I.
It’s A Living

	“It’s amazing you’re still alive.” 
	I don’t always start the day with a harangue, but that morning I was mad at myself. I knew I was forgetting something important. There aren’t many professions where absentmindedness is an asset, but in my line of work it can and does kill people, and I’m cursed with the kind of which folk legends are made. I have never yet put a baby in the oven and tucked a loaf of bread into bed, but that’s probably just because I don’t have children. 
	The morning rites I can do in my sleep, so it wasn’t that. I scattered the drops to the seven points and tried to concentrate. With Aine clattering around in the kitchen it was difficult. I had tried to make it clear when she was assigned to me that her duties did not include cooking or cleaning, but for the first of many times my attempt to depart from the official program had been baffled by her incredible fidelity to the rule. Her contract said to learn by serving  and by Idair she was going to serve. So there she was, making a breakfast I didn’t want, nervous as I was, but would eat anyway because Aine’s feelings were easily hurt and long in healing. I was willing to do a lot to avoid bringing pain into Aine’s transparent face. I remembered being an apprentice.
	But I didn’t remember whatever it was that I knew I was forgetting, so I gave up, made the marks, and started downstairs. 
	Aine made the bow and handed me my breakfast. “Here you are, dhiaoc.”
	“Thanks, Aine.” I decided to start with the eggs, since they looked the least intimidating. “Have a seat and have some of this. It’s wonderful but there’s no way I can finish it. I’m too nervous.”
	She sat down but didn’t touch the food. “You’ll be fine, dhiaoc. They’ll all love you.” And her face lit up with that fervor that frightened me. In Aine a respect for my status as the incarnation of Idair’s power and knowledge--something I am not, never claimed to be, and wished I could convince her to stop thinking I was--combined with a strange emotional attachment in a kind of devotion I thought was dangerous. If you’re unwilling to face the truth, this is not the career for you. And Aine didn’t want the truth about me--that I’m short-tempered and scatterbrained with a memory like a sieve and an undisciplined heart--to interfere with her reverence. Something would have to be done, and watching her across the table I knew it would have be soon, but my mind was on my imminent ordeal and I put it off.
	I got up to go. As I was adjusting my hreapa in a futile attempt to stall, I said, “Aine, you have a mind. I know I’m forgetting something. Any idea what it is?”
	Aine studied me, looking for the things I would. Marks made on each shoulder, the hreapa and all its fastenings in place. Probably nothing wrong with my hair, although I could never be sure; the stuff was unmanageable and seemed able to escape from any retention device I could come up with.
	She had a thought. “Have you fed the vigils?”
	I uttered an oath a woman of my standing should never use. “No. Of course not. And it’s been four weeks, hasn’t it.” Aine nodded. “And now I don’t have time. Will you do it, Aine?” I clattered out into the hallway in a bit of a panic. “It’s no big thing--just do what I do, and remember to say when you do the greeting that you’re acting on my behalf. And remember Shaineen gets an extra bun for the Cacht affair. I put all the food out in the pantry last night, I can’t believe I forgot. Thanks, you’ll be saving my life. Idair with you!”
	I ran, skirt flapping, the first quarter-mile, then slowed down. It was a beautiful day, I had an hour yet, and the walk through the forest wouldn’t take that long. The sun was unusually strong for a day this early in the growing season, and pleasantly warm. Birds were at their usual chatter but in high spirits. The prevailing topic seemed to be migration. Birds never say anything that important, but their mood is a pretty good divining tool, and when the birds are happy, so are we. 
	At the gate of the city the birds who had followed me flapped off. I walked up the broad cobbled street, skirting the horses, cows, carts and carriages that were rambling up and down it on their way to or from the central market. Those who saw me touched their lips and tried to get out of my way. I made the sign of protection over them and jostled through the crowd.
	The Scoil Chanon is part of the Pharc, the seven-pointed star at the center of the city. A straight road from each gate leads to the star, because as the seat of knowledge and power it should be easy for everyone to find. And it’s a good thing, too, because otherwise I’d get lost. The streets that branch off from the main arteries are more numerous than the strands of Idair’s hair and crooked as the Dark One’s heart. Only the people who live and work there have any idea how to find their way around the Sevenths. But I could probably make it to the Pharc in plenty of time unless--
	“Shriia! Shriia, oinach!”
	Unless. Well, it had to happen at least once. I stopped and searched for the owner of the voice. 
	“Here, shriia,” said a young farmer in creased and faded coveralls who was leading a bullock by a short leash. He pointed through the parting crowd toward a woman who sat by the wall, holding two children in her lap. One was nursing through a tear in her worn red dress; the other sat listless among the folds of her skirt. That was the one she was worried about.
	“He’s not moving,” she said, without waiting for me to greet her. “Since yesterday he’s been like this. He won’t even nurse.”
	I lifted the child. He was lighter than he should have been for his size. Under the dark matted hair the eyes were dull and cloudy. I set him on his feet; he plumped down into a sitting position, staring at me inertly.
	“I’ve seen the medicals,” she said. “They say it’s a case for you and yours.”
	The child offered no resistance as I examined him. He must have been a handsome little thing when those brown eyes had had their proper light. Probably his mother’s favorite. And clearly something else’s too.
	“They were right,” I said at last. “He’s been taken.”
	The mother silently hugged her other child to her. A disturbed murmur ran through the small knot of onlookers. I stood, lifting the child into my arms.
	“Your child is now under my protection. I’ve given my promise to do something and so I need to go on to the Pharc right now. I’ll keep the child with me so that no further evil will come to him, and return home with both of you afterwards. Be here an hour from now and be ready to stay a week or more. I’ll try everything I know and we’ll pray for the best. What is promised must be performed. Have I given what you need?”
	She looked up at me haggardly. “Yes, yes, shriia, I’ll be here. Idair with you.” The tears started in her eyes. “My boy--”
	“Don’t say his name,” I broke in. “Not yet. It’s not over. Wait here for me. Very often children can be brought back.”
	She nodded, but I knew what she was thinking. Very often children can’t be brought back, very often they die soon after, or worse, grow up with something else inside them. As I traced the sign of protection on the child’s forehead, the full horror of the situation seemed to grip her, and she pitched forward in a dead faint.
	I crouched down to lift her up and pulled the bottle of uisce out of my bag. As I sprinkled some on her face, I began to feel the familiar anxiety that comes with conflicting commitments. I had given Ethir my promise, and I had to go. But I couldn’t very well leave this poor woman here slumped over her other child. The drops of uisce sparkled faintly as they ran along her cheeks, leaving behind pale tracks. It was only then I realized that what I had thought was a suntanned complexion was at least partly the dust of the street. She hadn’t just come out there to find me. This was where she was living.
	She murmured, and her eyes fluttered. She sat up, vexed with herself for giving way, glancing furtively at the crowd that still surrounded us.
	“I’m all right now, shriia,” she said. 
Rather than chide her for lying, I looked around for someone who could sit with her till it was true. My eyes went back to the sunburnt, yellow-haired farmer who had first pointed her out. Partly because I was reading something off him that seemed to me like compassion, and partly because I was starting to feel as if I’d met him before.
	“Friend,” I called to him. “I’m sorry, I know your face but I don’t remember what name you use.”
	His face didn’t change, but he now seemed troubled somehow.
	“It’s Taric.”
	I glanced over his broad shoulders and plowman’s thighs. “Of course it is.” 
The women in the crowd laughed; taric is Old Tongue for “bull.” Taric’s eyes dropped and I felt his intense embarrassment. Once again I had spoken too quickly, and done hurt without meaning it.
“Well, Taric,” I said. “Would you mind staying with her until I come back? Do you have anything very important to do in the next hour or so?”
“Shriia, I don’t need—“ the woman began.
	 “I’ll stay by her,” Taric said. He patted the bullock’s neck. “He’ll sell as high at midday as he would now.”
	“Good man,” I said, hoping that my wretched memory would inform me finally about where I had seen him before. I seldom forget a face, but I often forget just about everything that goes with it. I uncorked the glass bottle and handed it carefully to the woman. “Here, take a sip of this, you’ll feel better.”
She peered into it suspiciously. As usual, it looked empty.
	“It’s all right, friend, I know it looks like nothing but it really isn’t.” 
She took a cautious sip, surprised to feel the water on her lips.
	“There you go. Keep the bottle, and have as much as you like; it’ll do you good. I’ll be back soon.”
	“All right, shriia,” said the woman. 
	Taric said nothing, and merely watched me go.
The crowd parted for me, its members touching their lips and calling greetings. “Life to you, shriia.” “Peace to the little one.” “Idair with you both.” I acknowledged as many as I saw and hurried forward.
	I was not happy. It had been years since a child had been taken in the City. Twenty years ago it was common enough, but then twenty years ago even aleasai would attempt it. Since the development of more effective protections most of the small fry had given up. By the time I was learning, this generally happened only when a family had never bothered to take precautions--but I was sure this mother had. The poor seldom overlook the formalities. This case meant a crack opening up somewhere. 
	I opened the link to Aine to let her know to get the spare room ready. <I’m bringing them in an hour--a taken child and his mother and brother.>
	<How old?>
	<They’re twins, and they look to be about two years old although I can’t say for sure. The mother’s probably nineteen, maybe eighteen.>
	<Idair preserve them.>
	<Have you fed the vigils?>
	There was a tense pause. <No.>
	<Well, for everyone’s sake do.> Sensing her hesitation, I added, <They won’t hurt you.>
	<I will, dhiaoc.> 
	I closed the link and rushed into the vestibule of the Pharc. Ethir was waiting for me. He was smiling, as always, his blue gown perfectly pressed and black hair artfully tousled. He touched his lips. “It’s all right, you’re not that late. Relax.”
