Morat and Taric. “There you are then. We’ll wait to start until we can hear them.”
	Because once we could hear them, they would be able to hear us. And so we stood out under that black sky between those ranks of trees, waiting to find out what an army of fourteen thousand sounded like.
	“They’re splitting up,” Taric called. “Half the companies are following the Tsraid bed and the other half the Ubh.” He stopped a moment. “They’re making a kind of a V, he says. With his company in the middle.”
	“Pincers,” Morat said. “Excellent.”
	Tactically, it made sense. By the time we saw the point of that V coming north toward us the ends would already be in position in the trees. They would run together to close off our retreat, and then the two halves of the V would simply march toward each other and crush us between them. But this wasn’t that kind of battle. Morat was pleased because it meant more of them would be likely to have a front-row seat. I was too nervous to be pleased about anything.
	<You all right, chara?>
	I gulped. <I’m afraid of what I’ll look like, Istri.>
	She shook her head, looking at me from her position inside the circle. <I’m not. I’ve seen you already. I know you’re beautiful.>
	Dalen held up a hand. Listen. You hear them.
	As always, it was a good five minutes before my ears registered anything other than the sound of the wind in the trees. 
	 That kind of...rumbling sound...
	Dalen shook her head sadly.
	The pity of it, she said. No craft at all.
	It didn’t seem as if they had any. But an army that size is hard to move quietly. And the ones running up past us among the trees must have been more quiet than the ones who were marching toward us now from beyond the bottom of that long narrow plain, vaguely and dimly visible as a black clot of indistinct and multitudinous dark shapes.
	I turned my eyes away from them to the others. Who, following Morat’s lead, had all pulled fire into their hands. Aine stood between Lilea and Dalen, her face resolute even if her gut was trembling. Cualha, Eorna, Eunem, and the three of them to make the circle and say the words; Morat would be actually pulling me out. They were all, now, the only bright things in the cave of this Amstian night, with Taric and Istria standing inside the circle. Taric was looking out at the army; Istria was looking back at me.
	You ready, Theamh? from Morat.
	As close as I’ll get, I said.
	Aine’s eyes caught me. <Good luck, dhiaoc.>
	<Thanks, Aine.>
	“Theamh ni hUlnach!” Morat shouted, her voice loud enough to carry a long way on that breeze. “You have been called upon to show yourself. Do you do this willingly?”
	“I do,” I shouted back, hoping it would be heard by that approaching horde.
	“Then we begin.”
	Fire flashed from one to the other to close the ring as they began raising the song. 
	It’s a very intricate spell and it has to be unbroken. Individual people can drop out and return as long as someone is always singing the right words at the right time. With six it would be safer than it had been for Daire. But then that wasn’t saying much.
	I closed my eyes. I was interested to see where I would gather. I assumed it would be the heart; but it seemed like a long time before my spirit reluctantly abandoned my head and my hands. It was even longer before it left the other heart, and settled finally around the one beating too fast in my chest.
	Morat couldn’t let me know what she was doing; I wasn’t in my mind to hear her. I couldn’t hear anything, in fact. All I could feel was the shuddering of my heart, beat after beat, thick and hot and terribly frightened.
	And then Morat started drawing me out.
	I knew this only because of the pain. It would be hard to say exactly where I felt it; it wasn’t like the pain of touching a dark user, or any kind of pain that comes through the body. But all the same it was agony. The pain of separation, of loss, of being dragged resistant from the thing you most want to cling to. The pain felt by torn-up roots. 
	I wasn’t sure I could stand it. But I hadn’t much choice. I wouldn’t have known how or in what way to resist. We leave our bodies as specters to go to the ether, but that’s a much different feeling. Even as projections we hold our shapes and we experience things almost as if our bodies were there with us. This was completely different. I could tell you I saw nothing and you would nod as if you knew, but if I tell you that I didn’t see even blackness, or whiteness, but actually nothing, would you know what I meant? Or if I tell you there was neither sound nor silence? Or if I say that when the pain left me finally it was replaced with something you might call peace or you might call joy or you might call terror, if only you had someplace to put the feeling, will that mean a damn thing to you? Because I couldn’t blame you if it doesn’t. It doesn’t mean a thing to me now, seeing these words on the page, and yet I know and the fifteen other crumpled up pieces of paper will tell you that this is as close as I am able to come to describing it.
	I can’t truly say I felt anything. I had nothing to feel with. But I knew I was out. And I knew in some way I can’t describe that they were all there. All bending their minds furiously on keeping the song up and the circle tight. Except for one mind that had to be Istria’s, released from the burden of keeping me trapped and going out to me intense like the stabbing light of a cold star, desire fear awe all of it pressed together into that sharp bright thing, the love for me released fused with the desire to bring me back to that body. Reaching me, even now, with such power I felt I would shudder if I could, as if even now that I was no longer in body she could still go straight to whatever I had for a heart.
	Or maybe it was my heart. Because there it was, a tremor, then another, then the quick hard pulse of the raw red muscle I was feeling truly, maybe, for the first time.
	Theamh. Theamh. Say you hear me.
	I read you, anyhow.
	And I must be coming back, a little, because in a little while I could hear Istria. 
	<Chara?>
	I could hear the gasp as I spread back to the other heart too now. <I’m here, Istri, I’m on the way back.>
	<Thank Idair. Hurry if you can.>
	 I could feel my hands. When I thought it was safe, I opened my eyes.
	For a moment it was nothing more than a confused carnival of light and dark, spark and flame cartwheeling before me. Then it settled out. The ring was unbroken, the flame still making the circle. The bright thing ahead of me was Morat’s hand, and the less bright thing under that was her face. And a little behind and to one side, Istria.
	“I’m back,” I said, my voice sounding strange to me. There was a strange taste in my mouth and my head felt light.
	Morat nodded. “It’s done now, Theamh. You’ll be all right.”
	Istria was already on her way over. I turned toward her, and before she quite reached me I felt my legs give.
	“You’re all right,” was the next thing I remembered. Istria’s hand was stroking my hair and my head was in her lap. “You’re all right, you’re all right.”
	I looked up at her face. It was drawn, and marked with recent tears.
	“How did I look?” I croaked.
	Istria had to cry a minute before she could answer.
	“You were beautiful,” she said. “Only so everyone could see it, not just me.”
	“All right!” I heard Morat’s voice ringing out in the near distance. “We’re ready to parley. Who on your side feels like talking?”
	“I hurt,” I said, as I became aware of a sharp pain under my collarbone.
	“They got one through to you,” Istria said, and I realized she meant I’d been wounded. “Before you were lifted up. It’s all right, we got the antidote into you.”
	Lilea, I finally realized, was crouched near me, holding a bloodstained rag and a bottle of uisce. Istria had already put down the cup full of brackish water and pounded retweed, yellowtooth stems, fielhu, and lacegrass. An arrow with a stone head was lying on the grass, its black tip crusted with ebrane and my blood.
	“Thanks,” I said, fingering the tear in my shift and the closed wound. “Sonnia was right--I don’t know what a dead rat tastes like, but it can’t be worse than this.”
	Istria laughed, although it sounded a little as if she were crying. Lilea put down the rag and held out the uisce.
	“Have a little more, Theamh, it can’t hurt.”
	I drank it obediently enough. I heard Aine’s excited feet hurrying over.
	“Dhiaoc! Are you all right?”
	“You remember I keep saying that’s too ambiguous a term,” I said.
	“But you’re not dying?”
	“No,” I said, because she was so anxious and so earnest I didn’t want to tease her. “I don’t think I’m dying.”
	“Damn right you’re not,” Lilea said. “Let her sit up, Istri, I think she can take it.”
	I sat up. Nothing very bad happened to me. Now I could see the army massed in a circle around our hillock, keeping a distance of many yards on all sides. And Morat standing in that cleared distance, looking at a woman in chain mail who was slowly drawing her sword out of its scabbard.
	Morat didn’t seem at all perturbed. Perhaps because Taric was standing there with his angry stare resting heavy on this other woman. Or perhaps because what happened next was that the other woman dropped the sword naked onto the grass between them.
	“I am Alepha ni hIlenium. I speak for the men and women I lead.” She met Morat’s gaze, not exactly with pride, but resolute. 
	“Na hOglaighi na hIdeire foghliann an linn,” she said, loud enough to be heard.
	She knelt down before Morat with her hands behind her back. Around us I heard a confused clank and clatter as the army slowly lumbered to its collective knees. 
	“You recognize the light,” Morat said, wanting to have it confirmed.
	“We do,” Alepha said, her head still bowed.
	“And you bind yourself to its service.”
	Alepha laughed, bitterly.
	“We have all already sworn to serve truth and the right,” she said. 
	“And you know where it lives now.”
	“We do.”
	“Stand then,” said Morat.
	Alepha got up. The army remained as it was.
	“Pitch camp,” Morat said. “Alepha, I want to see you and your senior officers in our tent immediately. Istria, get in touch with Chierna and tell her what’s happened.”
	Istria looked away from me, as if she really didn’t want to, and seemed to be focusing with difficulty on what Morat was saying.
	“What...what exactly has happened, dhiaoc?”
	Her voice was roughened, hollowed out with a lot of pain and trouble that were gone from her now maybe but not quite done with her.
	Morat seemed to understand why, and didn’t snap at her with the same brusqueness she was using with Alepha.
	“The Ideiren National Defense Force has surrendered to nine unarmed women and one off-duty Volunteer,” Morat said, without a trace of the smile she was feeling.
	“Oh man,” said Eorna, as if she hadn’t quite absorbed this information until now. “Spirits above and below.” She laughed, and both of her fists shot into the air in triumph. “Woooohoo! Idair RULES!”
	I was swept along in the general burst of laughter, until I found that laughing made my wound hurt. Istria put her arms around me and let me lean against her as I coughed myself still.
	“Chara,” Istria said. “Let’s get you set down for the night, you need rest.”
	<So I came out all right?> I said, leaning on her as she walked me over to the tent Morat was heading to. 
	<Chara, you should have seen it,> Istria said, as Aine trotted along solicitously behind us. <Of course you couldn’t have. But...>
	“You were beautiful, diaoc,” Aine put in, as she helped Istria set me out on the cushions. We were back in that same tent now, but everything was different. Morat was in a corner sitting with Alepha, and the others clustered around me as if I were in one of those dying rooms.
	“You were,” Lilea said. “A kind of blue-white, very bright, they were all just standing there with their mouths hanging open. Ah, it’s stupid--there’s no way to tell you what you really looked like. But you made an impression.”
	“I’ll say,” said Cualha.
	<I always knew you were beautiful,> Istria said, holding my hand. <From the inside out.>
	<Thank you, Istri.>
	<For what?>
	<For bringing me back.>
	<It was Lilea took care of curing you.>
	<I don’t mean that,> I said. <I mean...> My hand tightened on hers. <You kept me close to home. I felt you there. I knew I wasn’t ready to leave you.>
	I felt a drop of something warm on my face, and realized it was from her tears.
	<Rest now,> was all she said.
	I turned my head to look over at Aine.
	“Your first haling-out,” I said. “And you were there at Daire’s too, even without your fire. Lots of shriias go their whole lives without ever doing one. It’s good experience for you.”
	She nodded, but I felt like she wanted to cry.
	“How long does it wipe you out for?” I said to Lilea.
	“You should be all right in a day or two,” Lilea said. “Assuming there’s nothing more wrong with your wound.”
	“All right then.” I was dead tired, and having trouble keeping my eyes open. “Thank you...all...for keeping me together.”
	“Of course,” said Cualha, putting a hand on my arm. “We’re glad it worked.”
	I wriggled up so that my head was back in Istria’s lap. Nobody gave me any grief about it. And by the time I had drifted off to sleep I’d forgotten they were there, safe as I was, glad to be back inside. Safe in her hands. Safe home.

	Getting up before dawn seems crueler at some times than others. By the time the next morning rolled around the euphoria that must have been sustaining me through the previous night had worn off, and all I was left with was a feeling that I had spent part of the night dead, and a wish that I could sleep for another twelve hours.
	“Man,” I said, turning to Aine. “I’m glad I won’t have to do that twice.”
	“Me too, dhiaoc.”
	“What did I tell you about using my name, Aine.”
	“Theamh, then,” she said, the wind lifting her hair off her serious face. “Just please never put yourself through that again, dhiaoc.”
	I gave up. Istria, who had been watching from a distance, came forward now.
	“You feeling any better?”
	“Well, being in hreapa makes me feel better in some ways, and worse in others,” I said.
	“At least the INDF has coughed up a good breakfast,” Istria said. “Come on and have some. They’re all feeling very guilty, and they’re trying to make it up to us.”
	It was just as well they felt guilty, because they were one big army. The camp filled the entire plain and spilled over into the woods. When we got to the tent Morat and Alepha were still parleying over their griddle cakes, Kealp and Filim now talking with her.
	“Filim!” I said. “I didn’t know you were so far west.”
	“Nobody was meant to,” she said. “You wouldn’t know, would you, that we had five companies watching that whole rigmarole from the far bank of the Ubh. In case.”
	“Did Kealp know that?” I demanded.
	“Of course Kealp knew that,” Filim said, although Kealp had looked as if he were going to temporize. “You’d never have shifted him otherwise.”
	“I understand now,” Morat said.
	“About what?” I asked.
	“About why you don’t like Kealp.”
	“Oh come on now, Aiv,” said Filim, reasonably. “No harm done, was there?”
	Morat shook her head. I knew she was thinking that we needed to get ourselves extricated from this. Even though the armies were now all on our side, we couldn’t allow ourselves to work with them any longer. They felt they were doing us a favor by keeping us in the dark, and perhaps they were; but all the same, it meant we couldn’t trust them.
	“Get your breakfast and then come on over here,” Morat said. “We’re making plans, and I don’t want you to miss a single exciting moment of it.”
	With Morat’s sardonic stare still on me, I went over to the cooksite where, as it turned out, Owdan was pouring batter from a huge jug onto a hot griddle.
	“Shriia!” he said, sounding as close to glad to see me as a man that gruff could be. “Are you well now?”
	“More well than I was,” I said. “What, is that icartha?”
	“Is that what you’d like? We’ve got strawberries too.”
	“No thanks,” I said, remembering those poisoned fields of the north. “The icartha will be fine.”
	Owdan scooped a ladle full of round purple berries out of a bowl and poured them over a stack of cakes. I could see the butter melting underneath them. This was one well-provisioned army.
	“They treat you right, eh, Owdan?” I said, as he handed me the plate.
	“Oh, this is the leaders’ tent,” he said. “The rest of us don’t eat like this.”
	“So how’s Ilwath?” I said, moving back so Aine could get her plateful.
	“Never better,” he said. “She split with Gilish, though.”
	“I’m sorry to hear it; I liked her.”
	“I did too, shriia,” said Owdan, handing Aine her plate. 
	<Aine, they’ve got fruit; do you want any?>
	She shook her head. <I only really like blackberries and they’re not in season.>
	Poor thing--and me trotting out all that icartha jam last winter. I must not have been reading her very well yet then.
	“No, it wasn’t Ilwath’s idea, I’m afraid,” Owdan said. “Gilish fell for some lad down in the town who was--well--” He leaned over and sent it low. With us. You know.
	In the resistance. “Poor Ilwath,” I said.
	“Don’t worry about her,” Owdan went on. “She and Mna are getting on like a shri fire.”
	Aine almost dropped her plate. “Mna?” she repeated, not bothering to hide her surprise.
	“Oh--I don’t mean that way,” said Owdan quickly. “No, they’re just--they’ve made friends. Ilwath helps with the twins, and such. Takes her mind off it all. She seems--” He broke off, handing Istria her plate to cover the sudden silence. “She seems happy.”
	“I’m glad, Owdan,” I said.
	Istria stood next to me. <Who’s Ilwath?>
	<It’s a long story...> 
	“Hey Theamh!” shouted Cualha. “You’re holding up the line!”
	“Yeah, like nobody’s ever had to hustle you along, Harani.”
	“Damn!” Cualha’s face wore an expression of disappointment. “Every time I think I’m going to get you and every time you nail me.”
	“Well, don’t mess with the best, that’s all,” I said, moving off to Morat’s table as Harani’s laugh followed me from Cualha’s throat.
	And there we were, finally, all sitting around the table together, eating real food and feeling as if maybe it wouldn’t be too long before things got sorted out.
	“Here it is then,” said Morat. “Barant has evidently been hedging her bets.”
	“Meaning what?” Istria said.
	“Meaning she’s got the Kengdan Swamp Raiders under thrall.”
	“You’re kidding me,” I said.
	Alepha shook her head. “Soon after the Order split I noticed some weird fnaa--oh, sorry, shriia--”
	“Don’t mind me,” I answered, while Lilea tried not to laugh.
	“Anyhow, I noticed there were very odd things going on with the women and men. I’d heard the stories about Cacht, of course,” she said, with a nod at me, “and so it occurred to me after a while, maybe they were thralled. So of course what did I do,” she said, “but travel to the City and contact Barant, thinking she would want to investigate.”
	“Oh, I can see it now,” Istria groaned, leaning her head heavily on one hand.
	Morat nodded. “So Barant told her that yes, they were thralled, but thralled to me,” Morat said. “And that as they weren’t doing anything particularly aggressive yet it didn’t pay to go after them right away, what with the north being in so much more turmoil. But of course Alepha isn’t going to want to go back to an army that’s thralled, so Barant made her the offer of heading up the new army. And so Alepha got all the Raiders who hadn’t been thralled or corrupted to form the core of the INDF.”
	“Morat,” I said, “I don’t mean to balk at hard service, but I have had about enough of those arani.”
	Morat shook her head. “We can’t do it that way anyhow, Theamh. The Swamp Raiders aren’t organized by company--they’re in small bands held together by a loose central leadership. It sounds as if Barant has been using ordinary arani--small ones, thralling one band each, and the bands are only what, twenty or thirty. It would take an army of shriias to cleanse them all. Kengda’s a big place and it’s got itself a big army.”
	“Well so what do we do?” Aine asked.
	“Alepha, Filim and Kealp are all for fighting it out,” Morat said. “They do have the numbers advantage. I have a different idea.”
	“Which is?” Istria prompted.
	“We go right to the source,” Morat said.
	Lilea stopped chewing, reading already I suppose what we were waiting to hear.
	“We go down to the City and we take her out.”
	Morat looked back at us to see our reaction.
	“What do you mean, ‘we’?” asked Istria.
	“What do you mean, ‘take her out’?” Aine asked, at almost exactly the same time.
	“I mean,” Morat said, “that a bunch of us get ourselves into the City and capture Barant. We block her, we wrap her, we take her out of the picture. The whole system she’s been trying to put in place is already falling apart. With her gone it’ll crumble.”
	“It’s a good idea,” I said.
	I nodded. 
	“Except for the ‘we’ part,” Lilea added. “You can’t go, Morat.”
	“Why not?” Morat shot back.
	“You’re too important. Leaving aside the fact that we need you to stay alive--if you leave Amranth word will get around, and they’ll be after you. If you stay, that will distract Barant enough we might have some chance of getting through.”
	“See,” I said, pointing at her with a fork, “now you’re doing this ‘we’ business.”
	“Which is ridiculous,” Dalen said. “Lilea’s right, Morat, you can’t go; and you know well you can’t either, Lilea.”
	Lilea, for some reason, accepted this. “Well, who does go, then?”
	“I take it,” Dalen said, as she looked around at us, “that you are all implicitly volunteering?”
	There was a swift round of nodding from all the shriias and Istria.
	“In that case,” Dalen said. “Theamh, because she’s City and she knows the place. Aine, because she’s got aftersight, which may well come in handy. Istria, because I know damn well that if Theamh goes she’ll go anyhow whether we bid her to or not. Taric, because foresight may help and because whither you all go there goes he and it’s not worth the effort trying to stop him. Eorna, because they’ll need shields and Theamh can’t do them. Eunem, in case people get wounded and so there’s a fourth shriia to help with the odds when you find Barant.” She looked around at the others. “Cualha, you and I are going after Ygren as soon as we get the time; my guess is she hasn’t gone far from the city, she wouldn’t trust herself traveling with the armies about. Lilea and Morat will hold court up in Amranth. We’ve got the four corrupt shriias from Mypril being brought in any day now and even after that there’ll be plenty to occupy our time.”
	“Well,” said Morat. “You seem to have disposed of everyone very effectively.”
	“Does anyone object?” Dalen returned, matching her challenge.
	“Not to your disposition,” Eunem said. “I just wonder can we get to her.”
	Morat turned to Cualha. “Harani, what’s the situation down there?”
	Cualha blinked and in a moment Harani was there. “Good news and bad news,” she said. “The good news is, Pridhe found Nywyf; the bad news is, Ybrial found them.”
	“Damn,” Lilea said. Pridhe had been apprenticed to Lilea at around the same time I was apprenticed to Morat; she and Nywyf were both in Comings and Goings. They had both fled after the battle; but apparently they hadn’t fled far enough.
	“Tell Ybrial if you see her that she better not let me find her,” Dalen snapped.
	“I never see Ybrial,” Cualha answered with a bitter laugh. “She’s invisible as the night air and just as pernicious. You trained that bitch too well.”
	Ybrial was in Tracking, and had been Dalen’s apprentice. She had joined the Council recently, and so couldn’t be held responsible for what had happened with Istria; and maybe she hadn’t been dark then. But that didn’t mitigate the bitterness for Dalen.
	“And so are they gone?” Lilea asked.
	Cualha’s head shook. “They’re blocked and locked up along with the decent half of the Seated Leaders. Barant’s gearing up for another show trial. I don’t know why, seeing as they all seem to work out so badly for her; but maybe she figures third time is the charm.”
	“No word from Fand, I suppose?” Morat went on.
	“No. But I wouldn’t expect it. If she’s alive, she’s probably in Jipran. That’s where I’d be, if I were her. You know who has turned up in town,” she went on. “Ygren.”
	“What?” It was Cualha talking now. Literally, of course, it had always been her talking, but she had taken control. “I don’t believe it. Morat--can I go with them? Please?”
	Morat shook her head. “You’ll be more useful here.”
	Cualha sighed. “All right, but nobody touch her. Her gleacha is mine.” She laughed, and Harani’s blank look came back to her eyes. “If I don’t get to her first.”
	“The more important question is how did she get back there so fast,” Morat said.
	“Well, there’s what...Barant, Tliath, Ybrial, Faoil, Gulrun, Riina and Sibh,” Cualha’s voice went on. “That’s seven Council women on the dark side, and seven is enough for a flash forward, if you’re only sending one.”
	“So Barant’s rallying the troops,” Dalen said.
	“Either that, or she was just anxious to keep Lefray and Wous happy.” Cualha’s head turned toward me. “You still there, Theamh? You’ve been awful quiet.”
	“Still here,” I said.
	“Lefray works with your athi, doesn’t he?”
	“Yes.”
	“Well, Lefray and Ygren have been getting mighty chummy of late. They’ve been seen together near the Exchange. Look out, farmers of Kengda.”
	“They surely wouldn’t pull the same stunt twice,” Istria objected.
	“Not the same, but it’s all variations on a theme. It’s the start of the harvest season--the market’s very active right now, and very nervous.”
	“How is Pel?” Lilea interjected.
	Cualha shrugged. “Well, I take it. I still hear from her. She doesn’t want to tell me where she’s hiding, and I can’t blame her.”
	“So,” Morat said. “Their Council now consists of Barant, Riina, and five other women who, no harm to those of you who may have trained them, were never among the brighter stars in the firmament.”
	“Ybrial’s very talented in her way,” Dalen put in.
	“Yes, all right. But Tliath would never have made it onto the Council if Theamh weren’t always making herself unelectable, and Slythe always had trouble with Faoil and Gulrun. Sibh is such a nonentity it’s amazing Barant bothered with her. Riina’s smart, and still dangerous. But otherwise--they’re down to the bottom of the barrel.” She looked over at me and Istria. “I think you can do it. Get her alone, strike fast, and hold what you have. That’s all we’ll need. Without her they’re nothing.”
	Eunem nodded. “I’m in then.”
	“Eorna?” Morat said, turning to her.
	“I am so there,” said Eorna.
	“I don’t really have to ask you two, do I,” Morat said, looking at us.
	“No you don’t,” I said.
	“Nor me either,” said Aine. “I’ll go, and no regrets, whatever happens.”
	Lilea was watching me, and I knew she was reading my pride and my anxiety.
	“So then,” Morat said. “What the armies will be up to now is their affair, but I have gotten them to promise us two weeks’ grace before they actually engage the opposite side. That’s the time we have in which to do it our way.”
	“But Morat,” I objected. “It will take two weeks just to get from here to the City.”
	She shook her head. “By river or overland, you’re right.”
	“Wait a minute,” I said.
	“You volunteered,” Morat answered.
	“I didn’t know there would be sea travel involved.”
	“Do you want out?” Morat said.
	“No,” I said.
	“Then don’t waste time whining.” I sighed. “Of course we’ll lose time going back to Amranth for the celebrations. But we have to do it, since we’re promised, and since frankly, I think we’ve all earned some decent food and a little public gratitude.”
	“I’ll say,” said Cualha. “No--I’m not shutting off yet, I want to talk to Theamh. Morat, are we done here?”
	Morat didn’t smile, although she didn’t glower either. “The meeting’s over, if that’s what you mean.”
	“Great. Theamh, can I talk to you for a minute?”
	I got up, having finished my breakfast, and left the tent. Cualha followed, waiting until she heard that we were in a relatively secluded spot.
	“Listen, Theamh,” she said, leaning in conspirationally. “What is the deal with Morat and Dalen?”
	“Hadn’t you better ask them?” I said.
	“Do you think I covet an early death? Just tell me--are they, or aren’t they?”
	“Are or aren’t what?”
	“Availing themselves of the new instructions?”
	“Harani, don’t you have more important things to do with your time?”
	“Don’t play with me like this, Theamh,” Cualha said.
	“Harani, if they are doing--anything--they have a right to their privacy and if they aren’t, then you ought not to spread rumors. Leave it be.”
	Cualha’s finger pointed at me. “You’re just lording it over me because you found out first. For the first time in your life news got to you before it got to me. The shame of it, I can hardly tell you.”
	“Well, these aren’t normal circumstances,” I said.
	Cualha nodded, and blinked, and then suddenly hugged me.
	“I’m glad you’re coming down,” she said. “I miss you, and I want to see Istria, and--it’s hard on me, Theamh, I talk fast and light but it’s really, really hard.”
	I released her. “Hang in there,” I said. “The cavalry’s coming.”
	“Speaking of which,” Harani said, “you should know your horse is pregnant.”
	“She--what?” I gasped. “By who?”
	“That stallion of Taric’s. They seem very happy, by all accounts.”
	“Oh, that’s wonderful!” I said. “How far along is she?”
	“A fair piece. I’m not really a horse person, as you know. Mna will be able to tell you more when you see her.”
	I suddenly found myself with a sting in my eyes and a lump in my throat. Because I had suddenly realized, after all this, that I would actually be going home.
	“I’ll be glad to see you all,” I said.
	“Me too. Take care of yourself, Theamh.”
	Cualha blinked. “And thank Idair that’s done with,” she said. “I’ll be glad when you get down there too, and she can do her own talking for a change.” We began walking back to the tent. “That’s great about your horse. I hope she bears it.”
	I hoped so too. I hoped also that we would get down there in one piece. And that this thing called homesickness that had given Aine so much trouble wasn’t going to become just as bothersome for me.

	I know they have the same sun in Amst as they have everywhere else, but I think it sets differently. Something about the mountains; or maybe Istria is right, and the pollution on the other side of the border catches and breaks the light. But as we walked up the path toward the Amranth gate, the sun was going down over the lake, and we were all silent watching it. The air was full of sound--from the city we were heading toward, from the towns below in the foothills, even from our slow climb up--but they seemed distant, dampened in the gold-burnt sweep of this changing sky. So even with our spirits as high as they had been since the battle, nobody said a word until Morat stopped at the gate.
	“Morat ni hArrloh sues for entry,” she shouted.
	A woman’s head emerged from the window. “Where did you come from?”
	“From our victory at Folim Dha Bhannai.”
	Tonight the formula was more formulaic than usual; our return had been written into the celebrations. The crowd along the walls all knew exactly what had happened. But they were cheering as if it were news.
	“Who do you bring with you?”
	“Lilea ni Dhara, Eorna ni Chailte, Eunem ni hOamscul, Cualha ni Chrot, Dalen ni hAodha, Istria ni Vharen, Aine ni hEmer, Theamh ni hUlnach, and Taric of Felim Cloch.”
	“Why are you here?”
	“We heard there was a party,” she said.
	This got the reaction she had expected; it was some time before the wave of laughter and cheering broke and the gatekeeper could resume.
	“If it comes to a fight, who will you fight for?”
	“What I have always fought for.”
	It was a good answer. Since she was, after all, Morat.
	“Amranth opens her gates to you.”
	I looked up. The air was suddenly full of tiny scraps of something that tumbled in clouds as the air currents chased it down.
	<Rose petals,> Istria said, peering at a few she’d caught in the palm of her hand.
	<This late in the season? Where’d they get them?>
	<Greenhouses in Eala,> she said. <They grow them there--don’t ask me how.>
	They drifted down upon us, from rooftops and balconies. It was getting dark now, so we had light globes out and were making our way up the broadest roads we could take up to the town square. I understood now why Dalen had been so worried. The place was packed--I hadn’t known a city could hold this many people. Lining the roads, hanging out of windows, thronging along the rooftops, they were all out there, and they all looked as if they’d been making merry for a long time before we got there. The place was happy, and that made us happy. Even Dalen looked like she might maybe be relaxing a little bit.
	The buildings fronting along the square had been festooned with decorations--banners, garlands of fresh and dried flowers, ribbons, and of course placards advertising merchandise. I tried not to feel irked. After all, people had to eat something while they were celebrating, and they were going to need mementoes of the occasion, and so why shouldn’t someone be out there providing what was needful, only after all we’d been through I thought I might just puke at the mere sight of gold. But I didn’t have to worry, because as I realized when I had a chance to look closer there wasn’t any money changing hands. It was part of the celebration, as Cera explained later. For one night, everything these merchants were providing was provided free. 
	We were shown to a row of cushions that had been spread out on a kind of platform that had been erected at one end of the square. Cera and the Amranth shriias were already there. When we sat down the crowd that filled the rest of the square sat too. Chierna trooped in at the head of a small group of Daughters, who stood along the opposite side of the platform, facing us. And from the doorway that led to the house of the city Seat, and which backed up to the rear edge of the platform so that the crowd were looking at it, came Elef at the head of what must have been the Amranth leaders.
	She stopped when the other leaders were ranged along the back of the platform, standing in the middle folding her hands, and looking at Chierna expectantly.
	The woman who had let us in now climbed onto the platform, lugging a pair of huge iron implements that each had to weight about fifteen pounds.
	<What are those?> I asked Istria.
	<The keys to the gate. The original set, from the first siege. They don’t actually work any more; they’re just ceremonial.>
	She handed them to Chierna, who walked forward onto the platform. Elef moved to meet her. They were talking to each other, but both were faced so that the crowd could see and hear.
	“Elef ni hAoife,” Chierna began. “Two months, three weeks, and four days ago, when the gates of the city were sealed, you handed the keys to me and to mine. Since then we have governed the city in your stead, protecting it against attack from without and from within. It is our custom to do this in time of war, and we hope we have done it well.”
	“You have done it well,” said Elef. 
	“The siege is over,” Chierna answered. “With pride--and with no small relief--we return the keys to you, so that Amranth may once again be a free city governed by the will of its people.”
	Chierna handed her armful of iron to Elef, whose arms trembled a little with the weight but whose face showed no sign of strain.
	“Amranth thanks all of you,” Elef said. With effort, she lifted up the keys. “Failte saoirse i nAmranth!”
	I was a little startled that along with the cheer, there seemed to be a lot of flames lighting up all around. People had brought torches and tinder just for the purpose. During the siege there had been strict rules on the use of resources like firewood. So now that they were all welcoming freedom back to Amranth, they were doing it by breaking the siege rules, and if that meant wasting good fuel, well, who was to begrudge them. There had also been strict rules about public activities after dark, which was why they had decided to hold the celebration at night.
	Elef had handed off the keys to one of her lackeys, and was embracing Chierna formally. When Chierna retired to the other side of the platform, Elef turned to us.
	“Without your help, the siege would not have been lifted,” he said. “We thank all of our shriias, and all of the shriias from the City who have blessed us with their presence, and we wish to honor you all as you deserve.”
	Morat got up. I could practically feel Dalen’s teeth clenching. It was true that she was alone, on a stage, in front of a crowd of thousands of people, and even though Chierna had the Daughters dispersed incognito throughout the crowd, there was still no way to be sure there weren’t enemies concealed in there somewhere.
	“I am Morat ni hArrloh na Bearr, elected leader of the Council of shriias,” she said. “I am here to accept what you give on behalf of all of Idair’s true daughters.”
	“Your rules make it impossible for us to reward you,” said Elef. “Since we owe you what we can never repay, perhaps that is just as well. But you must allow us to make a gesture.” Elef picked up a kind of coronet woven of green vines and blue mramtha flowers. “It is a thing of no value; but believe that our gratitude and our love go with it.”
	Morat ducked her head so that Elef could settle the wreath on it. If she was thinking, as I am afraid I was, about how incongruous a wreath of flowers looked on her, she wasn’t letting it show.
	“We thank you,” Morat said. “For your gift, but more than that, for giving us a battlefield. You and your people have been with us in our fight for the right, and without you it would have gone much harder. We helped the Daughters lift the siege. But remember also when you tell the story that you freed yourselves.”
	<She’s an amazing woman,> Istria said, as Morat continued her speech to this large and apparently limitlessly enthusiastic audience.
	<She is that,> I said. 
	<I was lucky to have been with her.>
	<It’s not your fault if it didn’t always feel that way,> I said. <All that stuff you remember is true. She was hard on you.>
	<I know.> Istria looked up at Morat, somehow managing to carry off that wreath with the same ironbound dignity she’d always had. <But then you said Idair said she was hard on me too, and that...>
	I filled it in since she was too embarrassed. <That Idair loves you anyway...and so does Morat, Istria. She’s proud of you.>
	Istria nodded. And then said, <If we had known what we know, then...>
	<It would have been different. But we were different, and so were they.> I shrugged. <I think maybe this was just how we all had to learn.>
	“So before I go,” Morat was saying. “There is one last thing. We’re here in a free city with the light burning. That does not mean that there has not been damage done, or that we will not all feel the aftershock for a long time coming.”
	The noise died down a little. People were still murmuring and moving around, but it amazed me how well she was holding them. Although I shouldn’t probably have been surprised, knowing how easily she had always held us.
	“We have been wounded, you have been wounded, any number of people who are not here with us have been wounded. Our country itself has been wounded, just like the Order. And all of that will need tending. That’s our job, and we are anxious to start on it, hard as it will be.” She waited as long as she could before going on.
	“Remember this. You care for a wound by looking after the body that received it. A wound heals no faster because you have inflicted another. To heal from this, we start with us. I know there will be resentment and bitterness and hatred sown in us along with the wounds. I feel all those things in my own heart and I wouldn’t be a shriia if I didn’t admit that. I don’t ask you not to feel them.” The steel in her stare kept them all with her. 
	“I ask you not to nurse those feelings,” she said. “I ask you not to nourish them, and cherish them, and feed them on your heartblood. I ask you to let them die. I ask you to let yourselves heal. To let us help you heal. To help us heal. Because we’ve been wounded, grievously. And we will need your help.” She nodded, once, and I knew that every person in that audience thought she was nodding at him. “That’s the last thing I wanted to say. We thank all of you, and we wish all of you well.”
	The last burst of cheering broke out after Morat’s last line, and she retired to the cushions. Dalen let out a tense breath.
	Chierna had now taken the floor. “I would like you to join with me as we honor those who fought and say farewell to those who fell.” She looked over at us. “I know it is against custom, but so was this battle. Since they all fell fighting by shriia’s rules, I thought I might ask if we might borrow some fire.”
	Morat and Cera had a brief unspoken conversation, and Cera got up. “We give it to you gladly,” she said.
	I wasn’t sure what all this meant until I saw that someone had brought out a glass bowl and Cera had put some fire into it. Sicaela was now standing next to Chierna with a drawstring bag, from which she had pulled a round patch of cloth.
	“Adra ni Chirin,” she said, handing it to Chierna.
	“Your sisters thank you, Adra ni Chirin,” Chierna said, dropping it into the flame. “Live in our memory if no longer in our world.”
	It was Adra’s insignia--the badge each of them wore to indicate her cohort and her identity. They were pictorial--the image of a loon on the lake that was underneath the crossed keys must somehow have been identified with her. Now it was burning up in the glass bowl as Sicaela spoke.
	“Adra fell in battle by the edge of Lough Eala, trying to protect the rest of her women. And not one of us fell, until at last she was struck through by men in thrall to Hlos ni Nhym.”
	When her insignia had disintegrated, Sicaela produced another. And so all the stories were told. It took a very long time, but Chierna and Sicaela held the crowd’s attention. I was afraid mine wandered a bit. Istria was sitting next to me, and for me it was more interesting to watch her. She was proud of the place as if it were her own, proud of all of the women she’d fought with, and glad to have been part of it all.
	Once they were done, Cera took back her fire, and Chierna began handing out citations to the women who were still alive, for feats performed in the field. I didn’t notice much about what was happening on the stage until I heard Chierna say Istria’s name.
	“...last, but certainly not the least of the women we honor today,” Chierna said. “Istria, will you come forward, please?”
	Surprised, Istria stood up and made her way self-consciously to where Chierna was standing. Chierna saw she was shy and smiled at her.
	“I know that this wasn’t a path you would have chosen freely,” Chierna said. “But having decided to fight with us you did it with your whole heart. We know you can’t stay among us forever. But we’re reluctant to give you up as a comrade.” She took up a round patch that Sicaela had handed her. “We’ve never done this before, and we may well never do it again. But we’d like to make you an honorary Daughter of Amranth.” 
	Chierna put the patch into Istria’s hands. Istria looked back at her without quite knowing what to say.
	“That’s your insignia,” Chierna said. “You have the right to wear it any way and on anything you like. That way everyone will know you’re a Daughter, and not to be trifled with.” The crowd laughed. Istria laughed, but with a strain under it. “It’s something we all wanted to do; but as everyone knows, we’ve never used conscription. Do you accept?”
	Istria looked at the patch, fingering the embroidery. 
	“Yes,” she finally said. “Thank you. It’s a great honor.”
	“Thank you,” Chierna said. “From all of us.”
	Istria bowed and came back to sit next to me. As Elef took the stage for yet another speech, Istria handed the patch to me.
	<Look.>
	It had the emblem of the Daughters on it, and a series of interlinked slashes that evidently denoted her cohort. In the middle was a rose framed on either side by the halves of a broken chain.
	<Someone put thought into this,> I said, tracing the stitching. <And time.>
	She nodded. I put it back in the palm of her hand and closed my hand over hers.
	<It may still happen, Istri.>
	She shook her head. 
	I didn’t go on, because I had head Elef say the words “in conclusion.” Which are, as I have no problem saying, the two most beautiful words in any politic speech.
	“So,” Elef was saying. “To our citizens, to our guests, to those who fought with and for us, I say, welcome to the feast, and enjoy the freedom of your city.”
	The applause that burst out seemed to be everyone’s cue to break up. We got up off the cushions and began milling around.
	“Well,” said Cera. “Thank Idair that’s done with. Follow me to the real party.”
	The real party, apparently, was taking place in about three thousand different places all over the city. In the streets, in squares, in the little tiny parks, in houses and taverns and everywhere else. And everywhere we turned up people kept trying to get us to eat something. Eunem, apparently, had developed something of a specialty in poison detection, and with her along Dalen was prevailed upon to allow Morat to actually partake. I had been impatient with what I saw as groundless paranoia before, but watching her on that platform had shown me that Dalen wasn’t just being overanxious. Morat was someone who, if she were gone, could not be replaced. Which made her valuable to us, and valuable to them. But as the night wore on, even Dalen began to relax. So that by the time we were all crammed into that little tavern on the edge of the Dry Quarter watching the spark dancers, everyone had pretty much abandoned themselves to the mood--even Istria, who was looking at them the way a child looks at a sugarbuilt.
	Even for a foreigner from the south, it’s impressive. You have to do this in a pretty dark environment, in order to see the sparks, and the tavern had just the right level of light. You also need a stone floor, which this place had. And you need a bunch of women who are willing to wear shoes with iron plates at the toes and heels, which when struck violently enough against the stones set off showers of tiny little sparks.
	They had been going strong already when we all wedged ourselves around one of those tables and got started on the food. I had discovered a kind of malted milk beverage that seemed to be a local specialty and which I really liked, so I was happy; and what with the crowd Istria had an excuse to sit on my lap, so she was happy. Eunem had finished checking everyone’s order for unwanted ingredients and was finally getting to consume her goat cheese tart, so she was happy; and Morat and Dalen looked like they were about as happy as they generally got. Aine had just finished hanging a perfect little light globe above the table at exactly the right heat and luminescence, so she was happy.
	“Cera!” called one of the dancers, after they had finished their number. “You made it down here.”
	“Everyone, this is my niece, Mirith,” Cera said, introducing us to the tall, dark-haired girl who was mopping the sweat off her neck with a napkin. “Where’s Stemna, don’t tell me she’s left Ploc in charge?”
	“That’s her,” said Mirith, turning aggrievedly to us. “Always down on the na Frolns. Yes, athi is in charge, but no, he hasn’t been left. Mathi’s right--”
	“Behind you,” said a gray-haired woman who had snuck up behind Cera and given her a poke in the ribs that made her yelp.
	Cera turned around and embraced her. “My sister Stemna,” she said, exhibiting her to us. “The one who married well, made good and did mathi proud. Have a seat, will you, and tell us what’s good here.”
	Stemna perched on one end of the bench. “You know mathi was proud of you too, Cera. And she’d have been even prouder if she’d lived to see this.”
	“I know.” Cera lifted her mug. “To the generosity of our hosts, the lifting of the siege, and the confusion of Barant and her assembled bitches.”
	We all drank to that. The dancers were taking a break now, and there was a lull that seemed to make some of the patrons impatient. It wasn’t long before a few came over to chaff Mirith about being tired after only two hours, and she started chaffing them back.
	“Look, we’re not getting paid, what do you want from me,” she shouted over at the next table.
	“Hey don’t complain,” said Cera. “I never get paid.”
	“Then you ought to be the one providing the entertainment,” Stemna said. 
	“I thought you were trying for repeat business, Stemna.”
	“Don’t run yourself down,” Stemna said, turning to Istria. “She’s still got a good voice--and she knows how to use it.”
	“All right, don’t get started,” Cera said. “I warn you.”
	“Come on,” said Mirith. “I know you’ve got one in you, let’s hear it.”
	“One what?” Aine asked.
	“Maelnossa,” Mirith said.
	“Oh no,” Cera said, shaking her head emphatically. “No, no no no no. Come on, look at me, I’m in hreapa.”
	“So what? You’ve already cursed her once, what more can it hurt?”
	Cera glanced at Morat. “Plenty.”
	<What’s a maelnossa?> Aine asked, as the rest of them got into it for real.
	<I don’t know.> I looked up at Istria. <Chara, what’s a maelnossa?>
	<It’s a kind of cursing set to music. You make it up on the spot.>
	I passed this along to Aine. <Well, that should be interesting,> she said.
	“Of course you can do it if you use the formula,” Morat was now saying. “For Idair’s sake don’t let me stop you. I can hardly talk about the dignity of the robe when I’m sitting here with this ridiculous wreath on my head.”
	By now Stemna had drummed up support from the surrounding crowd, so that there was a crush of people around our table egging her on, including the band of musicians that had been playing for the spark dancers.
	“You’re really serious about this,” Cera finally said to Stemna.
	“YES!” shouted a number of enthusiasts from various quarters.
	“All right,” said Cera, standing up on the bench and lifting her mug. “But this is Stemna’s fault, I just want everyone to know.” She took a long draught from her drink. “All right, since I am a shriia, I have to start with the formula you’re all familiar with from the Burning.” Indeed, a few wags in the audience were nodding and saying it with her. “What I am about to say is not ordinary speech. It is poetry, and poetry does not obey the same laws of truth. Therefore while uttering it I am released from the promise of strict accuracy, and you are not to believe that what I say will be literally true, even though every poet hopes to be telling the truth in some way. So I begin.” She turned to the musicians who had been working with the spark dancers. “Give me something fast.”
	The musicians obliged. Over them, Cera said, “I’d like to address this little ditty to Barant and all of her cronies down there in the City.”
	Cera’s foot began thumping on the bench, beating out the rhythm.

	“Gather round, you sons of bitches,
	Whores of hell and Dark One’s witches--
	Up to now you’ve been in clover--
	Whoops! Looks like your reign is over.”

The crowd laughed encouragement to her, and she went on.

	“Sorry for it, Seated Leaders;
	All you whining, sheeplike bleaters.
	Seems the time to pay has come now--
	Get yourselves out of it somehow.

	As for all you rich who reckoned
	After this life you’d get seconds,
	Turns out now you’ve lost your money--
	What to tell you? Life is funny.

	Lythril and your guuns and minions,
	If you want my true opinion,
	I’d head north just like we told you--
	This place is too hot to hold you.

	Amstian Aivs who have betrayed your
	Forces and made men turn traitor,
	Flee--if capture should befall you,
	They’ll do a lot more than thrall you.”

This verse was greeted with prolonged applause from the men in the room, many of whom I had the feeling used to be part of that army.

	“But Barant, you wretched liar,
	You stay home and face the fire.
	Fleeing would be no avail now--
	All the Order’s on your tail now.”

This one was appreciated almost as vehemently by the shriias in the audience. Cera let the musicians play through until the applause had died down, and continued.

	“May your fall be swift and violent--
	But why fall alone and silent?
	When you’re facing your cremation,
	Company’s a consolation.”

She had worked everyone up to a pretty good pitch, and the menace riding in the tail of that last verse provoked howls of delight. Her voice rose for the final verse.

	“So take all those sons of bitches,
	Whores of hell and dark one’s witches
	Who decide to stick around
	With you when we bring you down.”

Cera finished with a final thump on the bench. There were shouts of approbation punctuating the applause. Stemna handed Cera another drink and hugged her. “Ah, you’ve still got it, sister mine. I’m glad at least now you have a worthy adversary.” She turned laughing to Morat. “It was me got that end of her tongue, growing up.”
	“Well,” Eunem said, looking a little critically at Cera. “So much for not nursing our bad feelings, eh?”
	“No, no no,” said Stemna, jumping quickly to her sister’s defense. “You’re not from here, you don’t understand. Cursing is all about not nursing those feelings. It’s our way--it’s how we handle things. For instance.” She leaned over to Eunem didactically. “Say two families get into a fight over a piece of ground not worth pissing on; in another place it might mean a generations-long feud. In Amst, one just steps over to the other’s house one day and starts trying to raise blisters with his words, the other fires back, the best man wins and that’s it. Each side has had a hearing, the gall’s vented, and we can all get back to work.” She looked back at Cera with a smile. “Isn’t that right, baby sister?”
	“That’s right,” said Cera. “Up here we have long memories and quick tempers; if it weren’t for cursing we’d kill each other with terrible frequency. Besides, it’s fun. I hope people are paying attention, I’ll bet there’ll be some cursing done far better than mine.”
	I was going to say something about how Istria was really good at it, but she and Morat had started to look perturbed in a way that had nothing to do with this conversation.
	“Sorry,” Morat said, beginning to shove her way past the crowd out from behind the table. “Evil never sleeps. Theamh, Istria, Aine, Cera, come with me. The rest of you don’t worry till we call you.”
	They of course were worrying anyhow as we scrambled out of the tavern. “What is it, Morat?”
	She stopped in the street, glancing around her. “Cera, how do we get to the Pharc from here?”
	“Follow me.” 
	<Morat, what is it?> I said, as we broke into a trot behind Cera.
	<Ask Istria.>
	<Istria?> I said.
	<A message from Chierna,> she said. <There’s bad trouble at the Pharc, where they’re holding the West Country Aivs.>
	<What kind of bad trouble?>
	<They’re thinking one of the Daughters guarding them has been possessed. At least they’re hoping so.>
	“I sure hope she’s possessed” is never a good thing to hear. 
	Morat must have filled Cera in, because she ran right up to the rooms above the Courts where they were holding the captured Aivs. The woman at the door looked immeasurably relieved to see us.
	“Oh thank Idair. Come with me.” Another woman took her place. The first one shut the door behind us and began unlocking the inner door that led to the holding room.
	“So many of us went to the ceremony, the guard’s a little light,” she said. “We’ve got her cornered but it’s still touch and go.”
	We ran into the holding room. The first thing I noticed was blood all over the floor and walls. Then I noticed an eviscerated Lacgon lying in the middle of it, and the other six men huddling against the walls away from death and danger. Death and danger as represented by the woman who was, literally, cornered, with her back wedged into the angle between the walls and her sword brandished out at the other two Daughters who had drawn on her but were reluctant to attack.
	“What name does she use?” Morat said quietly.
	“Iranis,” said the woman.
	“All right, Iranis,” said Morat. “Can you hear me?”
	It didn’t look like it. Iranis was in a state very close to frenzy, her eyes flicking back and forth from person to person without seeming to recognize anything. 
	“We’ll take a look, but we’d better get the sword away from her first,” said Morat.
	All of us bent our minds on it and gave it a wrench. It didn’t jerk out of her hands completely, but her grip weakened enough for one of the others to knock it out with a clang of her blade. It clattered onto the floor, where one of the other women collected it. 
	“Thanks,” Morat said, walking toward Iranis.
	Iranis lunged for her, her hands at her throat. Istria and I beat the Daughters to her, tearing her off Morat and pinning her to the ground. Morat reached for her head to look for the signs.
	“Get on it, Aine!” I shouted, as the red wraith burst angry from Iranis’s head. 
	Aine missed the first shot, but she got her fire on it at the second try, before it could land on anyone else. The thing hung crackling at the of the beam as Aine looked around for a window. There was none.
	“Take it back to the hall--I’ll come with you.” I followed her out, letting her hang onto the thing, but ready to catch it if it broke loose. Aine had to wrestle it, but she kept her hold until we got to the hallway and opened up one of the casements.
	It buzzed and spiked at us, but after a few good hits it went sizzling through the open window into the air. We shut the window and ran back to the room.
	Iranis was slumped in the corner, with the other three Daughters trying to comfort her as she dissolved into frantic tears.
	“I don’t understand--I just--I didn’t mean to do it, I wasn’t trying!”
	“It’s all right, Iranis,” said one of the women. “Sure you would never kill cold like that, we all know.” She looked up expectantly at Morat. “It was that thing in her head that did it, wasn’t it, shriia?”
	“Most likely,” Morat said. “What exactly happened?”
	One of the Daughters sat down with Morat and Cera while the others stayed with the distraught Iranis. “It was her and me on guard in the room here. I had to void, so I went down to the privy--and when I came back she was hacking away at him--opening him like you would a pig. So I went for her, and Anise there was in the vestibule so she came to help, and then we told Linta what had happened and she called you right away.”
	“Someone must have gotten an emanation into her,” Morat said. “Would you say it was Lythril’s, Theamh?”
	I didn’t answer, because I was looking at Iranis. Who, in an instant, sprang out of that corner, past the women comforting her, and right at Morat.
	I had her by the arm before she could get the dagger into Morat’s throat. Istria came to help, and in a few minutes Iranis was on the floor again, with Istria picking up the dagger, me and one of the Daughters holding her down, and Morat up on her feet and rubbing with one nervous hand at her neck.
	“Istria, hang onto her, I’ll go in this time,” I said.
	Iranis struggled, and she was a strong woman. By the time I had found the thing it took all three of the Daughters to hold her still. And it took all four of my vigils to dislodge the thing. And when it was dislodged, it wasn’t an emanation. It was a red reeking coil of sizzle and spike shaped like a swamp adder, only a hundred times the size and a thousand times as mean.
	“Oh fnaa what the hell is that?” shrieked Anise, backing away into the wall.
	“Keep her down!” I shouted, as Zott and Jayla went after it. “For all we know there’s another eight of these things in there!” 
	But the same women who wouldn’t blink in the face of a sword-wielding Amstian were out of their minds with terror at the sight of a blood-eater, so it was Istria, Aine and Cera who had to keep a still-struggling Iranis immobile on the floor while I shot bolts out at the round, gaping, red-fanged mouth that struck toward me like the maw of a leech eel.
	“Cera, that’s yours,” I heard Istria shouting. When I had the chance to look, Cera was on her feet too doing battle with something orange and nasty. I didn’t have time to look more closely because this thing was big, and it was fighting hard.
	I was trying to get a bolt down its gullet; that’s the fastest way. But it was clever, and kept twisting so my fire hit on the side where it didn’t do as much hurt. Phredi had devoted himself entirely to protecting me, so that the other three had their hands full with this roiling stream of red hunger. 
	“Damn!” Istria’s voice rang out over the sound of another sparking rip. “Aine--”
	“I’m on it,” Aine shouted. I didn’t know what it was exactly she was on but I was going to assume she’d be all right until one of us had time to help her. 
	<Zott, Jayla, Shaineen, pull back. Let it strike for me.> I felt their resistance. <Do it.>
	The three of them drifted away. The blood-eater took the opportunity. I calculated the angle in the half-second it took for the thing to target me, and sent a stream stabbing right into that onrushing maw.
	It recoiled, burnt and howling. <Harry it.>
	With the three vigils and me after it the thing was on the run. I got a two-handed blast square on its midsection. It curled up around the hurt place, nursing it.
	“Teir abhaile ghilliadh!”
	I hit it hard. It sizzled with a shriek back into the ether. I was about to congratulate the vigils, but then I saw what Aine was fighting.
	“Fnaa on a hot shingle.” I sent a bolt out at the purple spitting morass that was doing its best to engulf her. “It’s all right, Aine, I’m coming.”
	After the vigils had worked the purple for a while it pulled itself off Aine. She had her arms crossed but she was too worn out from the battle to get to flashpoint right away. Cera was still wrangling her kraikk, cursing it as fluidly as she had cursed Barant earlier that evening. The Daughters and the West Country Aivs alike were cowering in fairly abject terror, leaving Istria as the only one holding Iranis down. Iranis wasn’t struggling any more, but as we now knew that was no guarantee she was clean.
	“Dhiaoc--it’s not coming--” Aine gasped, her hands trembling in panic.
	“Break for a couple minutes and rest,” I said. “I’ll hold it off. At least I hope so.” Aine dropped her arms and tried to stop shaking. “Ah, leave her alone you fat son of a bitch! Hey Morat! Could we have a little help here?”
	There was no answer.
	“Istria!” I shouted, over the noise of the battle. “Where the hell is Morat?”
	I heard Istria’s feet as she scrambled off Iranis and darted around the room.
	<Theamh, she’s gone. They’ve taken her.>
	<They who?>
	<I don’t know. I’m on the trail--you follow as soon as you can.>
	Aine finally got herself to flashpoint, and miracle of miracles remembered to give the warning. “Close your eyes!”
	Cera and I revealed soon after, and in a last desperate rush we got the kraikk and the enfrui back into the ether. I ran over to Iranis, who was lying inert on the floor, grabbed her head and went in.
	By the time I was done Aine and Cera were standing anxiously over me. “Well? Is she all right?”
	“She seems to be finally clean,” I said, standing up. “Whether she’s all right is a totally different question.” I opened my link to Lilea.
	<Theamh?>
	<Lilea, come out to the Pharc and bring the others. We’re in the holding room for the West Country Aivs. Quick as you can do it.>
	<All right.>
	She didn’t need to ask me if something had happened. Anise, Linta and the other Daughter had recovered from their panic and were approaching Iranis’s limp form cautiously.
	“What’s the matter with her?” Linta whispered.
	Her eyes were glazed, and a line of drool dangled from her partly open mouth to the floor. There was nothing else in there. But packing an emanation and three very powerful spirits into one mindspace had taken its toll. She was too wrecked to even be going through aftershock.
	“All right,” I said, collaring Anise because she looked like she was the closest to having her wits about her. “When Lilea gets here, I want you to tell her Iranis has just been cleansed of a ghilliadh, an enfrui, a kraikk, and an emanation, all in the past fifteen minutes. You remember that?” She nodded. “Repeat it back.”
	“A ghilliadh, an enfrui, a kraikk, and an emanation,” Anise said, her voice shaky.
	“All right. Stay with her, talk to her, do anything you can to try to engage her mind. Lilea should be here soon.” I opened my link to Istria.
	<Istria?>
	<I’m away after them--they got her up to the roof and over the walls. They’re skirting the lakeshore on the south side. I’ve called Chierna--meet her at the gates.>
	“Come on!”
	Aine and Cera ran after me out of the Pharc. Cera led us through the streets at a pace that startled the many late-night revelers who were still wandering the city. If they asked, nobody stopped to answer. We pulled up in front of the gates, where Chierna, Sicaela and a small group of Daughters were waiting.
	“Cera ni Mhaick sues to leave,” Cera shouted up at the gate, “and she doesn’t have time for the thurking formula!”
	The gates opened enough for us to squeeze out, and then shut immediately.
	“Chierna,” I said, as we gathered outside the gates. “Istria’s going to show you where she is and then you lead us there, all right? But you have to let her deepen the link.”
	“How do I do that?” Chierna said quickly.
	“Just relax, she’ll take care of it.”
	She nodded. Her eyes changed, and she stood for a moment as if lost in thought. Then she suddenly snapped back to herself.
	“It’s all right, I know exactly where she is,” Chierna said. “Follow me.”
	Chierna eschewed the ordinary path down the mountain and led us in a disorganized scramble down to the lakeshore, waiting impatiently for us to negotiate the difficult ground. We were tired from the battle and perhaps stumbling more than we might have on the stones that seemed to delight in sliding out from under our feet. It seemed to me like forever before we reached the lake. Chierna gave us a minute to catch our breath and then she was off again, not even winded. We followed, with dirt and gravel flying off our hreapas in clouds as we pounded along the rocky shore of Lough Eala.
	The path we were following left the shoreline after a while and wound into the woods. It was hard going among those dark trunks and the only slightly thinner darkness between them. Until I saw the flicker of fire up ahead of us.
	Chierna pulled up short, apparently at a direction from Cera. Theamh, find out what’s happening up there.
	<Istri?>
	<Where are you?>
	<We can see the fire. What’s going on?>
	<It’s four men--some of the Aivs we never got, maybe--and a woman in hreapa--and Morat’s out cold. I don’t know how they--oh for Idair’s sake. Where did they get it?>
	<Istri, show me,> I said, since it was clear her descriptive talents were for the moment taking a vacation.
	I let it bleed through. Then I saw what had her so rattled.
	They were all in a clearing that had a number of large, slablike stones in the middle of it. Morat’s hreapa had been stripped off her and she had been laid out on one of the stones. The people who’d taken her were clustered around it. Their backs were to Istria and I couldn’t see their faces. But the woman in hreapa was removing the needle of a syringe from Morat’s arm.
	<Strepton?> I said.
	<But that all went up with Greenhaven-->
	<It’s a Cretid preparation and there’s a new hospital in Mypril, maybe they got it from--FNAA!>
	I had just noticed that there was one man crouched near the circle fiddling with some of that coated wire they had up north, which was attached to a machine that had obviously been made over the border. The machine was churning away, emitting a thin stream of blue smoke. The man touched the wires together. Sparks flew between them.
	Morat’s body was moving now; but nobody let it move far. I couldn’t see exactly what was going on inside that circle, and Istria was standing too far back to hear. But I saw the man bringing the machine over, and into the space they were standing around.
	<Oh no.>
	<What the hell are they playing at, Theamh?>
	I could see one of Morat’s arms, and see a pair of hands attaching the wires to it.
	<They’re going to shock her,> I said, highly alarmed. <We can’t let them, Istri, they could kill her on the first try. I’ll bring the others as fast as we can.>
	<I’ll take care of her,> Istria said. <Hurry.>
	I shut the link. “We have to get up there, now, and to hell with craft,” I said. “There’s four men and one dark user, we can handle it, we just have to hurry.”
	To demonstrate, I started thrashing up the hill toward the glow of that dark fire. The others followed after me. We were still quite some distance away--a glow like that travels far on a dark night--and it seemed like it was taking us forever. I was in a sweat of anxiety as well as from the exertion. I was not at all sure we would get there in time.
	If they had just been planning to kill her they would have done it already. She was still alive because they wanted to torture her. But having been through this particular kind of torture I knew two things. One, that this was very hard on the heart, and would be harder on a heart twenty-five years older than mine. Two, that the only reason Lythril had not killed me was that she had a machine that measured the shock and a body of data, industriously accumulated by Maerin, that told her how high she could safely go. This woman was just fooling around with live lightning from one of those portable generators, and if she didn’t kill her on purpose she might easily kill her by accident.
	We must have been close enough now to hear, because there was a confused noise of voices overwritten by a bloodcurdling howl of pain. 
	“Hurry!” I shouted. “They’ve gotten started.”
	I thought I had been moving as fast as I could, but I got moving faster. Through the lurching trees I started to be able to see dark forms against the light, no longer gathered in that circle but instead running around in what seemed like great agitation. And then I spotted Istria, in the middle of it all.
	For the moment, she wasn’t fighting. She was crouching back with her arms crossed over her chest, staring down the woman in hreapa.
	The woman opposite her drew red flame into her hands. And then something invisible, indescribable, changed about the picture, and I knew what was happening.
	“CLOSE YOUR EYES!” I shouted.
	Not a moment too soon. Even with our eyes closed we could feel the blistering heat. Chierna and the others fell to the ground in the underbrush--reflex reaction maybe, panic, shock, who knows what. Just as the four men in that clearing scrambled backward in terror. Istria was at the center of a white inferno, shooting that pure piercing light out at the woman in hreapa, who had stumbled backward but was up on her feet and trying to press forward. I was running again, and the light was strong enough for me to start distinguishing faces. I almost wished it wasn’t.
	You expect evil to change a person’s face--I do, at least. Lythril let it show on her face, but that was just Lythril; she wanted people to know what she was. No reason it would have to be that way. But it was still a shock to  see her again, with her yellow hair coiled up on her head like it had always been, fighting Istria without any sign of remorse or pain or anything but concentration and a calm desire to win.
	She was trying to get to Morat, who was still on the slab. I couldn’t tell whether Morat was dead or unconscious. Istria was fighting hard with the new fire, and so far Morat was safe. But this woman was very determined, and she had good reason to be.
	I jumped into the clearing with both hands blazing, making as much noise as I could. She turned her head to look at me, still keeping one eye on Istria. And even now, when her face changed with the shock of recognition, it wasn’t to remorse or fear, but to that gentle sorrow that looked so much like compassion.
	“I’m sorry to meet you like this, Theamh,” she said.
	“Oh, DON’T EVEN!” I shouted, firing two bolts out at her. “You be sorry for it if you want, Barant. I’m not.” She fired back at me; I blocked it easily. “Yeah, let’s go! Right here, right now! Come on!”
	Behind her, red flame crackled out of the air into the form of an arch about seven feet high. Inside the space the arch marked I could see the stone floor of the Council chamber.
	“Stop her, Istri!” I shouted, trying to get my flame on her.
	Barant stepped back into the arch, and it disappeared. Barant disappeared with it.
	“Fnaa!” I ran to where the arch had been, but of course it was far too late. The women who had flashed Barant forward to this place had flashed her back to the Pharc in the City, and she was out of our reach. The four men who’d been with her had now been brought down by the Daughters. Cera and Aine were standing at the edge of the clearing staring at Istria, who was still very much on fire.
	“I see something coming this way,” Cera called out.
	Aine was a fast learner. She’d only seen it happen once, but she knew what the answer was.
	“It’s Istria,” she said, “And she’s on fire.”
	It maybe should have been me who said it, but I couldn’t. I was crying too hard. And I was so transfixed by the sight of Istria burning again with our fire that I forgot all about Morat. I didn’t remember she was even there until I saw her get up, on shaky feet, and walk slowly but deliberately toward Istria.
	“Put her out, put her out, she’s burning!” Cera called.
	Morat reached into the flame and put her hands on Istria’s shoulders.
	Her voice was rusty and a little faint, but I knew what she was saying. “I burn, but it does not hurt me. This is Idair’s fire.”
	The white firestorm contracted, disappearing slowly until all that was left was flame haloing both of Istria’s hands where they were crossed over her shoulders.
	Morat lifted her hands away. Istria uncrossed her arms, held out her hands, and looked at them, speechless.
	“Idair’s mercy,” Istria finally whispered. “Ta se mo linn.”
	Morat burst into tears. Istria drew the fire back so that she could catch Morat as she started sinking to the ground.
	“I lived to see it,” she was murmuring, when we reached them. “Thank Idair. I lived to see it.”
	Istria had taken Morat’s head in her lap and was looking up at me in terror. <Theamh, she’s not dying, tell me she’ll be all right.>
	I put a hand over Morat’s heart. The beat was regular, if a little quick, and the blood was pulsing strong in her neck. It was true her muscles were twitching and she was too weak to stand, but at least they hadn’t killed her.
	<I think she will be,> I said. <But we need to get her to bed and get Lilea after her.>
	“Morat?” I said. “Can you hear me?”
	“Of course I hear you,” she rasped. I was glad to see she was irritated. “Where’s my hreapa?”
	Cera picked it up off the ground and handed it to her. She sighed with relief.
	“How do you feel?”
	“I’m a happy woman,” she said, “but I’m not a well one.”
	Her spirit was coming back, and I took that as a good sign. “Chierna, can you spare a few people to carry Morat back with us?”
	“I don’t need to be carried--”
	“You thurking well do,” I said. “Don’t brazen about this, I’ve been through it and I know what it feels like.” 
	Morat tried to get up anyhow, but only got as far as her hands and knees. I drew back from her a little bit as she vomited up the night’s bounty.
	“It’s all right,” Cera said, stroking her back gently. “We’re all flesh, it’s no shame. Let the Daughters take you back now and don’t try to prove anything.”
	Morat allowed them to make a kind of chair for her out of their arms and lift her into it. Chierna and the others marched the captured men ahead of them. Cera and Aine followed, leaving me and Istria a little ways behind.
	“You see, Istri,” I said. “I told you it might still happen.”
	“Oh chara,” she said, still in shock.
	“It’s like I said,” I went on, with my voice choked. “Beauty that would stop your heart. Like I always knew you had. From the inside out.”
	She just shook her head, still having trouble believing it.
	“Aren’t you glad now we kept your hreapa?” I finally said, with a smile.
	The tears finally came. I held onto her for a long time there in the clearing, while the others walked slowly, Aine looking back nervously every once in a while to make sure we were still all right. Until finally she stood back from me, and wiped off her face.
	“We better catch up with the others,” she said.
	I nodded.
	“How about some light?” I answered.
	Istria hung a globe in the air, watching her own hands, still stunned by the sight.
	“I don’t believe it,” she said.
	“Believe it,” I answered. “I do.”
	Her face twisted again, as if she were going to cry. “I love you, Theamh.”
	“Well,” I said, “a shriia’s just said it, so it must be true.”
	Istria laughed, with tears still in her eyes.
	“I always knew it was true anyway, you know,” I said.
	“I know,” she answered.
	“Come on, chara. Let’s go back.”
	The globe bobbed along ahead of us as we hurried to catch up with the others. 
	
	Lilea was in her element, and she was enjoying it. She would admit that if you asked her. In one room she had Iranis, who thanks to Lilea’s prompt attention was starting to recover, slowly. It would be a while before she could speak or move well but at least she knew who she was and could recognize her family, who were waiting with her for her to recover. And in the other room she had Morat, who was inwardly fuming at being confined to bed and having the entire Council plus the Amranth shriias coming in and out with sympathy and home remedies. Dalen, after quickly verifying that she was no immediate danger, had slipped away and left her to deal with the parade on her own, but Istria and I stuck with her. Lilea was aware of how irritating Morat found all of this, and amused by that, but also knew the way she knows things that it was good for Morat to see how much people cared about her. Finally it was just the four of us, and Lilea felt she could get started with the questions on her mind.
	“All right,” she said. “What happened? We found that poor woman on the floor--in the name of anything, how do you get all of that into one mind?”
	I shook my head. “It’s not prudent, I’ll tell you that. It couldn’t have lasted long. She’d have died pretty quick if we hadn’t cleansed her. Barant must have done it all very shortly before we got there.”
	“But why?”
	“For a diversion,” Istria said. “She knew as soon as the second woman discovered what Iranis had done she would assume possession, and it was a good bet Morat would be called out to see about her. It was also a good bet that Theamh, Aine, and Cera would be called out too, since nobody lets Morat go anywhere alone any more.” Morat groaned and turned away, closing her eyes in annoyance. 
	“But why kill Lacgon?” Lilea asked.
	“One, to get us out there, and two, to make us think it was Lythril,” I said. “That way as soon as the emanation left we would assume Iranis was clean.”
	“Which we did,” Morat rasped.
	“Not all of us,” I said. “I was suspicious right off.”
	Morat looked at me. “Why?”
	“Because she only killed one of them,” Istria finished for me. “Lythril doesn’t leave a job half-done. She’d have slit all their throats and probably killed Iranis and the other guard too. She wouldn’t have let us find her there.”
	I nodded. “So that was why I saw her making the spring, the second time.”
	“Wait, back up,” Lilea said.
	“Here was the plan,” Istria went on, “as far as we can make out. Barant stuffs the woman’s head full of those things, which are indebted to her and will do as she asks, up to a point. She also puts in her own emanation. She kills Lacgon to draw us all out there. As soon as Morat’s within range she calls back her emanation, before Morat can go into Iranis’s head. That way Morat doesn’t detect the other spirits. We think she’s clean, we stop paying attention to her, as soon as she has an opening she goes after Morat.”
	“That doesn’t work,” I said. “So, the second plan. When we go to cleanse her we find enough spirits to keep us busy for a long time. She picks three of the nastiest, most volatile kind, so the Daughters are going to be out of their minds with fright. While we’re all occupied, they somehow sneak up on Morat, and get her with the dolanol--”
	“I felt a pinprick in my arm,” Morat said. “And then I don’t remember anything, until I was on my back on that rock with that bitch looking down at me.”
	Weak as she was, her rage was still palpable. I knew how she felt.
	“They were shielded, but she had to tear the shield a little to get the syringe through,” Istria said. “So I could follow visible traces--they put a shield over Morat, but I could still see that one arm. They left their tackle on the wall, so I slid down it and followed them off.”
	“So we get to the woods, and we find out they’re planning to electroshock Morat--for what, I don’t know--” I said.
	Morat spoke up. “She was trying to get me to sign a confession.”
	“A confession of what?” Lilea demanded.
	“Being dark,” Morat said. “Her idea was to force me to put my name to this lie, then kill me and bring it home with her as proof that she’s true.” Her gray head shook wearily on the pillow.  “I told her she was stone cold crazy on top of being an evil bitch.” Her eyes found mine. “You went through a month of that?”
	“Well, not uninterrupted,” I said. “She took breaks to go and do evil to other people.”
	“And you too?” she asked, turning to Istria.
	Istria shook her head. “She didn’t have the machine.”
	“Ah that’s good,” Morat said, glad to hear it. “Because nobody should have to.”
	“I wish we could have taken her down there and be done with it,” Istria said sadly.
	Morat shook her head. “Of course she’d be crazy to stand her ground with the two of you in it and the rest on the way.” She lifted up one hand to put over Istria’s where it was resting on the bed. “You did well, Istria. I’m proud of you.”
	Istria blinked, hard.
	“I’ve decided I’m just going to say that whenever I think it,” Morat said. “I didn’t do that enough, the first time around.”
	To cover Istria’s silence, Lilea said, “Congratulations, Istria. I’m so glad.”
	“Thank you,” Istria said.
	“It’ll be good to see you in hreapa again,” Lilea answered. “We’ve all missed having you with us.”
	Istria nodded, but she was looking a little sad, running one hand over the bundle of her hreapa, which still sat in a lump in her lap.
	“Morat?” she said.
	“Yes?”
	“I’m not sure I’m ready to just start...” She swallowed. “Will you...you know...at the next Burning...give it to me, again?”
	Morat patted the hreapa, as if trying to reassure it instead of Istria.
	“Of course,” she said. “If we both live.”
	Istria nodded. “Thanks,” she said. “I mean--I guess it’s stupid to go without it since I already have it, I just--I would feel better doing it that way.”
	“If that’s how you feel, then that’s how we should do it,” Morat said. “But you better get Eorna to make you a learner’s tunic.”
	One of her sleeves was gone completely and the other was hanging by a thread; there were brown streaks running up and down the legs of those Cretid trousers. I smiled.
	“Or,” Morat said, “you could just do it yourself, since you’re not Theamh or Theamh’s scoilin.”
	Istria laughed, and took one of my hands. “You know, chara, you are better at all of that than you think you are. Or you would be, if you’d just give yourself a chance.”
	I shook my head. She was going to argue, but Dalen came in at that moment.
	Morat didn’t want us to see her perking up, but we could tell she was glad if only from the increase in gruffness. “And where have you been?” she demanded.
	Dalen stood with her hands behind her back. “I’ve been looking for something,” she said. “Something very important, that you lost during the battle.”
	Morat seemed a little suspicious, although Dalen looked very serious. “And what would that be?”
	Dalen brought one hand out. In it was a crushed, bent circle of torn leaves and wilted flowers. The ceremonial wreath.
	“Dalen--”
	Dalen placed it around Morat’s head with absurd solemnity. “It would be a shame to have lost it forever, wouldn’t it?”
	I stood up, taking my cue from the look of affectionate exasperation Morat was giving Dalen. Istria rose too.
	“Good rest to you, Morat,” she said. “Will you be up to haons linn tomorrow?”
	“Yes,” Morat said immediately.
	“No,” Dalen answered.
	“Maybe,” Lilea said. “Come on, you two. Dalen, you promise me that if you see Morat having any difficulty at all, you call me.”
	“Yes, mathi.”
	“Everyone’s a comedian,” Lilea said. “Take care of her, she’s important to us.”
	She didn’t have to tell Dalen that, of course, but I think she felt it would do Morat good to hear it. Out in the corridor she turned to me.
	“So,” she said. “It’s about time we had time to talk. Come on, there are probably still some people up partying. There’s all kinds of things I’m dying to ask you.”
	Istria might have balked at any other time, but now it didn’t bother her. She had my hand in one of hers and was bringing fire in and out of the other, watching it come and go and willing herself to believe it was back for good.
	“All right then,” I said, as Lilea led us back out to the hallway. “But remember, you’re not Aine and I don’t have to answer.” 
	“Aine!” Lilea called, as she passed us on the way back to the Raed. “You’re not going to bed yet, are you?”
	“I thought I would--” Aine said, gesturing up the hallway.
	“Come with us,” Lilea nodded. “The night’s still young, or at least middle-aged.”
	“Come on,” I said, as I felt she had read my hesitation. “We’ve got more to celebrate, and you should be with us.”
	“All right, Theamh,” she said, turning around and following us out to the street. “Just remember we all have to get up at dawn tomorrow.”
	“Not if we don’t go to bed,” Lilea said. “Live a little, Aine, you can sleep when you’re dead.”
	We went back out into the street and the life it was streaming with. I was sure I’d never have gotten to sleep anyhow, so where was the harm. I was too happy. It was finally true, that mistake I’d made up in Dairc. We’d gone up to the Cretid Nation with one shriia, and come back with three. Not bad numbers. Not bad at all.

	After several hours, Lilea noticed that Aine had finally laid her head down on her arms on the table and fallen asleep. We were in Stemna’s tavern, and pretty much closing the place down. It had emptied out substantially, but Stemna, Mirith and Ploc were still wiping down tables and giving “go on home” looks to some of the more tenacious customers.
	“So,” Lilea whispered to me. “Now Aine’s not listening--”
	“I don’t want her to have disturbing dreams,” I said.
	Lilea laughed, but would not be put off. “I’m serious about this, Theamh.” I sighed. “You know--well. You know my story, about how I got the call.”
	I nodded. Istria knew it too, but of course Lilea didn’t know I’d told her.
	“I told you I didn’t enjoy it with him, and that’s true. It’s not as if he was rough or careless or didn’t try, I just...it was never much good for me. So I always thought when I heard people talk about it as happens sometimes, they were just--making too big a deal out of it. I thought probably ordinary women were different about it, but I still didn’t see how it could possibly be all that.” I was about to come back with some kind of smart remark, but I looked at her face and I realized this was actually a serious matter for her. Istria read the same thing, and moved in closer to pay attention.
	“So I mean...I just...” She looked at me. “You were ready to give everything up just to do this--and you didn’t even know what it would be like.”
	“I suppose not,” I said. “I just felt like it was--necessary.”
	“All right, necessary,” Lilea nodded. “But what I’m asking is...” She looked down at her folded hands, then up at us. “Is it really? All that?”
	Istria reached a hand under the table to hold onto mine, and let me answer.
	“It’s different every time and some times are more than others,” I said, fighting my embarrassment. “But...yes. It’s all that and then some.”
	It seemed like Lilea was looking at me with an inexpressible sadness, and it hurt me for her. Since it was Lilea, she didn’t wait for me to ask her what was wrong.
	“It must have been me then,” she said.
	“Oh no, Lilea,” Istria interrupted, hurrying to stop her from sliding further into sadness. “No, don’t think that. It’s just different with different people. I mean, like, with Hedina--”
	She stopped herself, but it was too late. “With who?” Lilea demanded.
	Istria was about to bang her head on the table, but then she remembered that it might wake Aine. She contented herself with heaving a very  heavy sigh.
	“Hedina,” she said, concentrating furiously on a mug she held between her hands, “was one of the first minions Lythril recruited once she established her new place.”
	“And you--” Lilea said.
	“Lilea, I don’t think Theamh wants to hear about this.”
	“No, go on,” I said. “It’s not like I haven’t wondered.”
	She looked at me. “Well you’ve never asked.”
	“Well it doesn’t really matter, Istri,” I said. 
	“So tell me then,” Lilea insisted. “Come on, you’re a shriia now, so revel in it.”
	Istria glared at her, but her irritation at being forced to open this subject was mixed with a genuine desire to make her feel better, so she started.
	“It was...it was not long after I had turned,” she said. “I hated myself, I hated Lythril, I hated my life and I certainly hated the Cretid Nation. I was what the Cretids would call depressed. I think the only reason I didn’t kill myself was that I didn’t want to give Lythril the satisfaction.” I tightened my grip on her hand. “Maerin found Hedina in some Cretid sty and brought her to Greenhaven. Lythril put me on to trying to train her, so I had to spend a lot of time with her, and she--she got her mind fixed on me, I think.”
	Istria tipped the mug over, watching the trickle of juice slide along the table.
	“She started by trying to get me to talk about my life,” she said. “That’s how she found out about you, Theamh. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted her but I thought, this is my life now, she may be as close to a friend as I’m likely to ever know. Then she told me she thought she could get me over you.”
	I am afraid I laughed. Lilea looked a little taken aback, I suppose by my confidence. Istria just shook her head.
	“There were a lot of things, during that time...I believed them, but I didn’t. Like I believed that you were glad I was gone...except I knew it was a lie. Same with her. I knew in my bones she was handing me a line of tarbhfnaa to get something out of me but somehow also I thought there was a chance that maybe that would do it. So...”
	She looked into the distance for a little while, and then finally waved a hand as if trying to brush away some kind of annoying insect.
	“What I’m saying, Lilea--it’s not just you, it’s who you’re with. She made this big deal out of how many lovers she’d had but for me none of it mattered. I just--when she touched me, I wasn’t there.” 
	Lilea’s eyes suddenly opened. “That’s it!” she said, pointing at her. “That’s it. Exactly. That’s why.”
	Istria nodded. “I honestly...” Istria doesn’t blush as easy as I do, but it’s not hard to tell when she’s embarrassed. “I feel more holding Theamh’s hand than I ever did with Hedina, no matter what...well. A lot of people wouldn’t believe that but it’s the truth.”
	Lilea was looking very thoughtful. For a little while she said nothing.
	“Do think maybe,” she said, “it was that he was a man? I mean...” She shook her head. “I’ve been in scoil or the Order since I was twenty. I never gave the matter much thought until recently.”
	She leaned her head in one hand, and I saw suddenly how worried she was. I guess it’s natural to assume that everyone is like you are. It would never have occurred to me that, once the prohibition was lifted, people might be troubled by the question of what to do next. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like not to know who you loved. I knew there had been a time when that was true for me, but I had been so young. There was all that rigmarole with Edraw, but once I fell for Istria it was clear to me that whatever else I had felt for him, desire had never been involved. Lilea had never felt what I felt for Istria; maybe she never would. Not everyone did, as I knew well enough.
	“Well you know,” I said timidly, “she did say, it wasn’t to be compulsory.”
	Lilea laughed. “Oh I know, Theamh. But--you know all this time, I thought, well, I’m not missing much. Now it turns out I am.”
	I didn’t know what to say. Neither did Istria. Aine lifted her head off her arms.
	“You know what,” she said, her voice a little dry, “if you’re going to keep talking about this, I may as well just go to bed.”
	“But you should think about it, Aine,” Lilea said. “It’s even more important for you. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. You could--you could have children.”
	Aine looked startled.
	“See? This is a serious issue,” Lilea said. “And probably you’ve never even thought about who you would like to join with, or any of that.”
	Aine shook her head. “I don’t think I want to join with anyone.”
	“Why not?” Lilea said.
	If I’d asked, Aine probably wouldn’t have answered, but Lilea’s Lilea. “I don’t have that same...” She shook her head a little to wake herself up better. “I’m homesick, and I’m--much alone,” she said, glancing up at me as if worried that this might make me feel bad. “But I’m not--lonely--the way Theamh was when Istria was gone. I think maybe I just don’t need someone that way. I think maybe I’m well as I am.”
	She was awake now, and serious, and looking at her I thought maybe she was right. There must be people who were like that. Even when I had thought I would never really love anyone, I had been sad about that. Aine didn’t seem sad about it; she had considered the question and just decided it wasn’t part of who she needed to be.
	“It’s a beautiful thing, for them,” Aine said. “It just doesn’t seem like something for me. I can’t imagine it.”
	I was just going to nod and go on, but Istria decided to differ.
	“I felt that way for a long time, Aine,” she said. “Even after I met Theamh, before we...discovered. I think I even remembering talking to you about that--”
	“That’s right,” I said. “That you didn’t mind the prohibition because you couldn’t imagine wanting to do that with anyone, ever. I think that was before I really knew why.”
	“I’m so glad you found out different,” Lilea said.
	Istria was surprised to hear the emotion in her voice. I wasn’t surprised so much by the emotion as by the intensity. I knew Lilea had worked with Istria a lot in the first few years of scoil, and Istria had never told me what it was they had talked about, although it wasn’t too hard to guess. I also knew that Lilea had done a lot for her, but it came to me now that Lilea considered Istria one of her failures. Which was not fair. Just because she couldn’t undo the damage, that didn’t mean she hadn’t helped her.
	Stemna cut this conversation off by sliding onto the end of our bench.
	“So, you all look very serious,” she said. “What are you talking about?”
	You can’t just say ‘nothing.’ So I said, “Something.”
	Stemna laughed. “If that isn’t a shriia’s answer. Come on.” We looked off in various directions. “I know. It’s about that sealed envelope, isn’t it.”
	“Not exactly,” Lilea said.
	“Won’t you tell me what’s in it? The whole city’s dying to know. The talk is of nothing else. Almost.”
	“You’ll find out when everyone else does,” I said.
	“Will you tell me if I guess?”
	“Come on, Stemna,” Lilea said. “It’s not fair to interrogate us. We’re shriias, and we’ve been up all night.”
	“I know, I know.” She made as if to get up, and then swung back to us confidentially. “Is it about the end of the world?”
	I laughed out loud. Stemna looked at me and said, “So, no, then.”
	“No, nothing like that.”
	“Well that’s a relief,” she said.
	“People aren’t really saying that, are they?” Istria asked.
	“Some are,” she said. “But some talk about the end of the world like they talk about yesterday’s breakfast. You know how it is.” She looked at me mischievously. “Is it about what happens after death?”
	“No!” I was getting irritated. “Look, it’s much--most of it’s much more mundane than that. In fact, it may not even matter that much to ordinary people. It’s just some things Idair told me that are really important to the Order.”
	Stemna nodded, and then began to look vexed. “It’s not just about the sex, is it?”
	Even if I had wanted to dissemble I couldn’t have--my face was hot, and I could only imagine how red it was. Istria started in her seat and dropped my hand. Lilea spluttered on the juice she had been drinking. Aine suddenly was bolt upright on the bench and looking extremely nervous.
	“Oh rats,” said Stemna, disappointed. “Sure everyone knows that already, shriia.”
	“WHAT?”
	I think my voice was loudest, but I know the others were chiming in with me. Even Lilea, who usually is a lot more savvy about things like this.
	“Come on,” Stemna said, genuinely surprised and amused by our consternation. “You shriias, you think the rest of us only know what you tell us. As if it wasn’t obvious to anyone with eyes. Plus Cera isn’t the only shriia on the Amranth Council with family in this town. I asked her straight out and she just got all blotchy in the face and said she couldn’t answer me without breaking a promise. And that’s all you need.” She collected the mugs and started wiping down the table we were sitting at. 
	“But--” I spluttered. “But--nobody’s said anything to me--”
	“Of course nobody asks you directly,” Stemna said. “It would hardly be polite.”
	“But I would think--they don’t all think we’re dark, do they?” I said, starting to get a bad twist in my gut.
	“Shriia, you’re making me angry now,” Stemna said, whipping the rag off the table with a snap of her wrist. “We may not all have your learning or your mindstrength, but give us credit for something.”
	Stemna was about to walk off in a huff, but Lilea grabbed her wrist.
	“It’s no reflection on you,” Lilea said. “It’s just that she...well, all of us...would expect, that if you believed she and Istria were committing one of the major loss violations--”
	Stemna relented and sat back down. “Look, my baby sister’s in the business, I know what the violations are. Lifetaking, greed, lying, sex.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “Three of these things make sense. The fourth doesn’t. It makes sense to you maybe but an ordinary woman such as myself looks at that and thinks, I don’t know what Idair thought she was at.”
	Aine gulped, but said nothing.
	“So you all fly in here, and in a city like this everyone knows everything everyone else does. We know our shriias are all right, and they’re all right with you. But we watch you anyway, and what do we see. You’re not killing anyone, you’re not lying, you’re not handling money. However, it’s plain as a pikestaff that at least two of you are--”
	“Now come on!” Istria shouted.
	“Friend, I am a joined woman. Don’t tell me I can’t spot the signs.”
	“But--” I gave up, and just shook my head.
	“And that the rest of you all know about it. So that rule’s been changed, that’s all, or else it was never a real rule and you just misunderstood what she wanted. That must happen.” Lilea was about to get into it, but Stemna kept going. “Look, we’ve got the Daughters and we’re used to them, maybe it goes over easier here than it would somewhere else. But if it’s that you’re worried people will think you dark, you can stop worrying. Any Amranthian can see a tree by daylight.” I was still too flummoxed to respond to this. “We’re happy for you, shriia. I am, anyway. I know I always felt that rule was very hard on Cera.” Istria shook her head. “So that’s really what’s in that envelope?”
	I sighed. “There’s a lot of other stuff about...how the world was made, and how some things came to be as they are. But mainly, yes, that’s what’s in there.”
	Stemna laughed.
	“All that fuss about a simple thing like that,” she said. “Only shriias.” She stood up. “Friends, I’m glad to have your custom any day, but it really is time to close up. I’ll fix you something to take with you if you need it.”
	“No, no thanks,” Lilea said. “You’ve already given us plenty to digest.”
	We left the tavern pretty quickly, but once we got out to the street we all had to stop and take stock for a minute.
	“Well,” Lilea finally said. “Morat will be interested to hear this.”
	“I don’t even want to think about it,” Istria said.
	We walked back to the Pharc  in silence. The streets had finally emptied, although the litter of the celebrations was blowing through them in the night breeze. Two, maybe three hours before dawn. Aine went right to her room to try to catch up on her sleep if she could. Lilea just went back to the Mathair. I went to the room and undid, figuring even a couple hours would help. Istria stood by the window, looking out at the courtyard.
	“Istri?”
	“Theamh...I think...I’d like to be alone with her, for a little while.”
	She was afraid I would be hurt, but I wasn’t. “Of course, Istri. I’ll be on the walls.” 
	“Thanks, Theamh.”
	I left Istria in there with Idair, and went up the stairs to the roof. I climbed to the walls and leaned over the parapet, looking out over the dark landscape.
	In the time before dawn a place really does look as if it still needs to be made. There’s no color to anything, only different shadows, some deeper than others. The stars gave some light, but there wasn’t much of a moon. I could have made my own, but sometimes it’s better to keep it inside and look at the world the way it is without you. Dark, but not sinister; vague but not empty. Waiting, is all. Waiting for the word and the fire. Just like us.