	“Easy for you to say.” Ethir was then the hottest young law teacher in the Pharc--partly because he was brilliant and partly because he exuded a charismatic enthusiasm that swept everything before it. He and I had worked together in the past, and now that he was teaching the introductory survey he had somehow convinced me to give a guest lecture. Ethir was never nervous, and refused to believe that I was. To ordinary people, I suppose, a classroom full of staring eyes is far less fearsome than a demon from the 57th plane. But if I were an ordinary woman, my life would be very different.
	“Is he yours?” he asked, looking at the boy.
	“Don’t mock the afflicted.”
	“Just as well,” Ethir said, peering closer. “He doesn’t look very lively.”
	“Neither would you, if your spirit were rattling through the ether in the company of Idair knows what.” I sighed. “So lead me to my doom.”
	“Oh, don’t worry, Theamh,” he said, heading down the hall to the classroom. “I wouldn’t have asked you if I thought you’d put them to sleep.”
	“I can put them to sleep all right.”
	“I meant unintentionally.” He touched the door handle and shot me one of those smiles that had got me into this situation in the first place. “Ready?”
	“What do you think?”
	He opened the door anyway. Still toting the child, I followed him in.
	The class stood as we walked in. He waved them back to the benches and mounted the box.
	“Well, this is the week you’ve been waiting for,” he said brightly, as the noise of conversation died. “You’ve suffered through Property, you’ve dragged yourselves through Contracts and Breaches, you’ve fought through the Five Fundamentals--” There was some traumatized laughter. “And through it all I’ve heard you whimpering, ‘So when does it get interesting?’ Well, whimper no more.” They smiled. “Today we move into magic law, which means that not only do you get to hear about afflictions and thralling and all kinds of other good stuff, but for today at least you don’t have to look at my ugly mug any more.” Their heads turned toward me, responding to his unspoken cue. The child sparked a little speculative curiosity, but they remained politely attentive and silent.
	“Yes,” Ethir continued, as they looked back toward him, “today only, you have the chance to see Theamh ni hUlnach in the flesh.” The ripple of startled interest that followed my name surprised me. “And when those of your classmates who couldn’t be bothered to get up this morning find out what they missed, I hope you rub it in.” More laughter. “Those of you who pay attention to the world you live in will already know that Theamh is responsible for a few trifling matters in the shriic line, such as the defeat of Lythril, the purification of the river Ubh, and most recently the freeing of Cacht. What you may not realize is that she is also a brilliant amateur jurist, and I can’t imagine anyone better qualified to introduce you to this topic. So without further preamble, I’ll give the box to Theamh.”
	I handed the child to Ethir, who shrugged and sat down with it. The students’ eyes followed me as I took the box. Looking out at the faces of fifty young, eager men in identical gray robes, I was startled afresh by the intensity of their interest. I was still not used to this. I hadn’t been famous for very long.
	Behind me the stylus, apparently of its own volition, was inscribing “MAGIC AND THE LAW” on the lecture board. The students whispered and nudged each other. When the stylus finished and flew into my hand, they clapped.
	“Thank you. I’ll be writing on the board the usual way, because it’s much easier. What you’ve just seen is what we call uafasi.” I wrote the word on the board. “Any Old Tongue scholars? Who knows what that means?”
	A hand went up. “Awful things.”
	There was some laughter. “Right, but wrong. That’s the literal meaning, but in magic that term applies to what you might call parlor tricks. Things that are amusing and impressive, but that anyone can do with enough mindstrength and a lot if practice. They’re not what real magic is about--and they’re not what you’ll deal with if you specialize in magic law.”
	I replaced the stylus and stepped off the box. “To you will fall the unenviable task of trying to either defend or convict those who have been accused of practicing dark magic. And that’s a different fish altogether. Someone who’s done the reading give me the legal definition of dark magic.”
	Another hand. “The use and/or abuse of extra and/or supra-subhuman powers with intent to injure a second party.”
	I blinked. “That’ll work.” Scattered laughter. “No, seriously, what you’ve just regurgitated is in fact the exact legal definition. Pretty clear, right? But of course in law nothing’s ever as clear as it looks.” They nodded. “Ethir invited me to do this lecture for a few reasons. One, he knew it would scare the hell out of me.” The admission of fear made their laughter nervous. “I’m a shriia, folks, we tell the truth, get used to it. Two, since I am a shriia, I know more about magic than Ethir and can give you a sense for what’s involved and why sane persons want to stay far away from the whole business. Three, as one of the women involved in bringing our generation’s most notorious dark user to justice, I can tell you something about what the law means to the real world. Or rather the world of magic.
	“So let’s start with the basics. What are the premises the prosecution must establish to get a conviction in a dark magic case? Not you, you’ve already gone. You in the gray.” Laughter. “All right, you with the freckles.”
	“That the harm was the direct or indirect result of magic; that the accused performed that magic or caused it to be performed; and that the accused intended the harm when the spell, charm or attack was performed.”
	“Right. The first is the easiest to prove, which isn’t saying much. When Lythril was being tried on one of several charges of unlawful possession--”
	“Possession of what?” from Freckle Boy. 
	“People. There’s no way to possess someone except through magic, so in that case the first count was incontestable. Unfortunately, proving that Lythril actually performed that magic was next to impossible. The only physical evidence considered conclusive proof of direct responsibility is a scroll with the victim’s name in it in the accused’s handwriting.” This provoked a startled reaction. “Yes, that stipulation does suggest that dark users actually write these laws. Anyone smart enough to do dark magic is smart enough to destroy the documents afterwards. So the only thing we could do is what we usually do in these cases, which was to try to prove that the accused is the only person who could possibly have done this.
	“Naturally such a case is incredibly easy to contest. All you have to do is demonstrate that another dark user had means, motive etcetera. So we lose, a lot. That’s something to be aware of. Legal theorists argue about changing the laws, but you can see the difficulties. Magic doesn’t leave the kind of material evidence you’re used to because it doesn’t obey the laws of nature. And witness testimony is extremely unreliable under any circumstances--people lie, people remember things wrong or leave things out by accident. So the core of any magic prosecution has to be shriic testimony.
	“Shriias are trained to adjust for the kind of sensory deception magic involves, and we learn how to resist mindforcing. So we make fewer mistakes. But more important, a shriia is bound by all she holds holy to tell the truth. Under any circumstances, no matter how trivial the matter may be. Lie once, in or outside of a courtroom, and that’s it--you lose your fire, you lose your power, and unless you want to join up with the Dark One, your life as a user is over. We won’t lie to save our own lives, so we’re not going to do it just to help out some lawyer.” Good sports that they were, they laughed. “So those convictions we get, we get because a shriia can say in court that she believes the accused is responsible. The finders know she’s probably not mistaken, and definitely not lying.”
	By now many of them were scratching away at their tablets. I’d gone over the text so often that I could remember it even with the headache my nerves were bringing down on me. “Lythril is into possession. It would be hard to say what she gets out of it, but she spends a lot of her time trying to get into other peoples’ bodies. So we thought we’d be able to get her through her own expertise. Only Lythril, of all the dark users we knew about, had the skill to defeat the protections done on this particular victim. So when the defense asked, ‘Is there anyone else who you think could have overtaken him?’ the shriia in the box said ‘No.’
	“That should have done it, but Lythril’s lawyer--fellow named Bric mac Chlos--” A chorus of hisses. “I see Ethir has you trained. Anyhow, Bric did something insane. He contested the shriia’s testimony.”
	I gave it a minute and then went on, hoping the strain from the headache wasn’t showing on my face. “I remember thinking, this man is either dumber than tree bark or smarter than we are. Anyone out there who’s still awake tell me what happens when a shriia’s testimony is challenged.”
	A few voices broke in together. “Establish the shriia’s allegiance.”
	“By means of?”
	“An in-court auralysis.”
	“So, they get the witness--a shriia named Lilea--up there, and Morat gets the gessol out and lights it in front of her. We wait for the vapors to reveal her aura...” I folded my arms and leaned back against the board. “And you can imagine our surprise when they start turning black.”
	There was a general noise of shifting in seats. Most of them, of course, would have heard some of this story; but it’s always different coming from someone who was there. “I can’t even convey to you the effect it had on that courtroom. Mayhem you’d have to see to believe. Parents pulling their children into their arms, Bric demanding Lilea be taken into custody, the gardai milling around trying to decide whether they’re going to do it, Morat backing up and talking against evil as fast as she can, people just screaming, the presider banging that little--what’s that thing they have, the round thing they hit to open the--”
	“Alaive,” from various corners.
	“--thank you, he’s banging that rock on the desk as if that’s going to do anything, and I’m looking through all this chaos at Lilea, and she’s standing there with this shattered look on her face and tears in her eyes and I can’t hear what she’s saying because over the screaming and banging no one can hear anything but I can see her lips moving, and what they’re forming over and over is, ‘Idair, forgive me, I didn’t know.’ And that’s when I knew what had happened.”
	I realized that I had moved down into the area where the students were seated. I backed up. “She honestly thought that this was an accurate result, and that all this time she thought she was serving Idair she had somehow been serving evil instead, by mistake or I don’t know how. Now that’s the kind of reaction you’d only get from someone who was still true. So while everyone else was recoiling from her as if she were carrying ten plagues and a rabid ferret, I vaulted over the bar, ran up and took her by the wrist. She tried to pull away at first, but when my hand closed around her arm she stopped, and looked up at me.
	“And so did everyone else, because as they knew and you know, when two users allied to opposite powers make contact, what you get is pain on both sides. And I’m not talking minor twinge, I’m talking about teeth-rattling, knee-buckling, consciousness-threatening, this-is-what-I-imagine-childbirth-feels-like pain. And neither one of us had felt it. So there were now two possibilities. Either I was false too, or Lilea was true.
	“I raised my hand and stood there for a while holding Lilea’s up so everyone could see this. And I said, ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m really hoping that someone falsified that test, because if both of us are on the dark side, well, Idair preserve us all.’
	“Morat stood there, unsure what to do. The spectators were quiet and the presider seemed to have calmed down. Lythril still looked smug.” A hand went up. “Yes?”
	“But couldn’t you just touch Lythril and prove she was dark that way?”
	“Ah, that would seem to make sense, wouldn’t it? Anyone know why this is not a good plan?”
	Freckles Boy had his hand up. “Because it would hurt like hell?”
	“It certainly would, but that’s part of the job. Anyone else?”
	A pale boy with an eager face and dark brown eyes said, “It would only prove that you were opposites. She could have been the true one and you all false.”
	“Yes, that’s true, and the one thing I did not want was her claiming to be the only true shriia in the room. I don’t suppose anyone would have believed her seeing as she was never in the Order, but one never knows. But there’s another reason.” The boy looked disappointed. “That’s the common-sense answer, now think like a lawyer.” Nothing. “Come on, Ethir said you’d done the Five Fundamentals--”
	“Oh! I know!” shouted a red-headed boy sitting near the front. “It violates the right to spiritual privacy!”
	“There we go! It’s a violation of the accused’s rights to force her to submit to any test designed to establish allegiance and any evidence gained thereby is inadmissible. So there I was.” I paused and pressed my hands to my temples, not because I had done that then but because they were really starting to throb. “Up there in front of a crowd of people who weren’t sure I wasn’t evil, with no way to prove Lythril had rigged the test, no way to prove she was dark, nothing to work with. Except words.” I took a step forward and spread my hands. “So I started talking.
	“ ‘Women, men,’ I said, ‘I am prevented by law from walking over to this woman and proving on her body that we are bound to different powers. That’s as it should be. No one should be forced against her will to reveal herself in such a public forum. Lilea underwent auralysis voluntarily because she is a servant of the truth, because we are required and ready to show ourselves to you whenever it will serve. If she had thought it would prove her dark, she would never have agreed to it. She believed, when she stood up here in front of you, that she was a true daughter of Idair. And I believe she is, if only because I know that to see that black vapor rise around her broke her heart.’
	“That much was obvious to anyone in that room who had a shred of sensitivity. I’ve never seen devastation written more plainly on a human face. I was going to hand things back to Ethir, who was prosecuting the case, but he gave me the nod to keep going. ‘We’re used to trusting shriias implicitly. In every aspect of our lives we rely on the knowledge that they know the truth, they speak the truth--they are the truth, as far as we can know it. And now you’ve seen that challenged.’”
	I had forgotten the classroom, forgotten Ethir, almost but not quite forgotten my headache in the memory of that evil afternoon. “ ‘If a shriia can be false, what is true? If truth is not itself, how can we know what’s right? How can right and wrong even exist?
	“ ‘Women, men...we’re not the truth, itself. We fail, we make mistakes, we are not always what we vowed to be. But truth survives us. Truth is real, absolute, good--it shines through us, and through whatever faulty vessels illuminates the world. It pierces veils. It conquers darkness. It will shine on you, whatever has been done to stifle it.
	“ ‘Don’t look at auras. Don’t consider personalities. Look for the truth. You’ll see it. And when you do, you’ll know what Lythril is. I believe that Lythril called for this test knowing she could falsify the result. I believe that I am, that Lilea is honest and that Lythril’s power comes from the Dark One. I believe that Lilea’s account is the truth. I believe that you will believe it too.’”
	They were staring at me. So was Ethir. I took a deep breath. I hadn’t known how much reenacting that speech would take out of me. “They believed me, and they put her away.” A general movement of relief. “But it was a bitter victory. It set the single most disastrous precedent in the history of magic law. Auralysis is no longer considered proof of allegiance. Of course, we have other ways of establishing allegiance--but they are secret, sacred rites that cannot be explained or performed in public, and thus have no legal value. So if shriic testimony is challenged--and it always is, now--there’s no way to validate it. In effect, truth has disappeared from the courtroom. It was the worst thing Lythril ever did to us.”
	They were silent, most of them not even taking notes now. Krenham against Lythril was still relatively recent news, and many must never have heard the whole story. It was going well, but my headache was still there, and my shoulders hurt too now. 
	“So what happens now? That’s where you come in. Lucky you. Your generation of magic lawyers gets to try to convict dark users without shriic testimony. Oh, the fun you’ll have.” The laughter didn’t cut through the pain that was starting to spread to the rest of my body. “There are two practical tips I can give you. The first is--” I turned to write on the board; they snapped back into note-taking mode. “Make the defendant lie. About anything. Ask embarrassing personal questions if you must. Once you do that, you establish that the defendant is not a shriia.” The pain was now too strong to ignore. “Two, and I know this seems like a no-brainer, you must establish that the defendant is a magic user. Everyone for three provinces around may know the defendant uses magic but that doesn’t matter unless you can establish it according to legal standards.” 
	I had to stop. The pain was making my thoughts drift. The students watched, disconcerted.
	“Now, in Lythril’s case...we...” 
	I couldn’t finish. A stab of pain throbbed through my head and in each shoulder. Instinctively I crossed my arms over my chest. 
	“Theamh, are you all right?” from Ethir.
	When my hands touched the marks on my shoulders my mind rallied for a moment. Long enough for me to realize this was the wrong kind of pain.
	“Will everyone,” I gasped, clutching my shoulders and gathering what scattered force I had left, “please leave the room.”
	Before I finished the sentence I was mentally reciting the nilachaon. The pain intensified, but it was localized now in my head. Encouraged, I kept up the recitation and prepared to reveal. Unfortunately the students must not have understood the warning, because they were still in their seats, watching me.
	I closed my eyes and dug my fingers deeper into my shoulders, focusing energy through the marks into my hands. I felt the drain--my legs seemed to be gone, my guts were cold and quivering--but my brain was still repeating the nilachaon and the pain was now a small burning spot concentrated right behind my eyes. With any luck--
	“Close your eyes!” I shouted as I felt it reach flashpoint. “I mean it! This is not a drill! If you don’t want to go blind, close ‘em, NOW!!”
	Ethir was the only one who seemed to really know what was about to happen. He put one hand over the child’s eyes, and repeated my warning to them. Fortunately they listened to it coming from him.
	The light broke from my hands, crackling around my body in a searing white rope until I felt its tendrils reach my head.
	There was a deafening crack, and a flash of the kind of pain that makes you wish you had chosen another career. Then my head was clear, which was a relief. On the down side, the students were screaming and running for the windows, because hovering in the air in front of me was a snapping, smoking, angry mass of black and blood-red light.
	I was safe now--the white fire was burning all over my body--but I couldn’t keep up that effort for long. I threw a bolt from each hand; she let out a screech that caused several students to pass out cold, and retreated, slightly. By now I was sure who I was dealing with.
	“This is mine! Go back to the body Idair gave you!”
	She writhed, but didn’t move. I felt for the amulet I had started carrying around with me after the trial. Holding it out with both hands, I recited the Old Tongue words engraved on it. 
	It screamed like a thousand winter windstorms. A stream of black and blood-red light shot hissing through a window, and the room was clean. 
	I touched the marks. The fire melted back into my body. The students began slowly to recover.
	My knees buckled and I plumped abruptly onto the floor by the box. For what seemed like a long time I sat with my arms crossed and my legs drawn up. 
	After Idair’s fire the world seems mute, insubstantial, transparent. You can see right through people. The students gathering in the middle of the room were like glass to me. The boy with the freckles was ambitious but afraid he had no talent. The blond one with the piercing blue eyes would have a bad marriage. The tall thin boy was here because his parents wanted him to be; he wouldn’t finish the program. I closed my eyes.
	When I opened them some moments later the terrible clarity was gone. Several of the students now sported gray hairs. All of them were shaken. Ethir himself looked stunned. He was crouched next to me now with a hand on my shoulder.
	“What in the name of..” he began.
	I was drenched in sweat and I could see the scorch marks on my hands; I was sure there were some on my head as well. “Lythril,” I said.
	“What was she doing?”
	“Trying to take possession. What else?” I laughed, which seemed to disturb him.
	“But--you’re all right?”
	“Well,” I said after a long pause, “it was a close call.”
	“May Idair keep her out of here and away from you.”
	“Oh, don’t worry; the specter will have to rejoin her body.” I hoped. “For today, I’m safe. From her, at least.”
	I stood up slowly. My entire body was sore and my head felt like an anvil after a long day at the smithy. The reaction was setting in.