	It seemed like the sun was hardly up before we were standing there in the Council room, bags in hand, with Eorna folding up the shields and tucking them carefully into a sack and Morat looking at Istria as if she were very sad.
	“You take care of yourself,” Morat said sternly.
	“I will,” Istria answered.
	“And you take care of Theamh.”
	“Hey, don’t I get to take care of her?” I said.
	“No, you have to take care of Aine.”
	“I can take care of myself,” Aine said.
	“And I am what, cold liver?” said Eorna.
	“All right, never mind,” Lilea broke in. “Everyone take care of everyone else and don’t let anyone get hurt. Now let’s give them the blessing. They have to go sometime.”
	Morat stood up and lifted her hands. They started the song.
	“Duireann siadh hailbhann ar an t-sraid...”
	It gave me the shivers. The last time I’d heard it, I had been standing in the Council chamber in the City. Barant had been there with Riina and Slythe and everyone else, singing along as if nothing were wrong. Whatever else happened, there would be no way for anyone to pretend now. We were going down there to win or die; and which we did would determine whether it was evil or good that would rule the Order.
	But it was Morat now, and Istria was standing next to me, and Aine was there in her learner’s tunic, and Taric was standing there bearing it all very patiently, and everything was so different. And I thought, really, how can we lose.
	They finished the song. “Good luck to all of you,” Morat said. “Send us regular reports. Idair with you.”
	We stood up and bowed. And in the solemn silence afterward, we walked out of the Council and off toward the next big thing.

XVI.
Fish in Water

	“Look!” Aine’s voice broke in on my nauseated misery. “Look, look, there it is! There they are!”
	The boat was heading toward shore, and that made it even less fun for me to be on. But, lurching as the picture was, I had managed to make out in the distance a bunch of low, gray-shingled shacks that seemed to be practically one with the cliff they were perched on, rambling along the coastline. Underneath the cliff, a bunch of boats were drawn up on the beach, with tiny little people crawling around them. 
	“There who is?” Eorna asked.
	“It’s Saortal!” she said, completely oblivious to the lack of enthusiasm on Eorna’s part. “It’s my town!”
	Up on the cliff, I could see a tiny little human figure emerging from one of the shacks, waving one arm wildly.
	“There she is!” Aine shouted to me. “It’s mathi!” She began waving back. 
	Now there was a male figure standing next to her. I couldn’t even have told you the first one was a woman, but I supposed Aine knew her own mother, even from this far away. His arm was waving just as frantically. The next time I looked, they were close enough for me to distinguish their shapes. And the people who were climbing around among the boats on the beach started looking up, and waving.
	There was no dock, which perturbed me. Aine wasn’t bothered by that in the least. She brought the boat around into the wind so that it stopped moving, and dropped the anchor. Someone on the beach got into a boat and began rowing it out.
	“Aine!” he shouted. “Aine, chara, failte i do chonai!”
	He had to be one of the brothers--Nealf, maybe, he looked about the right age. Same coloring she had, with the same green eyes and determined chin. Aine hopped over the railing and jumped right into the boat. She landed soft as a cat, the rowboat bobbing gently under her as she threw her arms around her brother.
	If it bothered her that we were watching, she didn’t show it. And he wept on her shoulder without the smallest embarrassment. It had been more than a year since she’d seen any of them. And what a year, too. They must all have been worried sick about her, every day of their lives. It certainly seemed that way from the tenacity of his embrace--as if he was afraid once he let go she would disappear again.
	“Idair be thanked you’re home safe,” he said. “You really have your fire?”
	Aine brought it out of her hands. He looked at them with a low whistle of astonishment.
	“I know, I don’t believe it myself sometimes but my diaoc says that’s normal--oh--dhiaoc--Theamh--”
	I leaned over the railing and tried not to think about my stomach. “I’m Theamh ni hUlnach,” I said. “You must be Nealf?”
	“I am, shriia,” he said. “I’m very glad to know you. Come aboard.”
	I wasn’t at all sure how this was supposed to be accomplished, until I saw the rope ladder he tossed up onto the deck. I tried to look pleased.
	I made my extremely graceless way down the ladder to the rowboat. Nealf was a good sport, and didn’t laugh at me. Istria got down with a lot less trouble, and that was about all this rowboat could handle.
	“We’ll come back for you,” Aine called out to Eorna, Eunem and Taric. “What about seanmathi, Nealf, is she any better?”
	Nealf shook his head. “Still has trouble walking, and we have trouble stopping her from trying.” Aine nodded. “She got better when she heard you were coming. We didn’t tell her until mathi spotted you--in case you didn’t make it.”
	“Oh Nealf,” Aine said. “Of course we stopped--”
	“I mean, in case...you know. Something happened.”
	Nealf kept rowing. Aine’s eyes darkened.
	“I am sorry, Nealf,” she said. “I know you worry.”
	“Well,” he said, with an attempt at heartiness. “We won’t worry tonight.”
	We’d reached the shallows. He leapt out to drag the boat onto the beach. He came around to help me out of it, holding onto my arm awkwardly as if simultaneously afraid of giving offense if he touched me and of watching me fall splat on my face if he didn’t.
	“Go on up,” Nealf said. “Welcome to Saortal, shriias. We’re proud to have you.”
	There was a path up the cliff, although it was hard to tell the difference between the path and it. I toiled my way up with difficulty. When I finally got up there, I had barely a second to catch my breath before the small army of people who seemed to have gathered around Aine’s family’s shack engulfed us.
	“Mathi!” Aine disappeared into the embrace of a woman about six feet tall, with an impressive girth which was made more impressive by the seemingly infinite number of shawls she had swathed herself in. Clearly deciding that Aine wouldn’t be disengaged for a while, the tall, gray-haired and gaunt man next to her addressed himself to me.
	“I’m Tuiner mac Uisce,” he said, bowing to me.
	“I’m Theamh ni hUlnach,” I answered, bowing back. “I’m very glad to meet you. Aine tells me a lot about you.”
	He seemed pleased to hear it, although I had the sense that for him a smile would be considered too great an extravagance to waste on such trifles. Emer, however, had a whole different approach to emotional economy.
	“Theamh, this is mathi,” Aine said proudly.
	“I’m glad to know you,” I said. “You did a wonderful thing bringing her into the world.”
	I was suddenly engulfed by a multitude of shawls that smelled of sea salt and fish. “Idair’s blessing on you, shriia,” she said, rocking me in her arms. “For bringing her through it safe. Poor little minnow,” she said, letting go of me and returning to Aine. “Stanela, take Aine inside and you let her have the cushion by the fire and no arguing.”
	Stanela, a girl of about ten who was the youngest in the family, looked offended, not by the request but by her mother’s lack of faith. “I wasn’t going to argue,” she said. She trotted up to Aine and pulled at the edge of her tunic. “I’ve got a seagull. Mathi says I can keep it if I take care of it. Will you name it for me?”
	Aine took Stanela’s hand. “Come on, show me where you’re keeping it.”
	Stanela ran off with Aine. Emer accepted this philosophically. “And this must be Istria,” she said. “Aine told me the story, it made me cry very hard. Many times. Your poor mother, it must be such a blessing to her to have you back. Where’s Lirena got to? Lirena! There you are.” A girl of twelve with long brown hair done down her back in a braid moved shyly forward. “This is Istria. Remember you were asking me about her?”
	Lirena looked like she would just implode on the spot from the weight of her bashfulness. Then she saw the insignia on Istria’s tunic.
	“Wow!” she said, forgetting everything. “Is that a real live Daughters badge?”
	“Well,” Istria said, scratching absently at her head, “it’s not alive, but it’s real.”
	“Can I see can I see can I see?”
	“Now Lirena,” said Emer. “Remember your manners.”
	Istria knelt down in the pebbly grass so Lirena could get a better look at it. “We read about them in fosterage,” Lirena said, putting a hand up hesitantly to touch the embroidery. “I’ve read all the stories about them in the book our teacher has, and he said he would get me another one from his friend up in Amst but then his friend in Amst went into the Army and he doesn’t know what happened to him.” She looked at the insignia. “And they gave you a Red Teardrop! You must have done something really brave. What does this mean?”
	She was pointing at the rose. Istria stood up a little abruptly.
	“It means something really important,” she said, whispering confidentially to Lirena.
	“What?” Lirena whispered back.
	“Ask me later,” Istria said, and stood back from her. <Like maybe five years later.>
	<Well, it means other things,> I said.
	<I just would rather not go there.>
	“Can I ask you now?” Lirena said.
	“Don’t bother her, Lirena.” A taller woman with brown cropped hair put a hand on Lirena’s shoulder. “Don’t mind her, shriia. She’s just obsessed with the Daughters, is all. So are all her friends in fosterage. I’m Piacli, Aine’s sister.”
	The oldest one, who was supposed to have her own family by now except the man she had wanted to join with had been drowned the year before. “I’m glad to know you.”
	“I am too, shriia. I wanted to thank you for being so good to her.”
	“It’s easy enough to do,” I said. “She’s--I mean--there are a lot of smart kids at the scoil. But Aine is really something special.”
	Piacli beamed at me quietly. “I always knew she was. She was such a clever baby--and mindstrength! You could not get her to change her mind for love nor money. Treidar, this is Aine’s diaoc!”
	Treidar was two years older than Aine. “I’m so glad to know you,” she said, bowing but not touching her lips because she was holding a huge wad of dried seaweed. “You’re welcome here, shriia, we’re all grateful to you. Piacli, come help me with this.”
	 And so on, until Nealf had come back with the others. The joke in the family was that Tuiner wanted a son, so they kept going until they had Nealf, and then they were having so much fun trying it took them a while to stop. I had trouble keeping track of them all, especially once we got inside the house. It was long, but narrow, with partitions separating the rooms incompletely. Stanela scampered throughout the place, her bare feet maneuvering expertly around piles of fishing tackle, sewing, and waterproofed boots. Piacli and Treidar had taken over the main room, which served as kitchen, dining room, sitting room, drawing room, parlor, music room, and everything else that wasn’t a bedroom. They were doing things that would eventually result in dinner, and I felt it didn’t pay to inquire too closely.
	A commotion near the back door caught my attention, and suddenly Emer was locked in battle with a much older woman who was wearing, if possible, even more shawls, and leaning on a thick wooden walking stick.
	“...shouldn’t come over the rocks like that without someone there to help you!” were the first words of Emer’s that I could distinguish.
	“And I’m supposed to wait for someone to come find me?” the older woman snapped. “When my favorite og-inion is home for the first day in Idair knows how long?”
	“Seanmathi!” Aine leapt into the fray, and Emer withdrew for a moment as the older woman fussed over her. 
	“I thought I was your favorite og-inion,” Stanela pouted, taking a hold on one of the shawls.
	“So you are,” said the older woman, patting Stanela on the head. “You’re all my favorites. You’re my favorite og-inion who’s twelve years old, Piacli’s my favorite og-inion with blue eyes,  Treidar’s my favorite og-inion who goes down to the fishing and Aine’s my favorite og-inion who’s a shriia.” Aine laughed. “Come on, show me.”
	Aine brought the fire out of her hands. Her grandmother’s eyes teared up.
	“I knew you would do it, chara,” she said. “I just wasn’t sure I’d live that long.”
	“Everyone knows you’ll live to be a hundred, mathi,” Emer said. “As long as you will have even a little bit of care for yourself. You should not be traveling all that way alone with your legs as they are. Matter of fact, you shouldn’t even still be living in that deathtrap of  a place. Tell her, Aine.”
	Aine looked extremely reluctant to answer. “I--well I don’t know, mathi, I haven’t seen things for myself yet.”
	The grandmother laughed. “You see? She’s been trained well, she keeps an open mind till she sees the proof. Now where’s this diaoc of yours I’ve heard so much about.”
	I made my way through the flurry of activity to where they were clustered.
	“Seanmathi, this is Theamh ni hUlnach, my diaoc,” Aine said, formally presenting me. “Dhiaoc, this is Opona ni Phanton, my mathi’s mathi.”
	I bowed to her. “I’m very pleased to know you, seanmathair na hAine.”
	“Likewise,” said Opona, bowing back. “It’s not often we meet City girls with such manners on them. And you said she wasn’t polite!”
	Aine blushed violently. “I--that’s not true, seanmathi!” Opona laughed, which only flustered Aine more. “I said she wasn’t diplomatic, seanmathi. It’s not the same thing.”
	Opona winked at me. “You’re right, it isn’t.” She looked at Emer. “Well, am I to be let sit down and rest my bones, or are you still mad at me?”
	Emer guided her to a cushion by the fireplace, still vexed. I saw Eunem watching her walk. It wasn’t long before Eunem had engaged her in conversation, obviously with a view toward assessing her health. Istria had been cornered by Lirena, and was answering questions. Even Taric found himself something to do, looking over some of the ropes and tackle with Nealf and Tarbal, who must have been thrilled to have another man in the house. Eorna managed to get Piacli to let her help with the cooking. Aine watched all of it silently, as if she were drinking water, saving up against a long time of drought.
	I felt someone pulling at the skirt of my hreapa. It was Stanela.
	“Aine’s diaoc?” she said, timidly.
	It struck me that when she talked to me, she was suddenly much less brash and boisterous than she was around her parents and older siblings.
	“You can call me Theamh, Stanela.”
	She was still too scared to bring her voice much above a mumbling whisper.
	“My seagull,” she said. “I asked Aine and she said to ask you.”
	“Ask me what?” I said, trying to seem as friendly and non-threatening as possible.
	“If she could name it. I have a name all ready.”
	Aine looked a little nervous. “Does she mean name name?” I said.
	Aine nodded. “I told her I didn’t think you could give a name to an animal, like that, but she really wants to do it, and I couldn’t think of any particular rule against it.”
	I gave the matter some consideration. I couldn’t think of one either.
	“You know, I don’t think that’s ever really been decided,” I said. “Now that I think about it. Istria!”
	Istria looked up from where she was sitting with Lirena. “What is it, Theamh?”
	“Is there a rule about whether you can name animals? Stanela wants Aine to name her pet seagull.”
	“I don’t know,” Istria called back. “I can’t think of one.”
	Stanela was made nervous by all the attention, but she was also starting to get her hopes up. At least until she heard from Eunem.
	“Come on, you can’t name an animal,” Eunem said. “They’re not like us.”
	“Well, why not?” Eorna put in. “They get possessed too, don’t they? Maybe they wouldn’t so much if they all got named.”
	“Are you telling me there is a distinct unique name out there for every sentient thing--” Eunem said.
	“Well, there’s one for every human, why shouldn’t there be--”
	“But really, identity’s not the same for them,” Istria said. “I don’t think a name could possibly mean the same thing to an animal--and anyhow wouldn’t its mother have to find it? How do we know, maybe animals are named, just by each other.”
	Eorna started laughing. “I can see it now--a little fox in a little tiny hreapa out there with a little tiny book and a teeny weeny bottle of uisce--”
	“Now you’re just being ornery,” Istria returned. “I didn’t mean they would do it the way we do it, I just think if anyone does know Stanela’s seagull’s real name it’s probably another seagull.”
	“But I’m its mother,” Stanela said. “I raised it from a little tiny chick. It’d be dead without me. Doesn’t that make me its mother?”
	“Well, that’s sort of a separate issue from the naming question...” Eunem mused.
	“How separate?” said Istria.
	And suddenly we were in the middle of a full-blown debate on the question. Partly for the laugh; but the fun of it was that on some level we were all serious. Legitimate points of objection were raised. Ingenious philosophical rebuttals were fashioned. Major uafach freagair pertaining to spirit, body, and the nature of human identity were touched upon. And gradually Aine’s entire family gathered around the five shriias who were sitting on the floor amongst the clutter, watching us as if we were the VB.
	“A human cannot be mother to an animal, not the way another animal could,” Eorna insisted.
	“So you think if the seagull had been raised by an owl, the owl would be able to find out its name but Stanela can’t?” Aine objected.
	“How would a seagull ever be raised by an owl?” Istria interrupted.
	“We’ll settle this,” I said. “We’ll ask Morat. She’s Council head, her word goes.”
	“You’re not serious,” Istria gasped.
	“I am. Stanela wants to know, and it’s a perfectly legitimate question. Hang on.”
	Eorna burst into a fit of the giggles as they watched me open the link. By the time I reached her Eunem and Istria were laughing too, and Aine was going red in the face trying to look serious.
	<Morat?>
	<Theamh, what is it?>
	<We’ve got a question we’d like you to decide for us.>
	The link wasn’t deep enough for her to hear everyone laughing, but I think she could tell something was up. <Say it then.>
	I put the question to her.
	<You called me all the way from Jipran to ask whether Aine can name a seagull.>
	<Well, Aine wants to know if she can do this thing for Stanela, and you know how I am about consulting the Council first.>
	Now I had the feeling Morat was laughing. <All right, I’ll take opinions.>
	“Well?” Istria said, as she saw my eyes change.
	“She’s polling the Councillors,” I said. “She’ll get back to us.”
	“Oh no,” Eorna gasped, and they were all laughing again. Aine’s family didn’t really understand the joke. 
	<Theamh?>
	<Well, Morat, what’s the word?>
	<Negative, I’m afraid. Most of us feel that since we don’t know for sure it’s safer not to do it. Give my regrets to Aine. Tell her she can help Stanela give the bird a used name if she wants, that’s not really shri.>
	<All right, Morat. Thanks.>
	<Not at all. I’m glad you all are having a good time down there.>
	I closed the link. “Bad news,” I said, sighing. “Morat says you can’t do it, since we can’t decide the question it’s safer just not to.”
	Istria shook her head. “That’s Morat for you.”
	I was about to start laughing, but I saw that Stanela was very disappointed. I hurried to the second part of the message, trying to match her earnestness.
	“Morat says Aine can help you put a used name on her,” I said. “I’m sorry you can’t put on the real name, but real names are very serious, and it would be bad for your seagull if we did it wrong.” 
	Stanela nodded, although she still looked sad.
	“So why don’t you think up a used name for your bird and maybe tomorrow Aine will help you give it to her.”
	“All right, shriia,” Stanela said. “I’ll do that.”
	Stanela ran out back to where the bird’s box was to get inspiration. Aine looked back at me, and we both started laughing again.
	“You really just called the head of the Council about this?” Emer finally asked.
	“That’s right,” I said, standing up. “This is how doctrine gets made, Emer--doesn’t it give you confidence?”
	“Of course if it’s something important the process is a little different,” Eorna said.
	“I’m sorry.” I realized that the rest of Aine’s family was not necessarily equipped to appreciate the humor. “We’re all feeling giddy tonight--it’s unusual. It’s just that...”
	I looked around at the falling-apart house with its thin boards and the rags stuffed into the cracks where the mortar had fallen out and the cavalcade of people and people’s things with which it was bursting.
	“We’ve been for so long on the run and in danger,” I said. “You’ve made us feel at home here. It’s a great gift you’ve given us.” I bowed at Emer. “We’re grateful to you, Emer ni hOpona, for giving us a place where we can all be happy, for a little while.”
	Emer looked pleased, if startled and a little embarrassed.
	“Sure it’s not much of a place, shriia,” she said. “Nor much of a meal, either, but if you’re ready it’s about time to sit down to it.”
	There was much confusion and shifting about and handling of pots and cushions. I found myself between Aine and Istria, as we knelt in a circle around a bowl of something that, even though it had seaweed in it, smelled great and even looked pretty good.
	“You won’t have had ealpota before, I imagine,” Emer said. “Aine says that things in shells are all right for you?” I nodded. “Tarbal, pass out the leaves, will you...”
	I was handed a large, round flat leaf that must have belonged to some kind of vine or creeping thing they had in the area. Aine reached into the pot with her leaf flat against the palm of her hand.
	“See, you just grab a mouthful with the leaf, like this...” She withdrew the folded leaf, and tilted it expertly up so that the food slid down the shiny surface into her mouth. “You can eat the leaves too if you want but they taste pretty bad.”
	“Ah well,” I said, realizing that they were all waiting for us to start, and that the other visitors were looking pretty doubtful. “It’s just as well I’m still in hreapa.”
	My first try was messy. But that gave the others courage, and the family seemed to enjoy trying to help us out. Aine was full of solicitous advice on leaf-folding and wrist action. I got better, but progress was slow. 
	“That’s good, dhiaoc,” Aine said encouragingly, as I finally managed to get more of it in my mouth than down the front of my hreapa. “You’re making progress.”
	She said it with all the sincerity in the world, and no trace of irony. So that instead of laughing, I felt myself suddenly on the point of tears.
	“You’re very patient with me,” I said, trying to pass it off with the laugh.
	Aine got suddenly choked up too.
	<It means a lot to my family--and it means a lot to me--that you like it here.>
	“There you go, Theamh,” Istria said as for once the ealpota went right to my gullet without visiting any other portion of me on the way. “You can feed yourself!”
	The others joined in the laugh as I jabbed Istria in the ribs with my elbow, not I admit very hard. <Your family is great, and we’re lucky to be here.>
	“This is great stuff, Piacli,” I said. “I’m sorry I’m not handier with it.”
	“Well, it’s not something they see much of inland,” she said.
	“It’s too bad,” Istria put in, slurping her portion down with no trouble at all. “It would make a great addition to the refectory.”
	“Oh, but imagine what they’d do to it,” Eorna said.
	The conversation turned to food and cookery, and the focus shifted off me. Except for Istria’s.
	“Look at you,” she said, picking a strand of seaweed off my chin. “You’re a mess.”
	“I know,” I said, thinking more about how good it was to be near her than the extent to which I might be embarrassing myself. <If you’re nice to me, maybe you can help clean me up.>
	Istria smiled, and dipped back into the pot.

	But of course, privacy was as scarce a commodity in that house as beef was, so I ended up wiping my own face with a bit of wet rag around back by the privies. The others were helping clean up, which I would have been doing only I’d have had to fight Emer, who wouldn’t hear of it. 
	“Theamh?”
	I was surprised to see that Eunem was standing there, one hand nervously smoothing her straw-colored hair. Eunem and Lilea were close, although Eunem was on the quiet side and maybe for that reason had never hung around with me. She was good with children, or so Lilea said, and with the very old; and she had been influential in developing techniques for detecting everything from poisons to beagi. But now she clearly wanted to talk to me about something that was bothering her, and I couldn’t imagine why.
	“What is it, Eunem?”
	“Can I talk to you for a minute?”
	“Of course.”
	We sat down on a large stone that projected from the thin soil of the bluff. Eunem didn’t look at me, but rather down at her hands as they folded in the skirt of her hreapa.
	“All that stuff about the seagull,” she said. “This has been on my mind a long time...I knew I’d have to bring it up before we got there, now is as good a time as there maybe ever will be.”
	“Bring what up?”
	Eunem sighed, and looked out over the bluff edge toward the dark sea and the darker sky.
	“You know Grinth was from Kengda just like Barant is,” she said.
	“Yes,” I answered. She had practiced there before joining the Council.
	“Did you know Grinth was her naming shriia?”
	I dropped the pair of pebbles I had been turning in one hand.
	“No,” I said.
	“She was,” Eunem answered. “I was with her at the end--we were all taking turns watching over her--and she told me so. She was...you know, with the uru on her, it was hard for her to get things out but she was able to tell me that.”
	I looked at Eunem, and now she finally looked at me.
	“Before she died...” Eunem’s hands rose, and fell in a final defeated gesture. “Theamh, she told me Barant’s name.”
	Now I suddenly understood her agitation.
	“Are you sure?” I whispered. “With the uru--maybe she meant something else--”
	Eunem shook her head. “I know you would think that, Theamh, but I work a lot with stricken people, I’m good at understanding them. There’s no question.” 
	I was silent for a while.
	“She shouldn’t have done it,” I said, shaking my head.
	“I know,” Eunem answered.
	The waves continued to throw themselves onto the shore below us, filling the air with the sound of water. 
	“She knew she was dying,” Eunem said. “Of course it was wrong, she knew that.” She watched her feet swing as her legs dangled over the edge of the bluff. “She must have thought it was necessary.”
	There are times when it is necessary to know someone’s name. And at those times, if we can’t ask the mother or don’t trust her answer, we consult the Book. It’s done only if the person is in dire peril and needs to be protected this way, or if we need to block someone permanently. Which we can only do to ex-shriias, because to permanently block an ordinary citizen, even one who’s been convicted of dark magic, is highly illegal; it violates the right to psychic integrity. We talk about the Book as if it is a physical object, but it’s not. It’s something the shriias on the Council carry in their minds, locked away from their own memories by a complicated series of spells. It can only be opened if all the shriias on the Council agree to do it, and all perform a certain very complicated ritual that of course none of the rest of us are familiar with. Each woman on the Council has a piece of the whole--when we name children, we send the name to the Book, without knowing which shriia’s mind it will end up written in. When one of them dies, the knowledge is sent to someone else’s mind, through some mysterious process I know nothing of and wouldn’t explain if I did. No shriia can read the piece she holds until they all come together and open the thing. And since I’d been with the Order, that had never happened.
	So, if you want a name, you go to the Book, and you go there with the approval of the entire Council. That’s how serious we are about this. Knowing these names gives us enormous power over the people we serve, and it is a grave and serious abuse of the fire to just up and reveal them. Grinth must have died shrimarbh, after having been a good shriia for much longer than I’d been alive.
	“So you know Barant’s name,” I said.
	Eunem nodded.
	“You know what this means.” Eunem didn’t need to answer. “We could block her permanently.”
	“I don’t know how that works,” Eunem said.
	“No,” I answered, with a sigh. “But I do.”
	We sat for what seemed like a long time.
	“I see why you never told anyone,” I said. 
	“I didn’t want them to know Grinth had done it,” she said. “She was a good woman, a good shriia, and a good Council head.” I nodded. “But you see how it is. She must have told me because she expected us to use it against her. She must have thought it was worth the sacrifice. But I...” She looked out into the abyss. “If I tell it to you, will that put me shrimarbh? If you use it against her, will that send you shrimarbh? Is it still an abuse, to use it, even though it wasn’t us who named her?”
	All good questions. All very important. All uafach.
	“You’ve seen Idair,” Eunem said, turning to me. “What do you think?”
	I didn’t know what I thought. On the one hand, the damage was in a sense already done. And it was true that if we could have brought Barant to justice--our justice--under normal circumstances, we would have consulted the Book and used her name anyway. I thought maybe it would be all right. Then I thought maybe it wouldn’t.
	“I think we better ask Morat,” I said.
	Eunem nodded.
	“I’ll call her,” I said. “You go inside and let Istria know, before she gets worried and comes out here after me.”
	Eunem left, looking back at me anxiously. I opened the link.
	<Morat.>
	<Theamh.> She didn’t sound too happy to hear from me. It was late; maybe I was interrupting. <This better not be about the damn seagull.>
	<It isn’t.>
	I told her what it was about.
	<Spirits of heaven and hell, Theamh.>
	<I know. I have no idea how to answer her, so I’m appealing to you.>
	<What a joy it is to be the court of last resort. All right...this is going to take a lot longer than your seagull question.>
	<It was just in fun about the seagull-->
	<Yes, I know, I do have a sense of humor. This isn’t something to laugh at.>
	<No, it isn’t.>
	<I’ll tell you when we’ve decided. It might not be today. We need to be sure.>
	<Eunem would sure appreciate that, and so would I.>
	<We’ll do our best, Theamh. Till then.>
	<Thanks, Morat. Idair with you.>
	It was a great relief to walk back into the house and see life going on. Eunem was already deep in conversation with Emer and Opona; Taric had gathered with Tuiner and the boys around the fire and was helping them scour out the pots; Aine was helping Eorna make shields, and Istria was walking toward me.
	Eunem must have told her what we’d been talking about, because she started in as soon as she put her arms around me.
	<Don’t stay up nights over it,> she said. <Morat will find the answer. That’s what the Council head is for.>
	<But what if she’s wrong?>
	<She errs on the side of caution, you know that. Unless they’re sure, they won’t tell you to do this.> We sat down together in a corner. <I trust her, Theamh.>
	<I trust her too,> I finally said, watching the fire in the grate.
	<Istri?>
	She ruffled my hair. <What is it, Theamh?>
	<I never want that job.>
	<Don’t worry, Theamh. I think the odds are much against your ever having it.>

	By the time we were getting back aboard the Idair’s Arrow the next morning, I still hadn’t heard from Morat. Which meant I had unlimited leisure to witness the long, tearful, and intense farewells between Aine and her family. Emer knew that whatever we were going to be doing it was bound to be dangerous, and she didn’t want to let her go. When Aine finally did escape, she ran down the shore to get busy about the boat, not so much because she was embarrassed by the crying as because she didn’t want to start crying herself. Emer finally controlled her face and took me aside.
	“Tell me something,” she said. “Aine won’t say what it is you’re doing, or even where you’re going although I have ideas.”
	“We really can’t tell you,” I said. “It’s not that we don’t trust you--it’s that it would be dangerous for you.”
	“Take care of her,” Emer said, abruptly.
	“I always try,” I answered. “I can’t promise to succeed.” Emer looked down sadly. “I can promise you this. Anyone who wants to kill Aine is going to have to kill me first.”
	Emer looked up, and put a reddened, chapped hand on my shoulder.
	“Idair go with you,” she finally said, blinking to hide the tears. 
	“I certainly hope she will. Goodbye, Emer, I’m very glad to have met you.”
	I climbed into the little rowboat, and Nealf began rowing me out to the Arrow. It was while I was half-climbing, half-being hauled by Istria onto the boat that the call came.
	<Theamh.>
	<Morat? Have you decided?>
	<It was an all-nighter,> Morat said. <But we’ve finally come to this.>
	Istria was about to say something, and then saw me and waited.
	<It was Grinth who used her power to give Barant that name,> she said. <So it was an abuse of her fire to tell Eunem. But since Eunem came by the knowledge inadvertently, it’s not an abuse for her to help you use it to block her, since if things were normal we would use it to block her anyway. I think we can do it--as long as we minimize the danger to Barant.>
	<I’m not sure I understand the distinction,> I said.
	<I have a whole intellectual and philosophical argument about this based on Order history and canonical interpretation of the Instructions, Theamh, but what it comes down to really is that Lilea’s gut says Idair wants us to do this.>
	My gut was sort of saying the same thing, but I wasn’t sure it was quite as trustworthy as Lilea’s, especially now that we were back out in the ocean.
	<So how do we minimize the danger?> I said.
	<She won’t tell you the name until you’re actually in the process of blocking her,> Morat answered. <And once you’ve blocked her, you’ll both bury the knowledge--I’ll teach you how.>
	<All right, Morat. If you’re sure.>
	<We all prayed over this, separately and together. We’re as sure as we can get.>
	Because they knew how much they wanted us to be able to block her permanently, and they would all have mistrusted the impulse to say yes. If this was the answer they’d given, I could trust that it was the one they all believed was right. And that if Idair thought it was wrong, she would have found a way to let them know.
	<I’ll tell the others,> I said. <Thanks, Morat. I really appreciate it.>
	<It’s our job,> she answered. <Get there safely. Idair with you.>
	I closed the link. Istria knew the answer as soon as she looked at me, but I said it anyway.
	“She says she thinks we can do it.”
	Aine looked over from where she sat by the tiller. Her family was small in the distance now, and the memory of that mostly-carefree night was receding with them.
	“She better be right,” Istria answered.
	“I think she probably is.”
	“Me too,” Istria sighed.
	I lurched back to the stern to talk to Aine.
	“You miss them already,” I said.
	She nodded.
	“I’m sorry it’s been so hard on you being away from them,” I said. “I can see better now why you were so homesick.”
	Aine bent her eyes on the horizon. Finally she said, “You told me that if they ever wanted to come out to visit, they would be welcome.”
	I had, early on when I started to realize how much she missed them.
	“I didn’t really believe you,” she said. “I knew you meant well, but I thought you would...that you wouldn’t want them in your house, if you saw how we live...”
	Because she knew I was City, and that I came from money. Even if she didn’t know then that my father did business with the same people who were controlling her family’s income, she thought that I would have to be as class-struck as the rest of the City people they came in contact with.
	“And your family never came to visit,” she said. “So I thought maybe it was just something shriias didn’t do.”
	“I’m not normal, Aine,” I said. “I told you that.”
	Aine glanced back at me.
	“No, you’re not,” she said. “I got lucky that way.”
	Her brows furrowed a little as she concentrated on piloting the boat. I figured I should probably let her do it.
	“So you had the chance to give the bird its used name?” I said.
	She nodded.
	“What did she end up giving it?”
	Aine’s eyes followed a drift of ripples off one side of the bow, steering the boat away from it. “She likes its beak,” she said. “So she’s called it Beaker.”
	“So Morat was probably right, then.”
	“Probably,” she agreed.
	The boat slipped out beyond the shore into the rougher waters.

	“Theamh,” Istria said, putting a comforting hand on my shoulder. “Do you think you can stop puking for a moment? We may have a problem.”
	I leaned over the railing, watching the water slide away beneath us. “I wish I were puking. It beats the dry heaves.”
	“I know, chara,” Istria said gently. “I know. But, see, we’ve spotted this other boat on the horizon, and we think it’s got someone in a hreapa on it.”
	“Damn,” I muttered, wiping my mouth on my sleeve. Driblets of spit and scum dripped off it into the water. “Can you see who it is?”
	“Not yet.” She supported me as I slid across the deck toward the bow. Eorna and Eunem were looking very worried as they strained through the spray off the bow to see if it were a friend or an enemy.
	“Perfect,” I said. “That’s all we need is a naval battle.”
	“Well, should we avoid it, or just confront her and see what happens?” Eorna said.
	“She seems to be coming about,” Istria said. “Yes--there it is--she’s fleeing.”
	“What about it, Aine?” I called back. “Should we go after her?”
	“Hell yes!” Aine shouted. “I can overtake that thing, no trouble.”
	She didn’t even really wait for us to take a decision. She brought us closer to the wind, or some damn thing, and we started going even faster.
	The extra speed somehow made my stomach calmer, so I was able to watch our progress. The other boat had no deck and only one sail; it was hardly big enough to stay afloat in seas this choppy. And she was doing what she could, but we were certainly gaining.
	<Man,> Istria said. <I knew Aine drove like a maniac, but this is really something.>
	<It’s well enough we don’t have cars down here.>
	“YEEEEEE HAAAAAA!”
	We put on more speed, with Aine whooping away in the back at the tiller. The woman ahead of us looked back, and suddenly the boat came around.
	“What’s she doing, shriia?” Taric said warily, as Aine slowed down our progress.
	The boat’s sail tilted, and it started making straight toward us.
	“I don’t believe it,” Aine shouted. “She’s trying to ram us.”
	Our boat swerved out of the intended path, and when the other one slid past we could get a good look at the woman. She had bright red hair, with that coppery tinge to it that mine never had, and a face burnt by the sun. Her hreapa had round sleeves, which left her free to work the rigging without worrying about getting snagged.
	“Hey!” I shouted. “Who are you?”
	“Frith mo gleacha!” she shouted back.
	“Fine, be that way!” I yelled, as she brought the boat around behind us.
	Aine stood up, looking over our stern. The little thing was tacking along after us.
	“Theamh!” Aine shouted. “I don’t know who she is, but she’s got to be Jiprani.”
	“Why?”
	“Nobody else handles a boat like that, especially not in these waters.”
	I knew she had that regional pride thing, but I appreciated her point. This was not a sea that would be friendly to strangers. And this woman was steadily gaining on us, literally taking the wind out of our sails.
	“It must be Fand,” Eorna said. 
	“Wouldn’t you know her?” I answered.
	Eorna shook her head. “I’ve only been on the Council a year; she’s been out doing border maintenance for the last two.”
	Aine was peering over the taffrail at the little boat, trying to see what was painted on one side of the prow.
	“Bright Line!” she called. “This is Aine ni hEmer of the Idair’s Arrow. Who are you?”
	The other woman leaned suddenly forward, and then seemed to get suspicious.
	“How do I know you’re who you say you are?” she shouted back.
	“How many Jiprani shriias are there?”
	“But Aine ni hEmer’s not a shriia,” the other woman, clearly thinking she had caught her out in something.
	“She is now,” I shouted back. “I’m Theamh ni hUlnach. Are you Fand ni hUisce?”
	“That’s an even bigger one,” she shouted back. “Theamh ni hUlnach doesn’t sail.”
	“I certainly don’t, when I have the choice,” I called.
	 “Look,” Istria finally shouted. “You’re close enough, if we really wanted to kill you we’d have set you on fire.”
	“But I’ve got the thing fireproofed,” she said.
	“All right,” Istria said. “I give up. Have it your way.” She turned to Aine. “We may as well just go on.”
	I argued. “If she’s on our side we ought to make contact, Idair knows we can use all the help we find.”
	“Here, hold this,” Aine said, handing me the tiller.
	“What?”
	Aine jumped over the railing and into the water.
	“Aine!” I heard Istria shout. I was afraid to let go of the tiller. “You don’t swim!”
	Our boat was leaving her behind. “Slow down, we have to go back for her.”
	“How do I do that?” I shouted.
	Nobody really knew how to answer me. While they were all trying to figure out what to do with the tiller, I heard a splash behind us. 
	The other woman had thrown overboard a log tied onto a rope. Aine had managed to paddle over and cling onto it. The woman hauled her aboard. I saw the two of them trying each other, and then fortunately their boat caught up with ours.
	“Satisfied now?” Istria called at her.
	“I know who she is--who the hell are you?” Fand called back.
	“I’m Istria ni Vharen.”
	There was no immediate answer, except that the boat swerved a little.
	“Don’t tell me things like that when I’m holding the tiller,” Fand snapped.
	The little boat came alongside ours. Aine was cheerfully running about with a board and some rope, which she turned into a makeshift gangplank. “Don’t worry, dhiaoc, I’ll be right there. You’re perfectly right, you know,” she said to Fand, as she tied down her end of the plank. “She doesn’t sail. At all.”
	It was a big gamble for her, but she must have been sure that it really was Fand. Now that I thought about it, there weren’t many Jiprani shriias, which was why Fand was on the Council at her age; she was supposed to be the provincial representative. Aine ran across the gangplank and climbed cheerfully, if soggily, back into the boat.
	“Come on, Fand,” she said. “Tie up and come aboard, and have some company for a change.”
	Fand caught the rope Aine tossed her, and in a few minutes she was climbing over the railing. I put out a hand; she took it, and we did the fire thing. “I’m sorry to have been so suspicious,” she said. “I’ve been living on rainwater and seaweed for the past three months, it does things to your temperament.” She took Eorna’s hand. “Glad to know you, Eorna--I admire your work very much--and Eunem--and no point in trying you--”
	“This is Taric,” I said.
	“Ah--I remember from the report.” She bowed. “And you really are Istria ni Vharen.”
	Istria popped fire out of her free hand. “I must be.”
	“Well, clobber me with a boathook,” she said. “I thought you had to be dead. What have you been doing all this time?”