	“Scoili chanon,” I said, as calmly as I could, “that was not part of my prepared text.” There was some weak laughter. “Any of you who have been wont to make light of stories of possession--yes, you with the shaggy eyebrows, I’m talking to you--can start changing your minds. You just saw the nastiest being that ever wore black try to invade my personal space. Why, I don’t know. Probably because it’s partly my fault she’s been exiled. One thing about magic law--you make powerful enemies. Anyway, I’m going to let that episode speak for itself, because I’m going home. I hope the abridged version of what I assure you was going to be a brilliant lecture was somehow useful.”
	The students touched their lips and bowed to me. I collected my papers and tugged my hreapa back into something approaching normalcy. 
	“I’ll walk you out,” Ethir said.
	I had turned, but I stopped. One of the students had started to sing vausha.
	Another joined him. Soon a small choir--the whole Dairc contingent, I gathered--were singing in five-part harmony the song of blessing and thanks. It’s in a dialect of the Old Tongue that’s still spoken in the northern mountains, and the text has been handed down from the earliest days after Idair’s passage. It brings back the days of blackness and death, when shriias were few and had nothing to fight with but love and courage, when there was a dark user in every hamlet and three demons for every thatched roof and the battle I swore to fight was just beginning. Faith, love, despair--all blent together and sung over a shriia who has fought a battle. The citizens of Daircri sang it over me after I cleaned up the river Ubh. It had unnerved me then. This time, I was better able to appreciate the gesture, but still unsettled. Vausha is also sung at the feasts of the martyrs.
	I put my hands over my heart to thank them. Then I took the child from Ethir and escaped through the door.
	“Theamh, let me take you for a bite or a soup or something. You must be shattered.”
	I shook my head. “I don’t have time. I have an appointment.” When and with who, I couldn’t remember. I hoped it would come to me. “Besides,” I added, losing my temper as I found some of my strength, “I have to go home and hurt my apprentice.”
	“Oh my. I thought you had the pick of the litter.”
	“Aine’s got a fabulous mind and a memory like a steel trap,” I said, picking up speed. “Unfortunately, she’s got the nerve and daring of an elderly hedgehog. She doesn’t have the stomach for this kind of life and she’s not making mine any easier. I almost lost my body to the queen of all that’s twisted because the vigils make Aine nervous. Well, if she wasn’t going to feed the thurking vigils she could have told me that instead of saying she would and then hoping no one would notice. Fnaa, death, hell and ashes!”
	I was still cursing when we reached the doors. Ethir smiled. “Good to see you’re still yourself, Theamh. That mouth of yours is unmistakable.”
	“I know, I’m awful, but thurk it, if there’s anything I’d consider a fate worse than death it’s sharing a skull with that, and I almost suffered it because Aine wouldn’t stand her ground against even a field mouse, if it looked determined and unfriendly. So long, Ethir, you’ve been a great help, I’m sorry I gave a bad lecture and burnt your classroom and made everyone’s hair go gray--”
	“Listen. Your lecture was great, what you got through of it, the scorch marks will give me an excuse to push them to repanel that classroom, and in this profession people trust you more if you look older. Even without the battle it’d have been more excitement than all of first term put together.” He paused. “Do you do that often?”
	“Reasonably.”
	“It must hurt?”
	“Oh yes.”
	He gave me a long, thoughtful stare from beneath those black curls. His hair hadn’t been affected, at least. Finally, he said, “Take care of yourself, Theamh. People like you don’t grow on trees.”
	“Neither did you, Ethir--didn’t your mother tell you?”
	“I’m serious.” He put a hand on my shoulder and then, embarrassed, took it away. “You don’t understand what it’s like for someone else. I swear you looked like the other world had already claimed you. Just--be careful, will you?”
	“Careful as I can be,” I said cheerfully.
	“Theamh.” I returned his insistent stare. “Aren’t you at all concerned about this?”
	“Well, nobody likes to be attacked, but--”
	“We exiled her,” he said, seeming to feel the need to emphasize each word with a gesture. “The point of getting her out of the country was to prevent things like this from happening. That shouldn’t have been possible.”
	I shrugged. “Every net has holes,” I said. “The border does a fabulous job, but she’s a powerful woman, and it wouldn’t be hard for her to make a pinhole big enough to send her specter through. That doesn’t mean her body will be following.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ve got my shield, I’ve got protections, and I’ve got my own fire, Ethir. I’ll be all right.” 
	He nodded, still not convinced. “I hope so.”
	It must have shaken him badly; I’d never seen him serious for five minutes together. I hoisted the child and walked through he door. “Idair with you, Ethir.”
	I went storming down the street talking to myself. The sound of my own voice soothes me after one of these episodes, although in this case what I was saying wasn’t very soothing. “Ten of the worst minutes of my young life because the stomachless, water-veined thing that calls itself my apprentice can’t bring herself to visit the thurking vigils. She can recite you the seven scrolls in three living and two dead languages, she can give you the location of every major heavenly body on any given night of the year and she can’t figure out that I feed those things for a reason. It’d serve her right if Lythril did posses me. She’d eat Aine whole. As a snack. As part of a snack--”
	“Shriia! Shriia, oinach!”
	I spun around. “What?”
	It was a young woman in a torn red dress, carrying a child. My tone had brought water to her eyes. Next to her stood a young man with yellow hair and an angry face.
	“Shriia,” she said, apologetic, almost whispering. “Shriia, my child.”
	She looked at the limp form I had forgotten I was carrying.
	“May the spirit forgive me and may Idair someday sharpen my wretched mind,” I cried. “I forgot completely. You’ve been sitting here worried sick and I forgot. I’d have taken your child all the way home and then had to turn around and come back for you. I am so sorry. Come along, and you too, little guy, and we’ll see what the most useless bundle of bungling this side of Jipran can do for you. Taric, thank you for watching this poor woman while I disgracing my profession, you can go sell your bullock now.”
	Taric shook his head. “I’ve sold him already. And if it’s all the same to you, I’ll see you both safe home. I live nearby.”
	“Really? Where?”
	“A smallholding just outside Felim cloch.”
	Felim Cloch was a village about ten miles west of my house. It was also, I suddenly realized, where I had seen him before. The image popped back into my head. I’d met him during my regular walkout to Felim, a long time ago. I could now see him sitting awkwardly on the green in front of me, holding out a piece of rag paper, asking me to read something that had been scrawled on it. So, like many of his fellow small farmers, Taric had never learned to read. I wondered what else I had forgotten about him.
	“Well, come along then, Taric. What name do you use?” I asked the woman.
	“Mna.”
	“Mna, I am truly, deeply sorry--”
	“Please, shriia, it’s nothing. I’m grateful you took up the case.” She stared straight ahead. “The medicals were no use, and the guardians just lectured me and sent me away.”
	“Lectured you about what?”
	“About joining in spirit before joining in--”
	“Ah.” Taric dropped a few paces behind us. He was a man of some discretion, evidently. “So I ask only because it may help to know this--where is his father now?”
	“Gone.”
	“Dead or just--”
	“Just gone.”
	“Faithless bastard.”
	“I know. But...” She shook her head. She kissed the other child’s forehead. “Ah well. I don’t need him.”
	Taric caught up with us when he thought it was safe. “I’m sorry now I didn’t bring the horse this morning.”
	“What a coincidence, I was thinking the same thing.”
	“You look tired,” Mna said.
	“That’s probably because I am.”
	“Have you been in a battle?”
	I nodded. “My apprentice forgot one of the precautions.” I should have left it at that, but I was still furious. “I could’ve been taken, easy. And it’s pure luck none of those students got hurt or blinded. Idiot. If I had been taken Aine would have been toast, that’s for sure. Imagine the damage that bitch could do if no one realized.”
	“What bitch?” from Mna.
	“Lythril.”
	“I’ve heard of her,” Taric said. “And nothing I’ve heard is good.”
	“There’s little good to be said about her.”
	“She must be very bad,” Mna said. “Or else she must have hurt you very badly.”
	I looked at her. “You’re a sharp woman,” I said.
	“The shriia honors me.”
	“Mna, my used name is Theamh. Go ahead and use it. You too, Taric. Respect is a wonderful thing in moderation. Anyway, that’s my house.” I pointed into the trees. “Taric, will you come have a meal with us?”
	“I don’t see a house, shriia,” he said after a pause.
	“No, there’s a reason for that. I’ll have to let you in through the shield.”
	Taric shook his head. “I’ve got to get back to my farm. Idair with you.” He bowed and touched his lips, then went stumping down the path.
	Mna watched his retreating form for longer than was strictly necessary. 
	“Well,” I said when she finally looked back, “it’s just you, me and the twins. Close your eyes and cover his.” I covered the taken child’s eyes with my hand.
	I found the gate and said the words. We stepped through the shield. To an observer it would have seemed that we had disappeared. But I make sure there are no observers.
	“Here we are.” I enjoyed her astonishment. I’m proud of my little clearing, the herb and flower gardens, and the little house made of timber that sits in the middle of it. The forest stands thick around it, green and cool even in summer, and out back is the vegetable garden. Most shriias are far more successful with plants than I am. Until Aine came the garden was entropy incarnate, an asylum for sick, dying and dead plants, a labyrinth of exposed roots and tendrils gone berserk. For Aine even the tomatoes behaved. I don’t know what I do wrong. 
	“It’s beautiful,” Mna said. “Frih, look at the pretty flowers.”
	The child in her arms nodded gravely, then hid his head in her chest.
	“He’s shy,” she said. “And he misses his brother.”
	“How old are they?”
	“Almost two. It’s a little less than a year since their naming.”
	“Isn’t he old to be nursing?”
	“Maybe. But my milk is free.”
	“Like Idair’s love,” I said, embarrassed. I paused at the door to prepare my assault.
	I opened it and made noise coming in. “Aiiiiiiine! I’m home!”
	I led them through the greeting space up the steps to the guest room. At least Aine had taken care of that. The bed was made, and a little trundle bed had been set out for the twins. Everything was neat; she’d even put a spray of branch roses in a jar on the windowsill. I saw it and all the little touches Aine always put into such jobs and almost decided to forgo the confrontation, but a glance in the mirror changed my mind. My forehead still had scorch marks, my face was still pale. 
	“Make yourselves at home. I’ll be back after I’ve found and destroyed my apprentice.”
	I went to the kitchen. No sign of her. Living area, music room, both empty. The door to the laboratory hadn’t even been opened. She must be in her room.
	I tiptoed up the steps and past the spare room till I came to her door. For dramatic effect, I opened it without using my hands.
	Aine was too far along to be impressed by uafasi, but this time it got her. She jumped, dropped her book, and retreated as I advanced. She had recognized the battle signs.
	“You didn’t feed the vigils, did you, Aine?”
	She shook her head.
	“Do you know why I feed the vigils?”
	“I--uh--”
	“Because if you don’t feed them they stop doing their job. Which is to prevent people like Lythril from attacking the spirits of people like me.”
	“Oh no--” Aine cried.
	“That’s right,” I broke in, “in broad daylight, in the middle of my thurking lecture. As a result, the Pharc is going to have to repanel the classroom, a number of young law students now have salt-and-pepper hair, I feel like the Amstian Army has been using me for target practice, and it will take some fast talking to get Ethir to invite another shriia in for a guest lecture.”
	“I’m so sorry, dhiaoc, I’m--I’m--” She was crying, her face twisted and red with pain. My anger wouldn’t hold up, but she had to be told.
	“I know you didn’t mean any harm, but I almost lost control over my mind and body today and it makes me a little cranky. I like my mind. My body isn’t much but it’s the only one I have. Besides, if Lythril had won, your own life would have become a lot harder, not to say shorter.” She was sitting on her bed wiping her eyes. I crouched in front of her. “You knew it was important. I told you twice to do it. You told me you would and then you didn’t.” She was crying too hard to interrupt. “I don’t have to tell you what’ll happen if you pull that kind of fnaa after you get your fire.”
“Dhiaoc!” she cried out, as if in real pain.
“I’ve put up with your skittishness around the vigils because I don’t want to make things hard for you, but thurk it, Aine, I draw the line at this. Being possessed is worse than being dead. And I’m the thurking possession specialist. Who else would have been able to cast her out?”
	“I’m sorry,” she sobbed.
	“Why didn’t you feed them?”
	She snuffled for a moment, then shouted, “Because they hate me!”
	“How can they hate you?”
	“They do! They think I’m useless and stupid and a coward and they despise me and they’re right. I’ll never be a shriia, never, I’m scared of everything and even the vigils know it. You think so too only you won’t admit it. I work so hard all the time and it’s all for nothing and I’ll never survive the Ordeals and--”
	She was really breaking up. When she started tearing at her brown hair I grabbed her hands and held them.
	“Look at me. Aine.” She raised her eyes. They were puffed and red. “You’re brilliant, you have the instinct and the faith. All you need is to learn some courage.”
	“But I’m scared,” she wailed. “I’m scared of everything.”
	“So am I. Dark magic is the most terrifying thing in the universe, and bright magic--well, even Idair doesn’t know everything, and we only know what she chooses to tell us. You think any of us can really control what we summon? Once you’ve felt the fire you’ll know different. The powers we serve are as frightening as the ones we fight. Being a shriia means doing things that scare the fnaa out of you on a regular basis. Nobody’s born able to do that. You can learn, just like I did.”
	She sniffled. “You really think I can?”
	“I do. And a shriia is telling you this. Now come with me and we’ll see if I can repair the damage.”
	We went down the hall to the spare quarters. Mna was playing with Frih by the window. The taken child lay inert in his bed, watching the ceiling with his inanimate stare. 
	“Everything all right?” I asked.
	“Wonderful. Shriia--”
	“Theamh.”
	“My boy...”
	“For right now, he’ll be safest here with you. Until I get the vigils back I’m a demon magnet. Aine and I--Aine, Mna, Mna, Aine--are going after said vigils right now.”
	Either I looked especially grim or she could tell how scared Aine was. “Is there danger?”
	“Oh...pfft...” When asked inconvenient questions, we often try to put them off with gestures. “Just stay here and don’t go near the laboratory. Also ignore any noises you may hear. Except an actual death scream. If you hear that, grab the twins and run like the wind.” Aine moaned. Mna just nodded, then smiled slightly.
	“What a profession.”
	“Oh, this is the best job in the world,” I said as I left.
	“Also the worst,” I added as I opened the lab door.
	“All right, Aine,” I said after I had locked us in. “Watch closely, because someday you’ll be trapping your own vigils. First rule: remove all breakable objects. Second,” I added, opening the pantry, “they love food. Bring lots. We have any custard?”
	“I made some yesterday.”
	“Good. Let’s get the stuff out.” On the four pedestals in the center of the vigileacha we placed four wooden trenchers, and began doling out food. “Shaineen likes those sugary buns...the custard is for Jayla. Phredi’s more of a starch fiend...” Aine produced a loaf of fresh pumpkin bread. “That’s it. Put it on the plinth.” I stared at the fourth pillar. “Zott’s a hard one. I dunno. Try that tomato aspic in the back. He’s not got much of a sweet tooth...so to speak...” Aine finished setting the food out and drew back. 
	“All set?” she faltered.
	“Third rule,” I said. “Don’t let them know they scare you.”
	“I’ll try, dhiaoc.”
	“Theamh, thurk it.”
	“Sorry, dhiaoc.”
	“Fourth and final rule,” I said. “Pray hard.”
	Aine closed her eyes. “Oh, I am, dhiaoc. I am.”
	I licked my dry lips. “Prepare.” Aine grabbed my hand. Considering my condition it wasn’t actually a smart move but I knew I couldn’t have made her believe that. “All right. By Idair’s power and in the name of the spirit which we will never know.”
	I sang the song. With Aine’s sweating hand tightening its grip on mine, I challenged the vigils. I abused them for abandoning me. I asserted that I was their Aiv and they were bound to me and only me. I reminded them that I had conquered them once and since then had always treated them well. I invited them to return and escape punishment.
	I waited. Nothing. Except that Aine’s teeth had begun to chatter.
	“All right, brace yourself.” Aine whimpered. “They must have been really hungry.”
	Raising my voice, I taunted them. I dared them to come and best me in my own house. I hinted that they were staying away because they were afraid of me, a mere mortal. I insinuated that they had failed to defend me because they were afraid of Lythril, another mortal. I called them unworthy of the ether they inhabited and suggested that a vigil worth the name would come and fight it out with me.
	Aine felt it before I did but it wasn’t long in coming to me. Every hair on my body stood up. Shivers spidered over my skin. My muscles trembled, my jaw clenched. My mouth went dry. They were coming.
	“Which first,” I muttered, to keep myself from thinking. “Which first, which first...”
	“Dhiaoc,” Aine whispered. “Why is everything green?”
	It was true. Aine’s face, the food on the trenchers, the whitewashed floor, everything had a greenish cast. I sighed. 
	“Because Shaineen’s coming first.”
	The green deepened. The room swam in emerald light. Images buckled and ripped as the air shook. Light thickened, bubbling in green globs.
	“Form!” I screamed in Shaineen’s language. “Enough!”
	Green light licked flaming along every surface toward the pulsing emerald globe hovering in the center of the room. Light poured into a column, green, seething, and so bright it hurt.
	Shaineen spoke a strange variant somewhat related to Amstic but with even more hellish grammar. I formed the sentences carefully.
	“Welcome back.”
	Spurts of green shot at me. It was hard not to flinch, especially with Aine flinching next to me as if it were going out of style. “Care to resume your post?” More spitfire. The column sizzled, waiting. “Don’t forget, Shaineen, I’m good to you. I house you, I sing to you, I know your favorite foods...who else will do that for you?”
	She was still, as if pondering. Then a crackling lash of flame seared my arm. I fought the pain. Vigils are fearsome, but no one would call them intelligent. If you act like you’re invulnerable, they’ll believe you.
	“Go ahead,” I shouted. “Fire away. As long as you can’t get inside--” I broke off. “No, really. Zap me. See if I care.”
	Shaineen drew herself up into her brightest light. She was thinking.
	The column poured toward me.
	Aine shrieked. I’m sure I looked bizarre enough, glowing all over with a green nimbus. Shaineen was inside me; her restless energy was zinging up and down my spine, through my bowels, around my brain, desperate to consume. There was no danger of that. Vigils cannot possess, they can only defend. Being as stupid as the day is long, however, none of them realize this.
	“Is tu liom, is tu liom...” I began. Shaineen hummed with rage, causing spasms in muscle groups I didn’t even know I had. “Is tu agam, is me ag Idair, is i ag an nGhaist.”
	I repeated this while edging closer to the buns. My muscles were not entirely my own; they jerked and convulsed and twitched as I forced myself slowly toward the pillar. But as I repeated the spell, the pain lessened slightly. The old words have a soothing effect on the vigils, besides binding them. 