	Five hours later, Fand was leaning thoughtfully over the starboard railing as Aine explained to Eorna about steering. 
	“That’s quite a story,” she said, looking at me.
	I swallowed the acid that was threatening to bring on another bout of heaves. “It sure is. And it just keeps getting longer.”
	Fand shook her head. “So...but Morat’s all right?”
	She hadn’t taken it all in yet. “Yes,” I said. “Morat’s fine, so are Lilea and Dalen and Cualha and the whole Amranth Council. And Harani.”
	“And so Vrila’s dead,” Fand said. “Well, that’s good riddance to bad rubbish. What about Sibh?”
	“Sibh’s dark,” Eunem said.
	“I know that, what I mean is, is she still alive.”
	“Apparently.”
	“Ah well.” Fand turned her face to the wind. “I guess Lythril can’t kill everyone.”
	“So,” I said. “What do you know that we don’t?”
	“Very little,” Fand admitted. “I’ve just been out here trying to stay alive. They killed Irpeth, you know.”
	“I heard,” I said. Irpeth had been part of Border Control; Vrila had apparently burnt her up in that first battle in the Raed. 
	“I do know one thing,” Fand said. “Whatever they were trying to do by arresting Paigin, it didn’t work. I’ve been doing a sort of aquatic version of siuilin--everyone here goes out to the sea at least once a day, I catch up with them that way. And I’ll tell you, nobody liked the City much before but you should hear ‘em now.” She sighed. “So. What about it, Theamh, do you need an extra hand?”
	“It can’t hurt,” I said. “Can you leave your people?”
	“They’ll spare me, I’m sure,” Fand said. “Where were you planning to tie up?”
	“Aine says we’re anchoring on the south side of something called Cruacht Fiarl.”
	Evidently this meant something to Fand. “I’ll go ashore here and explain, and I’ll catch up with you there. Let me just go say goodbye to Aine.”
	I watched them talking, while Eorna took the tiller. Aine had only met this woman a few hours earlier, but in the energy of her gestures and volume of her talk I saw that she was already completely at home with her. But then to Aine it wasn’t a stranger. Fish do better in water, and I guess Jiprani do better in Jipran.
	“Safe home then, Fand,” Aine called out. “We’ll see you down there, but don’t worry. We’ll wait for you to catch up.”
	“In your dreams, child,” Fand said, climbing back over the gangplank. “If you get this tub down there before me I’ll eat my seaweed wet. Good rest to you all.”
	Fand untied her boat and it went veering resolutely off back into the distance. Aine turned to me. “Well, so that’s good, isn’t it, dhiaoc?”
	The afternoon sun was on her face and her hair was lifting in the breeze. It had gotten longer since we left. The whole way she held her body now was different. Easier, more relaxed, like she was finally comfortable.
	“Yes,” I said. “I’m glad we’re coming home this way, Aine.”
	Aine smiled. “Even with the puking?”
	“Even so,” I said. “It’s good to see you on your home turf. Or rather on water.”
	“Thank you, dhiaoc,” Aine said.
	It started to rain.
	“Don’t worry,” she said, looking up at the sky. “It’s not serious.”
	The wind picked up and the waves with it.
	I went back to my railing and my puking.

	I had finally decided that as long as it didn’t start raining again I would rather sleep on deck. At least there I got some fresh air. Taric, evidently, felt the same way, as did Aine and Fand. Apparently in Jipran, if you have to sleep on the boat you do it on deck so that if something bad happens to the weather you know it right away.
	“I’ll tell you what,” I said, searching for a relatively dry spot. “That ealpota tastes a lot better when it’s hot.”
	“At least yours was cooked once in its life,” Fand said, chewing away at a rubbery strip of raw weed. Aine had beaten her to the spot after all.
	Fand swallowed, with a grimace. “This your first time in Jipran?”
	“What was your first clue?” I said.
	“How about you, Taric?” Aine asked.
	He shook his head. “There was a stable in Na Pisce I worked at for a while.”
	That was about all he was going to say. Aine gave it another shot.
	“I never would have thought I would see it,” she said. “You sitting in my family’s house eating ealpota. Especially after that party you took me to at the Craoibh Oir.”
	“Oh no,” Istria said, alarmed. “You took her to one of Ulnach’s parties?”
	“It was a pedagogical--”
	“What was she supposed to learn from that?”
	“What money does to people,” Aine said.
	Istria gave this some thought.
	“I can see that,” she finally said. “Although as someone once said, there’s a fine line between instruction and abuse.”
	“Were you ever in that house?” Aine said.
	“Theamh brought me home at the Burning one year,” Istria said. She shivered. “It’s a cold place. Ulnach’s a cold woman.”
	Istria stretched out her legs, leaning against the gunwale. “If I went now it would be more interesting, at least,” she said. “I’d know what to look for.”
	She’d known since she was small that she suffered visions; and Idair knows there would have been plenty for her to see in her house. But it had taken a lot of training for her to get to where she was now. She’d seen nothing in my family’s house. That kind of bad had never happened there. If she went back now, she would be able to look for the kind of thing Aine found. The kind that doesn’t shed blood or inflict pain, that happens in words and looks and things that a place can’t be expected to remember.
	“I remember coming in the door,” Istria sighed, resting up against my shoulder. “That big double staircase, with that balcony at the top, and the light tree hanging from that high ceiling...tricked out for the Burning with all those evergreens and ribbons--”
	“And you asked me was it always like that,” I said.
	“I meant the decorations,” Istria went on. “Only you thought I meant, how your mother was, so you said yes...and for a long time I thought all the rich always put ribbons and tree branches all over their houses, just because they could.”
	Taric suddenly spoke up. “Your family’s house has a double staircase?”
	“Yes,” I sighed. “For show, although it does communicate to the second floor...”
	“What does the light tree look like, shriia?”
	“There’s a hollow iron tube that comes from the ceiling, and it branches out into a kind of pyramid of curved branches--”
	“I know what a light tree looks like, shriia,” he said. “I mean what does the one in your mother’s hall look like.”
	“It’s gilded,” I said. “It’s worked so the branches look like real branches, and there are little gilt leaves and berries all over them. The glass globes are designed to look like fruit. That’s why the place is called the Craoibh Oir. Golden branch.”
	Taric was paying attention, but not because he cared about the house.
	“This woman Barant,” he said. “That’s the woman with the yellow hair, worn up in a bun, hreapa looks a little bit like Morat’s only the stars are worn in different places?”
	“Yes,” I said, slowly.
	“What have you seen?” Aine asked.
	Fand looked at me questioningly.
	“Taric has foresight,” I said.
	“Really?” Fand gasped. Taric looked annoyed.
	“What have you seen?” Aine insisted.
	Taric didn’t want to talk about it, but he knew we wouldn’t let it go. 
	“I saw the double staircase and the light tree,” he said. “Lit up, and a bunch of candles sticking out of the walls in these gilt holders. And a bunch of people there in fancy suits. And that woman Barant there with them, in a kind of a silvery gray dress with little bands of white silk around the neck and the wrist. It had kind of a high waist, cinched around with a white silk belt. With a long skirt and silvery gray slippers.”
	If Fand found it strange that he could remember so many of the fashion details, she was evidently more struck by the important point. “She was out of hreapa?”
	“I haven’t ever seen a hreapa looking like this, shriia.”
	“If they’re ever introduced, I’m sure it’ll be by her,” I said. “That’s an old dress of my mother’s--are you sure it was on Barant?”
	“Your mother’s hair isn’t yellow, is it?”
	I shook my head.
	“I only saw Barant that once. But I remember all that pretty well.”
	Well, he would. I remembered the hearing pretty vividly too. 
	“And I saw her, in that dress, standing under that light tree you talked about, with the fruit and the leaves and the gilt. I’m guessing there aren’t two light trees like that.”
	“No,” I said. “Mathi is very proud that it’s one of a kind.”
	“When did you have this vision, exactly?” I said.
	“Last night,” he said, uncomfortably.
	“So it’s probably not happened yet,” I said.
	“Probably not.” 
	“Thank you for mentioning it,” I answered.
	“Will it help you, shriia?” he said.
	“Maybe,” I answered.
	“I’ll be glad then,” he replied, and turned on his side to sleep.
	<So,> Fand said, trying out the link. <Your mother is getting cozy with Barant?>
	It was hard to see what else would explain it. I couldn’t imagine that anyone would dare crash my mother’s party and raid her wardrobe. Unless Barant had seized the house and all its assets, she had to have been there by invitation. My mother had asked her down to one of those parties and lent her a dress just like she had lent one to Aine. 
	<It would appear so.>
	<Theamh?>
	I switched to the link to Aine. <Yes?>
	<If she’s going to be there out of hreapa...>
	<You’re right,> I answered. <I don’t like it, but you are. We’ll talk with the others about it in the morning.>
	She was right. It would be a good time to take her. If she was wearing my mother’s dress that meant she would have had to change after she got there. Which meant she must have left her hreapa bundled up somewhere. If Taric’s vision was accurate, that was as vulnerable as we could expect Barant to be. So it would be a good time to take her, if we could manage it.
	A pitched battle. Good squaring off against evil. Flames, pain, victory for one side and destruction the other. Claws out, blood drawn, no holds barred. In the middle of one of my mother’s parties.
	Well, it wouldn’t be the first time.

XVII.
Hyagleach

	When we came ashore at Na Pisce, finally, it was under cover of darkness. We knew Ybrial was on the move looking for us, or at least we assumed that was why Harani hadn’t seen her around in the past several days. It’s a shame, because Na Pisce is beautiful; I’ve seen it since in daylight. At the time, however, none of that mattered. We were just trying to find a secluded spot to tie up in and then sneak ashore as quietly as we could.
	Na Pisce has been something of a smuggler’s town for a long time. Not that anything ever got smuggled in from the Cretid Nation--the border would stop that--but the regions have laws about selling goods from one region in a different one that involve tithes, and someone’s always willing to risk the fines to buy cheaper. In fact, as Aine had admitted with some embarrassment, in her youth she had accompanied Piacli and part of her family’s catch on some highly irregular voyages to Na Pisce. Selling fish in Na Pisce, is not, of course, illegal. But like most fishing families, Aine’s family was under contract to a distributor, and had signed something (or at any rate, given their legally binding assent) to the effect that all their product would be sold to na Fir mac Lir at a fixed rate. But, as Piacli had apparently figured out, if they could get some of it down to Na Pisce faster than Wous’s fleet of larger and more unwieldy craft could, and if there were small buyers there willing to pay double the price so that they could shoot the stuff back to markets in the City that were willing to pay triple the price to get fish that could still be called fresh, then why let some mark made on a sheet of parchment make them feel bad about getting a little of their own back from an outfit that in any case made money by robbing them blind? 
	Anyhow, Aine’s smuggling past was a great help to us now, since it meant that Aine knew a little beach on the far side of the bay where the approach was difficult and the authorities didn’t trouble themselves to visit. I was happy to be back on land, even if I was unhappy to be back in a shield and looking at an all-day march to the Vicinity.
	All that dissipated, though, when we finally stopped around dawn to do haons linn. Because by then things were starting to look familiar.
	When you grow up City you think the City is the whole world. As a child I had gone on various trips with my parents to resorts in Naucht and so forth. But I had never been away from the Vicinity for this long. To see the birch trees growing along the bank of the river, and to suddenly realize, yes, it’s the Lifhi--the relief of recognizing the place was unexpected, and powerful. 
	“You all right, shriia?”
	Taric had been posted as our lookout, since we had to de-shield before we could put our hreapas back on. Now that the others were slipping back into their shields he had returned, but I was still standing with mine in my hands, watching the sun come down through the bright green birch leaves.
	“We’re home,” I said, still looking up at the trees.
	“You know this place?” Taric asked.
	“Not this exact place,” I said. “But...we’re at the Lifhi, in the Haunted Forest.” I looked back at him. “Aren’t we?”
	Taric nodded. 
	I got back into my shield. I was surprised by how much I wanted to go back to my house. It would have been suicidal, of course; they were watching it, assuming they hadn’t burned it down already. Instead, we were following Taric through the trees on the way to something he would only call “the old place.”
	The walk got harder as we reached the cliffs. The riverbed drops into a trough cut through one of the hills, and if you follow it, you find yourself standing on a narrow margin looking across the rapids at a sheer limestone face rising right out of the water.
	<It’s here,> Taric said.
	I backed up against the cliff wall behind me. <It’s not much of a hideout, is it?>
	<I mean the entrance is here,> he said. <You have to go in underwater.>
	<I beg your pardon?>
	<The entrance is underwater. You’ll have to swim to it. Follow me.>
	I transmitted this to the others. Istria promised to take care of getting Aine there. Taric took off his boots, tying them by the laces and slinging them around his neck, and waded into the river. 
	The river rose slowly up to his knees and then suddenly engulfed him as he stepped off the submerged shelf. I dove in behind him. Through the water I could see his blurry form stroking toward the other side. Until it disappeared into what appeared to be a dark hole in the cliff wall, about twice the width of a human body. 
	I couldn’t see what had happened to him, but I had a limited supply of air. I kicked myself into the passage.
	It was only dark for the first few feet; after that I could see a glimmering circle floating up ahead of me. I made straight for it, breaking through it as my head burst out of the water and into unexpected cold air.
	I was floating in the middle of a cave. The domed ceiling reached down to the water on all sides; the place was completely enclosed in rock. The light I had followed was made by the sun floating in through a very narrow fissure at the top of the cave roof. It was a murky, indirect light, but I could make out the ledge that Taric had crawled onto. 
	I hauled myself out of the water and sat down next to him. The water by the passage was already whirling again, and by the time I had the shield off Istria was sitting next to me and had dragged up after her a shape which I assumed was Aine.
	“Through here,” Taric said, crawling along the ledge into another passageway.
	Istria got the shield off Aine. “I’ll wait while you catch your breath.”
	Aine gasped.
	“You’re going to have a long wait,” I said, as more still-invisible shapes disturbed the water in the pool. “Aine doesn’t like caves.”
	“Dhiaoc...”
	“Pull out some light and see if that helps.”
	Aine brought a globe out. “Not much, dhiaoc.”
	“Go on through the passage, maybe it’s roomier in there.”
	“It looks pretty narrow to me, dhiaoc.”
	“There must be another chamber on the other side, Taric and Keanrih weren’t making love in a tunnel all those years. Come on, I’ll follow you.”
	<Theamh...> Istria said, as Aine moved reluctantly into the passage.
	<Don’t say a word.>
	Aine finally slid out of the other end of the tunnel in a shower of pebbles. I followed, landing on the floor face-first. I rolled over to see if matters had improved any.
	“Good spirits, Taric,” I said. “This place is huge.”
	I could tell Aine didn’t agree. But at least she wasn’t hyperventilating any more.
	The architecture wasn’t elegant; instead of a dome the roof of this chamber was a slab, and the walls were broken with irregular outcroppings and veins of calcified runoff that stood out in ridges. Stone icicles dripped from the ceiling. The floor was smooth, except for a ring around the edges where the water from the icicles had collected and, over the years, petrified into a bizarre series of round, flat stone formations that looked for all the world like fried eggs. Of course, we could only see this because Aine’s globe had followed us through the passage. I sent one of mine up to hang near the roof with it.
	“Coming through!”
	I scrambled out of the way as a very wet Fand dropped out of the tunnel onto the spot I had been sprawled over. She sat up, shaking the water out of her hair so that it splattered all over the rest of us.
	“Whoagh!” She got to her feet gratefully. “Well, if I’ve got to be underground at least I can be dry. Maybe it would make sense to learn to swim,” she said, heading over to the fried eggs to investigate them. 
	“Maybe it would,” said Eorna a little caustically as she tumbled in. “Then I wouldn’t have had to stuff you in there like you were sausage meat.”
	“Temper,” said Eunem, wriggling through. “Let’s not start an interregional incident.”
	Istria appeared, looking around with a low whistle. “Some place you’ve got here.”
	Taric nodded. His mind was somewhere else. Probably about where Aine’s was, although she was having a much worse time there.
	“Tell me again about how to suppress,” she said, putting a distressed hand out to grab Istria’s arm.
	Well, at least it would take her mind off the claustrophobia. “Is there more back there?” I said, nodding toward a passage leading out of another part of the wall.
	“Lots,” he answered. “More than I’ve ever explored.”
	My head turned at the same time as everyone else’s. There was a sound coming from that other passage.
	“It’s all right,” Taric said.
	A crouching form distinguished itself dimly in the opening, and then stepped into the chamber. It was Mna.
	Her hair was half-wet; she was barefoot and wearing that same red dress. But her face and her body showed the change. She’d put on flesh, and she’d lost that defensive furtiveness she used to have. Staying put for a while had been good for her.
	“You’re back,” she said, looking at Taric.
	“I am.”
	They were linked; and it was my guess they were saying a lot more than that to each other. Istria glanced at me.
	“That’s Mna ni Dhrialan na Lough,” I said. 
	Mna came forward, slowly, scrutinizing my face under the globelight.
	“Idair’s teeth, shriia,” she said, softly. “What happened to you?”
	“Hasn’t Taric told you?”
	She nodded, but her expression of startled concern didn’t change. 
	“I’m glad to see you again, Mna,” Aine said, thoughtfully distracting her.
	“Aine!” Mna embraced her. “Aine, when this is all over I want you to just sit down and tell me all about it. I always ask Taric about you but he doesn’t always remember the interesting stuff.” Mna looked at her with that ignited curiosity that made me remember she was still young. “A shriia for real now, and everything--”
	“Mna,” I said. “This is Istria--”
	Mna stopped abruptly and fixed her attention on Istria. It was an ambivalent kind of interest. She would have heard the story from Taric, which meant that she knew both about her and me, and about her responsibility for what had happened to Crann.
	“Welcome,” Mna finally said. “I know the shriia is very glad you’re back.”
	“So is this shriia,” Aine said, sensing her resistance. “You will be too, in a while.”
	Istria looked annoyed. “Don’t, Aine.” She and Mna spent another tense moment casing each other. “I can’t tell you I didn’t know what I was doing, or that I didn’t intend to hurt anyone. I knew when I made those things that they would play hell with a lot of people. I didn’t know it would be you but that makes no difference. I take responsibility for what happened to your boy and to you and all that comes with it.”
	She knelt down on the cave floor with her hands behind her back.
	“Magic is a weapon and I used it wrongly against you and yours. I have done harm that I cannot undo. So I offer myself here as prey to your anger. Name or perform your remedy, and I will submit to it.”
	I was a little worried about what would happen next. But when Istria knelt down Mna drew back, very startled and very uncomfortable. At first she said nothing. Then finally she turned to me in confusion.
	Shriia...what do I do?
	You either forgive her, or you don’t. In which case, if you want her to do something to make it up to you, you name it.
	Nervously, Mna turned back to Istria.
	“I forgive you. It’s all right. Please get up from there.”
	Istria stood. Mna let out a heavy sigh.
	“What’s done is done...and we shouldn’t be enemies, I don’t need another one. I’ve been making them by the dozen since you two left.”
	We made the rest of the introductions. Mna sat down on the cave floor as if she were used to it, tucking her legs under her ragged skirt. We put a shri fire in the middle so Mna and Fand could dry off while we talked.
	“Harani doesn’t know about this place, does she?” I said.
	Mna shook her head. “I did just like Taric told me to do,” Mna said. “But why? You don’t trust her?”
	“It’s Barant I don’t trust. There’s no way that Barant would let Harani keep operating and not open a door in her mind somewhere. Harani doesn’t know it’s open, but I would bet just about anything that we’ll find a breach when we look.”
	Aine was highly disturbed. “But--so Barant knows the whole plan!” she cried.
	“No,” Istria said. “She knows what we told Harani.”
	“But that’s almost the whole plan!”
	“It sure is.”
	“But--” Aine said.
	“See,” Istria began, “Barant knows Theamh’s smart. So she knows Theamh can figure out that if Harani is still alive and free it’s because Barant is using her to gather information about the resistance. So of course knowing that only a moron would tell her the plan. And Theamh’s not a moron.”
	“So...you told her the real plan...thinking that she would assume that it was a line you were feeding her to put her off the scent?”
	I nodded. “Up to a point, I figured that was as good a strategy as any. But of course if she knew we really were executing this plan that would ruin the effect; plus we don’t want her to know where to find the resistance. I had Taric warn Mna, and Mna’s been...”
	“Feeding her a line,” Mna finished.
	“Because Barant wouldn’t think Mna would know enough to suspect about Harani’s mind being breached. Anyhow, the important thing is, she doesn’t know for sure that we’re here and she doesn’t know where to find us.”
	“Plus,” Mna put in, “she also doesn’t know that you know about the dinner party your mother’s throwing tomorrow night.”
	“That’s tomorrow?” I said, shocked at how fast it was all going to happen.
	Mna nodded. “Iela got word to me today--Barant has definitively accepted the invitation. Iela--she’s a rock, Theamh, I’d have cracked long ago without her.”
	“How is she?” I said. “What about Frene?”
	“Both well,” Mna said. “And Frene’s invaluable--half of what we know about the others we get from him.”
	“He was always a good eavesdropper.”
	“Why is Ulnach inviting Barant in the first place?” Eorna demanded. “She must know about how Barant would kill you as soon as look at you?”
	I shook my head. “Does Iela have thoughts?”
	“Iela’s not sure,” Mna answered. “She thinks maybe it’s a peace offering. Like your mother is conceding, or something.”
	“My mother never conceded a thing in her life.”
	“Well, all I know is Iela said Barant was the last to respond to the invitation. She must have some misgivings.”
	And why wouldn’t she. The situation had “trap” written all over it. If my mother’s inviting her was a great mystery, maybe her choosing to attend was an even greater one.
	“I don’t think so,” Istria said, having read me. “She has to play it this way. Barant’s lost just about everything else, the only people she has left are the rich--the crowd that got her into this in the first place. The rich get nervous easily. She needs to make them believe that everything is under control, and showing up at that party is one way to do it. It’s a show of confidence--that’s probably why she’s going out of hreapa.”
	Mna gaped. “She’s going out of hreapa? How do you know?”
	Istria nodded at Taric. 
	“Are her minions coming too?”
	“No,” Mna said. “Iela says she’s bringing one guest--probably as a bodyguard, and my bet is Riina. The two of them go everywhere together now.”
	“Well that settles it,” said Istria. “We’ve got to do it.”
	“Suppose it’s a trap?” Eunem said.
	“It’s definitely a trap,” I answered. “For someone. But we may never have a chance like that again.”
	 Mna agreed. “As soon as I heard she was going I thought of you. Iela’s with you to the death, but you knew that--and Fada too.”
	“I thought Fada was going to quit,” I said.
	“She was. But after you left, your mother was in such a state, Fada couldn’t bring herself to abandon her. I don’t know whether it was mindforcing or good old manipulation, but Ulnach got her to stay on.”
	“What kind of state?” I said.
	“The kind with a lot of crying and taking to bed during daylight hours,” Mna said. “The kind that’s rough on the servants.”
	“Poor Fada,” Aine said.
	“Fada still feels like your mother isn’t quite right. She’s hardly taken any notice at all of what’s happening in the City--keeps entertaining her same circle of friends, even though half of them are probably in league with Barant and the other half will be as soon as they can get a private interview.” Mna spat. “Be glad you haven’t been here to see it. It’s nothing but disgusting, shriia.” 
	I had forgotten how sharp her outrage could be. It shouldn’t have surprised me to see that she was almost as angry with Barant as a shriia could have been.
	“So,” I said, picking up a long thin icicle that had fallen off the ceiling. “Those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of visiting the Craoibh Oir, here’s how it’s laid out.”
	I began drawing the map in the thin layer of wet silt that covered the cave floor. So now I was going to be the one making the plan. Ah well. Maybe it would work anyway.

	“I know it’s foolish,” Mna said, rocking a little as she sat with her arms wrapped around her knees. “But everything you’ve been through--and Aine, and everyone else--it seems like it all started because you took up my case. I can’t help feeling...responsible.”
	She had gotten older. Not with time. But I could see in her that she felt responsible for a lot of things, a lot of people. She had told us almost nothing about how things had gone for her in this time, probably because she didn’t want us to know what the lay resistance was up to. But one thing had definitely happened. She had become a leader, and discovered that she was good at it.
	“It’s Lythril and Barant who are responsible,” I said. “And I owe you nothing but thanks--the one thing you can take credit for, I think, is my finally finding Istria.”
	Her eyes darkened. “You found me Crann,” she said. “If I helped find the thing you love best, shriia, then I’m happy.”
	Taric dropped his head forward and ran his hands through his hair. Mna put a hand on his shoulder, sadly. He didn’t look up, but he allowed it to rest there.
	Things were complicated all right.
	“What time is it?” I finally said.
	“Two and a half hours to sundown,” Mna said.
	“Excellent.” I nudged Aine, who was still white-lipped and extremely tense. She jumped. “Come on, let’s go mug Harani.”
	“ ‘Mug’?” Mna said.
	“It’s a Cretid expression, I picked a few up,” I said. “I hope I’ll drop them soon. I’ll let you know if there’s any trouble.”
	The three of us got back out into the river. Aine was so glad to be out of the cave she didn’t mind having to be towed out of the water. The shields had so far done a good job of keeping us dry. 
	<Why do we have to mug Harani?> Aine said.
	<We want her with us, but we have to close that door first. And we have to close it before she realizes we’re here. So we have to take her by surprise and scour her by force.>
	<Are you allowed?> Aine said.
	<I have reason to believe she’s been invaded, it’s legitimate. It won’t count as a violation. Of course, that’s not going to make it any more pleasant for either of us.>
	Cualha had told us where she would be. It was Mablad’s turn for uisce ointe, so she would be coming to the tallest hill nearby to do her thing. We made it there well before sundown.
	It was a shock to see the na Poll house in the distance, looking like it always had. I wondered what Minead and Nocc were doing these days. I had forgotten to ask Mna. What did they think of all this? Were they still living in the same house? Had Minead started to doubt that everything I told her was real, had she begun to believe I was really dark and lying because that was easier? Was I on ground that was friendly, or hostile?
	<Take off the shields,> I said.
	Aine and Istria reappeared. Aine began walking among the shrubs that dotted the hilltop.
	<Aine, what are you doing?>
	<Looking for cover.>
	<Think about this for a minute, Aine.>
	It didn’t take a full minute. <Well, how do we ambush her then?>
	<We choose our spots and we stay there absolutely silent,> I said. <Don’t move, and especially don’t speak. Even after we jump on her, don’t speak at all, even in a head voice, until I let you know she’s clean.>
	It was a strange vigil. We were visible to anyone who cared to make her way up there; but nobody but Harani was liable to do that. So we were left alone on that hilltop, stock-still, eyes darting around as we waited for her. Wind wove around us and the first falling leaves of the season scuttled in it. The light dipped and the shadows lengthened. 
	For a while we talked over the links but soon we gave that up. Quiet started to seem natural, as if we were part of the hill now. I looked at Istria; I could see her dark eyes bent on the horizon, and the longer I looked at her the more I was starting to forget what I was there for. Until I saw a change in her eyes that told me she’d spotted her.
	<She’s approaching from the southside, up that same trail we used.>
	I could see her now, stick in hand, hiking up through the long grass. Her feet worked on their own, finding what they were looking for as her face turned to the sky to test the wind and the strength of the light. She had been coming out to the same place to make rain for five years; she hardly even needed the stick except for leaning on. 
	In spite of the strain I knew she had to be under, she looked calm--preoccupied with nothing more serious than the work she’d come out to do, and happy enough to be out in the air on one of the last warm afternoons we would have that season. I wished with all my heart that we could just let her do it and go home. But hateful as what I was about to do would certainly be, it was necessary. Because until we brought Barant down, there would be no real home for her to go to after her work was done. 
	Harani walked right between me and Aine, took the stick and began marking the star on the ground. We had ranged ourselves so she wouldn’t be able to detect us from where I knew she’d stand to call for the rain. And while we stood there, wondering how long we could keep this up, she made the call.
	Aine looked interested; she hadn’t seen it done much. I’m afraid I was just impatient. I really wanted to get this over with.
	Harani finished the song, and stood with her face turned to the wind. Watching her I started paying more attention to it. It might have been my imagination, but it seemed that the wind was colder, freshened a little with the promise of rain.
	Harani nodded. “There we are then,” she said, out loud, to the sky. “Thanks for standing by me. Till next time.”
	She rubbed the star out, then turned to descend.
	<Now.>
	We all flew at her at the same time. She spun around, trying to pinpoint where we were coming from, but Istria had her around the waist and we got her down on the ground. Not without struggle.
	“Damn you!” Harani’s fist flailed out and got me in the eye. I had to bite pretty hard to keep from yelling. “Get off me, you bitch--”
	<Help me wrap her.>
	Aine and I got her wrapped. Harani had plenty to say about that.
	“Thurk you anyway! Three of you on one woman who can’t even see--that’s craft! That’s a battle to sing about! Who are you anyway? Ybrial? Is that your stench I smell?”
	We had to leave her head free so I could go into it. I hated just seeing her there, powerless on the ground, shouting her taunts as hard as she could but still shaking. She was scared. Of course she was scared. It was just that I’d never seen her scared before. And somehow knowing that to her, we were all invisible, while we could see her struggling in panic, made it more painful.
	When I went into her head she fought me, and that made it hurt her more. She should have started to calm down once I got in, but the pain had put her on edge, so it was like pulling teeth all the way. I was afraid I might miss the thing in the confusion. But I found it in the last place I looked, which would have been the first place I suspected it--right by her link to Cualha.
	I closed it, checked it, and pulled out so fast I physically recoiled.
	“All right, she’s clean!”
	Aine and Istria dropped the wrap. Harani sprang to her feet with a howl of rage and landed a fist right on my head.
	“Come on!” Istria shouted, while the world spun around me. “It’s not Theamh’s fault, it was necessary!”
	Harani was going for Istria when I sorted myself out. I grabbed her wrist and spun her around.
	“It’s all right!” I caught her other wrist as she struck out. “It’s us, you’re safe.”
	“Why the hell!” Harani shouted, breaking up into red-faced tears.
	Harani isn’t a person who touches, and neither am I. But when I put my arms around her she didn’t fight me.
	“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry, I know, I’m sorry. We had to close the door.”
	Her breath was still rough. “What door?”
	“Barant had a door open near your link to Cualha. She’s been listening in. It’s closed now. I didn’t know what way she had you breached so I had to go in and close it before I could let you know who we were. I don’t want her to know we’re down here.”
	I let go of her. She was still very shaken.
	“It’s closed now?” she said, snuffling.
	“Yes.”
	“But...so she knows everything I know, now?”
	“All she would know is what you and Cualha talked about,” I said. “I figured that was it but I couldn’t be sure. If she had tried to go any broader or deeper you probably would have noticed.” I sighed. “And anyhow, she seems to be developing this as a skill.”
	Aine nodded. “It must have been her who told me not to feed your vigils.”
	“So Barant won’t necessarily know you’ve closed it,” Harani said.
	I shook my head.
	“That’s good.” She tried to pull herself together. “Damn, Theamh! I’m glad to have you back here, but I wish you’d’ve said hello first.”
	“Well you know Theamh,” Istria said. “No time for the small stuff.”
	Harani’s head turned to face her, and the gravity on it silenced us all.
	“It’s good to hear your voice again,” Harani said. 
	It meant something to her that Istria was back in the world. More maybe than she had expected.
	“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go somewhere safe, we’ve got planning to do.”
	Harani rubbed her hands together gleefully.
	“Is it gleacha-kicking time?”
	She was so eager, I had to laugh. “Almost.”
	“Great.” She followed us into the trees. “I am going to love every minute of it.”

	“See, the thing is,” Istria said. “Barant probably still has her vigils. So they’ll warn her if her enemies are nearby, and Idair knows we’re her enemies. But--so are you.”
	Harani nodded. “It makes sense,” she said. “She’ll see me there, she’ll assume that’s what the warning is about. And if she gets suspicious and asks why I’m there I’ll just tell her I’m working to bring her down. I say that to her practically every time I talk to her.” I laughed. “I think the problem will be getting me in there. I don’t get the feeling your mother likes it when people crash her parties.”
	“She’s invited Darin,” I said. “When’s the last time you were out on a date, Harani?”
	Harani looked like maybe she was going to swallow her tongue.
	“Theamh, I’m a shriia.”
	“So? We’ve got new instructions.”
	“And Barant has certainly not been shy about letting people know,” Harani answered. “She works it into every press conference--about how you and Istria are lovers, and that’s why you’re dark. I see why you didn’t want to tell me about Morat and Dalen.”
	“Anyhow,” I said. “Mna is getting the word to Darin. Be down at the hospital about an hour before sundown, and don’t worry, he’s a perfect gentleman.”
	Harani shook her head. “Whatever will I wear?”
	“You can go in hreapa,” I said. “Barant’s only changing to please Mathi and to make it look like everything’s all right.” Harani nodded. “So, what do you think? It’ll be dangerous because you’ll be in plain view--”
	“Do I care?” Harani laughed. “If I can get in one good hit on her I’ll think my life worthwhile. You haven’t seen what she’s been doing to the place,” she went on, warming up. “Comings and Goings is the worst--Riina’s too busy enjoying the fruits of her ill-gotten gains to attend to much. People are dying who shouldn’t die, and Returns is a complete shambles because Pel’s in hiding too. And Practical Magic is enough to make you sick--literally--nobody’s willing to undo the waste, they’ve all got much better things planned for themselves--and Possessions! Forget it. Barant’s too busy doing evil, Tliath thinks siulin is beneath her--and Sibh, my spirit, it’s hilarious--she thinks if she just sits things out and plots long enough eventually she’ll rise up and slay all the other ones and take the whole thing over.” She drew up her knees to her chin, wrapping her arms around them. “I never thought I would get to fight the Dark One, you know. I just wanted a steady job with regular hours and no pay.” Aine laughed. “But I’ve gotten a good close look at evil now, and I understand about this battle business. How can you not fight this.”
	“I know,” Aine said.
	We sat for a while quiet. Finally, I said, “So you know what you need to know.”
	“I do.”
	“Then go on back like nothing’s happened, and we’ll see you at the Craoibh Oir. Only you won’t see us.”
	“So what else is new,” Harani said, getting to her feet. “I will hide my anticipatory glee as best I can. I’ll be letting it all out that much more violently when we finally get this done.” We stood. <You hear me all right, Theamh?>
	<Just fine.>
	<Good. Well, good rest to you, wherever you’re headed.>
	Harani walked away through the woods, swinging her stick carelessly. I was sad watching her, trying to remind myself that I would in fact see her again. If all went well.
	“I wish...”
	Istria nodded. “I know, chara.”
	That Slythe could have been there with us. That at the very least, I could have known what would happen when I last spoke to her, and been kinder to her. Maybe she knew, now, that I had forgiven her. And maybe, if it really were true that nothing and no one is lost forever, she would be there somehow, helping in spite of things.

	<How are you doing, Aine?>
	I was sitting up next to her as she squirmed around on her bedroll in the middle of the main chamber. Istria and I had been planning to set up in one of the other chambers, but it seemed to make her feel better to have us nearby, so we had given up on that idea.
	<I wish it didn’t bother me.>
	<But it still does, though.>
	<Why is it, dhiaoc?>
	I glanced over into the corner where Fand was curled up. <Fand doesn’t seem to be happy either,> I said. <Maybe it’s all that time you spend on the water--you get used to wide open space.>
	Someone was moving around in the dark. It gave me a start, but it turned out just to be Taric, getting up from where he’d been sitting and crawling through the passage out to the entrance chamber with the water. 
	<Where’s he going?> Aine said, fretfully.
	<I’m sure it’s all right. You stay here.>
	Aine laid back down next to Istria, who had fallen asleep long ago. I went to the passage. I heard Taric drag himself onto the ledge, but there was no splash.
	I made up my mind and crawled through the passage after him. He moved down to the end of the ledge when he saw me, without comment but without explicit resistance.
	I dangled my feet in the water. He sat with his back to the cave wall, his legs tucked underneath him. There was very little light now coming through from the globe in the next chamber, and I couldn’t see his face. But I had gotten better about reading him.
	Water dripped from the opening into the center of the pool. It was raining outside.
	“Taric,” I finally said, quietly.
	“Yes, shriia?”
	“Do you want to talk?”
	The answer came late. “About what?”
	“About...” I looked around. “About us being here, about Mna and the boys, about your having killed for me, about Keanrih...about anything.”
	I listened to the water drop into the cave.
	“Don’t know what there is to say,” he finally answered.
	“I don’t either,” I said. “I just thought...” I shrugged. “You’re silent, a lot, maybe that’s just how you like it. Maybe it’s because you had to be silent so long.”
	He continued to be silent, at least for a while.
	“I’ve been thinking about Keanrih a lot,” I said. “For different reasons than you would. But I still thought--all these people, in your place, and I’m the only one who really knew him. Maybe you would want to talk.”
	Or, then again, maybe he wouldn’t.
	“Or, if you want me to leave you alone, that’s fair enough,” I said.
	“No,” he finally answered. “No, you can stay if you like, I don’t mind.” I drew my feet out of the water. “Do you like the place, shriia?”
	“I do,” I said.
	He nodded. In the weakened light from the other room I could see the circular ripples crossing and rippling on the surface of the pool.
	“We found it together,” he finally ventured.
	I could read now what that meant. It was more than just a place to hide. It was a place where Keanrih wasn’t a landlord and Taric wasn’t a hired hand. Somewhere to which nobody had title, that was just the earth and owned by nothing. Something that had been created--at least as far as they could tell--after they met, where they could start clean without that baggage. 
	“He was a good swimmer,” I said.
	I was surprised to hear him gasp the beginning of a cry.
	“Taric?”
	He was, sure enough, crying.
	“I was alone when he died,” Taric said. “I was absolutely alone.”
	Nobody would even have told him. He couldn’t have gone to the departure. And it should have been Taric sending him home.
	Would that have made a difference? If Taric had been there to say goodbye, would Keanrih have been able to break the grip of that guun? Was he held captive not just by Lythril and Istria’s craft but by this silence, this unsaid farewell? Not wanting to leave, because Taric hadn’t been given the chance to let him go...
	“He was a good swimmer,” Taric repeated, crying.
	And Taric had had nobody to mourn with. And would he even have known how to mourn or why, after having no word from him for so long except for a letter he couldn’t read. Alone in that farmhouse with nothing but the animals and the future, suddenly bereft and unable to speak it to a single human creature.
	“Yes,” I said.
	“He was beautiful.”
	Taric looked at me when he said it, tentatively, as if he expected me to argue.
	“Yes,” I answered.
	“And he took things...too damn hard...”
	It went on for a long time this way. Taric telling me things about him, and me just listening and saying very little. Good things and bad things, things I knew and some I hadn’t. Just because now finally he had someone to talk to.
	At last when he hadn’t said anything in a while and he seemed not to be crying any more, I thought maybe it was time for me to go. But even though he wasn’t looking at me it seemed like there was something else he wanted to get out.
	“I’m scared of the boy, shriia,” he said.
	I’d never heard his voice like that before.
	“Scared how?”
	“Just scared.”
	I didn’t know exactly what to say. “Do you mean, scared of what might happen, or just that being around him scares you?”
	“Both.”
	“Do you know why?”
	He swallowed. “I know...Mna says...all young children are like that. Demanding.”
	“I think they mostly are.”
	“I don’t know what he wants,” Taric said.
	“From you?”
	He nodded. “He wants me around, all the time. But I don’t know what he wants.”
	“Maybe that’s all it is,” I said. “Children like attention.”
	Taric’s head shook. 
	“Is it different from how Frih is?”
	“Frih likes me being around, I can tell that. But it’s not the same.”
	“It’s good you went away for that little while, maybe?” I said.
	“But I missed him,” Taric said, with that tremor back in his voice.
	No wonder he was scared. I was scared too.
	“Have you...do you...see...things about him?” I said.
	“Thank the spirit not yet,” Taric said, with a large, troubled sigh.
	“I don’t know what to tell you,” I said. “I understand why you’re scared of him. And why you miss him--as he was, and as he is now...” He shook his head. “I don’t know what anyone can do about it. I’m sorry it’s happened. I know Istria’s sorry for it too--”
	“I know, shriia,” he said. “She made me the speech, one time when you were gone. There’s no remedy, so it doesn’t matter, but I know she wishes there were.”
	It seemed like he was done talking.
	“You coming back inside?” I finally said, moving toward the passage.
	“In a minute.”
	I crawled back into the room and found my way to Istria. A little while later I heard Taric coming back. But it was a long time before I got back to sleep. 