	I stretched my hands out over the food. Shaineen sensed something was up. My flesh stretched taut over my resisting bones but I held myself there. “Tag is ith is bi liom go deo!”
	In a livid, dazzling jade torrent the light gushed from me onto the buns, swarming over them and down the pedestal, then poured straight up to the ceiling, raising a pillar of clear green light from tiles to rafters. Inside the pillar the food began to glow, brighter and brighter until it exploded softly into a star. Shaineen had fed.
	I leaned heavily on the table. Aine watched with round eyes from a corner.
	“You did it, dhiaoc. That’s amazing. I can’t believe you did it.”
	“I can’t believe I’m going to have to do it three more times.”
	And indeed, almost before I could stand up again a ball of yellow light warped the air ahead of me. Wearily I switched dialects. Jayla’s was so dead there was no one left who could remember having heard a mortal speak it. Twelve cases and fourteen kinds of subjunctive are perhaps too much to ask mortals to cope with on a daily basis.
	“Greetings, Jayla. Will you join your colleague?”
	The ball pulsed, quietly. Apparently not.
	“I’ve always treated you well, Jayla. I’ll do my best not to fail again. Come back.”
	The globe remained unperturbed. I didn’t. I knew she would strike, suddenly, at the moment I’d stopped expecting it. Jayla is a little brighter than the others.
	“If you fight me, look to yourself,” I said. “You might do what you like with my body, but my self is proof against you, and it’s my self that does the fighting, isn’t it? And can you get in there to hurt it?” I turned to Aine. “Let her steam over there if she likes--”
	As soon as I took my eyes off her she was snapping toward me. I met her face on and drew her inside me.
	She was even angrier about that than Shaineen had been. The first spasm knocked me to the floor. Aine rushed forward.
	“Don’t!” I shouted. The pillar and its custard looked very far away, but I did my best. “Don’t touch me, it’ll burn.” I was safer on the floor, anyway. At least Aine kept it spotless and the boards were smooth. I dragged myself forward, painfully, still not quite believing this was happening. Had I known, when I entered the scoil, that someday I would be slithering across a plank floor towards a plate of custard with an ancient spirit trying to grill my innards by sheer force of psychic spleen, I might have thought twice about this career.
	When I finally reached the pillar, the words had calmed her enough to allow me to stand up. I extended twitching hands over the quivering mass.
	“Tag is ith is bi liom go deo.”
	With a final wrenching shudder she left me and devoured the custard. The globe hovered above the empty plate, shining smugly. Vigils and food are funny. You can almost hear them belch.
	“Two down,” I said.
	“Dhiaoc...” said Aine.
	I turned. At the sight of the amorphous pink fog I felt nearly faint with relief. Phredi was a pushover.
	“Phredi,” I said. “Look. Pumpkin bread. Your favorite. It’s all yours if you come back. I’m sorry I didn’t feed you. I promise to look after you better in the future, only get back there and don’t mess with me, I’m not ready for it.”
	The fog gently floated over, engulfed the bread, and consumed it, glowing happily. 
	“That was easy,” said Aine.
	“Disappointed, are we?” I snapped. “Zott’ll make up for it, trust me. He’s--AAAAGH, mac na mhada! Hell, death and blood!”
	I said this because the room had unreasonably become an electric blue cyclone of which I was the unfortunate center. Zott’s fire whipped around and through me, passing into my body and out and back in, a process infinitely more painful than simply entering it and staying there. Zott churned the tornado faster, raising the level of pain until I could barely pull myself together to say the words. “Is tu liom, is tu liom, is--YEEEEEAGH!!” 
	Zott hurled me against the wall. I could hear Aine crying. I couldn’t blame her. There I was, her dhiaoc, the woman responsible for initiating her into Idair’s mysteries, spread-eagled and screaming curses as a blue whirlwind tried to think what else it could do to me. I repeated the words. The cyclone slowed. Carefully, I approached the last pillar.
	“Is tu agam, is me ag--fnaaaaaaaa, you SUCK!!” All right, Theamh, so he’s got you on the ceiling. That’s no excuse for that kind of language. Nothing you can’t handle. It’s just like being on the floor, only gravity works backwards. 
	I wriggled along on my back until I was over the fourth pedestal. I flung an arm out toward it.
	“Tag it ith is bi liom go deo already!”
	The blue shot in a straight bolt to the trencher. I fell even straighter. 
	“Dhiaoc! Dhiaoc, are you all right?”
	I groaned.
	“Dhiaoc!”
	“Is Zott at his post and quiet?”
	“Yes, dhiaoc. Are you all right?”
	“ ‘All right’ is a very subjective term, Aine.”
	I was still flat on my stomach where I had fallen. I wasn’t sure if I had broken anything. I was sure, though, that it would be a few minutes before I could move.
	“Let me help you--”
	“No, thank you,” I said, rolling painfully onto my back. “I think I’ll just lie here for a bit until I’ve recovered the use of my limbs. If you could maybe...”
	“Anything, dhiaoc.”
	“Heat up some tomato soup?”
	“Of course, dhiaoc. Are you sure--”
	“GO!”
	She went.
	I contemplated the ceiling. I know that ceiling well. It had looked almost the same after I first captured the vigils. I know because I contemplated it then too. I’ve thought of putting a mural on it, but I never seem to have the time.
	When Aine returned with the soup, I was still there.
	“Dhiaoc...”
	“What do you think, Aine? A nice painting of the Coming up there, Idair on the left, Sincil on the right over that bad patch of plaster, and the tilu tree branches covering the scorch mark right above Shaineen’s plinth...”
	“Can you get up? Are you hurt?”
	“Aha! I can move my arm. Well, I know my back’s not broken, that’s something.” I sat up. “I’ll have my soup from here, I think, no sense in pushing it.” I took the soup. My arms were a little shaky but they did what they were told. “Thanks.”
	“Dhiaoc, are you going to be all right?”
	“I think so. The fall knocked the wind out of me, but probably I was limp enough by then that nothing else happened.”
	“Thank Idair.”
	“No kidding.”
	“Are you angry with me? Because you should be.” I sighed. “You gave me a direct order and I willfully disobeyed it. I could be expelled for that.”
	“Only if I charge you.”
	“But I should be punished! I put your life at risk! I’m a bad apprentice! Say something! Aren’t you angry?”
	“Of  course I’m angry! Catch your vigils and then come tell me if you ever want to do it again. Falling from the ceiling is trivial compared to what they do to some people. But now you’ve seen what’s involved, you will of course not do this again.”
	“Oh no.”
	“See? You’ve learned something. That’s what you’re here for.” I stood up. “All limbs still in working order. Fabulous.” I plumped into a chair. “Speaking of which, since I’m not starting on the child till I get my strength back, we may as well do freagair now.”
	“But dhiaoc, you’re worn out. I can skip a day. It’s my fault anyway.”
	“Aine, if I stopped your education every time something like this happened it’d take you 90 years to get your orders. And you must have questions.”
	We went through to the study, passing Mna’s room. She was in the doorway. 
	“Shriia, are you all right?”
	“Why does nobody ever use my name even though I specifically ask them to?” was my somewhat irrelevant answer. “Sorry. I’m safe, anyhow. In fact, as soon as I’ve had a bit of a rest, I’ll need you and the child in the laboratory but just relax for now.”
	She smiled at me. “You relax too, shriia. You look a little...”
	“Are the bruises showing already?”
	“No...no...” She was giggling. So was Frih. Even Aine cracked a smile.
	“What? What?”
	“Your hair,” she finally gasped, and burst out laughing.
	I looked in the mirror. It was standing on end. And I have long hair.
	“It happens,” I said. “As long as my life is intact I don’t care so much about my dignity. Come on, Aine, you can watch my hair settle as we work.”
	We sat facing each other across the study table. Aine looked at me, hands flat on the table, eyes bright. Aine never takes notes. She remembers everything.
	“By Idair’s power and in the name of the spirit, which we will never know,” I began.
	“Bi I go deo,” Aine answered.
	“Ceard a bfhuil thu ag iarradh?”
	“Ta me ag iarradh shri.”
	Freagair, or Questions, is conducted in Old Tongue. For the sake of the tale I’m shifting into vernacular. You’ll thank me for it. “Ask and I answer.”
	“Why do the vigils have to enter you?”
	“In order to bond. To protect you, they have to be attached to you on the psychic level, which only happens when they enter. Once they’re in you and you say the spell, they’re bonded.”
	“But Phredi didn’t enter you.”
	“Phredi voluntarily resumed its post. That meant it agreed to reactivate our former bond. Since the others chose not to honor it I had to form another.”
	“Why do you have to feed them?”
	“It cements the bond. Once they’ve eaten they’re yours--for one cycle of the moon. The bond breaks 28 days after feeding. So you have to feed them before it breaks.”
	“Are they dark or bright?”
	“Ah. Well...they’re ancient. They pre-date Idair’s coming. Before her there was a lot more ambiguity in the world. The vigils--they’re good at heart, I think. They’re just so appallingly stupid that they can’t be trusted to recognize the good. Often they end up bound to dark users.”
	“How do they absorb the food?”
	“No one knows.”
	“Why four?”
	“There are four kinds of vigil--each lives in one of the four encircling spheres and speaks a different language. Not everyone goes to the trouble of catching four. But for a really tight shield you need one from each sphere.”
	“And once you have, they’re invincible?”