	Even though I was seeing it, it was hard to believe it was happening.
	Me, Eunem, Eorna, Fand, Aine, and Istria, sitting in a circle under that cave roof, with the shields piled in the middle, running through the plan for the last time. Because in a minute we would be making our way down to the City after Barant.
	“Fand, Eorna and Eunem will follow Darin and Harani through the front door,” I said. “Aine, Istria and I will go up the back stairs from the kitchen into Athi’s study. From there, we split up and fan out. Whoever spots Barant first, let the others know. We want to do this in private if we can, but we can do it in public if we have to.” They nodded. I’d been through it all so many times, there was little point to this.
	“Nothing we can do to put it off,” I said, bringing my hands together. “It’s time.”
	We still sat there for a little while, aware of the seriousness of things.
	Aine reached for Eorna’s hand. The ring was joined soon as we all took hands, holding on tight, hoping we’d all make it back.
	“Idair come with us,” Istria finally said. 
	That was all. We put on the shields, and disappeared one by one.
	Fand did all right with hers, even though Eorna had just made it and she wasn’t used to wearing one. And they all did pretty well following my directions, invisible as I was. I didn’t like being the only one who really knew where we were going. But it was light enough, and I found us the gate to the City without any serious trouble.
	<Here we go.>
	The place had changed. People weren’t talking as loud or as long as they used to. Or as much. If you saw someone on the street, he had somewhere to get to and wasn’t going to be digressing. Harry, worry, a kind of pinched anxiety. And that was just the people who were doing well.
	Because there were a lot of people who weren’t. The others maybe accepted the men and women settling down for a night on the street as normal for the City, which as everyone knows is a cruel heartless place where poverty is the least that can befall you. But I knew there were more of them than there used to be. Either Barant’s reign hadn’t been good for the ones who were hanging on at the bottom edge of breaking even, or they had stopped running the shelters.
	People were closing up shop, even though it was still light out. So that by the time we got through the town to the Pharc, the streets were emptying fast.
	There it was. White as it had always been, with the carvings above the doors and the tilu tree rising up in the central courtyard. The shriin was empty and dark, but even that was normal for this time of night. You would never know what had happened.
	Eorna and Eunem worked there, and Fand had been to scoil like everyone else, and they were all looking at it with the same fascinated anxiety. We knew there was evil in there. But we could see no signs of it. And that just made it all worse. 
	<Look, up in the Raed,> Aine said. <You can see the lights.>
	There were a few scattered windows lit in the upper stories. That was where the apartments were, and that must have been where Barant’s minions were retiring. 
	<Shouldn’t...> Fand was tentative about using the link still, but it was working; the words went to everyone. <Shouldn’t they be out hanging lights?>
	I could see that some shopowners were lighting lanterns and hanging them. The rest of the streets were just getting darker.
	<They should,> Eorna said bitingly. <But Faoil and Gulrun are both lazy, and Slythe’s not here to ride them.>
	Or to take care of the waste disposal, which from the smell of things had been let go rather severely. Eunem turned to look at the Mathair as we passed.
	<Wait a minute,> she said. <Where the hell is the refectory?>
	Not where it used to be, definitely.
	<Harani?>
	<This Darin fellow is a hoot and a half,> she said. <How come he never married?>
	<Why don’t you ask him?>
	<I have. He just laughed at me.>
	<Where are you?>
	<About halfway down the avenue, so you better hurry.>
	<What happened to the refectory?>
	<They closed it down. Said it was a security risk. Our Council is dining indoors these days.>
	<Just so they can eat meat with impunity, or what?>
	<Maybe,> Harani said. <Maybe they just got tired of standing in line.>
	I told the others. We passed gloomily through the streets to the gate of the Sixth.
	I had tried to brace myself for the changes. I hadn’t been prepared for this, though. Aine even less so.
	<It’s exactly the same,> Aine said, as we hurried up the street. <It’s exactly, exactly, exactly the thurking same!>
	The whole country had been wrecked by these women, but the Sixth was the same. It looked no different from the way it had when Aine had stood in front of that milliners’ store and delivered that tirade about my family, my mother, and the rich in general. Still clean, still intact, still shining, brass and glass perfect and polished. The one place that was weathering the storm. Even prospering under it.
	<Not exactly,> Istria said. <You see the gardai.>
	Now, we did. They were posted at intervals up and down the street, wandering around, drifting in and out of the shadows. 
	<Since when are they all men?> Eorna said.
	<I suppose probably a lot of the ones they had went into the INDF,> I said. <So they had to recruit new ones.>
	It was an unpleasant feeling, walking down that street--the one street that was well-lit, even if it was by ordinary fire--knowing it was being patrolled by this new group of gardai. But they never noticed us. We weren’t what they were looking for.
	<This is it.>
	We stopped in front of the Craoibh Oir. The carriages were out there with the horses and the footmen, just as they always had been. And among them, I could see Darin, piloting Harani solicitously around so that the horses wouldn’t trample on them. He probably didn’t need to be doing it, but she was trying to be polite and not get on him about it. Maybe she really did like him.
	<There they are. Go to it.>
	Eorna, Eunem, and Fand went after them. I led Aine and Istria to the back door.
	The door opened before we reached it. We stopped. Iela came through the door, carrying a string bag full of scraps.
	“Here you go!” she said, scattering them about for the birds. “Eat hearty, friends, someone should enjoy this party.”
	Feeling like an idiot but not wanting to ruin the plan, I gave the agreed-on countersign--my best possible imitation of an owl.
	Iela straightened up. I could tell she knew I was there. It was as strange for her, probably, as it was for me. I hadn’t seen her or even spoken to her; this had all been arranged through Mna. Here I was meeting her for the first time since she’d given me her blessing before my journey and I couldn’t so much as say hello to her.
	She went stumping back toward the kitchen door. She held it open longer than necessary. Nobody in the kitchen seemed to notice--they were all too busy. We linked hands so they could follow me to the entrance to the staircase, snaking through this mess of cookery and cooks until we finally escaped.
	I felt like running, but we had to be careful or the creaking boards would give us away. Finally I pushed the door open and slid cautiously through into the study.
	My athi was sitting at his desk, looking right at me.
	<Hold.> I froze; that was all I could think of to do. <Athi’s up here. Don’t come through till I tell you it’s clear.>
	His eyebrows wrinkled as he saw the open door. He got up, crossed the room, and pulled the door a little further open, peering down the stairs. Satisfied that nobody was there, he shut the door, with Aine and Istria on the other side of it.
	<Now what?> Istria said.
	<We better wait,> I answered, as my father returned to his desk and bent his head over some papers. <Athi can’t be planning to spend the whole party up here.>
	I was at a loss as to why he was there at all. He should have been downstairs with mathi getting things ready and greeting the guests.
	It seemed to me that he had aged since I left. Maybe I had just never seen it. The skin under his neck was wrinkling; his hair was gray where it wasn’t white. His forehead was lined and his body seemed thinner than it ought to be. And he looked tired, and sad.
	The door to the hallway creaked. I almost jumped out of my skin; athi seemed to be expecting it. At least he showed no surprise when another man walked in.
	“Lefray,” he said, standing up. “Thanks for coming. Shut the door, will you?”
	<We’ve spotted her,> from Eorna.
	<Where?>
	<In the main hall. Riina’s with her.>
	<Keep an eye on them. We’ll be down there as soon as we can.>
	Lefray stepped in and closed the door. I had never bothered to pay much attention to him before; just another stout balding rich man like all the others my father worked with. Now I took another look. His face was pleasant enough; he was stocky without being bloated and he stood with a kind of amiable slouch that made him look friendly. Not a fearsome figure. Unless, evidently, you were a Kengdan farmer.
	“Of course,” he said. “You only have to ask. What is it, Flahn? Are you in trouble?”
	My father looked at him in silence, then said, “Of course I’m in trouble, Lefray.”
	“Oh--but I meant, financially.”
	“Actually,” my father said, “that was what I wanted to speak to you about.”
	Lefray nodded. “I’ll always help you out, Flahn. You’ve done it for me.”
	“I’ve been looking over the books for the past few years of the partnership,” my father said. “There are some discrepancies I wanted to ask you about.”
	Lefray’s face didn’t change but his voice did. “What do you mean, discrepancies?”
	My father didn’t look so old any more.
	“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
	“I don’t, Flahn. Everything balanced when I did the math.”
	“It balances all right,” my father said. “I’ll give you credit for that. This sum you subtracted here turns up here as your ‘initial investment’ in Kengdan grain promises. It’s only once you start doing work with compound interest that it becomes apparent.”
	“Whatever you’re insinuating, Flahn, you may as well come out and say it,” Lefray said. “It’s not like you to beat around the bush. If you suspect me of having embezzled--”
	“I would never suggest such a thing, Lefray,” my father said. “I know you’d never steal from me.”
	Lefray looked puzzled. “Then what are you trying to say?”
	“We bought the shares at 30 and then we sold them for 85,” he said. “And all the profit went back to the partnership. The problem,” he said, looking up from the page of the ledger, “is that we didn’t buy as many shares as we should have.”
	“We bought--”
	“Even allowing for the heftiest imaginable commission, at least ten percent of that ‘initial investment’ disappeared at the purchase stage,” he said. “What I want to know is where it went. I know it wasn’t your pockets. You aren’t capable of that. At least I would like to believe that.”
	Lefray’s face, which had been working anxiously, settled into a genial and persuasive smile.
	“You know where it went, Flahn. You must know.”
	“I don’t,” my father said.
	Lefray finally replied, “It was part of the initial investment. It’s just I bought...security, instead of the actual shares.”
	He shrugged, hoping to pass it off. My father wouldn’t let it go.
	“That was the bribe money, wasn’t it.”
	“I beg your pardon?”
	“You used that money to pay the shriias to fix the weather. That’s why it disappeared.”
	Lefray took his time before answering.
	“Flahn, there’s a party going on downstairs. Can’t we talk about this later?”
	“Do you want to continue doing business with me?” my father said, harshly.
	“Of course, Flahn.”
	“Then tell me the truth.”
	Lefray considered, moved his hands in the air, and finally made his decision.
	“I gave the money to Wous; he was the one who handled the negotiation.”
	My father slammed the ledger down on the desk so hard I jumped back.
	“How could you do this, Lefray?”
	“You got the money back--with interest--it went into the partnership--”
	“Behind my back?”
	“It was your daughter--we would have let you in on it only Wous was afraid it would get back to her--”
	“You took money out of our partnership to bribe a dark user to help you rig the promise market?” Lefray tried to answer, but my father kept going. “Let me in on it! What could have ever made you think I would go along with this?”
	“Whenever we make an investment we always research it first. We always try to manage risk. We look for the best information we can get and often we have to pay for it. I don’t see how this is any--”
	“Don’t give me this tarbhfnaa!” my father shouted.
	I could hardly ever remember having seen my father this angry. It was a shock to my system. It was a bit of a shock to Lefray too, but he tried to press his point.
	“It’s reality, Flahn. Magic is part of the promise market now, and if we’re afraid to work with these people we’ll be shut out of the best deals.”
	My father stared at him, just about too mad to speak.
	“I’ve been collecting the evidence,” he finally said. “I wanted to talk to you about it first because you’re one of my closest friends, and I’ve always trusted you.” Lefray’s face was falling, but I could see his position wasn’t changing. “And you’re telling me you’ve accepted this as a standard business practice?”
	“What else is it?” Lefray said.
	“Fraud,” my father answered. “Illegal manipulation of the market, dishonest accounting, bribery, corruption, theft--”
	“This is no different from what we do every day, Flahn,” Lefray insisted. “Twil was out there with his hand in the pot, we didn’t want to be left behind.”
	My father put one hand on the desk, resting his weight on the furniture as if that comforted him. I recognized the look on his face. The shock of betrayal, that same bewildered denial. The refusal to believe that his friends could have been false to him, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.
	“I have the evidence collected,” my father said. “I go to the Courts with it tomorrow. Is there anything you want to say to me before I do that?”
	“Yes,” said Lefray. “Don’t.”
	“You can’t stop me.”
	“Of course I can’t, but don’t you see it would be insane,” Lefray answered, trying to sound reasonable. “Nobody would press the investigation. You’d accomplish nothing and you’d become dangerous to them. I’m afraid of what they might do to you, Flahn.” My father laughed. “I’m serious. I have no fear for myself. Half this town already knows about that deal and the other half wouldn’t care. But if you tell the authorities they’ll know you’re an enemy, and it would hurt you badly.” Lefray took advantage of my father’s silence. “You can’t stop this, Flahn. This is the future happening. This is progress. Growth. What we always wanted.” Lefray went back to the hall doorway. “You think it over, Flahn. You’ll see it differently once you’re used to the idea.” He opened the door. “I’m going back downstairs before my wife starts getting nervous. You coming?”
	My father turned his back on him, but said nothing.
	“See you down there,” Lefray said, and closed the door behind him.
	Bent over his desk, my father seemed to be either crying or laughing. Then he seized one of the little china vases that sat on the near corners, and hurled it at the wall.
	I had to duck. It shattered against the plaster and fell to the stone floor in sharp glazed fragments.
	Muttering to himself, he hurried to the door and out of the room. I put my head out the door to watch him disappearing down the hallway.
	<Come on through. Careful, there’s broken pottery.>
	Istria and Aine came in. 
	<How much of that could you hear?>
	<Just about all of it,> Istria said.
	<We’ve got to get this over with, I’m afraid of what my father might get up to down there.>
	We made for the landing. Once we had negotiated the dinner tables--still empty of diners, at this point in the evening--we leaned over the balcony to assess things.
	And by heaven and hell, there she was. Standing in the gray dress, just as Taric had described her, with one of my mother’s best crystal glasses in one hand and one of those tasty haons beagi in the other, chatting to Wous and a small cluster of other men. One of whom I recognized as Nuet mac Riach, the Leader of Leaders.
	<Good spirits,> said Fand from wherever she was watching. <Your family’s connected, all right.>
	<And there’s Riina,> said Aine. <By the drinks table.>
	Riina, also, was out of hreapa. She was wearing an old dress of mine, in fact, and engrossed in conversation with Cullugh.
	I finally located my mother. She was standing under the shadow of the balcony, talking to Harani and Darin.
	My mother and Harani. Liable to prove a lethal combination, if left alone.
	<Harani?>
	<It’s all right, Theamh, she’s not asking after you.>
	Well, that was comforting.
	<Harani, we need to get Barant out of here. You think she’d flee if you talked to her?>
	<She always has before.>
	<Wait till we get into position, I’ll give you the signal.>
	<It’ll be my pleasure.>
	When my mother entertained, all the rooms on the ground floor were open to the guests. In the beginning almost everyone would be in the entrance hall, but eventually some of them found their way into the more private rooms and settled there in small comfortable groups. I directed Istria into the music room and Eunem into the solarium. Fand, Aine, and Eorna would stay in the hall to take care of Riina. I staked out the parlor, leaving the communicating doors open.
	<Harani, we’re ready. Do your worst.>
	<I don’t think anyone needs to see my worst, Theamh.> I could just imagine. <You want to hear it? It’ll probably amuse you.>
	<Sure, why not.>
	Harani deepened the link so we could hear. It was easier since it was her, actually; there was no image to distract me, and I could keep my eye on the room.
	“Barant!” Harani called out to her with patently false cheerfulness. “Darin was just telling me what a beautiful dress you’re wearing. Was it a gift from a client?”
	“Good evening, Harani,” Barant said coldly. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”
	“No, I bet you didn’t,” she said. “See, Darin, I don’t mix much with the high and mighty. They’re really not interested in anything they can’t buy or sell.”
	“I’ve spoken to you before about governing your tongue,” Barant said severely. “I’ve given up on disabusing you of your unfortunate misconceptions--”
	“What misconceptions?” Harani said. “Oh--you must mean the one about how you’ve perverted the Order and killed hundreds of people to further your personal ambition. Or do you just mean the general one about your being the foulest piece of evil the Dark One ever spat into creation?”
	“That’s enough!” Barant snapped. “Or so help me when the discipline committee meets tomorrow--”
	“You and Riina do not a committee make,” Harani said. “And you can pass whatever sanctions you want, you’re still thurked because you can’t do without me. You know, I could bring it down on you right here.” Harani’s voice dropped. “I’m close enough to reach out and touch you. And the whole place will know what you are.”
	“They’ll know I’m the opposite of you,” Barant said. “That can only work in my favor.”
	“If I’m the opposite of you why do you allow me to work?” Harani said. “Why expose the innocent people of the Vicinity to me? There can be no compromise with evil. After all.”
	“These people know what I am,” Barant said. “And I’m what they want. Be careful, Harani.”
	I heard footsteps. <Theamh, she’s heading your way.>
	<All right.> They got louder, and slower as she headed through the corridor. <Aine, Istria, start moving in. Stay calm.>
	I was one to talk. My heart froze in me at first, then started beating so fast I was afraid Barant would hear it. But when Barant came in through the door, having recovered her composure, she didn’t seem aware that she was anything but alone. 
	I wondered if she would relax now, give something away maybe. But she drifted slowly about the room with the same earnest yet kind expression, looking at the couch and the polished end-tables and the marble fireplace. Running her eyes over the heavy brocaded draperies, the velvet on the pillows, the silk tassels on the edges of the hearthrug. Looking closely at the little objects my mother had artfully scattered along the surfaces of most of the furniture. Appraising, valuing. Coveting.
	Eunem and Istria began making their way in from the other rooms. It was the perfect spot to give her the battle--nothing too immediately flammable, small enough she’d have nowhere to run but big enough we wouldn’t all cook ourselves or each other.
	Perfect until my mother walked in through the door to the hallway.
	Barant didn’t see her at first. She was leaning over one of the tables examining an ornamental casket. It was silver, set with a number of stones called thanth, which are cut like diamonds but are deep blue. Her hand grazed it lightly, and she lifted up the lid.
	“It’s a lovely piece, isn’t it?” my mother said.
	Barant stood up slowly, closing the lid gently. “Yes.”
	“I wanted to apologize for Harani’s behavior,” my mother said. “It pains me to think that you should have been insulted while you were a guest in our home.”
	“It’s not your fault,” said Barant. “I’ve come to expect that from her.”
	My mother walked toward her. She was wearing a new dress--fawn-colored with rose overwork, tailored close to her body but flaring around her ankles in what looked like a sudden profusion of petals. She lifted up the little box, turning it in the lamplight.
	“Do you like it?” she said. 
	“It’s pretty,” Barant demurred.
	“It’s yours then,” my mother said. “A gift. To make it up to you.”
	Barant shook her head. “You know the rules, Ulnach.”
	“I do know the rules,” my mother said. “But this isn’t precious.” She raised it to the light, silently and subtly inviting Barant to come closer and look at it with her. “The silver is just plate. And thanth are sold for two pieces a bushel in Naucht.”
	Barant still wouldn’t bite. “Where did you find it?”
	My mother put it gently down on the table. “I bought it at a market in the City,” she said. “I gave it to Flahn as a gift, before we were joined. I would have given it away long ago, but he’s attached to it.” She sighed. “I could hide it away up in his study. But I keep it down here. It reminds me of how far I’ve come.”
	Since Barant was still deciding how to answer, my mother went on. “When he met me I had taste, but nothing else,” she said. “I didn’t know how to tell the difference between something valuable and something that just...looks good.” Her heels clicked across the floor. “I made the same mistake you did. But it was one of my last.” My mother stopped walking and locked eyes with Barant, who returned the stare without appearing to notice a challenge or an insinuation. “I got lucky. Someone took an interest in me, and trained my ability. And I was holding my own in no time.”
	<Theamh, what the hell is going on in there?> from Fand.
	<Too much talk and not enough hyagleach,> Istria answered.
	<Hyagleach?> said Aine. 
	<It’s an Amstian thing,> I answered.
	<What does it mean?> from Fand.
	<I’ll be delighted to demonstrate if Theamh ever gives the word,> said Istria.
	<Well, excuse me for wanting my mother to get out of the line of fire.>
	<I’m not saying don’t wait, I just wish your mother would stop playing games.>
	<I’ve been wishing that for twenty years, it hasn’t made a difference so far.>
	“Ulnach,” Barant finally said. “Why did you invite me here?”
	“I want what you want,” my mother answered.
	Barant smiled. “And what do you think I want, Ulnach?”
	“Haven’t you told us all, often?” my mother said, returning the smile. “You want a return to unity, peace, and normal life. I can help you.”
	“You insist that you have no knowledge of your daughter’s movements,” Barant said. “The others don’t believe you, of course. I trust you--about that, at least. But since you don’t know that, then you can’t help me. Unless you can tell me where Lythril is.”
	My mother’s back was to me now and I couldn’t see her reaction. “Why would I have any idea where Lythril is?”
	“Perhaps you don’t,” Barant said. “On the other hand, it’s possible that Lythril is still--how did you put it. Taking an interest in you.”
	I wished I could see her face. I had no idea whether that insinuation came as a surprise or not. When she answered, it was with the same soft persuasion.
	“It was a hard world to break into,” my mother said. “A Kengdan swamp rat like me, with nothing to trade on but my looks and my mind. I’d have been eaten alive if I hadn’t learned that talent, alone, won’t do it.” I could see her in profile now in the soft light of the lamp--relaxed, serene almost, her hands disposed gracefully along the back of the couch she sat on. “You can’t make it here without friends. Someone to protect you. I’m grateful to those who did it for me. I’m offering to do it for you.”
	“These friends of yours,” Barant said, sitting down in the armchair opposite her. “Did they warn you to beware the generosity of the rich?”
	“This is not generosity, Barant. It’s business.”
	“This is what I mean.” Barant crossed her ankles, tucking her feet between the legs of the armchair so that her skirt fell in pretty folds over her knees. My mother had spent a long time telling me about how to stand, how to hold my hands, how to sit in a long dress. Apparently Barant was a natural. “In exchange for something you want, you are very generously prepared to offer me a thing of no value. I am not interested, Ulnach.”
	 “What I’m asking is also a thing of no value,” said my mother.
	“I find that hard to believe,” said Barant, with an insinuating smile.
	“This house is the nerve center of the whole seventh,” my mother said. “If the Sixth has a leader, it’s me. You know that, or you wouldn’t be here, and neither would Nuet. Every community has a heart and ours is the Craoibh Oir.” She glanced over sadly at the door that led into the great hall. “I go through the motions, it keeps me busy. But my heart’s not in it. Anyone you ask in that hall will tell you, the season isn’t what it should be.” Her eyes came back to Barant. “They make allowances for my trouble. But they won’t do that forever.” She leaned forward. “It’s in your interest for that heart to keep beating, as much as it is in mine. If I lose my place it’ll be another three years before anyone knows where the new heart is and it’ll be another five before you can figure out where you need to go to take the pulse.”
	“Ulnach--”
	“You need me,” my mother said. “You need me to keep the place together and to keep people happy. You need me to give you access to the people you need to influence. I’m willing to give it all to you. And there’s only one thing I need from you.”
	Barant waited.
	“I want my daughter home.”
	Barant laughed once. “I’m sorry, Ulnach, but that’s simply impossible.”
	“I thought all things were possible,” said my mother.	
	The air suddenly seemed to freeze.
	<I don’t believe it.> Istria was openly amazed. <Your mother nailed her.>
	Barant smiled, slowly.
	“Idair was wrong about a lot of things.”
	That smile hardened. My mother’s voice got lower.
	“She certainly was.”
	There was a long, electric, unbearable pause.
	“You’re not talking to Theamh,” my mother said. “I’m a very different story. I don’t care whether she ever makes fire again; I just want her home and I want to know that her life is safe. And to make that happen, I’m willing to be...reasonable.”
	<Theamh, your mother is frightening me,> said Istria.
	<Welcome to my world.>
	Barant’s eyes narrowed for a moment. Then she said, “It’s difficult to take you at your word, Ulnach, until I have a reason to trust you. You invited me here and then ambushed me with my most open and outspoken enemy. That’s not a good beginning.”
	My mother stood up. “Excuse me a moment,” she said. “I just remembered, I was going to ask Harani to leave. I’ll be right back.”
	<This is it,> I said. <Be ready, I’ll give the word.>
	Barant looked off through the doorway after my mother, settling back into the armchair. I got ready to drop the shield.
	She looked back in my direction, her gaze blank and inward.
	I dropped the shield.
	For once in my life I got it off all at once, so that I popped into view suddenly instead of in small frequent increments. Barant’s eyes flicked wide open.
	<Now.>
	While the others dropped their shields, I went for her with the blocking fire.
	She had a blast out in time to deflect it. Istria and Eunem, out of the shields, fired at her from either side. Istria’s fire hit and began crawling over her. Eunem’s had been deflected by a one-handed blast. She readied another try while I sent off a second blast.
	A torrent of purple, brown, and two kinds of orange ripped into the air around her. Her vigils, on the defensive.
	“Tabhair, mo sielnai!”
	It was lucky they were fast. Egreli, the brown one, had already sent Eunem flying backward into the bookcase. Shaineen went after him, wrapping around him and struggling in a shower of sparks. Zott had himself wound around the purple one before it got to Istria, and Phredi and Jayla were buckling and whipping through the air between me and Barant while the two orange vigils, Jupra and Jopra, went dancing around them.
	I lost track of who was doing what. Bolts of color and fire zipped around the room, with knickknacks and furniture flying in their path. An end table crashed through the stained-glass window. Shards of porcelain were embedded in the upholstery of the armchair. The silver and thanth casket sailed past my head as I tried to fight through the mayhem toward my adversary.
	<Theamh, where the hell is she?> from Eunem.
	<I got her, I got her, she’s running for the music room.> Istria was on her tail. 
	<Eunem, stay here, I’ll try to flush her back toward you.>
	<All right.>
	I ran into the great hall, shutting the door behind me. There was a lot of screaming going on, and running for the doorway. 
	“Get out!” I heard Harani shouting. “Out, out, do you want to get burned? Run for the exits, people! This party’s over!”
	I wasn’t ready to pay much attention. I did see Frene and Fada run down the same hallway I was running up, on their way to the scene. I got into the solarium, locking the door behind me.
	<Istria?>
	<She got a shield on somehow. But she’s got to be in one of these rooms.>
	<I’m in the solarium, I’ll do a sweep. Wait and see what happens.>
	I began sweeping blocking fire back and forth, walking slowly forward so that I would cover all of the room. Blocking fire doesn’t burn people, but it is hot, and it wasn’t very good for the plants that were growing in the copper pots ranged around the sundial.
	She didn’t seem to be there. I passed through into the music room.
	Istria was there in her sleeveless shirt and those Cretid trousers, wisps of her hair working loose from her braid and sticking to her damp forehead and neck. Her eyes were darting all over, lit with the fire of the chase but still detached, measuring.
	She held up a hand as I was about to speak. Her eyes were riveted on the voluminous swag of dark red velvet that framed the enormous bay window. It was a dramatic window treatment, swooping along the upper edge and falling in extravagant profusion onto the thick figured carpet beneath. It was held up by a pair of antiqued iron finials at the corners. One of which was slightly bent.
	<You think she’s on top of the valence.>
	<Climbed up the drapes. That’s what I think.>
	<Well, nobody could ever say she wasn’t in shape.>
	I set fire to the drapes.
	We heard her hit the floor. Istria was right on her, tearing into the shield. I heard a scream from both of them. A partially-visible Barant tore through the doorway into the parlor, leaving Istria clutching a swath of gray satin that had been part of Barant’s dress.
	<I’ll be all right, go after her.>
	I wasn’t going to stop anyhow. I was worried about what would happen if Barant got down there and the only thing standing between her and escape was Eunem.
	<Aine, what’s up with Riina?>
	<We’ve almost got her.>
	<Well, as soon as you’re done I need you here.> I was already in the parlor, but with the vigil fight still going on it was hard to see where people were.
	<Eunem?>
	<Where is she, Theamh?>
	<Look low, that’s the half that’s visible.>
	Eunem dove to the floor, where the vigil fire wasn’t quite as thick. A blast of blocking fire ripped out toward the hall door and caught Barant around the ankles. She yanked on it, and Barant fell on her face.
	I couldn’t actually see her face; she was still only visible from the waist down. But I got a hand on the rest of the shield and gave it a good tug. It tore in half. There she was, struggling on the floor while I slapped some more blocking fire onto her.
	<Istria?>
	<Thurking bats of the northern passes!>
	<What?>
	<It’s Ybrial. Damn it, we should have known she’d sneak in another one.>
	<Where?>
	<I’m still in here with the flaming drapes--I could use another pair of hands.>
	Barant was fighting back now, and I had to waste effort deflecting. <Aine?>
	<We’ve got her blocked, but it’s taking all we can do to wrap her.>
	<Then do it mechanically.>
	<What?>
	<Tie her up, put her in a sack, whack her upside the head with a frying pan, but do something to put her out of it and then get to the music room and help Istria with Ybrial.>
	<Right, dhiaoc.>
	Eunem clearly thought this whacking upside the head was a good idea, and began looking for something large enough for this purpose.
	<Not the poker, you might do permanent harm. Pick something wide and blunt.>
	“Aaaargh!”
	Barant had managed to get to her feet. I kept the fire on her with one hand and started fighting off fire with the other. Barant was not holding back. The beams I deflected burned where they hit. It was getting hot, but Eunem had detached a leg from one of the tables that had fallen victim to the vigils and was making her way cautiously over. 
	Eunem swung at her with the leg. The wood connected with her skull, and she staggered back against the door.
	I had the fire on her torso and down one arm. I was close enough to make it.
	<Eunem, give me the name.>
	<All right. The rest of you, if you can hear this say so.>
	Nobody answered. It was the private link.
	<Here it comes.>
	I don’t know how Barant knew. But when the knowledge passed from Eunem to me, Barant’s face distorted in a grimace of rage. From her free hand she sent out a bolt that raised blisters on my face and would have taken the skin right off Eunem’s if she hadn’t deflected it. But neither of us was quick enough to deflect the stream of fire Barant sent running along the stone floor to flare up underneath the skirt of my hreapa.
	“FNAA!”
	I dropped to the ground and rolled over, clutching my hreapa around my legs to smother the flames. 
	“Theamh! Are you all right?”
	“Eunem, NO!” I shouted. “Thurk me--stay on her!”
	It was too late. Eunem had turned around to help me, and in the moment before she heard me and turned back, her head disappeared inside a blast of red flame.
	I severed the stream with one angry blast. But Barant had shaken my fire off and was out the door. 
	<She’s in the hall! Anyone free go after her!> I ran to Eunem, using the skirt of my hreapa to smother the flames. Her hair was burnt beyond recall, and her face looked bad.
	“Darin!” I bawled. “Darin mac Donald, get your gleacha in here!”
	I was drawing and settling as fast as I could. Nothing had turned black yet. But her skin was red and suppurating and her eyes didn’t look like eyes at all.
	“You want me to come in here?” came Darin’s voice.
	“Yes I thurking want you to come in here! The vigils don’t give a rat’s fnaa about you, don’t worry!”
	Darin moved erratically toward me, ducking the bolts of colored flame and flinching frequently. Until he saw Eunem.
	“Oh my God,” he said. 
	I had been able to do something with her mouth, at least, so that she could speak. “Theamh...I can’t see...”
	“You’ve been burned badly about the head,” I said. “But I think you’ll make it.”
	“Then don’t thurk around with me,” Eunem said. “Go after her.”
	“Darin’s going to take care of you,” I said. “You just work on burying the name.”
	“All right,” Eunem gasped.
	“But Theamh--what about--” Darin said.
	“That thing about not going to the medicals isn’t loss, it’s just rule.” This didn’t mean much to Darin. “Darin, we’re making an exception. It’s all right. Do what you can only remember about the sedatives.”
	“Of course I remember about the sedatives!” Darin shouted, but I was long gone.
	<Talk to me! Where is she?>
	Istria and Aine ran out of the music room dragging Ybrial between them. She was unconscious, and evidently blocked. She fell to the floor in a heap.
	“Fada!” Aine shouted.
	“I’m coming!” Fada ran out of the hall, trailing a curtain cord. “You want this one tied the same way?”
	“The same way,” Aine said. <I saw her run by--I think she was headed to the kitchen stairs.>
	<Aine, take Fand up to the study, she may try to sneak out there.> Aine nodded and ran up the staircase, Fand behind her. <Harani, you want a piece of this action?>
	<Do ducks like water?>
	<Can you find your way out here?>
	<Give me credit, Theamh.> Indeed, Harani appeared a moment later, flushed with excitement. <Where to?>
	<The kitchen. Watch out, it’s narrow.>
	<Stop being such an old fussbudget, Theamh.>
	Harani and Istria clattered down the stairs behind me. There’s always a fire of some kind going on down there, but I could tell immediately that there more than usual.
	The thing about the kitchen, of course, was that it had been rendered as fireproof as possible. Stone floor, brick walls, no hangings, minimal furniture. So even though most of the chairs were on fire there was plenty of open space. Most of the hired help was fleeing up the staircase we’d come down. Iela, on the other hand, was standing her ground near the stove, and flinging anything she could reach in Barant’s direction.
	I’d have laughed if I had a moment. Barant was dodging pots, pans and kitchen utensils as they flew at her, kept too busy ducking to get a good purchase on Iela or her mind. She was shooting fire with both hands, but without being able to really aim.
	<You have a bead on her?> I said.
	<Like she could be more obvious,> Harani answered.
	<On three.>
	Streams of white fire burst from all of us, converging on Barant. Istria’s spread down, I spread up, and Harani went around the back.
	Barant fought forward. We backed up as she lurched blindly toward us. Red fire was running in fissures all over her. We had her, but it wasn’t tight enough to start setting the seal, and anyhow when that happened I would have to do it myself.
	<Damn!>
	<What?>
	<I think Ybrial just broke the block.>
	<Eorna?>
	<Yeah, Ybrial’s loose. But I’m on her, no worries.>
	Barant stopped fighting forward, and made a break for the back stairs.
	<Aine, she’s headed up to the study.> We ran after her.
	<Jipran’s ready for her.>
	She was starting to break through the fire in patches. But we were close on her tail, and keeping hold. When she burst through the false panel door into the study she was a patchwork of red and white, covered head to foot in that garment of struggling flame.
	“Tabhair, mo sielnai!”
	It was the first thing I’d heard Barant say all battle. I wasn’t happy to hear it.
	“Son of a bitch!” A shower of large, bound ledgers fell onto Fand as the brown vigil hurled her against the bookcase. Mine were up a moment later, and now the vigils had a whole new set of furnishings to play with. Books make very effective missiles, as do letter openers, inkwells, and fountain pens.
	<Harani, give way, I’ll try to increase purchase,> I said.
	As my father’s personal effects hurtled around my imperiled head, I spread the blocking fire up and around to take over from the area Harani was covering. It was slow, but the progress was steady. Istria was now concentrating solely on her hands, Aine having taken over the rest of Barant. Fand, having crawled out from under the pile of accounting, was now mad enough to dart forward and grab Barant by the neck.
	That put Fand out of commission for a while, but it got us a very big gain. I was now covering her whole body except for the head and the hands. Of course, those were the important parts. But Aine was on the head and Istria was on the hands, and Barant was in some deep stinking fnaa.
	Barant decided on flight. She couldn’t see well where she was going, but she stumbled back through the doorway and into the corridor.
	We ran out there after her. <Aine, let me try for the head.>
	I got about halfway up in the first spurt, but after that it was a battle. By the time I had closed on it she had crashed through the dining area and was backed up to the railing that ran along the landing of the great staircase.
	<Aine, Istria, stand by her, I don’t want her going over.>
	They ran to flank her. I had all of her now, I was going to have to go for the hands.
	<All right, Istria, here goes nothing.>
	Istria began giving way on the hands. I leapt forward, but a split second was good enough for Barant. She got the fire out of one hand, flashing it around in blind fury.
	While I worked on covering the other hand, bolts of red flame seared through the air around me, deflected by Aine, Istria, and Harani when they could reach them. I did see one go shooting over the balcony right at the light tree.
	“Look out below!” Aine shouted.
	I heard the crash of glass and metal and the screams of several bystanders. Including something that sounded much like my mother, and more in outrage than in fear.
	I set my teeth. Straining with everything I had, I pushed my fire down her wrist and along her right hand. The flames licked over her palm. And then the red disappeared completely under the white.
	I had her.
	I stepped closer so I could see her face. Her eyes were vague under the dance of the white flame, but they were open, and they saw me. And they knew what I was doing.
	I can’t tell you how to block someone permanently. I can tell you that when you do it, the subject knows exactly what is happening. And, judging by Barant’s expression, the experience is intense, and terrifying.
	I wasn’t aware of anything going on around me, or even much that was going on in me. I noticed nothing and no one until I knew I had finished what I needed to say. 
	She knew I had finished it too. Because as the seal set, Barant let out a long and ragged roar of anger and despair. And when I finally was aware of the heave of my lungs and the blood beating in my ears, I could read nothing off her.
	I buried the name as deep as I could put it. I heard the others testing their head voices to see if she could overhear.
	Is it over? from Istria.
	It’s over, I said. I don’t think the bitch can hear us.
	Here, let me try, said Harani. So how about it, Barant, you purulent sore on the Order’s gleacha, are you blocked, or what?
	Barant knew we were talking about her. But she must not have known who was saying what, because when she lashed out with her fist it was at me.
	 The pain of being punched very hard in the head was secondary to the systemic shock that came with the flesh contact.
	It was all I could do, after I recovered the use of my limbs, to drag myself up against the railing. From there, as I dangled gasping over the balcony, I could see Barant being chased down by Harani, Aine, and Istria. Barant stopped and took a swing at Istria.
	Istria snatched up one of the trays the servers carried the drinks on. Crystal crashed to the floor in bright tiny fragments, but Barant’s fist hit the tray and not Istria. Which left Istria free to grab the heavy silver ladle out of the punch bowl and work her over with it, displaying an artistry that was truly beautiful to watch.
	Fand was behind me, still a little winded. “You touched her too, eh?”
	I nodded. “Let’s go.”
	Fand and I limped down the stairs. By the time we got there, Barant was lying on her back in a litter of twisted metal and shattered glass. Aine was running around putting out the little fires that had started when the light tree fell. Istria had one knee on Barant’s stomach and had her throat pinned under the curve of the ladle.
	“I think this is it, Barant,” Istria growled, too angry even to raise her voice. “I think this is thurking well it.”
	“Theamh, where’s Eunem?” Fand said suddenly.
	Fada spoke up. “Your friend the medical took her up to your mother’s dressing room, I told him that was where all the salves and so forth were.”
	<Eunem?>
	<I’m still here, Theamh.> And still in pain, if I was any judge. <Did it work?>
	<She’s blocked,> I said. <Forever.>
	<Thank Idair.>
	From over the balcony I saw streamers of colored fire shooting back through the air toward us. My vigils gathered around me protectively. Barant’s hovered over her, keeping the distance that block enforced.
	They didn’t want to go. I could see that in the way they slid around and over her, looking for something to grasp. But the permanent block had cut that bond at the root. They knew they would never work for her again. They were just doing what Kelah’s had done. Saying goodbye. Loyal to the last, whether she had deserved it or not.
	They disappeared into nothing. I called mine back.
	<You’ve done very well, friends.> I looked around at the wreckage of the party. <Anything you all can find to eat in here, it’s yours.>
	My vigils began dispersing about the room, picking out fragments of haons beagi and absorbing them happily. My mother, my father, and the rest of the guests watched with speechless fear.
	“Let her up,” I said, staring at Barant with all of my anger back at the surface.
	Istria got off her. Barant stood, painfully, brushing chunks of glass off herself. I had a feeling there were a lot of shards still in her that would take a little more effort to remove. I couldn’t quite bring myself to feel bad about this.
	“Barant ni hElois na Truan,” I said, still panting and feeling a little wild-eyed. “You’re under shriia’s arrest.”
	Barant looked at me with hatred, and let out a sharp bitter laugh.
	“On the charge of...well. We’ll start with practicing dark magic, treason, and about three hundred counts of conspiracy to commit murder, and work up from there.”
	“Who’s going to hold me, Theamh?” Barant said. “You’re still a proscribed criminal. So are all the rest of you. You have no authority to hold me in custody and nobody at the Courts or in the Seat will answer to you. In fact,” she said, trying to take comfort somewhere, “the minute you show up they’ll arrest you all.”
	“Maybe that’s true,” I said. “But so thurking what. I just blocked you permanently.” She stared back at me, her breath still rasping and uneven. “You’ll never do magic again. You’ll never use another spirit against someone. You’ll never overtake, invade, or force another human mind. No contact, no linking, nothing but your own rotten company for the rest of your life. No matter what happens to me, you are done.”
	Barant glared around at the other guests, who were huddled in the corners. Clearly no help was coming from them.
	“Pack of cowards,” she said, her voice still in that register of reasonable concern--as if she were merely gently saddened to see that they were no better than they were. “And you can all stand here while my enemies set on me, and do not a damn thing about it?”
	“I guess you’d better choose your friends more carefully in the future, hadn’t you?” Iela snapped.
	She was singed, but she was more or less whole, and although her favorite apron was dangling around her in blackened ribbons her face was creased in a wide smile.
	I looked at her and began fighting the tears. I didn’t want to cry in front of Barant.
	When I looked away it was easy enough not to cry, because the first thing I saw was mathi.
	I think she was mostly in shock. The gilt and glass light tree that had been the house’s centerpiece was lying in ruin on the floor. It seemed as if a lot of the furniture and a few of the rungs in the banister had been sacrificed during the battle with Riina, and what hadn’t been smashed or set on fire was upended, scattered, and strewn. I could still hear flames flickering in the parlor, and I was much afraid that the music room was still not completely extinguished. At least she hadn’t seen the upstairs study, although that would probably have bothered my athi more than her.
	“Hello, mathi,” I said, in a small voice. “I’m home.”
	Her face twisted, and she swallowed something that looked like it tasted bitter.
	“So I see.”
	“This is Istria,” I said, with a tentative gesture toward her. “You remember Istria?”
	“I remember,” my mother said.
	“Well, that’s all right,” Istria said. “I’m not sure I can say I’m pleased to see you either.”
	Harani burst out laughing. Fand and Eorna caught it from her, although Aine was still too afraid of my mother.
	“I’m glad to see you,” I said, looking through the laughter at my mother.
	I popped flame out of my hands, just to check.
	My mother saw it, and she laughed.
	My mother doesn’t laugh much. When she does, it’s usually the kind of high, pretty silvery rill that you have to practice. She wasn’t practicing on this one. This laugh might have had the sharp edge of frenzy in it, but it was real, and I had the feeling it meant that maybe she was glad to see me too.
	“And you too, Athi,” I said. “Do you have anyone you would like me to arrest, while I’m on a roll?”
	“Lefray, Wous and Nuet hived off out the front door as soon as you got started,” my father said. “I think they intended warning the gardai.”
	There was a sudden loud hammering on the door.
	They couldn’t do us much harm by arresting us now; our work was done. Even if they killed us outright, the tide had turned, and there was no going back. None of the women left had the skill or smarts to take Barant’s place. But of course nobody wants to be killed outright.
	Nobody moved or spoke. The banging started up again.
	“I’ll see who’s at the door, Aiv,” said Frene smoothly, moving off to the hallway.
	I watched him go with suspicion. It seemed like he was way too ready to open that door.
	What rushed through the door, down the corridor and into the great hall was not Frene. Nor was it the gardai. It was a motley assortment of ordinary people, armed with sticks, knives, daggers, whatever they appeared to have been able to get their hands on. And leading this motley assortment were some people I knew. Taric, with a short sword and scabbard hanging from his belt; Mna with a mace in one hand; and between them a woman about six feet tall, with no weapon at all. She had a gaunt face and thin but wiry arms, and she wore the gray dress of a proscribed criminal. But she carried herself like a Seated Leader. Or like a Jiprani.
	“Good evening, Aivi,” she said, addressing herself to the crowd. “I’m Paigin ni Phisce na t-Sraid, Seated Leader for Upper Jipran and Leader of Leaders of the very-recently-established Provisional Seat.” She strode up to Barant, looking down on her from her superior height. “And you must be...history.”
	She bit the word off bitterly, closing her mouth in a smile that had nothing to do with mirth or affection.
	“These women are under shriia’s arrest,” I said. “Can you guarantee their safety?”
	Paigin looked at me. “You’re Theamh ni hUlnach.”
	“I am.”
	She bowed. “I’ve long wanted to meet you.”
	“This is Aine ni hEmer,” I said, because I knew Aine was dying to be introduced. 
	“I’m pleased to know you, shriia,” Paigin said. “We’re all very proud of you.”
	Aine blushed, and was too overcome to do anything but bow back at her.
	Paigin’s green eyes bent on mine. “I give you my word we will preserve them all for the vengeance of the earth and Idair. Is my word good with you?”
	I took a minute to read her.
	“Yes.”
	“And they’re all blocked?”
	“Barant is blocked permanently. The others...”
	“I’m blocking Ybrial,” said Eorna. “Harani’s blocking Riina.”
	Paigin looked at both of them.
	“Mna, get the mittens, would you,” she said.
	Mna hauled a bag full of iron out onto the floor. She and Taric shoved the mittens onto Riina and Ybrial.
	<Mna, what is this?> I asked.
	<Don’t think you’re the only ones who’ve been working tonight,> she said, clicking the manacles shut. <Taric, me, and a few thousand other people broke the Seated Leaders out of the Courts. Now we’ve got the right half locked up. Weall is running an emergency session of the Provisional Seat as we speak. The Raed is empty, so’s the shriin; and the gardai appear to have taken flight along with the dark bitches. Even a rat can tell when a ship’s sinking.>
	“We’ll take them to the Courts,” Paigin said. “I’d be obliged if you’d all come down tomorrow and talk about where to go from here. The Seat has voted to extent Morat an invitation, but I think it would probably be better coming from one of you.”
	I nodded. “One thing,” I said. “Barant, herself, is relatively harmless now. But as soon as Lythril knows that she’s going to make it her mission in life to assassinate her. For the sake of shri we can’t let that happen. It would probably be better for her,” I said, swinging around on her, “if she was in our custody. But of course it’s her choice.”
	Istria smiled. Aine’s eyes got bigger. Fand and Eorna turned to watch. Harani rubbed her hands in anticipation.
	Come on, I heard Harani saying. Come on. Say it.
	Barant’s eyes were hard as glass.
	“I’ll take my chances,” she said.
	Even if it meant her death, she wasn’t going to throw herself on our protection.
	“Then get her out of here,” I said.
	Paigin nodded. Barant was hauled out between Riina and Ybrial.
	“Your country owes you all a great debt,” Paigin said. “Good rest to all of you, and Idair with you.”
	They left the hall. We heard Frene bidding them a good night and closing the door.
	“Aine?” Istria said, in the silence.
	“Yes?”
	“You were asking me about hyagleach?”
	“Yes,” Aine answered.
	“This is it.”
	Fand threw back her head and let out a long, sharp yelp of exhilaration.
	Aine joined in. Other cries of triumph erupted all over the house--from me, from Istria, Eorna, Harani, Fada, Iela, even Frene--and I felt sure that somewhere up in my mother’s sanctuary Eunem and Darin heard it too, and were maybe adding to the noise.
	The other guests, I noticed, were markedly silent.
	My father and mother began shepherding guests to the door and doing their best to comfort them in their shock. The rest of us stood there shouting our release and relief into the cavernous bowl of the great hall, probably shattering whatever glass was left whole.
	“Dhiaoc,” Aine said, when we had finally stopped for breath.
	She was half-laughing, although it was close to a kind of exhausted cry, and she had a delirious light in her eyes.
	“What is it, Aine?”
	She laughed, for a while, before the tears came when she actually said it.
	“It’s my birthday,” she said. “I’m twenty years old today.”
	I just gaped, at first. Then I started laughing too.
	“For Idair’s sake,” I cried, throwing my arms around her. “Happy birthday, Aine.”
	She clutched onto me, and the laughter shifted very suddenly into crying.
	Istria came over and put her arms around both of us. By the time my parents came back we were all crying. Fand and Eorna were leaning on each other, and Harani had come to sit with the three of us on the steps of the great double staircase.
	“Theamh?” my mother said.
	She was clearly uncomfortable with the crying, and a little frightened of it.
	“It’s Aine’s birthday,” I said, still crying.
	My mother looked at her, and back to me, and then at Istria.
	“Happy birthday, Aine,” my mother finally said. 
	I looked up at her, and I thought maybe she would say something. That maybe something would happen that never had before.
	“Why don’t you introduce me to the rest of your friends,” my mother said. “I’ll have Iela make up the guest rooms for them. And maybe you would help put out some of the fires in the downstairs suite.”
	It was as close as I was going to get. But that night, it was enough. Barant was done, the Pharc was clean, and Aine had lived to be twenty. And tonight Istria and I were going to sleep together under my mother’s roof. Anything was possible.
	Except that some things, I knew, would not happen. Slythe would never come back to life. Neither would Daire, or Kelah, or Adra, or the victims of Dunta and the Back Three. Eunem would never see again. Crann would always be caught between two lifetimes. Taric and Mna would always be caught in the ever-complicating web of consequence. Nobody would be the same after this. Not Aine, not Istria, not me. Maybe not even Idair. 
	But then, I thought, as I climbed under the sheets and wrapped myself around Istria, that wasn’t necessarily all bad.
	<Thank Idair we came through it,> I said.
	She held me tighter. <And thank Idair I was ready to fight with you.> 
	She kissed me, for a long time, as if it was the first time in forever.
	<It’s the beginning of it, Istri,> I said. <Our lives, together. In normal time.>
	<It’ll be a good life,> she said.
	It was already getting a lot better. At least until Morat called.
	<Theamh?>
	<Yes?>
	<I’m sorry, am I interrupting?>
	<Don’t ask me a direct question.>
	I lay back exasperated on the bed. Istria looked at me.
	It’s Morat.
	Ah.
	She lay back next to me, with a sigh.
	<I won’t keep you.> I draped myself along Istria. <I just wanted to say...I’ve told Istria how proud I am, about how well she’s done. You’ve told Aine, I’m sure.>
	<Yes,> I said.
	<Your diaoc won’t tell you,> Morat said. <So I will. You’ve done good and you’ve done well, Theamh. Congratulations.>
	I swallowed. <Thanks, Morat.>
	<It’s nothing. I’ll clear off now. Hope to see you down there soon.>
	The link closed. Istria stroked my shoulder.
	“Trying to be a diaoc for both of us,” I said, with a broken laugh. “I guess she thought maybe she was too much diaoc for just you.”
	Istria just kept holding me, and waited for me to get it out.
	“I don’t understand it,” I finally said, crying. “I just don’t understand it.”
	“I know, chara. Why she would do all of this...to you, to me, and to everyone...”
	“I don’t understand it.”
	“It’s better that way.”
	I nodded. She kept her arms around me. I drifted off to sleep, trusting that maybe I would have good dreams for once. Or that even if I didn’t, once I woke up, I wouldn’t care any more. I had everything I had ever wanted. Almost.

XVIII.
Or With A Wedding

	The floor was cold under my bare feet. When I peered over the edge of the tub I saw ice had formed on the surface of the water. I ringed the tub with fire and waited for the thaw. The cold raised bumps all over my naked skin. I stayed near the flames.
	From behind me I heard a long yawn. Istria was stretching, her eyes still closed. Instead of waking up, she settled back into sleep, lying on her stomach with her hands stuffed under the pillow. One leg stuck out from the pile of bedclothes.
	She woke up when she heard me start crying. I knew she probably would but I couldn’t help it. After four years of sleeping on that cold hard floor, to see her safe and warm in my bed, comfortable in her skin and stretched out like she knew she was home--it was a miracle I never got used to.
	“Chara?”
	“I’m all right--I just...I just can’t believe you’re here, sometimes.”
	It was warmer with her holding me. “Want to come in?” I said, into her neck.
	“It’s too thurking cold, Theamh.”
	“I know,” I said, stepping gingerly into the water with a grimace. “But don’t you think you maybe ought to get yourself used to it? In preparation.”
	“Nice try.” 
	I washed fast, with her leaning over the edge of the tub. I had turned my back on her to look for the soap when I heard the sound of her slipping into the water.
	“And what is this now?” I said, as her arms slid around my waist.
	“It’s not as cold where you are.”
	I turned to face her. She pulled me through the water up against her, my legs wrapping around her waist.
	“Come on, Istri,” I sighed as she ran her mouth along my neck. “This is a work bath.”
	“Sex is part of love, love is the foundation of shri, shri is work,” she murmured.
	“Isn’t it wonderful to be a reasoning creature.”
	But I did have to get out of the tub. Istria thoughtfully flashed out some fire to dry me off with. I had discovered it was much easier that way, and there was less danger of me accidentally igniting my hair.
	I pulled on the shift and went to the window, taking my hreapa off the peg. It was still dark, but it wouldn’t be for long. Istria looked on from the tub.
	She had been doing haons linn with me at first, but as the weather got colder she stopped. It was a way of making her reinvestment matter more. I understood, although it was that much harder for me to get up in the morning with her still warm in bed. 
	I finished with the song, and lifted up the window. I looked out at the world that was forming under the early morning light.
	There was a lot more bright than I had expected. The ground was white, and snow was drifted in the bare branches of the trees.
	“Istri!” She heard the excitement, and climbed out of the tub. “Istri, it’s snowing!”
	The snow was still falling through the morning air, adding to the blanket. Istria stood behind me, forgetting about the cold, and about the fact that the arms she wrapped around me were still dripping wet.
	I could feel the strength of her emotion in the clasp of her arms. It was the first snowfall of the cold season. That meant that tonight would be the first night of the Burning. And that tomorrow Istria would be wearing her hreapa again.
	Also, it meant that tomorrow we would be joined.
	Morat had kept her word. It took her a few weeks to get down to the City, because of how she traveled. She and the rest of the Council walked all the way from Amranth, and as they went other true shriias who had been in hiding came out to join them, so that by the time they arrived they were at the head of a small army. We found out, as Morat had expected we would, that a lot of the shriias that we thought had been killed had simply gone to ground near the communities they worked in, hiding when necessary, fighting when they had to, and continuing to minister to their people. 
	It was a gigantic undertaking--a kind of siuilin for the whole country. And it was a huge risk, because there were still any number of dark users lurking around out there. But it did exactly what she wanted it to do. It gave people who hadn’t been in Amranth or in the City the chance to learn what she was first hand. It gave the Council the chance to see what this war had done to the rest of the country and the rest of the Order. And it meant that when they got to the City, it was absolutely clear that right and light were back in charge, and the minions were scattered and powerless. 
	And of course by the time she got here a lot of things had already been taken care of. Eorna, Fand, and Eunem once she was a little better functioned as a provisional council, with our help. I spent a lot of my time in the City in those early weeks. We were living then at the Raed, because I had to do a lot of work before the house was habitable. They hadn’t burned it; but it had been trashed, by people who had made a very thorough search first and vented their anger afterward. The only thing taken as opposed to wrecked was the pile of notes that Istria had left behind her, that I’d been saving in the basket. Istria wasn’t happy to hear about it, but we both felt that the damage was minor. She took her notes in code in the first place, and in the second place, at that stage she hadn’t gotten very far. So Cinhe and Pertlo stayed at Taric’s until I had set things right.
	Watching Morat come through the northern gate at the head of that crowd is something I’m never going to forget. It was a cold afternoon, but the whole city was there to watch with us. They were visible from a long way off through the trees, flashes of white and snatches of talk or song that drifted down to us along with the cloud of dust they were raising along the main road. And then, when they got within sight of the city, they seemed to become more serious all of a sudden, moving silently and slow. Morat lifted up one hand in a fist above her head, with the fire burning around it. 
	The others followed her, and by the time they got to the gate there were scores of lights flickering and rippling in the silent wake behind her. When they passed in under the arch, the crowd watching was silent too, knowing somehow that this was the right way to welcome them, even though we had all come out there prepared to cheer. 
	As they’d asked us to, the rest of us were waiting on the main road, a little ways back from the gate, so that when Morat stopped in front of us the whole group was inside the city. Lilea, Dalen, Cualha, and all the other women in white who were standing their with their fire raised up in wordless testimony at the sky.
	“Are you coming here, shriia?” Eorna said.
	Morat finally spoke. “Am I needed here?”
	“Yes,” Eorna said, with emotion.
	“Then I am coming.”
	Eorna picked up the silver star pendant, running the links of the brass chain through her fingers, her mind going over a lot of things, most of them not happy. Maybe she was thinking about the three days we spent turning the Raed upside down looking for the thing, only to find it tucked away in a drawer in Barant’s bedchamber. Maybe she was thinking about where this thing had been, in what sordid circumstances it had been worn. Or maybe she was just thinking about how Eunem couldn’t see this, even though she was standing right there with us. 
	Morat bent her head while Eorna draped the chain around her neck. 
	“Welcome back, Aiv,” Eorna said.
	Morat embraced her. Eorna’s face twitched, and by the time Morat let go of her she was crying right there in front of everyone. But then so was I, and so was everyone else except for Fand, who seemed a little more impervious. And Eunem. 
	I had been able to help some with her face, and Darin had done his best, so that she wasn’t as horribly scarred as Coel. But her hair was never going to grow in right again, and her eyes were useless to her. Harani had been teaching her how to cope with this, but it’s a hard way to live, and at that time she wasn’t reconciled to it. In the high after the battle she had said it was worth the sacrifice; but once that wore off it was a hard dark time for her. She was angry at Barant, at Idair, at me, at all of us who had come through it more or less unscathed. I could feel her bitterness even from where I was standing, and that was just one of many reasons why I was very glad to see Lilea coming.
	A noise from down the hallway recalled me to the present. I couldn’t place it at first. Then I realized it was the floor creaking as Aine jumped up and down.
	“It’s snowing! It’s snowing!”
	Istria laughed. I better get dressed.
	You better, I said. 
	She stood by the window while I dried her off. She seemed half afraid that the snow would disappear if she didn’t keep looking. Even while she pulled on those old Cretid trousers and her sleeveless shirt, she was keeping an eye on the new world outside.
	Istria had called it; Aine came bounding in within seconds. “I’m going to go out and see if Cinhe and Pertlo are warm enough.”
	“You got Eorna to waterproof your learner’s tunic, didn’t you?”
	Aine nodded.
	“And you’ve got on a wool overshift?”
	“You know we have snow in Jipran, Theamh,” Aine said.
	“All right, run along already.”
	Istria and I took longer to get downstairs. By the time Aine came back we had heated up the cider and toasted the bread. Pertlo, in a sentimental moment, had allowed an egg for each of us.
	I couldn’t help smiling as I spooned the eggs out onto everyone’s toast. Istria, as she often did, knew what I was thinking.
	“He’s probably broken them by now,” she said.
	Aine looked blank for a moment, then got it. “Poor Taric. After all he did for her.”
	Taric was back on the worst piece of land in the vicinity, trying to get ready for another planting season. He had lost his harvest. Mna and Gilish had been able to keep the livestock going, but that farm was way too much for two inexperienced caretakers. But, for just about the first time in his life, Taric had friends. Owdan, and other men and women who had worked with him and Mna against the corrupt Leaders. They knew he was in this hard place because he had been working for the people, and they had prevailed upon him to accept some help. So he had something to plant next year.
	So I had been surprised, soon after we moved back into the house, to get a call from him. And remembering what happened the last time, I was more than a little alarmed to see his face in the waterglobe.
	“It’s nothing serious,” he said, as soon as his image had appeared. “But I can’t fathom it, and I thought maybe it’s something...not normal.”
	“What is it, Taric?”
	“It’s my hens. They’re not laying. They’re refusing to sit on their nests, and they’re...they’re...”
	“They’re what?”
	“Walking about the coop in single file.”
	Well, that was certainly baffling behavior, so I went out to have a look. It gave me a chance to see how Mna and the twins were doing. Or, more accurately, to realize how little I or anyone could do about the mess that I could see swiftly developing.
	Taric was right--Crann was demanding. And in addition to being especially strong-willed, he had more mindstrength than a two-and-a-half year old should. While I was there, at least, he followed me around instead of Taric; and I think it made Taric feel a little better. I could see him thinking, maybe it’s not just me, maybe it’s just people he remembers, maybe all he wants is to be around someone familiar.
	I wasn’t at all sure that was how it was, but he hadn’t called me out to give him advice on his relationships. I squatted down near the chicken who was at the front of the line, while Crann played with the straw and shifted his bright eyes from me to Taric. 
	I think it sort of annoyed Taric when I burst out laughing.
	Because after all it’s serious when your hens won’t lay. But it was still damn funny, at least to me.
	“Do you know what it is, shriia?” he said.
	I nodded, still laughing, and stood up slowly. Crann laughed too, although I think it was just because someone else was laughing.
	“Then what is it?”
	I did my best to put on a straight face.
	“While Pertlo was staying with your hens,” I said, and then started laughing again.
	“I’m all on fire to share the joke, shriia,” Taric said.
	“Well, I told you Pertlo was a cantankerous and uncooperative sort.”
	“Yes,” he said.
	“She apparently spent a lot of time talking with your chickens about the conditions they all live under, and...” I shook my head. He waited. “She’s got them organized.”
	“What do you mean, organized?”
	“Your chickens have formed a guild. They’re on strike.”
	“What?”
	“I don’t think Pertlo quite understands how lucky she is to be employed by a shriia. She probably thinks all hens work on contract.”
	It’s not much of an achievement to render Taric speechless, but it was still all I could do not to laugh at the expression on his face.
	“Well--but--what do I do about it, shriia?”
	I shrugged. “You can negotiate, or try to break the strike. It’s up to you.”
	“Negotiate?”
	“I’m willing to act as your agent, as long as you don’t ask me to do any double-dealing. The thing about chickens is--”
	As he saw me gearing up to explain the intricacies of human-animal contract negotiations, Taric underwent a sudden fit of refusal.
	“No. Thank you shriia, but no. They’ve laid before and they’ll lay again.” He turned to look at the hens, who had begun walking about the coop again. “You hear me? You’re on a real farm, and I eat meat!”
	Of course, they had no idea what he was saying. 
	“The offer stands,” I said. “Good luck with them.”
	And that was the last we’d heard about it. But I thought of him every time we sat down to a plateful of Pertlo’s bounty. She had been unusually generous with us since her return. There’s something to be said for letting them see how the other half lives.
	“Do you need one of us to come with you for siulin?” I said.
	Aine shook her head, answering with her mouth full. “It’s only Vinha. There’s never much wrong up there.”
	“That’s well enough,” I said. “We’ve got a lot to take care of. You’ll call if--”
	“Yes, I’ll call,” she said, with a teasing smile. 
	I nodded, about to leave it and move on, but she seemed to get suddenly sadder.
	“What is it?”
	“It’ll be the last time,” she said.
	Because tomorrow she’d have her orders, and be on her way to Jipran. She had asked for a post there, and Morat had been only too pleased to give her one. Fand had been agitating for a long time now to get a provincial council started in Jipran. That was a long time in the future; but the first step was getting enough shriias out there to cover the place decently. Na Pisce wasn’t big enough to have its own Pharc or a Council to put in it, and Jipran had been languishing unorganized, with its small complement of shriias scattered along the coast. Aine was going to a village somewhere between Na Pisce and Saortal--she knew the place, I didn’t. She’d been out to find a site for her house, and Fand had been released to help her build and shield it. I knew how much she was looking forward to being home. It hadn’t seemed, so far, like she was very sad to leave this place.
	“I know,” I said. “I’ll miss you.”
	Aine looked down at her eggs, and decided we weren’t going to get this started now. After all, she wouldn’t be leaving until tomorrow.
	“I suppose your mother isn’t as happy to see the snow,” Aine ventured.
	If you want to change the subject, my mother usually works. At least around Istria, whose response to the mention of her name tended to be at least mildly explosive.
	“She’s still dead-set on having that breakfast at the Craoibh Oir?” Istria demanded.
	“I’m afraid so.” Istria sighed, and speared her eggs violently with the fork. “Look, it won’t take long and it’ll be very small. Most of her friends are under indictment anyway.” Istria muttered something under her breath. “The Pharc got the ceremony and Minead’s doing the feast, I had to give her something.”
	“I know, chara, I just--your mother--”
	“I know, but--”
	Istria held up a hand. I waited until she returned to the place at hand.
	“So, that was Eorna, she wants to know if we can clear our avenue, as long as we’re coming in. Do we have time?”
	“Sure, if we start now,” I said. “It’ll give me an excuse to be out when Kronn calls about the damn costume.”
	“Oh, that’s right,” Istria said, suddenly remembering. “Here, we better get going.”
	Istria found the whole costume crisis amusing, but she knew I was very tired of it. The first time Kronn got a look at me after I came back, she almost had kittens. After fussing at me for a long time she had coerced me into her shop for a refitting. I told her it was no use because I intended putting the weight back on, but she wouldn’t listen. In the past months my eating, like everything else, had been erratic, and that costume had been taken in and let out more often than a farmer’s tomcat. Kronn had started another alteration the day before, and now we were going to need the thing tonight. When she woke up and found that out, I wanted to be far away from my waterglobe.
	We put on the winter ropesoles and started the slog into town. The snow was just deep enough to make it hard going. But with Istria’s arm in mine that wasn’t a bad thing. 
	It was a relief not to have to worry about hiding. Morat had put a stop to all of that. Literally, the first thing she did after her election ceremony was open the envelope and read the new instructions. It caused some upset among the assembled City dignitaries, but it sure made the repeaters happy. Kleark collared me after it was over demanding an exclusive interview. I told him shriias couldn’t give exclusive interviews, and he said he would take what he could get. So the news reached all corners of the country within a day, and nobody talked about much else. Except I suppose in Amranth, since evidently they had all gotten tired of the subject long ago.
	And then in the first meeting of the reconvened Council, they ripped through a series of doctrinal changes so fast they must have felt the wind on their faces. It was a shock, even to me.
	When they made the announcement, Istria and I were in the Pharc courtyard along with the repeaters, those apprentices who had been determined not to be in league with the dark users, and a number of other shriias. Harani was just there to get the gossip, like most of them. But we were pretty interested to hear the outcome, and so was Aine.
	Morat came out into the courtyard with the rest of the Council behind her. She cleared her throat and clasped her hands, staring down the repeaters until they shut up.
	“There have been three major pieces of new doctrine made today. We will announce them on the Council network shortly, but I know the world outside the Order will take an interest and I want the Council’s positions to be very clearly understood.”
	I clutched Istria’s hand and waited.
	“First: the Council has voted unanimously to amend the teaching on loss violation. The category ‘abuse of the body’ will no longer include consensual sexual activity. We know that sex itself is not a loss violation, and we will no longer teach scoili that it is.”
	This got a loud cheer from the assembled apprentices. We had put them all through the wringer when we got back, and the ones who had been let stay in the scoil had been through all kinds of scourings. At least they got to be the first scoili ever to be told to have as much sex as they wanted.
	“Second: the Council, again unanimously, has determined that it is Idair’s wish that men be allowed to join with men and women be allowed to join with women. Therefore, all members of the Order will be instructed to join any two persons who ask to be joined, provided they meet requirements already established pertaining to blood kin, age, ability to consent, availability, and so on. If two men, or two women, wish to be joined, and there is no other reason they should not be, then it is not only the right but the duty of the Order to join them. Both of these changes are effective immediately.”
	The repeaters began cogitating. We waited to hear about the third one.
	“Third: the Council has considered the question of whether to allow shriias to be joined.” It was clear this had been a harder decision than the others. “It is quite clear to most of us that it is Idair’s wish that we do so. However, it is equally clear that Idair wishes us to maintain the life of poverty that has so far been the Order’s best protection against the Dark One. For a shriia to join with someone who is not bound by our strict rules against money and property would create a number of very intractable, very significant problems.”
	Istria was already starting to look disappointed. We were of course planning to live together anyhow, but our hopes had been rising.
	“We have come to this conclusion.” Morat looked out at Istria, who returned the stare sadly. “One year from this date, we will begin allowing shriias to join with ordinary people. It will take us a year to develop rules that will preserve everything Idair wants us to preserve.”
	I nodded, sadly. It made sense, even though I was disappointed.
	“Shriias who join other shriias, of course, do not face the same problems. So members of the Order will be instructed that if they wish, they may join with each other, or solemnize the joining of two other shriias, effective immediately.”
	All right, Theamh...don’t cheer and make an ass of yourself...
	You might as well, Aine said, as Istria brought a hand up to her mouth in tears. Everyone else is.
	Well, everyone in the Order. The repeaters were still in shock.
	I looked at Istria, whose eyes were watering above the hand still held over her trembling mouth.
	“So what about it, Istri?” I said, softly, still amazed. “Will you--”
	“Yes!” It came out immediately, in a gasp. “Yes--name of the Spirit--yes--”
	She hadn’t heard the end of the question and I never got around to finishing it, but who was sweating the details. Except for the repeaters, who continued firing their questions at Morat while we held onto each other and gave thanks for the fact that the Cretids and their cameras had disappeared long ago.
	“...these joinings between members of the same sex, will they be legally binding?” one of them was asking, when we paused for breath.
	“That’s up to the Seat,” Lilea said. She had taken over for Riina as head of Public Relations. “I understand that Paigin is supportive.”
	“Kleark mac Caille, True Stories,” said Kleark, standing up. “Shriia, a number of the Seated Leaders have spoken out recently against same-sex joinings in very strong language. How do you plan to respond?”
	“I don’t,” Morat snapped. “They’ve made their position plain, but they don’t run the Order. I hope the Seated Leaders who oppose same-sex joinings will realize their error, but I and my colleagues are not going to wait for them to get their heads on straight before we begin doing what we know to be right.”
	One of the other repeaters stood up and gave his name. “Shriia, are you concerned at all that these new policies may adversely affect the Order’s popularity with the people, or your popularity as a national leader?”
	Morat laughed once.
	“Young man, you haven’t been covering this beat long, have you?”
	“I haven’t, shriia, but--”
	“These are decisions that had to be made so that we can go on telling the truth,” Morat said. “I hope of course that ordinary people will understand and accept that but regardless, we must do as we see right. And anyone who has been in the Order for any length of time will tell you that I have never done anything just because I thought it would make people like me.”
	After the laugh, someone else asked, “What would you say to people who say that for shriias to...join, that way...will undermine the dignity of the order?”
	“Well,” Morat answered. “First, if the past few months have taught me anything it’s that there are things more important than dignity. Second, I would tend to think that those people would be confusing dignity with priggishness, and third, well, I think people will come to realize, as Theamh ni hUlnach put it, that it’s better we should be in bed with each other than in bed with the Dark One.”
	After the startled laughter had subsided, someone asked, “And so your response to Fielp mac Hyslana’s comments to the repeaters yesterday, about your own possible motives for making these changes, would be--”
	Morat cut the question off with one withering glance. The other repeaters laughed, a little nervously. When she spoke, her tone and facial expression brought back some very vivid and unpleasant memories for me, Istria, Harani, Aine, and quite a few of those scoili.
	“With all due respect to the member for eastern Kengda, he has not spent the last thirty years getting up before dawn every day to bust his gleacha for the poor of this country. When he’s done that, he can start talking about what’s right and proper deportment for the head of the Council. Till then, I have better things to do than curry favor with a man who demonstrates with every public word he utters and every political action he takes that he is the friend of the rich and the sworn foe of the destitute. He and the Order have nothing to say to each other, and the sooner he realizes that, the better.”
	If there had been anyone in the courtyard who had plans to ask Morat whether the rumors about her and Dalen were true, they were now all far too frightened to do it.
	“I am not the entire Council. My colleagues are not bootlicking lackeys. They would never give their assent to a decision they thought I was making solely for my personal benefit. They believe as I do that these changes are not only consistent with Idair’s wishes for us but beneficial to the Order, to shri, to our shriias, and to the people we serve. Those who disagree are welcome to do so, but that will not alter our decision.”
	Nobody seemed inclined to disagree, at least out loud.
	“Now, if you will excuse me, these are long days and I have a lot to do. Lilea will take your questions. Idair with you.”
	Morat went back inside. Lilea faced the assembled ranks undaunted, even with amusement and relish.
	“All right then,” she said. “Who wants to hear about the womanhunt?”
	By the time Istria and I began melting the snow off the avenue that led from our gate to the Pharc, that womanhunt ground to a halt. All the apprentices who had gone out looking along with Dalen and their diaocs came back as shriias; and they brought back Tliath, Gulrun and Faoil. The three of them were still being held, blocked and mittened, up in the Courts along with Ybrial and Riina. Ygren was a much worse story--the only real stain on the victory. She had made the unfortunate decision to go to ground in east Kengda, where she was expecting help from some clients who wintered out there. Unfortunately, to get to east Kengda she had to get through west Kengda, where memories of that disaster she had arranged were still very fresh.
	They had tried to make it look like a lurer attack, but it didn’t take Dalen long to find out what had really happened. The murderers were never brought to justice. Dalen knew who they were; but aftersight is not admissible in court. The farmers had engineered a pact of silence that no amount of investigation or interrogation could break, and ultimately it was determined that there was no way to make a case against them. In any case, I doubt a Kengdan Finders panel would have convicted them.
	From what Dalen was able to determine, Lythril made some attempt at recruiting Barant’s minions; but obviously it hadn’t worked out. Tliath and Gulrun both admitted that they had been in contact with Lythril, but Dalen was of the opinion that they had been captured before they could join up with her. Sibh turned up dead further north, along the Tsraid. One slash with a sharp blade right under the chin--the dark user’s cut. She had probably attempted a power play that failed, and Lythril had meted out her only punishment for treason. After which she had disappeared. After some fruitless searching, Dalen had come back, just in time for the Burning. Dalen reasoned that until we heard of her elsewhere, the best way to find Lythril was to stay near Barant.
	I don’t get to do Practical things much; but making snow melt is simple enough. By the time we got to the Pharc we had worked up a pretty good sweat even on this cold day, and were enveloped in a cloud of steam.
	Through it we could see Eunem out on the steps of the Mathair clearing them off. She had a wool headscarf wound around her head and neck, and was humming to herself as she felt the steam rise around her.
	“Eunem!” I called, as we approached.
	“Is that you, Theamh?”
	“Yes, and Istria’s with me,” I said.
	“Well, when is she not,” Eunem said, with a smirk. “Happy Burning, both of you. And congratulations.”
	“Thank you,” I said.
	“How are you, Eunem?” Istria said, as she turned to come in with us. 
	“Well enough,” she said. “I’m making a lot of progress on mobility.”
	She wasn’t using the stick indoors any more, and was nodding at people who passed in the halls. “Harani says you’re learning fast.”
	Eunem shrugged. “I learn as fast as I can learn. I still...” She shook her head. “It’s still hard. You know? To realize that I will never be able to just--open my eyes.”
	We reached the counseling room at the end of the Mathair. Eunem put a hand against the door.
	“It’s empty, at least I hope it is,” she said. When she pulled the door open we saw she was right. “You’re here for Lilea, aren’t you?”
	“Yes,” I answered.
	“She’s always running late these days. I’ll wait with you if you want.”
	“Sure,” I said.
	We sat down on the cushions. Eunem leaned back against the wall and sighed.
	“Theamh, I’m sorry about--”
	“--Eunem, Idair knows you’ve had enough--”
	“Don’t interrupt me.” I stopped talking. “Whatever may have been done to me, I must face up to the fact that I was a complete bitch to you for weeks on end. I owe you an apology for that. Isn’t that right, Istria.”
	“It certainly is,” Istria said.
	“It’s not your fault I got burned,” Eunem said. “It’s not your fault you didn’t. And even if you are one of Idair’s favorites, that’s not your fault either. I’m sorry I took it out on you, especially when you were trying to help me.”
	I didn’t know what to say, except, “I wish I could have helped more.”
	Eunem shook her head. “Nobody could have done any more than you did. I’m satisfied I’ve got the rage aimed back where it belongs. That’s about all I can do at the moment. Before I die I may stop hating Barant, but I don’t see it happening soon.”
	“No reason it should,” said Lilea, as she came through the door.
	We all got up. Lilea hugged each of us. “Congratulations, both of you. I’m so happy for you. And happy burning.” Istria and I sat down again; Eunem started to go. Lilea took her aside and talked to her for a few minutes, without speaking, before she finally went off back to the Mathair. Lilea sat down near us.
	“Well,” she said, bringing her hands together in her lap. “As you know, all couples who wish to be joined in a shriic ceremony are required to have a meeting first with their local shriia or other representative of the Order. Usually the purpose of this meeting is to determine that the two participants fully understand the implications of their decision, are not acting rashly or simply out of a desire to have sex, and are reasonably likely to make each other happy instead of miserable.” We nodded. “I think it would be risking untruth to pretend that any of these things are actually issues here. So instead,” she said, looking from Istria to me, “how about we talk a little bit about the Greenhaven Mental Hospital.”
	Neither of us had expected this. I suppose that was part of Lilea’s plan. It certainly brought a lot of things that had been very well buried right to the surface, right quick. 
	“I know it’s going to hurt,” Lilea said, looking at me. “But trust me, you’ll feel a lot better afterwards.”
	Since we got home, Istria and I had never talked about those days. Lilea knew that we hadn’t done it because we were afraid, and that if she was there it would be easier for us. And Lilea had decided, evidently, that if the purpose of this meeting was to give us a better chance of a happy union, then this was probably the best use to which she could put it. Even though that meant getting us angry with her, with each other, and with the world.
	“So was I right?” Lilea said, several hours later.
	“You were right,” I answered, finally letting go of Istria. 
	“Tell you what though,” Istria said. “Never do that again.”
	“I’ll never have to,” she said. “You two know now that you can talk about all of that without the world ending. So next time it comes up it’ll be because one of you wants it to. I, fortunately, will probably be very far away.” Istria laughed. “Think of it as my gift to you. Because it is a gift, even though it may not seem like it.”
	“I know,” I said. “I will appreciate it, in time.”
	Lilea stood up. “So. Off to the second ordeal of the day.”
	Istria and I followed her back out of the Pharc and into the back streets. Some of the new shriias were clearing the streets, still in their robes. People had come out to be in the snow and feel the sting in the air and get ready for the festival. Everyone was headed somewhere; but we were about the only people headed for the Central City Hospital.
	“I couldn’t believe it when Ethir sent the messenger,” Darin said when we met him in the hall. “I had to put him off a couple days just so we could get the ward ready. It’s the first time since the thing was built that we’ve ever had anyone to put in it.”
	He had stopped outside a steel door whose many bolts he was unlocking with a set of keys he took out of one pocket. “I don’t understand why this is necessary,” Istria said, probably feeling as uncomfortable as I did listening to the steel clash against the wall as the door swung open. “You’re the doctor, isn’t your word what matters?”
	Darin shook his head, and waved us through. “Every day God sends, every man woman and child in Ideire displays some or all of the symptoms of serious mental illness. Any Cretid doctor who interviewed any of you for half an hour would have no trouble signing you into an institution. I am absolutely the worst person to ask.” 
	Our steps echoed in the empty corridor, like Darin’s voice. He stopped us outside a door with a thick glass window set into it.
	“But why us?” Istria pressed.
	Darin nodded at Lilea. “Her because she’s the closest thing you have to a doctor. Theamh because she knows her well, and you for moral support.” He sighed, resting his hand on the knob irresolutely. “I told you she’s still asking for you.”
	“You did,” I said.
	“I think it would be better if you go in alone. She’s extremely paranoid, and she becomes very agitated whenever she’s approached by more than one person.”
	I peered in through the window. I couldn’t see much.
	“Why is it so dark in there?”
	“If we leave a light in with her she puts it out as soon as she can do it,” Darin said. “The light in the hall doesn’t go through because the door window is really a one-way mirror. We aren’t trying to maltreat her,” he said, a little touchy. “These are all things we had to do for her safety.” I shook my head. “You ready?”
	“I’m not going to get any readier.”
	Darin opened the door. “We’ll be right outside, and we can see and hear what’s happening in there. She won’t be able to harm you.”
	I crossed the threshold, and the door shut behind me.
	Darin had tried to close it softly, but the sound still made the dark shape huddled in the corner twitch itself upright. There was a very little light in the room, let in through a small, narrow and barred window at the very top of the exterior wall. Enough, once my eyes adjusted, for me to see Barant.
	She was wearing a gray shapeless dress, and no shoes. Her hair was unbound and hung in lank strands around her head and shoulders. She had pushed herself into the corner farthest from the outside window, where the shadow was deepest.
	“Who’s there?”
	It was the same voice; but sharpened with fear and breathless with anxiety. Her knees were drawn up against her and her hands tucked into her lap behind them, her arms shuddering a little as her hands twisted.
	“It’s Theamh,” I said. “Darin said you were asking for me.”
	“Come close so I can see you.”
	I didn’t want to go closer, so I pulled out some fire and held it up near my face.
	Barant flinched away at first, closing her eyes and bringing a hand up against the glare. Then she turned back, blinking into the light, and suddenly instead of shrinking away she was dragging herself toward me.
	“Theamh,” she said, in a whisper. “Thank Idair.” I snatched my hand back as she reached for it. “You have to listen to me. Nobody else understands. But I know you will. You’re too smart for them. I always said you were the smartest one I ever trained.”
	The way the lines on her face met in that expression of desperate pleading made my stomach turn. I was for the moment too horrified to respond.
	“It’s all a trick,” Barant said, as the shadows under her eyes and her mouth flickered. “She’s working on their minds. She’s making them think everything’s all right. She’s got everyone fooled. She’s good, oh, yes, she’s really good but I see right through her, all the way, it’s like--it’s like now I’m not distracted any more, I’m blocked and I’m stuck here in this room all day but my mind is just like a blade now, I know exactly what she’s up to, I know exactly what she’s thinking.”
	“Who are you talking about, Barant?” I finally said.
	“Lythril,” Barant whispered. “She’s turned them against me. Even Morat. I never thought she’d get to Morat,” Barant said, her voice sliding up into a cry. “Never. Morat’s so strong, she’s much stronger than I am. How can she have gotten to her?” It seemed like Barant was asking me this bizarre question. “I don’t understand, I don’t understand...”
	Barant was crying now, rocking her head gently on her knees and talking more to herself than to me. I didn’t know if I was supposed to answer or not.
	“She’s turned on me,” Barant said, her head suddenly flying up and her eyes fixing on me. “She sends spirits in here trying to kill me. There was an arani came in through the window last night trying to strangle me but I got rid of him. I’m still too many for them.” Now there was a kind of malicious pride in her voice that completed the work of unsettling my nerves. “Lythril can turn them all if she wants. She’ll never get to me. I can hold out forever. She won’t break me. I’ll die first.”
	I could read nothing off her, of course, and that only made this worse. It was as if I were watching a very strange performance of a play I had walked into halfway through. Only I wasn’t really sure if any of this was acting.
	“You can help me.” She was back to pleading again. “You have to help me. You’re my last hope.” She crawled toward me so that I had to keep backing away. “You have to get me out of here. You have to tell them.”
	“Tell them what, Barant?” I said, my voice flat.
	“Tell them it’s not me that’s dark,” she said, pressing her hands hard against her breast. “It’s not me. I’m the last one. They’re all possessed or dark or being mindforced except me.” I shook my head. “Nobody believes me. Of course they don’t. Lythril’s got them all. But you believe me. You believe me, Theamh. Don’t you?”
	“Barant--”
	She broke me off as if she knew, somewhere underneath all this, that I wasn’t going to say yes. “You lived with me, you learned shri from me, you know me better than anyone I have left. Would I do all those things they say I’ve done?” Her head was tilted toward me in supplication. “You know who I really am. You’re my only hope. My scoilin, the best I had. You’re the future of shri, Theamh,” she said, holding a desperate hand out toward me. “You know that, don’t you?”
	“Barant, do you remember the last time you saw me?”
	My voice sounded harsh even to me, and she recoiled from it.
	“It was in a locked room like this, up in the Courts. Do you remember?”
	Barant shook her head, closing her eyes and putting her hands up against me.
	“Do you remember what you said to me then?”
	“N-n--no--”
	She was already shuddering in refusal, crouching away from me. 
	“That was your line, that you were the only bright shriia left in the world and I’d been the dupe of evil and especially of Istria. Do you remember what you said to Istria?”
	“Shhhhhhh!” Barant exploded at me. “She’ll hear you! She’s watching me too! She’s one of them.” Barant dropped her voice. “You have to watch out for Istria, Theamh. She’s turned. Lythril turned her.”
	“Yes, Lythril turned her,” I said. “And now she’s turned back. And she helped me bring you down. And when you saw us, up there in that room in the Courts, and you called her a whore of the Dark One, do you remember what she said to you?”
	“She’s a liar,” Barant burst out, finally raising her voice. “She’s a liar, she admits she’s a liar, how can you believe anything she says?”
	“She said she may have been a whore but that’s better than being a pimp,” I said. “Do you remember that, Barant?”
	“Don’t listen to her!” Barant shouted. “Don’t listen to any of them, they’re all liars! I’m the one who’s right!” she cried, dropping into tears. “They want to destroy you, because you belong to me, they want to turn you against me because you’re the last good thing left to me. I’m the one who’s right.” She fixed me with bright glittering eyes. “And nobody believes a thing I say. But you believe me. You’re smart, you’re strong, you see through all of this. You know I’m true. You know that.”
	“I don’t know that, Barant,” I said.
	“Theamh--”
	This time I didn’t draw back fast enough, and she got her hand around my arm. Through a grim, gut-wrenching effort I got myself up off the floor quickly, in time to see Barant collapsed in a shrieking heap.
	“You’re one of them!” She sat up screaming, red in the face, from pain but also from rage. “You’re one of the bitches set against me! I knew it, I knew you were a traitor, I knew I couldn’t trust you, I knew she sent you in here to kill me. Liar! Traitor! Whore of the Dark One!”
	I was so stunned that I couldn’t really react. Then I finally got to my feet, as Barant struck ineffectually out at me.
	“I’m leaving, Barant,” I said. “This is probably the last time you’ll ever see me.”
	Barant stopped screaming. Something passed across her eyes, and now suddenly she was all craving and whimper.
	“Don’t go,” she said. “Don’t leave me here. I’m powerless. Lythril’s got them all trying to kill me. Everyone. You have to help me.”
	“I can’t help you,” I answered.
	“You can,” she said, urgently. “You believe me. You must believe me. If you just believe me, then it’ll be all right. If I know you believe me. That I’m the one who’s right.”
	“I don’t believe you, Barant,” I said.
	Big tears began falling from her eyes and running down her crestfallen face.
	“You of all people,” she cried. “You of all people to betray me like this--”
	“Thurcte bi thu agus uille do sasni!”
	Barant recoiled from the noise as well as the words.
	“For Idair’s sake, Barant, does it have to be this? Would it cost you so much to admit to what you’ve done and take it like a woman?” She was still crying. “Will you not even do one decent thing or say one honest word for the rest of your wretched life?”
	“Of course,” Barant whispered, her face lighting up as if she had experienced some great revelation. “Of course. It’s not her.”
	Her eyes were on me now, but they weren’t really seeing me.
	“It’s you, isn’t it,” she whispered. “You’re finally here. You’ve come for me.”
	“I’m leaving, Barant,” I repeated.
	“I’m glad you’re here, Lythril,” Barant said, with a small, self-satisfied and cruel smile. “I’ve been waiting for you. Come on in.”
	I found my way back to the door and smote it with one fist. “Darin, open up!”
	For a split second I thought he wasn’t going to open the door. That I’d been locked in here with her, through some stratagem I hadn’t seen through, and that Barant would keep working and working at me forever. But then I saw the door open slowly.
	Barant saw it too. I was through the door in an instant, but when it closed again it was almost right on her nose. Her hands banged on the door as her face contorted behind the glass in a cry of frustration and anger.
	“Well?” Darin said, as I hunched over my knees. “What do you think? Is she competent to stand trial?”
	I looked at him as if he were a creature from some other world I had never been to.
	“I don’t think so, Darin.”
	“You don’t think she’s putting it on to get out of the trial?” Istria suggested.
	“I suppose she could be, but...” I looked back through the glass. Barant had gone back to her corner and the darkness. “What’s to be gained? Wouldn’t it be better to be sent to the Skelligs than to live the rest of her life in this place?”
	Under pressure from the Order and the families of the convicted, the Seat had put a stop to the Courts sending criminals to the Zone. It was a hard battle but a lot of us put everything we had into it. The Order had sent some of the northern shriias into the Zone when we started reconditioning the border, and what they found made them all greatly disturbed and very angry. Kleark and some of the other repeaters had picked up the story, and opinion turned fast and swelled quickly. The Seat had finally recognized that this was equivalent to a death sentence, and was looking around for other options. Till they found one, there were the Skelligs.
	The Skelligs are a set of islands off Naucht Point. They get plenty of rain and they’re green, and visited by all kinds of seabirds. But nobody lives there, because it’s simply much, much easier to live on the mainland; the Skelligs are almost at the edge of the border. At least, nobody lived there until very recently. That was where the exiles would be going, once a proper system was established for dealing with them out there. It was a temporary solution; but it was a necessary one, because we were going to be sentencing an awful lot of people for an awful lot of permanent harm.
	“It would,” Lilea said, decisively. “I think you’re right, Theamh. I saw this coming on her.” She sighed. “She doesn’t want the truth to be what it is. So now she’s living in the world she made.” Lilea glanced back through the window. “It doesn’t seem like a very good place.”
	“Do you think maybe...” Istria shrugged. “Probably not.”
	“No, what.”
	“Do you think we blocked her with something in there?” I groaned. “I’m not suggesting she was possessed the whole time she was doing evil. But Lythril knew we were going after her, she knew we’d try to block her--what if she got something into her head, and then we blocked it in there? And now it’s driving her mad?”
	I took a last look through that one-way window.
	“Do you think there’s anything in the world that would be worse company than her own mind?” I finally said.
	“Maybe not,” Istria answered. “It was just a theory.”
	