	“I don’t know. But they do a good job. At the very least, they warn you.”
	She nodded to show she understood, but there was an unanswered question still in there. I waited.
	“Do--do you...” This hesitancy was unusual; generally freagair was the one time that she spoke quickly, deliberately, and without her habitual underconfidence. “Do you know...why she came after you?”
	I sat back, exhaling my tension.
	“I would say just for spite,” I answered, my fingers tapping slowly on the table. “But that’s the thing to remember about Lythril. She’s got spite, meanness, and cruelty in her, and plenty of it. But she doesn’t do evil just for the pleasure of it. She has reasons for what she does--reasons that always go back to her own profit and the power of the Dark One.” A line of worry had appeared between Aine’s eyebrows. “She hates me, and I hate her. But that alone isn’t enough to make her violate her exile, find a way through the border, and make an attempt on me in public.” 
	“Then what else is there?”
	“That’s what I don’t know.”
	Thinking this over, Aine fell silent. When she found her voice it was smaller.
	“Do you think...it has something to do with the child?”
	“I don’t see how. Lythril’s never been interested in children the way some dark users are. But at the same time...” I sighed. “It’s funny, her making that attempt right after Mna came to me. It could just be a coincidence. But you’ll find in this business, Aine, that coincidences usually aren’t. Idair can’t solve all of our riddles, but she does what she can to give us hints.”
	I was used to seeing her afraid, but there was something different about the anxiety in her face and her body as she sat awkwardly forward to put her next question. Something sad, almost something ashamed.
	“Will she make another try, do you think?”
	“Not today,” I said, with as confident a smile as I could flash. “But I’d be afraid to take bets on tomorrow.” She really was looking alarmed. I tried to laugh it off. “But she’s got better things to do with her time--and so do I. We’ll hunker down and get started on the child, and now that the vigils are fed and happy, she can attack me all she wants.” Aine looked a little more comforted, having seen them in action. “Ask me about something else, if you’ve still got questions. Have you?”
	Aine nodded, then came out with it. “Why do you sleep on the floor?”
	I blinked.
	“I am only bound to answer questions about magic. My reasons for that are not directly related to the magic arts, and I am not ready to give them to you.”
	“Is it some kind of discipline? Purification?”
	“I don’t sleep on the floor because I think it serves Idair. Probably it’s wrong of me to do it. But even so, it hurts no one but me. Therefore I continue. But don’t you start. It’s uncomfortable. Although the medicals tell me it’s good for the spine.” I smiled at her, but she was unconvinced. I didn’t know if she asked because she had heard the story or if she had just wondered. But she knew enough about me to know I wasn’t doing it to improve my posture.
	“What purpose does it serve, then?”
	“It serves no purpose, beyond keeping a memory alive. Aine, unless you have another question about magic, I think we’re done here.”
	“I’m sorry, dhiaoc.” It hurt her feelings that I wouldn’t tell her. But I wasn’t going to. “I do have one more question.”
	“Fire away.”
	She gritted her teeth at the pun. “What will happen to the child if he’s not brought back?”
	“One of two things. He will sicken and eventually die, or...”
	“Or...”
	“Or something else will fill the space inside him.”
	“And then what happens?”
	I spread my hands in defeat. “He grows up possessed. When his body is grown enough to do the will of whatever’s in him, he’ll do something, and it will probably not be very nice. After that the possessor will destroy his body and go back where it came from.”
	“Can you bring him back?”
	I smiled at her sadly. “Ah, now that I don’t know, Aine.”
	After another pause, she said, “That’s all.”
	“Then it’s ended.”
	We both stood up. I took a deep breath.
	“Well,” I said. “Now that I’ve given my lecture, fought a battle, snared four vigils and answered your questions, I think I’m ready to go look for a missing child’s spirit up and down the 98 levels of incorporeal existence. Want to come watch?”
	Slowly she grasped the fact that I was trying to be funny. “Naturally.”
	“Let’s go then.”

II.
Calling

	Mna sat with the twins in the spare room. Frih toddled uncertainly around, waving his arms for balance and stopping to peer in that myopic toddler way at things that caught his attention. The taken child lay where he had been put, showing no interest in his surroundings. Even when she leapt forward to apprehend Frih before he could pull the jar with the roses off the sill onto his head, I could see her keeping one eye on the other child, hoping he would laugh, clap his hands, cry, do something. He didn’t, of course. I would have been rather disturbed if he had. His complete vacuity was agonizing for his mother but to me it meant that there was still time. Nothing had come to take his place. Or if it had, it was still hiding. 
	Aine followed me into the room as Mna finished delivering her “behave” lecture to Frih, who looked up at me with wide, frightened eyes. 
	“This is the shriia, Frih,” Mna said. “Greet the shriia.” 
	He stared in panic, then wrapped his arms around his mother’s knees with vise-like grip, hiding his face in her skirt.
	“It’s all right,” I said. “He’s in a strange place and it must be frightening to have so much attention.” As I went to look at the taken child, Frih turned his head to watch me. He didn’t like a stranger interfering with his brother. “What’s this one’s used name?”
	“Crann.” At the sound of it Frih looked attentive, but there was no change in the other child. I opened his mouth; he was dehydrated and would have been wailing with hunger if he could.
	“First thing is to get some food into him,” I said, hefting Crann and leading Aine, Mna and Frih down the passage to the laboratory.
	“He won’t take anything.”
	“I know. Oh, say hello to the vigils.” Mna and Frih balked on the doorstep. “It’s all right, they may sort of wave over you as we pass but they won’t hurt you.” I walked across between the pedestals, then stopped when I realized no one was following me. Mna was still frozen in the doorway, with Frih clinging for dear life. 
	“Really, they won’t hurt you.”
	Mna stared at me, hard, then laughed and shook her head. “Come on, Frih.” She pulled him into her arms and followed Aine across the room into the second chamber.
	If she’d come here to hurt me they would have sensed that and warned me. As it was, they took little notice of them. I settled her and Frih in a chair on one side of the worktable and myself on the other. Aine hovered a little behind me, watching as I seated Crann on the table in front of me.
	“Now, I want to explain so you don’t get your hopes up,” I told Mna. “I’m going to set up a link to the child that will allow me to control his body. That way I can get him to take food. But when you see him moving, remember that doesn’t mean he’s back.” Mna nodded. 
	“Dhiaoc...” Aine hesitated.
	“Yes?”
	“Could...do you think I could do it? I’ve made a lot of progress...”
	“That’s up to Mna, really.” She looked over. “Aine’s been working on projection and she’d like to help. I think she’s ready, but it’s your decision; if you’d rather I handle it I will.”
	Mna looked doubtful. “Is there any danger?”
	“Oh, no, he’s quite safe.” There wasn’t really any way to make a child in his condition worse, but there was no need to add that. 
	“Well then...yes, it’s all right.”
	She still looked uneasy. “Tell you what--I’ll go in first and make the link and then I’ll transfer control to Aine, will that make this less nerve-wracking?” Mna nodded gratefully. “Probably a good idea anyway in case there is something in there.” I held the child’s head so that his eyes were on mine. “All right, little man, here we go.”
	Staring into the subject’s eyes isn’t technically necessary and doesn’t technically help, but I find that the eyes work as a focus point. We’re used to thinking of them as where a person’s spirit shows through, and even though that’s not literally true the act of looking serves as a metaphor for the mental effort. It doesn’t work for everyone. Harani had trouble with projection as an apprentice because she tried to do it the way her dhiaoc told her; it was a while before it occurred to someone that since Harani couldn’t see this technique was probably not helping. She got better results by taking the subject’s hands, and now a lot of the younger shriias prefer that method, even the sighted ones.
	No warning crackled at the edges of his mindspace when mine moved into it. Intellectually I had expected that but it was still a shock. Even in the womb children have some kind of defense, a boundary that reacts and repels when it touches the vibrating edges of a foreign consciousness. I slipped right in, and it was a bad feeling--a hollow nauseating shock. Mindspace shouldn’t ever be that empty.
	I scoured his interior, looking for anything sentient. Beyond a small, dull throb not unlike what you get from the mind of an insect or a snail, there was nothing but the magnified echo of my own searching.
	“They really cleaned him out,” I said. Anything that might have once had something to do with the will was gone; they’d left him enough for involuntary bodily functions but nothing else. I extended myself slowly into the new shape, tracing the contours and skimming along the borders where flesh and thought translate. It didn’t take long to get oriented.
	“Ah--”
	Despite my warning Mna cried out in relief when Crann’s head turned toward her. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know this is painful. But he has to eat.” She nodded. Crann crawled toward her across the table. Frih watched, with fear and confusion rather than joy. He knew without being told that this wasn’t his brother.
	“There’s nothing else inside him, at least,” I said. “And while he’s under my protection the vigils should keep him clean. Aine, would you like to take over?”
	Aine nodded. I handed my chair over to her. She opened her link to me. <All right, I’m bringing up the connection. Can you pick out his signal?>
	After a few moments of concentration she said, <It’s very weak.>
	<Yes, and it’s only that strong because I’m joined with it. Have you got him?>
	“I’ve got him.”
	Mna and Frih both stared at Crann, who had spoken the words along with Aine, in the high treble of a child’s voice but with the practiced articulation of an adult’s.