	Ethir was bitterly disappointed to hear the verdict.
	“Are you sure she’s stark raving mad?” he said.
	“Stark,” I answered.
	“Raving,” Istria continued.
	“Mad,” Lilea said, emphatically.
	“Ah well,” he finally said. “It will save time and money.” He gathered up a large bundle of documents and dropped them into a drawer. “We can still use the evidence in the other trials, especially Riina’s.” He kicked the door closed. “Well, the good news is the Lacgon Six have agreed to take what we offered, so we won’t have to recall you.”
	Istria looked relieved. “Is Wriana all right with that?”
	Ethir nodded. “What she wanted was for the story to be told. That’s why we didn’t bargain before the trial started.” He laughed, a little caustically. “You know, it’s funny. Most cases, it’s the prosecution that goes chasing the defense down trying to get them to plead guilty. I had five of those lawyers in here last week begging to cut a deal with me, and we had to keep turning them away. But now it’s done,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “In exchange for our dropping the high treason charge, they plead guilty to rape.”
	It was a good deal for them. The penalties for treason vary, but for treason that incorporates murder--high treason--the punishment is permanent scrainnte na phoblacht. In other words, instead of being exiled, you are sent into a kind of internal exile, where you are trapped inside the country but nobody is allowed to know you. The unpleasant thing is that in order to make this effective the culprits have to be identified, which is done by means of a tattoo on the forehead. Getting the tattoo is painful. Wearing it is worse--it marks you as a victim for anyone’s wrath, an outcast that nobody will ever lift a hand to help. They would be much better off out at the Skelligs--particularly now that everyone knew what they’d done.
	“She was one compelling witness,” I said.
	Ethir nodded, his eyes blurring a bit. Then he brought himself briskly back to the moment at hand. “So, I’ve never been to the Craoibh Oir, Theamh. What should I wear?”
	I groaned. 
	“So she’s sent out the invitations,” Istria said grimly.
	Ethir nodded.
	“Well, wear something you’re not too attached to,” I said. “When I attend these parties, they tend to get messy.”
	Ethir laughed, and stood up. “Theamh...”
	Istria sized him up, and said, “Lilea, can I see you out in the hall for a minute?”
	Lilea had already been in search of a pretext, so she agreed immediately, leaving me there alone with Ethir.
	 He shook his head. “You can hide nothing from a shriia,” he said.
	“Except me,” I answered.
	“I just wanted to...ask you about...” I waited, apprehensive. “Look, sit down, this may take a minute.”
	I sat down. I knew when I invited him to the wedding it might cause him trouble, but I felt like it would be worse not to. I waited for him to let me know if I’d done wrong.
	“Well, the good news is,” he said, leaning his elbows on the desk and his head on his hands, “I’m over you.”
	“That is good news,” I said, startled but very relieved. Then, because he wasn’t looking as relieved as I was, I said, “And you are over me because...”
	He sighed heavily. “I’m ashamed to admit it,” he said, staring right through me as if not seeing a thing. “It’s highly unethical.”
	“Oh no,” I said.
	He must have read it off me, because he just nodded.
	“Is it that you have a thing for shriias, Ethir, or do you just like a challenge?”
	“Both, maybe--I don’t know--” He jumped out of his chair and began roaming restlessly about the office. “First there’s you--as if anything could be more hopeless--and now I fall for my own client? What is the matter with me?”
	“Technically speaking, Wriana’s not your client any more,” I said. “The case is over. I don’t see the ethical problem.”
	Ethir’s head snapped around and his eyes fixed me with a terrified blue stare. 
	“Have you told her how you feel about her?”
	“Of course not!” He dropped a stylus he’d been toying with, and it clattered onto the litter on his desktop. “My relationship with her has been purely professional--”
	“Are you going to tell her?”
	His eyes got large and his voice got anxious. “Theamh, her introduction to men was being held down and raped by seven of them. I don’t think much of my chances and even if I did,” he went on, his voice rising, “how could I force my attentions on her after what she’s been through?”
	“Forcing your attentions on her is not the same thing as telling her how you feel.”
	“But--”
	“Look, Ethir.” I leaned across the desk toward him. “You obviously want my advice about this, so how about you stay quiet a minute and let me give it to you.”
	He looked a little vexed, but he shut up.
	“I understand why you would be worried about this,” I said. “As you say, to force unwanted attention on her would be a very bad thing. However.” I took a moment to see if I could get this straight in my head before saying it. “You are bound by the rules of decency and your knowledge of what’s right to respect her feelings, and if she tells you that it upsets her to hear you talk love to her then you’ll have to stop. But shouldn’t you give her the chance to tell you how she feels, instead of making the decision for her?” 
	He looked at me as if this were something that had never occurred to him.
	“I mean, with me, sure, you could assume that when you told me I would be nothing but uncomfortable. But Wriana’s different. She may very well never want to touch another man until the day she dies, and that would be nothing but natural. But maybe she does want the love of a man, for healing or for companionship or just because she wants it. Maybe she wants you. You’re a good man, people tell me you’re good-looking, and you’re not someone who will give up at the first sign of difficulty, which is good because by the Spirit if anything is certain it’s that there would be difficulty.” 
	“Are you serious?” Ethir said, in a hushed and frightened whisper.
	“I don’t know if she wants you or not, Ethir, I’m just saying you won’t know till you’ve asked. Worst that can happen is that she’s made uncomfortable for a little while and you get disappointed. Wouldn’t it be much worse to find out years later that you could have made each other happy but you weren’t eithanta enough to take the first step?”
	Ethir gulped.
	“But I’m not,” he whispered.
	He certainly didn’t look it. I’d never seen Ethir look this scared.
	“Will you talk to her, Theamh?”
	“Will I--what, you want me to do your lovemaking for you?”
	“Just to ask her--if it would be all right--”
	“Ethir, you pusillanimous--”
	“It’ll be better coming from you,” Ethir insisted. “You’re a woman--you’re non-threatening--”
	“My gleacha--”
	“Well, not to her--it isn’t just cowardice, Theamh, I really don’t want to hurt her.”
	I fumed at him silently for a moment.
	“You say it isn’t just cowardice.”
	“Certainly, to some extent, it is,” Ethir admitted. “But I also truly don’t want to force anything on her.”
	I shook my head.
	“You are always getting me into these things I regret later--”
	“Oh, thank you so much, Theamh,” he said, leaping up. “You’re the best--you really are.”
	“Yeah, you say that now,” I said, gruffly. “Idair with you, Ethir. See you tomorrow.”
	I joined Istria in the hallway. Lilea had already wandered off.
	<What was that all about?>
	<Would you believe he wants me to act as go-between for him and Wriana,> I said.
	Istria prevented herself, with difficulty, from laughing. <Could he not find a local crone who would jump at the chance to meddle?>
	<You know the City,> I said. <Crones are out of fashion here.>
	Istria shook her head as we passed under the gate to the Sixth.
	“You should never have agreed to it, Theamh.”
	“Well, what if Wriana really does--”
	“No, I don’t mean that, I mean this party of your mother’s.”
	“I never thought she would be able to get the house back together in time,” I said.
	“They have all the money in the world and she has nothing else to do with her time. Besides, you’re her only daughter. Of course she’s ready.”
	The snow was still drifted along this avenue. It was the only place in the City so far that the streets hadn’t been cleared. Individual shopowners had come out to shovel the stuff off their steps and clear little paths, but the Order’s snow detail hadn’t made it out there yet. We’re not above taking revenge, in harmless little ways.
	When we got to the Craoibh Oir, the front steps were dry as a bone, as was the path up to them. I looked at Istria, she looked at me, and we began trudging out through the still-deep snow around to the kitchen entrance.
	Around the kitchen door it was wet and muddy. Iela opened it, and shooed us in immediately.
	“Come on, out of that, both of you.” She shut the door behind us. I was a little startled to see Varen sitting down by the fire having a bowl of soup.
	Varen turned one of those inscrutable yet unsettling smiles on me. “You use the servants’ entrance, Theamh?”
	“Sometimes,” I said.
	Iela got us into chairs by the fire and had the rest of the soup shared out before we could say anything about it. 
	“You know, mathi--” Istria began.
	“Don’t start.” Varen looked at me. “Her own daughter comes in through the back door, you can’t expect me to spend all my time in that parlor.”
	Istria sighed. “Where’s Sinal?”
	“Off with Dohem and the boys seeing the sights. They didn’t have the chance last time we were down here.”
	This allusion to Istria’s departure ceremony passed in silence. I said, “So...this morning meal thing is happening after all...”
	“I brought out my best, but when it comes to some things, I’m afraid Ulnach’s got just as much hyagleach as I do.”
	 “I find that hard to believe,” I said.
	“I said some things,” Varen reiterated, as the smile sharpened.
	Iela pulled up her chair. “Did I tell you about the time--”
	“No, Iela, please--” Varen began, looking genuinely apprehensive.
	“Don’t worry, Aiv, it’s a great story.” Iela turned to me. “Frene heard it when he was up supervising the drapes, you know, in the music room. Herself is getting into it with this one, you know, passing those remarks that are just that innocuous you can’t with justification take offense, about what she’s planning to wear for the breakfast and how there are dressmaking shops right nearby and they do home fittings and she’d be happy to make her a present of a nice frock, and Frene is standing there wondering if maybe there’ll be violence done--you know Frene, he’s much better at reading than I am--”
	“--yes, I am,” said Frene, who had appeared silently and suddenly behind her. 
	Iela didn’t skip a beat. “Well, you finish the story, then.”
	“And so I was waiting, just to see what would happen, in case anyone required me to fetch the medicals,” Frene said. “And mathair na hIstria says to Herself, ‘Ulnach, would you like to take this outside? Because I’ll bet you the price of that frock that I can kick your gleacha.’”
	Both of us burst into scandalized laughter.
	“What did she say?” I gasped.
	“She said nothing,” Frene answered. “She just came into the music room and started fussing about the way the drapiers were hanging the cloth.”
	“And so now I spend my mornings down here,” Varen said. “It’s warm, and Ulnach stays out of it.”
	I felt bad for Varen. She had gone after my mother the only way she knew how, and she had actually won; she would be going to the joining in what she’d brought with her. But it still ended with her taking refuge down here in the kitchen, the way I always had. Made afraid by the same subtle magic my mother had.
	“Well, mathi should have better taste and sense than to get into it with you about what you’re wearing,” I said. “After all, I’m going in my work clothes.”
	Varen smiled briefly. Iela shook her head. “Theamhin, when you’ve spent as long in service as I have you learn that if there’s to be a joining in the family, sense is always in short supply,” she said. “I thought we’d all escape that calamity, but there was a miracle, and here we are.”
	Frene patted her on the shoulder. “Don’t grieve, chara. You’re not losing a Theamh, you’re gaining an Istria.”
	Iela put a hand over Frene’s, and her eyes watered.
	“Come on, Iela,” I said, taking her other hand. “I know it’s a long way for me to go, but we can always set up a link--”
	Iela shook her head. “No, Theamhin, I don’t want that.” She stood up. “Here, you’d better get up to Herself, she’ll have heard the voices. She potters round the back stairs these days, trying to figure out what we’re all talking about down here.”
	“You coming, mathi?”
	Varen shook her head. “I’m going up there when I have to and not before.”
	My mother was indeed hovering, although she was pretending not to have been. “Happy Burning, Theamh,” she said, embracing me carefully. “And to you too, Istria. Theamh, I want to talk to you for a minute about something. Will you excuse us?”
	“Sure,” Istria said, without much good will.
	My mother drew me into the refurbished music room. “I need you to speak to Varen about the boys.”
	“What about them?”
	“Varen can borrow one of my frocks if it’s absolutely necessary, but nothing Flahn has will fit any of them, and if we don’t--”
	“Mathi,” I said. “Varen is not going to borrow one of your frocks and if you think so you are dreaming. They brought their good clothes--”
	“Theamh,” my mother said, dismissively. “You know how people are here about country fashions. I just don’t want them to be embarrassed.”
	“They are not going to be embarrassed,” I said. “They are proud of who they are. Let them wear what they want and forget about it.”
	“You know this is your party,” my mother snapped. “I’m giving it as a favor to you, Theamh, the least you could do is--”
	“You know what, Ulnach?”
	We both turned. Istria was standing with her arms braced in the doorway and she looked dangerous.
	“If my family isn’t good enough for you and your house and your friends then we can all go stay at the Pharc. Theamh’s given her promise to be here but I haven’t. Do you want us at this thurking party or not?”
	My mother still hadn’t figured out how to respond to a direct attack; it wasn’t the way her ordinary adversaries operated. 
	“Of course you should be here.”
	“That wasn’t the question, Ulnach. Do you want us here or not?”
	She looked away, in great perplexity. Finally, she said, “I would like for you and your family to come.”
	“All right then,” Istria said. “Nobody in my family changes their spots for anyone. That’s why they like Theamh.” I shook my head. “If you want us, you take us as we are. If I hear any more tarbhfnaa from you about what we’re wearing or whether we’re good enough, I’m not coming to this damn event, and that is a shriia’s promise.”
	Istria turned around and went storming back down the hall. My mother looked at me with fear in her eyes.
	“How can you deal with a person like that?” she said, her voice almost a whisper.
	“It’s easy,” I said. “I don’t give her any tarbhfnaa.”
	My mother shook her head.
	“Look, mathi...” I said this because I was afraid she might start to cry. “I appreciate your giving this party, and I’m glad you’ve opened the house to Istria’s family. I’m glad you want to be part of the joining, because I love you and athi and I want you to be in this with me.” 
	She didn’t give any indication that I had said anything out of the ordinary, even though this was the first time I’d told her I loved her since I got in the habit.
	“But it’s very hard on me when you’re this rude to them--”
	“Me rude!” she laughed.
	“--and it’s hard on them too. So please for my sake try to be a little friendly to them. It’s not their fault I’m moving to Amst.” I gave her a very short hug. “Now you wanted to discuss this thing with me, and I’m here. So let’s discuss.”
	My mother shook her head, still a little stunned. Then she brought out her ledger.
	“I’ve planned a meatless menu...”

	Fortunately I could plead work and cut the afternoon short. All of us in the City, including the new shriias, had to be at the city square two hours before sundown. It always takes us a while to sort things out and the new shriias are nervous about how it will work. And that would go double this year because of the change.
	Morat saw us coming and came to meet us, her hands tucked inside her sleeves and her breath frosting in the air. “Aine’s already here,” she said, nodding across the square at her. “You two are the ones we were waiting on, in fact.”
	“Sorry,” I said. “My mother...”
	Morat waved a hand. “Never mind.” She turned around to look at that crowd of women in white, which was beginning to resolve itself into seven circles, linked in a ring around the stone platform Morat would be standing on.
	“Not as many as we should have,” she said, dryly.
	The Council was much smaller than it had been. They would be holding elections after the Burning, but for now it was obvious that something very wrong had happened.
	“You’re sure you won’t run,” Morat said, not really phrasing it as a question.
	“I’m sure,” I answered.
	“Istria?”
	“I’m even surer.”
	“Ah well.” She brought her hands out and began rubbing them. “We’ll keep working on you.”
	If you had told me a year ago that someday Morat would be trying to convince me to run for the Council I would have said you were crazy. But that could be said of so many things.
	We found the circle with Aine in it, and took up our places. Aine was still wearing that excitement, and still restless with anticipation. Harani was a little more jaded; but even she paid attention when Morat finally got onto that stone and raised her hands for quiet.
	As always, we had attracted a crowd--mostly ordinary people, although the apprentices also turn out to watch. If the play we would be performing that night represented the beginning of shri, this rite reenacts the beginning of the Order. That time so far back when the shriias who had been working on their own in the dark came together to build something. They took the decision and never looked back, and now here we were. About to give the Order a new birth for a new year--a new birth it badly, badly needed.
	The beginning is sung by the Council head, in the vernacular. It was the first year in a long time that Grinth hadn’t done that, and I could feel the others around me registering the change. There was still a lot of grief for her.
	“The ground is hard, the trees are bare,
	And water freezes in the air.
	The sun is cold and nights are long,
	The wind is hard, and darkness strong.
	So under cloud and in cold weather,
	Every year we come together.”
Because it’s an old rite, the words are very simple. The new shriias grit their teeth over it; but you learn to appreciate the simplicity. There’s enough else to keep track of.
	“Each pair of hands and each secret name,
	All hearts on fire with the one flame...”
	Morat lifted her hands above her head, and we all felt the thrill of anticipation.
	“The season’s dark, the need is dire,
	“Hands together--” 
	She clapped her hands. A ball of flame shot from them into the air above her head. 	
	“Bring the fire!”
	The crowd around us hailed the release of the first flame. The rest of us got down to the hard work at hand.
	We started in our individual circles, joining hands and turning, ducking under the arch of someone else’s joined arms when the circles interlinked. The words are more a mnemonic for the motion than anything else. But the repetition is important, because this takes a long time and it has to build.
	hand in hand around the ring
	magic is what you hold when you sing
	hands together, make the star
	magic is being more than we are
	Instead of a ring each circle was now a star, left hands together in the center as we wheeled around. Fire rose from our clasping hands into the air, shooting in an arch toward the ball above Morat in the center. It was growing, flashing out in all directions like a hanging star as the fire from each of the groups fed it. When Morat gave us the sign, we dropped hands and backed out until we had all joined one big circle around her.
	hand to hand from me to you
	show me your color, show me you’re true
	hand to hand to take it higher
	show me the magic
	show me the fire
	The change was simple, but it affected the whole rite. Touch-testing has always been part of this rite; but the way we used to do it, it only happened twice: once when you joined hands in your smaller ring, and once when you backed out into the big one. In both cases, all you would have to do avoid detection was make sure that all the dark shriias were standing next to each other in the same ring and that there was one shrimarbh person on either end of them. This was maybe why Barant hadn’t worked harder on making Slythe dark. Gulrun had apparently been gathered to the Dark One very recently, so she must have been on the other end. It had never occurred to the original Order, I suppose, that you would have so many people turning that you could afford to corrupt two shriias just to use as buffers.
	It was Aine who suggested the change. It’s a move from dancing called the ravel. Essentially, you have two circles rotating in opposite directions and people weave through by taking the hand of the person opposite, passing them, giving a hand to the next one, and so on. The important thing is that if you do this often enough, everyone touches everyone else. It was a simple idea, but it would mean a lot to the Order.
	And it meant a lot to me, as I found my way through, to see them all--Harani, Lilea, Eorna, Fand, Eunem, Cualha, Dalen, all of them, true, happy, transfigured in the light of the fire that was growing in the center of the ring.
	Change, turn, do it again, with the song still rising, until you forget exactly what you’re doing but the song carries you anyhow, and the fire grows until it burns like a second sun, and Morat, who is the only one who has to really keep her wits while all this is going on, decides it’s time and gives the signal and it all rushes toward completion.
	Morat’s hands clapped in the air, just as we turned to face the center and lifted our hands. With each clap, another burst of fire shot from each pair of hands into the star above us. The song had split, dividing itself into several strands that wove around as hands clapped in a set of different interlinked rhythms. You could hear them floating around your head, repeating and rippling back on themselves. Hand to hand to hand to hand to show me show me show me show me...
	“Ready!” Morat shouted.
	We called out in answer, although I could hear the minds around me counting down for the final step. Haon...do...tri...ceathair...
	Each pair of hands struck at the same time. Streams of fire shot from the star to pour back into each of us. Around us the crowd began cheering. You can see why. Looking around the ring I could see us all glowing, radiating the light we were holding in our bodies. This is the thing that’s magic about it. Each of us was carrying part of that fire--a burden of light and heat over and above what we normally command. We come together, and we make more than we could make individually. And then we take what we’ve made, and bring it to the people.
	Morat glowed too, her face raised to the darkening sky as she called the last order.
	“Tonight, the Burning begins again,” Morat shouted to the crowd. She lifted one of her burning fists to the sky. “Bring the fire!”
	We broke up running. Most of the others had brought their horses. Cinhe was still extremely pregnant, so Taric had lent us Hiinh and Bearla, who had foaled not too long ago. Taric had given Bearla’s foal to Aine for her horse, an act of generosity that deeply touched all of us; but the colt was too young to be worked this way. So Istria and I climbed onto Hiinh, and Aine swung herself up onto Bearla.
	The horses didn’t mind the fire, even though they weren’t used to it. I looked over at Aine, glowing with her share of the light, and couldn’t believe how proud I was.
	“See you at Mablad,” I called at her.
	“See you there,” she said. “Happy Burning, Theamh.”
	We rode off in opposite directions. We had a lot of homes to visit and a lot of hearths to light. And it would be the last time doing it in the Vicinity. But next year Aine would be bringing the fire in Jipran, and Istria and I would be bringing it in Amst. All three of us, shooting like stars out of the heart of the City to light up the rest of the country. Or so it seemed to me, anyhow, as Hiinh took us clattering through the City toward Felim.	

	The people say that we do the Burning play at midnight because that’s when it’s darkest, but really it’s because that’s how long it takes us to get to all the houses. This year it was faster with three of us, which meant that unfortunately Kronn had time to find me backstage and begin hassling me.
	“All right, now take that off and try this on,” Kronn said, brandishing a long stretch of vermilion silk at me.
	“Kronn, how many First Nights have you been to?” I snapped. 
	“Can’t you just--put it back on--”
	“No, I can’t. You’ll just have to hope for the best.”
	Kronn was about to argue, but Mna came barreling around and almost into her.
	“Good, I’ve been looking for you,” she said, holding out a huge pile of black cloth. “The brooch snagged when I was taking it off last night and there’s a big rent, can you--”
	Kronn grabbed it and ran off to find a corner where she could set to work on it.
	“Thanks,” I said.
	Mna smiled. “It was nothing.” I sighed, and the look on my face seemed to make her a little apprehensive.
	“Now you remember, right,” she said, as Pernan and the other people who were in charge of the scenery bustled around us. “It’s just a play.”
	“Of course I remember,” I said. “I’m not going to go setting you on fire, Mna.”
	“It’s just everyone tells me I’m really convincing,” Mna said. “It’s kind of worrying me.”
	Mna had impressed a number of people with her histrionic skills during her work in the resistance, and Pernan had, in a surprise move, cast her to play the Dark One.
	I patted her on the shoulder. “You’re a good actress, is all,” I said. “But don’t worry. I won’t forget who you are.” She sighed. “Here comes Kronn. I’m out of here.”
	I ducked out to take a look at the crowd. The stage had been set up on the grounds of the Na Poll estate. It was a large platform raised on stilts with its back to the stone wall of the house. The audience had started to fill the seats, and it was almost completely dark. It was also cold, but I would soon be plenty warm, what with the three costumes.
	“God it’s freezing out here!”
	There was no mistaking that voice. Chandra had found her way back here, and there she stood, shivering in her thin skirt and sweater and a pair of oversized boots.
	“What are you doing out in this without a cloak?” I demanded. “Are you hoping for the chance to do a piece on alternative medicine, or what?”
	“I gave mine to Lara, she doesn’t have as much natural insulation,” Chandra said. 
	“I thought Viecter said he would keep her warm.”
	“Well, you know men, they talk big but they can’t deliver,” she answered. “Seriously, I just came back to say good luck, I know Aine said you were nervous.”
	“I’m not good at this,” I said.
	“You’ll be fine.”
	Her hair was starting to grow out a little bit. She had cut it all short before she came down, as part of an effort at disguise. She’d been arrested and interned anyhow, along with Lara and Tyrna and a whole lot of other people. After weeks of negotiations between our Seated Leaders and their central government, they had agreed to release most of the Ideiren internees to Ideire, along with Chandra, Lara, and Etana. Kwenu was still considered too dangerous, as was Tyrna. Ethir was working at them, and Darin had high hopes. Till then, he was in heaven looking after his grandchild, and Etana had some compensation for the temporary loss of her mother and Ira. The Cretids agreed to the releases in return for our discontinuing our policy of exiling violent offenders, which of course we would have done anyhow. And in return for our allowing their minions to return to the Cretid Nation in peace, along with all the fnaa they’d tracked in. 
	“I’m glad you’re here and not there,” I said.
	“Me too,” Chandra answered. “Here rocks, and there SUCKS.”
	She was laughing, but she and Lara had both been very badly scarred. Internment had been particularly hard on Lara, who had been thrown in with the male internees. Her head had been shaved, and they had stopped her getting some kind of medication that she needed, and put her in men’s clothes. I told Cera that when they got to Amranth, the first thing she should do was put Lara in touch with Viecter; and sure enough, Viecter had had her feeling beautiful again in no time. They appeared to have fallen in love in the process; or, at the very least, Viecter was helping Lara get over Iriq’s death.
	“Now go on so you don’t lose your seat,” I said. “You’ll be amazed how fast it fills up.”
	As indeed I was amazed when I walked onto that stage and looked out over what should have been a blanket of white snow, and was instead an apparently limitless crowd of people sitting out there on blankets and tarpaulins, wrapped up in their cold season clothes and all waiting for me to start talking.
	“Happy burning,” I said.
	They called the greeting back at me, breaking up into cheers at the end. The size of the crowd and the wave of noise was a little stunning, and I had a moment of paralysis.
	<It’s all right, chara,> Istria said, from the audience. <They’re all with you.>
	“Welcome to the First Night,” I said. “Can I ask all those who are at the First Night for the first time to come up here near the stage, please?”
	Usually the only people who move forward are very young children. This year, the children were almost crowded out by a group of repatriated internees, among them Ilean and the baby. And mixed in among them I could see Lara, Chandra, Sonnia, and Etana.
	“Now,” I said, addressing myself mainly to the children. “I’m Theamh ni hUlnach, and I’m a shriia. You all know what a shriia is, don’t you?”
	“Yes,” the children all chorused, while the adults looked a little embarrassed.
	“Now who can tell me what a shriia does?” I said.
	“Ooh! Me!”
	Little Teala, who had been running out to greet me for siuilin with such enthusiasm, had her hand up and was shouting to be noticed.
	“Teala, this isn’t your first time, now is it?” I said.
	“No, shriia,” she admitted. “But I know what a shriia does!”
	She said it so eagerly I had to laugh. “All right, Teala, what’s the answer?”
	“They tell the truth!”
	“That’s right,” I said, as the crowd laughed. “We do an awful lot of other things too, but that’s the most important one. So for the whole year, any time you hear one of us say something, you can assume it’s true. But for this one night, things are a little different. Who can tell me why? Who can tell me why, and is not Teala.”
	Teala put her hand down, disappointed.
	Sonnia raised her hand.
	Well, it was a first-time-for-everything kind of year. “Sonnia?”
	“Because you’re about to pretend to be Idair, and you’re not.”
	“Very good!” I said. The crowd laughed. “This is a play. It’s a kind of a story on stage. Idair wanted us to have stories. So this one time during the year, she lets us pretend. Even though we all believe that most of this is a true story, it isn’t really happening right here, right now. It’s just pretend, and not real. Especially the scene in the cave.” They nodded. “So while I’m up here on the stage, and I’m not in my hreapa, you must remember that what I say is not to be taken as literally true, although of course every storyteller hopes to be telling the truth, in some way.”
	I stepped back, and began undoing.
	This is part of the rite, precisely because it is so unnerving. We get up there and strip down in front of our people, just the way Idair was stripped before hers. It means something to them to see us do it. For a lot of them it will be the only time they ever see a shriia out of hreapa, dressed like an ordinary woman.
	Or, not exactly like an ordinary woman. Nobody knows anything about where Idair came from except that it was somewhere else, and that she was dressed differently from the rest of the people. Which unfortunately means that people like Kronn are able to go wherever their fantasies take them when they design Idair’s costume. Once I got into character, I would look pretty outlandish. But at the moment, all they saw was me freezing in my shift in front of many hundreds of people.
	“From the beginning of the seventh scroll,” I said, lifting up my bundled hreapa and walking backwards away from the edge of the stage. “The story of the Burning.”
	I hurried off into the wings. Keln, the town leader, hurried past me, winking as she leapt onto the stage. 
	“It is far too late.” Keln’s voice reached me faintly as I hurried to get into my costume. “Iandar should have returned to the camp.”
	It fit, although it was snug. Or rather, they fit. By the time I was done I was wearing a long silk gown in vermilion and yellow, in which I felt utterly ridiculous. And under that, of course, I was wearing a white shift, and under that I was wearing a one-piece body covering, cropped at the knees and with short off-shoulder sleeves, that was worked to look like a tapestry of little flames, and which, as a consequence of all the embroidery that went into achieving this effect, itched like hell.
	<Istri, can you run some lines with me?>
	<Sure, chara, this part’s not that interesting.>
	We went over my part while the rest of the cast found out what had happened to Iandar. I was nervous because the original concept--and, of course, the script--had recently undergone a number of revisions. Many of them reflected contemporary developments, as often happens.
	Finally it was my cue to go on out and start negotiating for Iandar’s release. Pernan had given me all kinds of directions on how to sweep impressively onto the stage, but mainly I was just trying not to trip over the dress.
	“I am here,” I called as I took the stage. “Where are you, jackal of the Dark One?”
	Pernan strode menacingly out, and waited for the audience to get it.
	They got it pretty quick, judging by the delighted burst of catcalls and hissing. Pernan had made himself up to look like our now-imprisoned former Leader of Leaders, Nuet mac Riach. Pernan struck a self-satisfied pose and waited for the noise to die down so his line could be heard.
	“Govern your tongue,” said Pernan. “Remember you do not rule, here.”
	“I do not rule, anywhere.”
	It was not that hard, actually, to remember that it was a play, given the quality of the acting. Pernan was playing with relish and with great success, but not with a whole lot of subtlety. I got through my part without any real trouble until we got to the actual hostage exchange.
	Pernan was still hamming it up, and of course there was an absurdity to it all that should have kept me distant. But delivering myself over to evil, even if it was only a play, was still daunting. My lingering over the goodbye to the First Followers was, they tell me, very convincing.
	“My sovereign grows impatient!” Pernan shouted. “Bestir yourself, or I will order my archers to hurry you along!”
	“Hold your noise, you bitch’s bastard!” I shouted back.
	I had to wait for a deafening roar of agreement to die down before going on.
	“I obey the sound of no man’s voice.”
	“You tell ‘im, Idair!” someone shouted.
	Pernan pointed at me with his sword, and the spear-carriers ran down to strip me.
	When I felt their hands on me the effort of not striking back brought me out in a cold sweat. Aine and Istria had tried to get me used to it but practicing with them hadn’t really helped. The gown had been sewn up the back with one half-raveled seam, so it split easily, and I was hauled off the stage in pretty quick time. Where I was ashamed to discover that I was shaking visibly.
	“Shriia,” Pernan said, worried. “Are you all right? Did we hurt you?”
	“You did fine,” I answered. “It’s nothing you did, it’s just--memory.”
	Pernan picked up a coil of rope and looked at it, doubtfully. I held out my hands. 
	“Go ahead,” I said. “Just don’t make it tight.”
	Pernan began binding my hands, making a fairly professional knot. “Is that comfortable enough?”
	I wiggled around. “It’s fine.” We began sneaking back up to the wings. The minions were doing their big dance number on stage, and I wanted to watch.
	They work hard, and I have to say that for a bunch of people who spend most of their lives doing completely unrelated things, they were good. They had a lot of red streamers that were meant more or less to represent fire, and twirled above and around them in the air as they wove about the stage in complicated figures. The musicians put a lot into it--Symdel was on stage in a minion suit whacking on any number of kinds of drum and beating out a demonic tattoo that was starting to get under even my skin. This part always scares the children, but this year I think there were a few adults up there by the front who were wishing they were sitting farther back.
	Across the stage I could see Mna getting ready for her entrance. She was veiled in black gauze, through which you could dimly see her yellow wig and the long black robe. One of the crew helped her climb into the throne, which was carried on two poles held by four minions. The throne carriers hoisted her up, where she wobbled dangerously for a minute before the chair could be stabilized. Then they marched her out onto the stage.
	The minions set her down, and the last part of the dance had them all venerating the veiled dark figure in the throne, who sat there with one hand on each arm and her feet planted on the gilt pasteboard base, immobile and regal. Finally the music stopped.
	“What is your will, O Dark Queen?” said one of the minions. Poor fellow, it was his only line, and I had heard him practicing it over and over during rehearsal.
	“Bring her to me.”
	Her voice projected well through the veil--sonorous, and strange, very unlike her.
	Pernan dragged me back onto the stage at the end of that rope.
	“Leave us,” she said.
	Pernan bowed, and he and the minions withdrew quietly. Everything was silent.
	“Is Idair gonna be all right, mathi?” asked one of the children at the front.
	“Yes, of course, sweet thing,” her mother whispered. “Shhh.”
	Two gloved red hands reached up to remove the black veil. There was a hushed reaction from the crowd--not astonishment, really, more recognition.
	The Dark One was wearing a yellow wig, with the hair done up in a bun much the way Barant did it, and a black robe pinned around her with a moon-shaped silver brooch. The cut of the robe was suspiciously reminiscent of Barant’s hreapa, and I was clearly not the only one who recognized it. A thin silver chain winked around her bare neck.
	She crossed one leg over the other. “So this is Idair.”
	“I am,” I said.
	“We meet at last,” she answered, with a cold smile.
	There was something about her stare that sent chills up my spine, and after what I’ve lived through I don’t scare easy. She stood up slowly, walking down the steps of the throne with a fluid, dark grace that was just about the antithesis of the Mna I was familiar with. Even in heavy-heeled black boots she glided across the stage as if she were a creature of the air itself, silent and precise and deadly.
	“Do you know who I am?” she asked, taking up her position opposite me, those red gloves resting on her hips as her feet came to rest.
	I was sure Pernan was biting his nails thinking I was having an attack of stage fright. But that wasn’t why I waited before answering.
	<Theamh--> Istria was just about as agitated as I was.
	<Istri, will you take a look and tell me who’s on stage with me?>
	<I can’t see the face from here, but I think I’m thinking what you’re thinking.>
	I dropped my eyes to break the stare, and when I looked back, with all my defenses marshaled and focused, I wasn’t looking at Mna’s face. 
	<Round up the shriias in the audience and get them in position.>
	<I’m on it.>
	“Yes,” I finally said, in the uneasy silence. “I know exactly who you are.”
	She smiled.
	“Who am I then?”
	It occurred to me that if we could take care of her without causing a massive panic among the ordinary people who were watching, that would be good. And that Lythril was just enamored enough of the limelight to want to play along as long as I would let her.
	“You’re evil,” I said. “The rot at the root. The bitch who’s been spoiling my world since I first tried to make it. The Dark One.”
	“Such language from one so young,” Lythril said, shaking her head. “We’re both intelligent, powerful women. Must we call each other names?”
	“I call you as I see you,” I answered.
	“Minion,” Lythril called out into the wings. “Bring a chair for our guest.”
	Three of the extras began carting out furniture. They showed no indication that anything out of the ordinary was happening. Lythril was mindforcing them all, of course, into believing that she was really Mna, just as she had been mindforcing me. With all the distractions I was easier breached than usual. The audience wouldn’t recognize her in all that get-up; those up close to the stage were children or Cretids and didn’t know what Lythril looked like, and those further back wouldn’t be able to see anything but the costume. And the body language, which must have been what tipped Istria off.
	“Sit,” Lythril said, assuming one wrought-iron chair and waving me into the other. “We have much to discuss.”
	I sat down on the red cushion, uncomfortably. So far, Lythril was following the script. That meant that either she had a confederate who had been able to smuggle her a copy, or she had been attending rehearsals. I didn’t like either possibility.
	“I have nothing to say to you,” I said. “Except that you cannot rule here, and so you may as well leave.”
	Lythril laughed. “But it’s just getting interesting,” she said. “Besides, I have a rule. Never leave business unfinished.” She leaned across the little round table toward me. “A rule you must follow yourself, or you wouldn’t have let yourself be led here to me.” She leaned back. “Admit it. You’ve been looking forward to this meeting as much as I have.”
	My next line was a cheesy pun about being bound to come, and I decided to hell with it.
	“I’ve been expecting it, certainly,” I said. “You wrap yourself up in all that motheaten mystery but I can see through to a few things. I knew you’d make this happen.” I smiled, resting my bound hands on the table and leaning forward disarmingly. “You hound me like a dog would. You can’t leave me alone. One would think it was love.”
	Pernan, I knew, was offstage somewhere chewing his script in anguish. Lythril didn’t take it well either.
	“Don’t flatter yourself,” she snapped.
	“Why am I still alive?” I said, turning my wrists inside their bonds. “When you want a thing done, you find a way to do it. If you want me dead, then take me. I’m sitting here not ten feet away from you in my shift with my hands bound. When are you ever going to have a better chance?” My heart was pounding, but I was hoping that my mask would hold. “If you really want to finish this business, why am I still drawing breath?”
	My eyes were on hers but what I was really watching was her hands. She was wearing those red gloves, and that would slow her down some. But the bonds on mine would also take me a second to snap. If she moved first, I would get the worst of it.
	But Lythril’s hands didn’t move. The gloves rested inert on the table as if carved in stone. It seemed to me that she was deliberately not moving them, or the face that showed no trace of understanding that this was anything other than a play.
	“I didn’t bring you here to kill you,” Lythril said, now departing as widely from the script as I had. “I’ve come with a proposal for you. A bargain.” Her body shifted slightly in the chair, although her hands remained in exactly the same position. “Call it a truce.”
	“A truce with you would be the same as surrender.”
	“Come now,” she said, with that smile. “We’ve gone so many rounds in this battle now, and what have we achieved but stalemate? I’m not strong enough to defeat you, and you can’t bring yourself to kill me.”
	“Don’t be so sure,” I said.
	Lythril looked a bit startled, briefly. “Don’t try to bluff me, I know you too well.”
	“You think you do,” I said. “You know that I love life and abhor death and that I will do everything in my power to stop the taking of a life. Do you also know, O queen of all that’s twisted, how much I love my world and my people?” My mind finally snapped the rope binding my wrists. I didn’t move them, so the audience wouldn’t notice; but Lythril certainly did. “You have done so much harm, and so much wrong, to me and mine--and if I leave you in the world, you will go right on doing it. I have said, that if it is certain sure that the only way to save life is to take another, then it must be taken.” I got slowly out of my chair. “It will be the end of me, as I am, of course. I know that. But if it is also the end of you,” I said, “then I could say that it would be worth the sacrifice.”
	Lythril looked up at me, and I couldn’t read her, because she was putting a lot of effort into the mask. Probably because she was frantically trying to decide whether I was serious about this, or whether I was just taking advantage of the formula.	
	“You can’t kill me,” she said. “I’m the mainspring. I’m the driving force. Without me, where would you be?”
	“Happy,” I said.
	Lythril began pulling off her gloves--slowly, as if it were just a piece of stage business.
	“You’re wrong,” she said, laying the gloves down on the table. “Without me, there is no you. I define you. I make you.” She stood up, leaving one hand trailing along the wrought iron table, trying to draw my attention away from the other. “I’m necessary.”
	“You were at work in the world before I was born,” I said. “I don’t know what the world would be like without you in it. But I can’t wait to find out.”
	Behind Lythril I saw Istria and Aine moving through the wings, hanging back at the edge of the stage.
	<On my count,> I said, to both of them.
	She lifted that hand off the table.
	<A haon...a do...>
	“You never will,” said Lythril.
	<TRI!>
	Her fire was in the air first, but mine met it and sent it back. Istria and Aine were on her from behind with blocking fire. Fire shot out from all directions--from Harani, who was throwing from the wings behind me with aim I could only envy, from the galley up above where Fand, having climbed up the ropes and pulleys holding up the stage, was dealing it out with both hands, and from the audience where Wriana, having pushed her way through to the children’s area, sent her fire sizzling over their heads.
	Instead of panicking, the crowd began cheering. Particularly bright bursts of flame evoked applause, and a shower of red spark that curved in an arc from one of Lythril’s hands brought out a collective “oooooh!” Even when I stuck my hand through my own fire to grab Lythril’s shoulder and bring her down, and even when she was struggling like a wounded bear on the boards while the seal was being set by the six of us, nobody seemed to question what was happening. I did hear one child say, “Is that lady gonna die, mathi?” but the answer given was, “No, honey, it’s all right, it’s just playing.”
	I couldn’t believe it when the seal finally set. There she was. Lythril. Crouched on the boards in that ridiculous costume, her wig having fallen off long ago. Blocked. And, infuriatingly, still wearing that smile.
	I grabbed that black thing she was wrapped in and hauled her to her feet. She was more at ease now than she had been on the stage before the battle began.
	“You win this one,” she said. “But I will triumph, in the end. That is the bargain.”
	“I do not bargain with evil,” I said. “Wherever your evil erupts, I will send my daughters there to fight you. And every time, as long as I am the one writing this story, evil will lose, and good will triumph. Until in the end, if the Spirit wills it, there will be no darkness.” I hurled her into the wings, following her off.
	Istria had her flat in the snow and was binding her hands behind her back before got out of the wings. I had a few minutes, because the First Followers were going through the dumb show of watching and waiting for Idair.
	“Where’s Mna?”
	Aine’s feet were sticking out from under the stage platform. She dragged Mna’s body out into the snow. It wasn’t moving.
	“It’s all right,” Aine said, with a hand on Mna’s head and one on her heart. “I think it’s...” She pushed up Mna’s sleeve to show a pinprick inside the elbow. “Just dolanol.”
	“Well,” I snapped, as Istria rolled Lythril over. “Did you bring strepton too, or was there only room in that costume for one syringe?”
	Pernan came running out of the wings in great distress. “Shriia, what the hell--”
	He saw Lythril. I don’t think he recognized her but he knew that she wasn’t Mna.
	“Pernan, I think Ethir’s in the audience,” I said. “Will you go and find him, and tell him to call up as many gardai as he can scrape together and meet Istria behind the stage?”
	Pernan disappeared, quickly.
	Nobody spoke for a moment. I heard the words drifting from the stage.
	“Come to the hilltop. I see fire at the mouth of the cave.”
	I got up. Lythril was lying in the snow, looking fairly bedraggled and pathetic, and yet still somehow pleased. Istria, Wriana, Harani and Fand were clustered around her, ready for anything, while Aine hovered solicitously over poor Mna.
	“You can handle her,” I said.
	Istria nodded.
	“Well then,” I answered. “The show must go on.”
	I stripped the shift off so the flaming bodysuit was showing.
	Lythril whistled at me.
	“You look good, Theamh,” she said. “Have you lost weight?”
	I walked back through the wings and onto the stage.

	“Extradition,” Ethir sighed. “That’s what explains it.”
	“Explains what?” Aine demanded.
	It was very late, and we were all very tired. Lythril was tucked away in a holding cell and a pair of mittens, Morat was convening an emergency council meeting, and many hundreds of local citizens were no doubt congratulating Pernan on having organized the most exciting First Night since they built that flying dragon chariot out at Peheot ten years back. Meanwhile, Aine, Istria, Wriana, Harani and I were sitting in Ethir’s office, while Ethir dropped onto the desk a file folder that was about three feet thick, and I tried to wrap my hreapa closer around me so it would cover up that stupid costume.
	“Istria here was saying,” Ethir sighed, as he rooted through the pile, “that she had the feeling Lythril wasn’t fighting as hard as she could have.” He extracted a sheaf of bound papers from the file. “And Theamh was saying this had to be a stratagem, because as an assassination attempt it was way too stupid.” He tossed the papers across the desk at Aine. “I just let myself into the court clerk’s office to pull Lythril’s file. Sure enough, it was in there.”
	Aine looked at the cover of this little booklet. There was a large red waxen circle on the front, stamped with the word “filed” and the relative date. 
	“It was received before the office closed yesterday,” he said. “Of course with the snow nobody but work-mad idiots like me came to the Courts today, so it was never sent along to me. But this says the Seat has agreed to the Cretid City Court’s request to extradite Lythril, should she be taken into custody. In exchange, they’ll give us Kwenu.”
	“But why does she want to be extradited?” Wriana asked.
	“Because as soon as she gets over the border the block lifts,” I said. “And she’ll mindforce her way out of custody, and begin the process of taking the Cretid Nation for a ride until she has enough money to set up an establishment and then eventually she’ll come back here to make our lives miserable and we’ll go through all of this tarbhfnaa again.”
	 “What does the Cretid Nation want with her, anyhow?” Harani said. “They were begging us not to send them our criminals--”
	“She’s being held responsible for some of the recent unrest,” Ethir said. “They want to pin some of the worst abuses of the Enforcers on her and the Specials. There’s been no discussion of their being the undead, of course. But everyone knew they were extralegal and privately contracted, and now they’ve been linked to DeVane. So Lythril will go down, and people will be appeased. Or so they think.”
	“Since as we all know,” Istria finished, “the bitch will never even stand trial.”
	We contemplated this morosely for a moment.
	“Ah well,” I said. “At least now we know she won’t show up at our joining.”
	Istria smiled. “I’ve half a mind to invite her. I know it would drive her crazy.”
	“Well,” I said. “I’ve seen enough crazy for one day, I think.”
	We left the office. Harani yawned, and shook her head.
	“I better go find Eladh,” she said. “I never thought she’d be ready this early, but that’s the one damn thing you can say for Barant. She made us a lot of new shriias.”
	“You going to stick around for Morat?” I asked Istria.
	She nodded. I held onto her, hard, as she kissed me goodbye.
	<I’ll miss you,> she said.
	<You’ll see me tomorrow.>
	<I know.>
	<I’ll miss you too.>
	Aine, who had been waiting patiently, joined me as I walked out of the Pharc. It’s traditional, the night before they get their Orders, for the new shriias to sit up with their diaocs doing freagair for the last time. It is also considered bad luck, in Amst, for a joining couple to see each other the night before the ceremony. I believe that this superstition was invented on purpose by overprotective parents, but since it dovetailed nicely with scoil tradition we had agreed to make Varen happy, this one time, and follow her instructions.
	So there we were, finally. Me and Aine, sitting across the table from each other in the music room, going through the formula one last time.
	“Ceard a bhfuil tu ag iarradh?”
	“Ta me ag iarradh shri.”
	“Ask and I answer.”
	Aine didn’t say anything right away. I watched her think about what to ask first, as I had so many times.
	Her face didn’t look older, exactly. She was still so young, still eager, still sure that the future would be one long adventure. But her hair was tied back now, and her arms showed pale in the firelight as she stroked the bundle of white wool that was wrapped up in the lap of her learner’s tunic.  Her hreapa, finally finished.
	“I remember the first time we did freagair,” she said. “It seemed like I had a million and three questions.” 
	I smiled. “It seemed like that to me too.”
	“Now...” She laughed, a little sadly. “Dhiaoc, I’ve been with you...all this time, and it seems like I now have about a million and two.”
	I laughed. “So I haven’t been good for much, then.” And, before she could start thinking that I thought she had really meant it that way, I said, “You know, we call this the final freagair but that’s not how it works. I’m always going to be your diaoc, Aine. And if you ever have a question you think I can answer, you ask.”
	“I...I don’t even really know where to start.”
	“Start wherever your mind is.”
	That look came back, and she began. “When you said that about it being worth the sacrifice if you could take her down...did you mean that, or were you just play-acting?”
	“I think I was just play-acting,” I said. “I think. I can’t really be sure.”
	Aine nodded, as if this made sense to her. “Do you really think it’s love?”
	“On Lythril’s part?” She nodded. “Please the Spirit let it not be. No, Aine, that was just play-acting. It’s hatred right enough.”
	“And you think she did this deliberately.”
	“I think so. Until she gets herself re-established the safest place for her is the Cretid Nation. She can do what she likes up there; they’re like children, compared to her. And to get there clandestinely she’d have to get through our border and theirs, and both of them have gotten a lot tighter. It’s much easier to do it this way. We send her up there, all expenses paid...and as soon as she’s in their custody, she’ll find a way out of it.”
	“But why give herself up in this very elaborate way?” Aine said.
	I shook my head, laughing. “That’s Lythril,” I said. “If you can’t do it secretly, then do it with flair.”
	Aine was watching me closely. “Do you think she really is...necessary?”
	I sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t know whether she’s still alive because Idair wants her that way or because she’s smarter, better and more powerful than any of the others. It’s been a long battle,” I said. “It began before Idair even came here. The Dark One has been beaten back time and again, but so far, we can’t seem to do without darkness.” Aine nodded. “Idair said...you know...I feel crazy saying ‘Idair told me,’ but it’s true, she did--”
	“I know, dhiaoc,” Aine said gently.
	“Idair said that there was evil in her world, and she couldn’t make ours without it. That one of the things we’re here for is...to go on fighting it. Keep struggling, keep pushing the line back, keep looking for new ways to keep the fire burning. And maybe something we do, someday, will give her the answer. If she can defeat evil in her world,” I said, suddenly realizing this was what I believed, “then I think it will finally leave ours. But I think that both you and I will be long dead before that ever happens.”
	Aine thought about this for a moment, and then changed tack.
	“Did you miss Barant, when you started in practice?”
	I felt queasy thinking about her, but I felt it important to answer.
	“It wasn’t a break--it was gradual. For the first year, we used to get together fairly often. Sometimes she came to visit, or I’d go down to the Pharc to see her. Then things got complicated, and I saw her less often, and...” I thought for a while about what the real answer was. “I did miss her. It wasn’t something I thought about a lot, but...yes. I did.”
	Aine knew it was hard for me to talk about it. “Did Istria miss Morat?”
	I smiled. “She did and she didn’t. She had lived in mortal fear of Morat for a long time, and it was liberating to be out from under her nose. But she did miss her, all the same. There...I mean, it was never an easy relationship. But there was always love there. And I think Istria knew that, even at the worst times.”
	“If anyone ever asks me, whether I missed you when I started,” Aine said, “I won’t have to think about the answer.”
	After a silence, I said, “I’ll miss you too, Aine. A lot.”
	She swallowed. “I’ll be--really glad to get my orders--and to get home,” she said. “And...I never thought, ever, that I would be ready to set out on my own. I was terrified at the thought of doing siuilin alone, all by myself--being the person people ask, trying to make talk with all those strangers...” Her eyes came back to me, shining now with water. “That doesn’t scare me any more, dhiaoc. Or at least not as much.”
	“I’m glad to hear it,” I said.
	“I wish...” Her hands came together on the table, folding in on each other. “I wish you weren’t going to be so far away.”
	“I know, Aine. But we’ve got the link, and it’s not far by sea, as we now know.” She laughed, as at the same moment the tears spilled out of her eyes. “I’m scared as hell to go to Amst, you may as well know. Not as scared as I would have been. But I’m City, and I’m always going to be City, and everyone will know that when they see me coming.”
	Aine was smiling now, even though she was still tearing up. “I don’t think people will care so much, Theamh. You’re not the bad kind of City.”
	“I thank you for saying it,” I sighed. “Any other questions?”
	Aine thought, and said, “You said how, even though I’m not a scoilin, you’ll always be my diaoc.”
	I nodded. 
	“So I’ll always have a diaoc.” She looked up at me with compassion. “But you don’t have one any more.”
	“No, I guess I don’t.”
	“I know you’ll be all right,” Aine said. “But I wish it was different for you. Everyone...everyone ought to have a diaoc. Everyone should have someone like you.”
	“You’re making me cry, Aine.”
	She laughed. “It’s only fair.”
	“Do you have other questions?” I prompted, after a while.
	“I’m sure I will later,” she said.	
	I nodded. “Then it’s ended.” 
	We stood up. Neither of us moved.
	“It isn’t, really,” I said, finally.
	Aine nodded, silent and sad.
	I went around to her side of the table and gave her a hug.
	“I’ll always be here for you, Aine.”
	“I know. I know, I just...”
	I finally let go of her, after we’d both cried for a little while. “I’m going to get some sleep,” I said. “We’ve all got a big day tomorrow. Are you packed?”
	Aine nodded.
	“And you remember how it goes?”
	“I remember, dhiaoc,” she said, with a mischievous bit of a smirk. “My part’s easy. You’re the one on the spot.”
	“Don’t remind me,” I said. “Good rest to you, Aine. Idair with you.”
	My room looked very lonely when I got up there. But there was a kind of pleasure in the loneliness, in the knowledge of how much I missed her. Knowing that the next day she would be there with me, and that we would be to the world what we always had been to each other. Joined, body and soul. Wife and wife, till the end and after.

	It was still dark when we got back to the Pharc. In the hallways I could make out other new shriias, all in their shifts and hugging their bundled-up hreapas, talking to each other or to their diaoci. Istria detached herself from one group and came to meet us.
	Aine was used to seeing us greet each other, so she didn’t blink; the others were a little startled. Morat just looked the other way. <Happy Burning, Istri.>
	<Happy Burning, chara. I just--I can’t wait.>
	<I know. I--the ceremony-->
	<There’s no way to say it all. I know. Don’t get worried over it, chara. I know what’s in your heart.>
	Morat cleared her throat. Istria let go of me.
	“I hate to interrupt,” she said dryly. “But it’s time to line up for the procession.”
	We got ourselves sorted in two lines, diaoci and apprentices paired up. Morat was at the head of one line and Istria at the other, standing next to the door to the shriin. Morat held up a hand, and the noise died.
	“We’re going in there to make a new day,” she said. “A new world, and new shriias. And a new Order.” Up and down the lines heads nodded as the gravity of it came home to us. “Idair knows how badly the world needs to be new. You’ll be the ones who bring it to being.” She wasn’t looking at Istria, but her mind was there. “All of us are proud of you. And all of us are very--very--grateful. To Idair, to the Spirit, and to you.” 
	Istria looked at her with a full heart but said nothing.
	“Come with us into the daylight,” Morat said.
	That was the signal to start the song. The doors to the shriin opened, and we walked in singing.
	It’s just haons linn. The same words I say every morning, the same words Aine would probably get tired of very quick. But it’s also much more than that. 
	We walked slowly into the shriin, moving in a circle around the broad end of the triangle. Aine’s parents were sitting on the cushions that had been spread out in the narrow end, along with Istria’s family and the families of all the people who were getting their orders. In the darkness outside, we could see long ranks of dark shapes that showed us where a crowd had gathered. Normally people don’t get up this early. But this year, the City wanted to see this happen.
	When we stopped processing, the diaoci were on the inside, facing outside toward the larger circle, where the new shriias stood with their hreapas. Aine had unbundled hers and held it awkwardly, her nervousness suddenly coming back to her.
	At the right point in the song, I took her hreapa from her. She seemed relieved to have me handling it. I lifted up Aine’s hreapa and draped it over her.
	Aine began pinning it on. I turned my attention to getting my own hreapa into shape, so that by the time I looked back at her she was already reaching for the ash and making the marks.
	Her hreapa was like her--unassuming, but impressive in its simplicity. One very long, wide strip, which she had found a way of winding so that it clung close to her arms and torso but flared loose in the skirt. I don’t really know any better now than I did then how she does it. But it brought my heart out to see her in it, with the marks made, looking for the first time like the shriia she was.
	Istria was wearing hers too. I saw her out of the corner of my eye, but I knew that if I looked at her I would lose it. So I made the marks and watched Aine watching me.
	The song ended. Aine, Istria, and the other new shriias crossed their arms, touching their shoulders. Morat stepped out of the circle toward the crowd of relatives.
	“Women and men,” she said, to them and to the watchers outside. “Give your welcome with mine to Idair’s newest daughters.”
	The new shriias turned around, lifting their flaming hands into the air. The inside of the shriin lit up with their fire. The light spilled through the glass walls onto the faces of the people watching, as somewhere the sun breached a horizon we couldn’t see, and the cold pink light of dawn broke over the City.
	The welcome rose from everyone’s throats--the families gathered in the shriin, the crowds outside, and the diaoci, who were cheering like me at the sight of all the work we’d done and the worry we’d had finally bursting in light through a still-dim world. Even if not all of them were staring at Istria, back in her hreapa with her hands in the air, and thinking how she was the most beautiful thing ever to be on the earth.
	Morat turned back to the circle and bowed at them. “May Idair always be with you as she is now, and may you all live long to do good and do well.” She wavered on the point of tears. “Congratulations.” And then her old manner came to her rescue, and her face set in that dry kind of humor. “And welcome to the work.”
	The new shriias took back the fire. The circle broke up into a mess of hugging, and congratulating, and let us be frank, weeping. I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t watch this and keep my composure.
	“Oh, Aine,” I said, sniffling. “You--you look great, it’s a great hreapa.”
	“Thank you, dhiaoc,” she said, having long given up on not crying. Emer was hovering around, not sure it was all right to break in on us. 
	“Emer, doesn’t she look great?” I said.
	Emer beamed speechlessly, and pulled Aine into a maternal embrace.
	I found Istria, who was standing a little shyly in a circle made up of her admiring family and Morat. She turned around as I approached, with a diffident smile, lifting her arms with a kind of shrug.
	“Well...” she said.
	By the time she started crying I was already holding her.
	“You’re so beautiful,” I said. “It’s--I’m not even going to try.”
	I would probably have held onto her for a great while longer only Varen was looking at me as if I were in her way. I let her go back to her family, and wandered down to where Morat and Lilea were standing in a corner with Harani. 
	“Thank your mother for the invitation--” Morat began.
	“Don’t worry,” I said. “Aine’s not coming either.”
	“Aine’s not coming?” Harani demanded.
	I shook my head. “She’s going for breakfast with her parents--she didn’t want to subject them to the Craoibh Oir, and I was damned if I was going to make her.”
	“Well, hell,” Harani said. “I’m not going either then.”
	“Haven’t you given your promise?” Lilea asked.
	Harani shook her head. “You know me, I put off the unpleasant. Sometimes it works in my favor.” Lilea sighed. “You gave yours, didn’t you?”
	“Damn,” Lilea said, glumly.
	Istria finally rejoined us. Morat’s eyes lit up when they caught sight of her, in a way that did my heart good. 
	“So you’re not coming,” Istria said.
	Morat shook her head. “Mainly because I don’t want to be seen there, but I do also have a lot of work to do.”
	Istria nodded. “Theamh understands, don’t you.”
	“Too well I do,” I answered.
	“And so do I,” Istria said. “But alas, your mother has somehow managed to avoid giving me further offense, and I love you like nobody ever loved a woman, and so I am rushing in where Morat refuses to tread.” She smiled. “Just like old times.”
	“Almost,” Morat answered. “Congratulations, Istria. It is a great thing to have a second chance.”
	Istria bowed, and then decided that the new Morat would probably allow herself to be hugged. And the new Morat did, although she wouldn’t look pleased about it.
	“See you at noon, dhiaoc.”
	“All right, Istria.” We began moving off. “And try not to set the place on fire, this time.”
	“I make no promises,” Istria called back, laughing.

	It was a small party. I had been very definite about enforcing prior restraint on the guest list. Wous, for instance, was not in attendance, nor were Lefray or any of the other people who had been convicted of conspiracy to defraud. Unfortunately the treason charges had been dropped against everyone but Twil, who was still up in the Cretid Nation and not apparently planning to return. It was depressing to realize that once I had stricken off everyone who had collaborated with Barant and the minions, my parents’ circle of friends got very much smaller.
	But at least Ethir was there, with Darin and Darin’s entourage. He had become kind of a chaperone for the Cretid contingent, and was happily ensconced at the beyond-borderers’ table, wedged in between Lara and Chandra, and horsing around with Etana as she sat perched on a stack of cushions in one of mathi’s chairs.
	They were, of course, the last table to shut up when my father stood up for the speech. Chandra was in the middle of laughing very loudly at something Darin had said, and Lara was still doing her best to flirt with Ethir. Viecter appeared to be used to this kind of thing, or at least not to mind. Perhaps he could read enough off Ethir to make a realistic assessment of Lara’s chances.
	“Friends,” my father said, gently.
	Chandra shushed Lara, loudly.
	“Friends,” he repeated, “I want to thank you all for coming here to celebrate with us. We have so much to celebrate.” He put down his glass, because it had started to wobble a little in his hand. “For a long time I never thought I would even see Theamh home safe. And certainly I never thought I would see her joined.” He swallowed. “I’m very grateful to Idair and to the Spirit for bringing both of those things to pass.”
	I had never seen him get this emotional. Istria took my hand under the table.
	“I especially want to thank the na Craic family for coming all the way down from Amst to be here with us,” he said, turning to Dohem. “I’m so glad to have met you all. I am of course attached to the na Craoibh name,” he said, with a laugh that the others echoed politely. “But if Theamh has to take another, I’m proud that it should be yours.” 
	My father paused and dropped his eyes for a moment, and I was worried about what would happen next. But he looked up and went on.
	“The hard thing about your both being shriias,” he said, looking at us with a smile, “is I can’t give you anything as a joining gift.” The others laughed. “At least nothing that has resale value. But there is one thing I’d like to give you both, just because it means something to me.”
	He really was about to cry. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen that happen.
	He reached under the table and pulled out a box with a big ribbon tied around it. “This is for both of you.”
	Since he seemed to want us to, Istria and I walked up and took it from him. “Go ahead, open it.”
	I undid the bow; Istria opened the box. I looked inside.
	It was the little casket with the blue stones and the silver plate.
	I lifted it up slowly, while Istria and I tried to make our expressions of consternation seem like expressions of heartfelt gratitude.
	“Your mother gave me that before we were married,” my father said, getting choked up as he looked at it. “It was one of my first gifts from her, and it’s always meant a lot to me. I’ll miss it, but I wanted to pass it on to you, now that you’ve found somebody to love that way.”
	It was hard not to look at mathi, but I managed it.
	“It’s about the only thing in the house that you can safely own,” he said, trying for the laugh. “You know Ulnach, she always wants the best.” Their friends laughed politely. “But it’s not just that. It’s...it’s been good luck for us,” he said, with a brave smile. “We’ve had thirty-five good years together. I hope it’ll bring you at least that many.”
	I nodded, still not quite trusting myself to respond in speech.
	“I wish you all the love and happiness in the world,” he said.
	“Thank you, athi,” I answered. “It means a lot to me that you want me to have it.”
	Istria nodded, grateful to me for finding a good formula. “Thank you, athi na Theamh,” she said. “It is a very beautiful gesture.”
	Athi smiled, and hugged each of us awkwardly once, and sat down. We made our way gratefully back to our table.
	Dohem got to his feet. “Thank you, athair na Theamh, for your very kind words...”
	Istria’s fingers interlinked with mine. <This could go on for some time,> I said.
	I felt her foot sliding along my bare calf under my shift.
	<Even my mother’s parties are better because of you,> I said.
	<High praise indeed.>
	All the same, I would be very glad when it was over. Because it would get me out of the Craoibh Oir, which as I looked around at it seemed like a place I was ready, once and for all, to leave far behind me. And because it would get us closer to joined.
	When Dohem sat down I thought the ordeal might be over, but unfortunately Lara got to her feet.
	There were stares, of course, but not the kind she was used to. It mattered more to people down here that she was darker-skinned and that she was a Cretid than it did that she was a ransani. The same prejudices that Darin had been chafing under were somehow liberating for her, in a way I didn’t fully understand. Viecter watched her with pride as she inserted herself into this local ceremony with all the aplomb she always had.
	“I always say a toast should be like a dress,” Lara said. “Simple enough to make a statement, and short enough to be interesting.” There was some polite laughter. “So here goes. Theamh here knows that when I say we’ve been through the war together, that’s not entirely a figure of speech.” Her brown eyes got liquid. “I met her after she came north. I’ve seen her fight, I’ve seen her cry, I’ve seen her kick gleacha, take names, and set stuff on fire. But it wasn’t until I came down here and saw the two of them together that I’d ever seen her happy.” Lara lifted her glass. “Istria, I promised Chandra that if you didn’t treat her right I’d help her find someone who could take you out. Well, I’m glad you’re treating her right, because after hearing all the stories and watching you work I don’t think the man, woman or spirit exists who could take you on.” Istria looked down, embarrassed. “Istria, honey, I know when we first met I made some cracks about your outfit and your jewelry. But let me tell you right now, girl, I love what you’re wearing.”
	Istria laughed, and I felt her beginning finally to see what it was that I admired about Lara.
	Lara lifted her glass. “You don’t see true love every day. So here’s to Theamh and Istria, wishing you long life and happiness and many years of making the right fashion choices.”
	Lara sat down. Chandra and the other Cretids were applauding, along with me and Istria. Partly because I really was touched by what she’d said; and partly because nobody knew how to follow that, and so it meant that the speeches were over. And that once the interminable process of dissolving the party was over, it would be time.

	“Are you nervous, Theamh?”
	Aine was making an effort to use my name, but I was in fact too preoccupied to reward her for it. “Yes, I am.”
	“I think that’s supposed to be normal.” She looked out through the window at the snow-covered rosebushes in the courtyard. The tilu tree was just bare branches, except for the white and yellow ribbons wound around the trunk. I had never seen that tree decorated for a joining before. Neither had any of the people milling around in that courtyard, waiting for the ceremony to start.
	“Are you nervous?” I demanded, a little defensively.
	“Yes, of course,” she said. “But nowhere near like you are.”
	I sighed.
	“You can’t possibly be having second thoughts,” she said. 
	“Of course not, Aine. It’s not about that. It’s just...” I shrugged, waving out at the courtyard and all the people. “I still don’t know what I’m going to say.”
	“You were like that at the restoration, and it came to you then,” Aine said. “I don’t think it will matter if you don’t say the exact perfect thing.”
	I knew that. But it was a lot of pressure. For most joinings, frankly, people don’t expect much; a lot of couples just use the sayings from Sincil and Anron. But when you’ve become a story in your own time, the bar is raised; and that was what had me in a sweat.
	Aine had her back to me, with her hands on the sill as she looked through the casement. I still wasn’t used to seeing her in hreapa. But she was getting used to being in one; and it looked right on her.
	“I’m really glad you wanted me to do it,” Aine said quietly, looking out at the tree.
	“Of course we did,” I said.
	There were repeaters out there too, of course. And whatever I said would be picked up and repeated along dozens of networks. It was too may firsts--the first joining between two women, the first joining between shriias, the first Burning since Morat had been restored to the head of the Council. 
	“I think we should go out there,” Aine said. “I think they look ready.”
	<Istri, are you ready?> I asked.
	<I’ve been ready for this since the first time you touched me,> she said.
	I wasn’t nervous any more.
	“All right, Aine.”
	I followed Aine through the door into the courtyard. Istria was standing near the tree, carrying the tilu staff. It had been wound around with a flowering vine, as it usually is; it being winter, the vine was flowering only because it had been steeped in uisce the night before. On a wooden stand nearby there was a coiled-up length of vine that had been similarly treated, although it wasn’t flowering yet. And between her and me there was a formidable sea of people.
	Aine nodded to Istria. The musicians who were grouped behind the tree began to play. Istria stood up a little straighter, and gripped the staff in her hand.
	Aine took a deep breath, like a swimmer about to dive. Then she grabbed my wrist, and began towing me through the crowd toward the tree and Istria.
	The woman is supposed to at least pretend to be reluctant, just as the man is supposed to hold the staff in a defiant way. Of course, since the staff is not a cooking spit, but a blunt piece of wood decorated with flowers, the effect is never very striking. At our joining it was even less striking. We had decided that it should be Istria with the staff, because she identified so much with Anron. Which left me as Sincil; but I wasn’t doing much of a job with the show of reluctance.
	I took up my stance opposite Istria, while Aine turned around with her back to the tree, looking between us out at the audience.
	“This joining, like all joinings, is the first joining,” Aine said. “And so even here at the other end of time, we ask the question with the infinite answer.” She looked at Istria. 
	“What question is that, shriia?” Istria said.
	“What is love?” Aine answered. “Can you answer this question, Istria?”
	This part had been tricky, because of course we’re shriias, and so we can’t follow the script if it’s not the truth. But after both of us had spent nights tearing our hair out over the sayings we were trying to write, we realized there was no problem with this part.
	“I do not think so,” Istria said.
	Because you can never answer it, fully and completely. Because you can search yourself and the universe all day every day for the right way to put it in words and it will never come to you. Trust me. I’ve spent a lot of my life trying.
	“That’s where you’re wrong,” said Aine.
	And that’s true too. Because without words, you can answer the question.
	“There is Theamh,” said Aine. “Tell her--tell all of us--what you feel for her.”
	Istria’s eyes were already filling up. I knew that when it was my turn to speak my voice was going to be very unreliable.
	“I can never tell all of it,” she said, shaking her head.
	<I know, chara.>
	She took a breath. “I could tell you my heart lives in yours. I could say that before you I was nothing but damage, and you brought the rest of me into the light. I could tell you how my body has its shape from you, how your touch made it--finally--a place I can be home in--”
	I was crying before she was. And I kept crying after she mastered it and went on.
	“I could tell you how every day’s light makes you more beautiful to me, or how the world is good to me because you’re in it. I could sing all the things that make you the best thing Idair ever made. I could tell you how when you’re not there all of me cries for you. I could go on forever and not be done. So I just--I’ll just say...” She took a breath, smiling at me through the tears. “I love you, Theamh. It seems to me like I always have, even before I knew who you were. I know I always will. Every day with you is a miracle but the biggest of all is to be standing here with you now. You know what my life has been like. But I still say, and it’s true, that I am the luckiest woman ever put on the earth.”
	I saw and heard nothing but her, until Aine’s voice broke in on me.
	“You hear what Istria says of you,” Aine said. “What reply does your heart make?”
	When I looked back, Aine’s face was composed, mouth grave and eyes clear. But her voice was ragged with the effort of containing whatever this was stirring up in her.
	Istria was smiling at me, tear-eyed but almost ready to laugh. She knew how hard I had struggled with this, and she knew that for all the agony I had gone through I was now about to wing it. But seeing that smile I knew that no matter what I said, it would be all right. That she knew how much had to go unsaid, and understood all the things that I knew I would never be able to put into speech.
	“My heart will always answer,” I said. “It’s a beautiful thing, that you give me, the chance to answer you. I love the way you reach for me, I love rushing out to meet you. I love how you--open--me.” Istria abandoned the attempt not to cry. “You’re the best there is--beautiful, brave, bright, strong, all the wonder of the world in one place. I love you with all of me, all the way through. You make me who I want to be. You make me happy, you make me strong, you make me a better woman and a better shriia. I could stand here telling everyone for days what a miracle you are but I’d be no closer to getting it right. I love you, Istria ni Vharen, all of you, mind to heart and out to the skin, your body, your spirit, your past and our future. And I will never be done thanking you, Idair and the Spirit that you are who you are, and that I have the power to love you almost as well as you deserve.”
	There was a very long and very weepy silence, and finally I looked at Aine.
	<Oh--you’re done.>
	<For right now, anyhow.>
	When she blinked herself back to attention, there were beads of water on the ends of her lashes. She lifted up the coiled vine and held it up between us.
	“Listen to me, both of you,” she said. “This is your answer.”
	Her voice rang out clear over the snowy courtyard, echoing back off the white walls of the pharc, fluttering out through the bare tree branches into the air above us for the winter birds and the people who had somehow climbed all the way up there and were sitting along the edges of the upper story roof. 
	“This is love,
	All you have spoken,
	And all you have not spoken; 
	
	“This is love,
	The fire that twins you,
	The sudden knowledge

	Of another’s heart,
	Of your own heart,
	Of their union.

	Behold,	
	You are lucky,
	And have answered each other;

	Stretch out your hands
	That I may join your bodies
	As your hearts have already joined.”

We reached for each other, our fingers entwining as we held on tight, lifting our joined hands so that Aine could wrap the vine around them. I thought for a moment that she was going to tie the thing in one of those Jiprani knots, but she just tucked the ends in like the rest of us do. When she was satisfied that it wouldn’t fall off, she poured the uisce over our hands. The water shimmered along the stem of the vine and out to the leaves. Aine lifted her voice again, looking out at the people in the courtyard.

	“From this source
	Springs all life,
	From this fountain
	All beauty;
	From this union
	All strength,
	From this love,
	All love,
	From this root,
	The green shoot;
	From this stalk,
	The flower.”

There’s always a moment of suspense at this point, because it takes the uisce a while to kick in, and the couple is usually very anxious about it. It’s of course the worst of omens if the thing doesn’t work, which is why we usually don’t do joinings in winter; uisce has a more reliable effect on a plant that’s relatively recently plucked. Aine gave a little sigh of relief when the buds began growing out by the leaves. She went back to her text.
	“You see blossoming on your wrist the flower of your love,” Aine said. “Will you care for this vine and keep it green, now, then, and always?”
	“Always,” I said, looking up at Aine..
	“Always,” Istria answered.
	“Not to me,” Aine said, with the ghost of a smile. “Say it to each other.”
	I turned back to look at Istria, and it was a minute before I could speak at all.
	“While I live and after,” I said, “I will live in you.”
	Istria nodded, her voice hoarse too. “Always, forever, you will be my heart.”
	The buds opened, and the red petals began unfolding through the green sheaths.
	“Listen to me,” Aine said, addressing herself now to the assembled spectators. “Through the words they have spoken and by the blossoming of the vine, Theamh and Istria have shown that their spirits are joined. Where the spirits have joined, let the bodies follow, without shame and without fear.” She looked back at us. “What you have made is true and right. Anyone who comes between you will answer to Idair.” And she added, with a tearful little laugh, “And also to me.”
	I understood now why, in the Chronicles, Sincil and Anron just stand there. I was thinking, if for the rest of my life I do nothing but just look at her face, I will die the happiest woman in the world.
	But, of course, nobody was about to let this go on for long. 
	“So will you kiss her, or not?”
	I knew Harani must have bitterly regretted letting Mna beat her to it; but there it was; she’d hesitated and she lost.
	We came together like rivers do. And it was a long time before we parted, and when we did, it was a moment before I remembered what I had to do next.
	I reached to unwind the vine from our hands, and twist it into a wreath for her. I had practiced this at home a few times, so I accomplished this almost handily, and reached up to settle it on her head. She looked at me, and laughed, and we were both so happy I couldn’t help kissing her again.
	I stopped not because I wanted to, really, but because my sense of embarrassment finally returned. When we turned around, Aine tells me, my face was pretty flushed. But she wasn’t really noticing that. She was looking at the little vine wreath on Istria’s head.
	That was when it hit me. The flowers on that vine were roses, red at the heart shading into a kind of flame color at the edges of the petals. I hadn’t thought anything of it because it made sense to me that they should be roses. Except inasmuch as roses do not grow on vines, which is why we always use mramtha for this ceremony. 
	Aine blinked once, and decided that it probably wasn’t something she’d done.
	“Women and men,” she said, lifting our still-intertwined hands. “Give your welcome to Theamh and Istria na Craic.”
	“WOOOHOOOOO!”
	The first people up on their feet and clapping were the shriias at the back. Harani, Lilea, Morat, Dalen, Cualha, Fand, Eorna, Wriana, even Eunem, they were all giving their hands and their voices as loudly and enthusiastically as they could do it. Mna was right in there with them, not to be outdone. Once the rest of the crowd got up and joined them it was hard for me to see exactly who was up to what. I did see my mother clapping, with a kind of tense smile on her face, and Emer dabbing her eyes with the end of one of her shawls. And I couldn’t see Lara in the crush but I could definitely pick out her voice.
	“All right Theamh! You go, girl!”
	<Theamh.> Istria’s hand tightened on mine. <Look.>
	I followed her eyes. Varen was standing up too, holding tight onto Dohem’s hand, and she was weeping like a child.
	<Istri...>
	Words are magical things; any shriia will tell you that. But there are times when they become inadequate, and we both knew this was one of them. We walked down through the crowd hand in hand, my heart about to burst in my chest, saying nothing and needing to say nothing. We passed in silence through the door into the Pharc. Aine closed it behind us. Through the open window we could hear Minead.
	“Listen to me, everyone!” she shouted, her voice carrying farther than you would think possible through the noise. “You are all welcome in my house for the feast and the dance. And bring anyone else you find on the way. I’ve laid on twice the food we had for the Burning and if there’s any left over I will be sadly disappointed in all of you.”
	“Oh, that’s right,” I snuffled, as I finally let go of Istria. “There’s a party.” I broke up into a sheepish smile. “I--I forgot all about it.”
	Istria laughed. So did Aine. 
	When the door opened to admit the well-wishers, we were all hanging onto each other, three women in hreapa laughing and crying and amazed at the world. Because we all know, we all say, that Idair is good. But sometimes it can still take your breath away.

	Minead had opened the whole house for this thing. All the rooms, all the floors, the turrets, everything. And there were still people milling around in the grounds, frozen and snow-covered though they were. Based on the crush, I didn’t think she would probably have any food left, after all. 
	Istria and I tried to stay near each other, but it was a whirlwind in there, and we were both constantly being accosted. It was a while before either of us had time to talk to anyone, let alone each other. Until finally Sinal found Istria, and I let them sit down in one of the alcoves and have some peace. I had a mission of my own to accomplish, after all.
	I found Wriana in the entrance hall looking warily at something rolled up in a bun.
	“You’re sure this isn’t meat,” she said.
	Rince shook his head, a little affronted. “Of course not, shriia.”
	“He’s right,” I said, polishing one of them off. “It’s a kind of a paste they make from these beans grown down in Naucht--well, never mind. Come with me, I have a promise to discharge and I need you to help.”
	The only place I could find that was empty was a window-seat at the top of one of the staircases overlooking the grounds. “Is this about the practice?” she said.
	“No--not really,” I answered. “Although--I mean--do you have questions?”
	Wriana shook her head. “I won’t know what they are till I’ve started working.”
	“Well, you can always ask.” She nodded. “It’s a strange lot--the villages are so different. It’s Felim and Mablad I’d worry about,” I said. “This may have ended happily, but it didn’t end clean. Not for Mna, not for Taric, and definitely not for Minead.”
	Wriana nodded. “I’ll do my best with them, Theamh. Although I have a feeling you’ll be a hard act to follow.”
	“Well, so will you,” I said.
	“I’m glad you’re going up there,” Wriana answered. “It hurt me to think that they might end up with someone--well, I just wouldn’t want them to miss out, because of what happened to me. But with you working there I know they’ll be all right.”
	It touched me that she trusted me with her people. After the Burning, there is always a lot of moving around; the new shriias have to have posts, and the shriias on border maintenance have to rotate, and new Council members have to be chosen, and so forth. Wriana had asked to be transferred, and nobody was surprised. I had also asked to be transferred, and specifically to Amst, which surprised everyone except for Morat. So for us it was simple--she would take over my practice, and Istria and I would go out to High Winds. I’d take care of Wriana’s people, and Istria would take care of Tifni and Hern’s. It would be a lot of walking and a lot of work, but I was used to that. 
	“Thank you,” I said. “And I know you’ll take care of mine.”
	Wriana nodded. “So...what did you want to talk to me about?”
	I sighed.
	“Wriana, you’ve gotten to know Ethir pretty well, because of the trial,” I said. “Do you--well, what do you think of him?”
	She blinked. “Think of him?”
	“I mean, do you feel, like--” I could see this was headed nowhere. “To hell with it. Wriana, Ethir was mad enough to entrust me with a very important mission, and I am naturally going to make a hash of the whole thing. He admires you greatly, you know, and--well--he’s--interested in you. Romantically.”
	I couldn’t tell how Wriana was taking it. I’m not sure she could either.
	“He asked you to tell me this?”
	“He’s afraid, because of the rape, that if he told you himself it would bother you--hurt you somehow. He asked me to break it to you, so you wouldn’t be under pressure.”
	Wriana laughed.
	“I know, it’s still extremely awkward, and I’m sorry. It’s not like I have to take back an answer. He just--he was afraid to tell you about it, himself, and I thought, it would be a shame if something that could happen didn’t happen, just because he was scared.”
	Wriana shook her head, distantly. “I--I don’t know, Theamh.” She looked out over the grounds. “He’s as good a man as anyone’s likely to find. And he knows--I’ve told him things, because he had to know them, that I haven’t told anyone. It’s a rare man who could make that possible.” Her hands dropped in her lap, open in ambivalence. “But...”
	I looked out the window with her in that heavy silence.
	“You understand,” she said.
	“Some.”
	“What do you think I should do?” she answered.
	I shrugged.
	“If you decide he’s--something you want--then I think you have to act first. Certainly he’ll be too craven to do it.” She smiled. “If you don’t know, or you know he isn’t...then do nothing. Nothing is what he expects, you know. He’s used to it.”
	Wriana was about to answer, but Chandra suddenly swooped down upon me.
	“There you are!” she shouted. “Come to the ballroom, they’re starting the dance.”
	I had no choice but to follow where I was dragged. Because it was a country place, and old, the ballroom was huge--a cavernous hall that could hardly see much use nowadays. But it was just about the right size to comfortably fit all the people who wanted to dance. Pernan and some of the other musicians were already into a tune, and chains of linked dancers were weaving in and out on the floor.
	Chandra finally let go of me when we had reached the clump of Cretids. Istria was watching Sonnia show off her new mindstrength skills, while Aine looked on patiently.
	“Try to read what Lara’s sending,” Aine was saying, as Sonnia’s brows furrowed.
	After a moment, Sonnia said, “Oh, very funny.”
	“Yes, but tell us what it is.”
	“She’s saying, ‘You of all people ought to have a little black dress.’”
	Lara looked very startled.
	“Is she right?” Chandra asked.
	“Honey,” Lara said, “you have to learn not to spook poor Lara like that.”
	Sonnia looked extremely pleased with herself, and I couldn’t blame her. Istria was frankly amazed.
	“Lythril never got anyone that far,” she said. “How’d you do it?”
	Aine’s eyes darkened. “Lythril’s just not a very good teacher.” 
	“Anyhow, I don’t wear black any more,” Sonnia snapped, turning back to Lara. “I’m done with all that. I’m going to be a shriia.”
	“So you think,” Istria said. “You’ve got all kinds of years of brutal training ahead of you. You realize that.”
	“You remind me every other day, so I would think I would,” Sonnia answered.
	“Are your parents still bugging the Seated Leaders?” I asked.
	“Yes,” Sonnia said, very aggrieved. “I’ve been on the VB, did you know that?”
	“How?” I said.
	“There was some program they did on cults and I was on it. They think you’re brainwashing me.”
	“What is a cult, anyhow?” I said, turning to Lara. “I remember you said--”
	“All right, we’re not opening that can of worms,” Chandra said. “Not while I’m here, at least. Listen, Theamh, I dragged you both down here so I can give you my present. I have to wait till Pernan’s done, though.”
	I accepted this as part of Chandra’s general randomness, but Istria said, “Why?”
	“It’s a song,” she said, a little truculently. “I wrote you a song, all right? I play guitar, and I write songs, and I wrote one for you guys.”
	She was looking defensively at Lara, who for some reason found this amusing.
	“I didn’t know you were a musician, Chandra,” I said.
	“Of course I am,” she spluttered, as Lara continued to be highly entertained. “I’m a vegetarian, I drink herbal tea, I compost, of course I play folk guitar. It would be a cultural impossibility for me not to.”
	“That’s right, honey,” Lara said.
	“So it may be painful, but it’ll be over quick,” she said. The music stopped, and the talking broke out again. Chandra sighed, and began making her way toward the stage.
	Pernan helped her to the platform and turned back to get everyone’s attention while she picked up an instrument I recognized vaguely from my exposure to the VB.
	“Before we do Amranth Walls,” Pernan called out, “one of our guests has written a dance in honor of the happy couple.” This news was received, apparently, fairly well; at least Chandra seemed to look a little less apprehensive as she settled the instrument against her hips. “It’s called...what’s it called again, friend?” he said.
	“Happy Ending,” Chandra answered, a little diffidently.
	“It’s called ‘Happy Ending,’ and it’s the same measure as ‘Along the Lifhi,’ so you all have no excuse for sitting out.” He nodded to the band. “Start whenever, we’re ready.”
	Istria took my hand and we wandered out into the middle of the floor, the others clearing a space for us. Chandra screwed up her courage and struck the strings.

	“You know once it’s spoken,
	My word can’t be broken--
	A shriia has said it, so it must be true.
	But if I had never begun this endeavor,
	Or taken the fire, I would be true to you.”

Istria’s arm went around my waist. It was an easy tune to dance to--although anything would have been easy, with her holding me. I could see Morat and Dalen watching from the sidelines, not touching at all, but standing next to each other. And, off in another part of the ballroom, Harani letting Darin take her around the floor.
	
	“I loved you before I was touched by the flame;
	The day that I’m dying, I’ll still feel the same
	So I don’t much care what the future’s portending.
	I know that you are my happy ending.”

	It’s a good tune, Istria said, as we spun in circles along the floor. I could see out of the corner of my eye that Viecter and Lara had come out to join us. And it’s true.
	I know.
	Do you think she had help with the lyrics?
	I looked over at her. Well, Idair did say she might come to the wedding.
	Istria smiled. Should we tell her it was inspired?
	She wouldn’t know what we meant by it.
	Pernan and the others joined in once they heard her go through it once. Chandra’s voice got stronger against their backdrop.
	
	“That joy still goes through me, each time you undo me,
	And naked before you I learn who I am.
	It’s something so healing, this kind of revealing,
	And getting as close to the core as we can.”

I looked up at the roses encircling Istria’s head, and felt my heart beating.

	“And all of these years I’ve spent saying what’s true--
	I’m glad they prepared me for being with you.
	We’ve no use for silence or lies or pretending,
	Now that we’re here at the happy ending.”

Istria held me closer, and the rest of the room began to disappear, merging into a vague and gently troubled pool in which the two of us drifted alone, anchored to each other and to love.

	“And living through love as we slowly get old
	Is a long, boring story that doesn’t get told...
	But if no one reads it, I’m not going to care;
	My life’s a story as long as you’re there...”

Chandra’s voice lingered at the high end of the line. Istria reached forward for my mouth.

	“Beyond good and evil, it’s just you and me, girl,
	Heart beats to heart as we dance hand in hand.
	And we’ll be on fire with love, hope, desire,
	Long after this peace has grown old in our land.
	
	And if there are never new battles to fight,
	Well, some find that boring, but I’ll be all right--
	I loved you in struggle, in strife and contending,
	And I’ll love you after the happy ending.”

Istria’s eyes were dark, softened with unspilled tears and the love welling behind them. I lifted one hand to her face, tracing the outline with the ends of my fingers, lost in three hundred kinds of wonder.
	I love you so much, I said, feeling the poverty of language.
	I love you too, she answered. More than is possible.
	Which doesn’t make sense, of course. Except that it does. Because at that moment, at the next moment, at this moment too, as I sit here writing this at the wind-shot end of a long, cold, dark, utterly wonderful Amstian winter, with her arms around me as they sometimes are while I write because she likes to sit with me and watch the words appear on the page and know that it’s all happening again, somehow, for whoever will read it--at this moment, the one I live here and the one we lived then and the one you are living now as you read this, whoever, wherever, whenever you are, I tell you, the sky is wide and the stars burn white and love moves bright and unconquered through the waters of the world, and anything, anything at all, is possible.

THE END