	<Well, you’re in at the speech level anyhow.> In answer to Mna’s stricken stare, I explained. “Aine’s not used to projecting into humans and she hasn’t quite got the hang of differentiation. Her actions are being performed on both bodies.” I closed my connection to Crann. <Follow it deeper. Fill out the space.>
	<What does that mean?>
	A question I’d asked my own dhiaoc many a time. <Visualize what’s happening. If you had to draw the connection between your mind and his what would it look like?>
	<Like...like...there’s a rope, and it’s stretched out taut at both ends, and...I’m one of the strands braided into it. I’m a bright...I’m kind of a bright yellow strand running through this piece of brown rope.>
	<Good. Now when you talk, what happens?>
	“When I--” said Aine and Crann. Poor Mna; I would have to make this up to her somehow. <The yellow strand gets brighter and the rope vibrates.>
	<All right. What you want is to start bleeding through until you’re saturating the whole rope. Can you do that?>
	After a couple minutes she let me know that she had.
	<Now. Melt the rope.>
	<What?>
	<Dissolve. Let it turn into a liquid and flow until it takes some kind of a shape.>
	I watched her face working as she tried to do this. <Try not to tense up. Imagine your own body melting.> This went against the grain of Aine’s personality, as indeed it still goes against mine, but after several minutes of struggle she finally did seem to have mastered it. <What does it look like now?>
	<I’m...we’re...aah!> She flinched; Crann flinched with her.
	<Hit the boundary?>
	<I guess so.>
	<Take a few minutes to learn the translation points and then try moving him.>
	She stared abstractedly into space, then lifted one arm cautiously. Crann lifted his.
	<All right, you’re in business. Take it from here.> I closed our link. “We’re going to see if he’ll nurse.” Mna nodded and bared one of her breasts. Aine and Crann both looked disturbed.
	“Go ahead and pick him up,” I told Mna. She took Crann, who looked much more tense and worried than a two-year-old generally does, and held him to her breast. For a moment nothing happened.
	“Get over it, Aine,” I said.
	Slowly, Crann’s face turned toward Mna’s breast. He seemed to be having a lot of trouble finding the nipple.
	“Aine--”
	“I can’t--” she and Crann said.
	“Close your eyes.” She closed hers; Crann closed his. Aine’s head moved, with Crann’s, searching blindly for the nipple. His mouth closed around it and he began nursing.
	Mna held the child unhappily. It can’t be fun to nurse a stranger, even if it does look and feel like your own child. I could see from the unchildlike hesitancy and deliberation of his sucking, and the expression on Aine’s face, that she was no more comfortable than Mna was. She hadn’t known that the twins were still nursing.
	“Stop when it seems like he’s full.”
	Mna looked over at Aine, whose eyes were closed and whose mouth was also working, although only on air. While we watched, her expression of pained resignation gradually changed to one of absurd contentment. Mna and I looked at each other.
	“Don’t laugh,” I mouthed, feeling close to the brink myself. It was no use; Mna burst into loud, unrestrained laughter. Aine’s eyes opened and she snapped back in her seat with a start. The child flopped limp in Mna’s arms.
	“Well, that’s the end of that session,” I said. Mna settled the child sadly over her shoulder. “Would you say he got what he needed, Aine?” 
	She nodded, rather curtly.
	“Please,” Mna said. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself. You just looked...” The rest of the sentence disappeared in laughter, which I am afraid I was tempted to join. 
	“Very successful for your first try.” I patted Aine on the shoulder. “Next time we’ll work on differentiation. We’ll be doing this several times a day so you’ll get plenty of practice. And in the interest of everyone concerned, Mna, I think it might be as well to start weaning them.”
	“Yes,” said Mna. “I suppose that’d be for the best.”
	“Now we can start looking. Mna, I’m going to need your help here. What we’re going to do,” I explained as she moved toward me, “is call for him. And since he’s flesh of your flesh, your call will have a much greater pull on him than mine. But for him to hear it we need to get it into other dimensions and that’s where I’m going to help. Have you ever linked with a stranger before?” She shook her head. “I’ll try to make this painless.” I positioned her across the table. “Look into my eyes and relax.”
	It is, of course, difficult to relax when your inanimate child is slumped in a heap next to you, a supernaturally intent and eager student is staring at you as if she would love to take notes, and a stranger is trying to enter your skull. But the angry, humming challenge that met me at the edge of her mindspace was a relief after Crann. I waited for the ring of warning fire to open as she felt my answer and lost her fear. After several minutes I realized that wasn’t going to happen on its own.
	“You have to trust me, Mna.”
	“I do, shriia--of course--I just--”
	Around her mindspace the flames were brighter and the circle was closing. “It’s all right. Listen.” 
	The song for this changes with every subject. The established text will do the job, but with experience you learn to work what you pick up from the subject into the words. Mna clearly wanted more than the standard assurance that my entry would be temporary and that I had no plans to stay. Everyone has places they don’t want you going, but Mna’s privacy bit with uncommon fierceness. Learning the shape of the spaces hidden under the whitest heat of that protective flame, I was finally able to say what she needed to hear.

	there are other memories
	than the memory of pain
	find them and when they are found
	give me these and only these

	neither lover, friend nor kin
	I know what I cannot claim
	keep bound up what you have bound
	close your wounds, protect your skin

	here where your silences are
	I will never need to go
	I do not need, to give you voice,
	to press the bruise, unseam the scar

	happy, laughing, bright-eyed, fair,
	as he was not long ago,
	find him living, find your boy--
	where you find him, meet me there.
It loses something in a translation, even mine. A patch of the perimeter bled into quiet light. Slowly, carefully, I glided into the memory. It was an ordinary scene--she had just finished bathing him, and was tossing him and catching him in the air while Frih looked on, laughing. Both looked completely unlike their present selves--animated, fearless, Frih babbling nonsense and Crann squealing with delight. Simple action--catch and release, flight and rest--played lovingly, tenderly, over and over. 
	<Can you hear me, Mna?>
	“Yes, shriia, I--” 
	<You don’t need to speak. Are you ready to look for him?>
	I knew it before she said it. <I’ve been ready for days, shriia.>
	<I’ll do the traveling, you do the talking. Stay in this memory, it’ll keep you grounded. You don’t need to see this.>
	<See what?>
	<Never mind. Call for him.>
	It was a wordless cry, a kind of ache that burst sharp from her heart with the clean, bitter taste of a pure thing. Longing, lack, a keen over an emptiness that will ruin life and defeat time. Something to which my spirit sent up a faint echo I was hoping she couldn’t detect. Wrapping myself around that cry, I launched my specter into the ether.
	What happens to the ordinary forms of perception when the air around you buckles, splits, and gives birth to ninety-eight distinct but merging realms of vision, each with its own peculiar elements, properties and inhabiting demons, is something that pretty much defies description, and I won’t try to convey it to you. It’s all you can do to remember that you have a body, that it’s seated in a chair, that the law of gravity is acting upon it, and that the infinity of intersection, overlap, and superimposition that has just opened up and sucked you in is something that nobody besides yourself and a select group of like-minded lunatics truly considers real. Let alone trying to pick out a path that will take you through the different levels and still lead you back to that body you left there sitting in the chair with the rest of the material world.
	Mna kept up the cry for a long time, but its tenor changed as we went further in. She was not a woman to take pain without anger. You can’t get blood from an incorporeal being but Mna was out for the ethereal equivalent, whatever that is. After sweeping through about eighteen different planes I decided it had reached the point where if Crann did hear her, he’d go running from the spanking he’d be sure he was in for. 
	<We’re going back now, Mna. You can stop.>
	<Have you found him?>
	<No, but we’re not going to on this try. You can let it drop.>
	And with bitterness, it came back, <Maybe you can, shriia. I can’t.>
	The thought was there although she tried not to say it. You don’t have children. 
	Perhaps I brought us back a little more abruptly than necessary. She did seem a little disoriented, blinking at the child and everything else. Aine looked expectantly at me.
	“Nope,” I said. “The sowlths, enfrui, yspil, wrond, and their close relations and neighbors have had nothing to do with the boy. So there’s only eighty-odd places left...”
	Mna was looking on in alarm. “How often will we have to do that?”
	“Till we find him or I satisfy myself that he’s not in the ether.”
	“If he’s not in the ether...where is he?”
	I laughed. Aine looked at me reproachfully. She was right, it wasn’t funny.
	“Well, Mna, there are several possibilities. He could have been pressed into service by a dark magician. He could be animating some other form. He could have been pulled into a river or a well or some other body of water that for whatever reason doesn’t have a genius and wanted one. A lot could happen. I’m hoping we’ll get to whoever took him before they dispose of him, because otherwise I could grow old searching for him.”
	This was perhaps not the best way to put things to a distressed mother. But Mna seemed to take it without much emotion. She had already assumed the worst.
	“I’m sorry, Mna. I was hoping we’d find him first time out and that would be the end of it.”
	“It’s not your fault, shriia.” She picked Crann up, looking at him with a face almost as emotionless as his own. “I had no idea the world was so big.”
	“Not big so much as deep,” I said absently.
	“What?”
	“Never mind...” Frih took her other hand. I led them back through the vigileacha into the main living area. I was surprised to find that it was already dark. Aine lit the lamps and I threw myself into one of the chairs.
	“Aine, how long were we in there?”
	“Four and a half hours, dhiaoc.”
	“No wonder I feel like a three-day corpse.”
	“Will you let me get supper for once?” Aine asked.
	“Yes. Go do it.” She left, smiling to herself.
	Mna let Frih wander the room, keeping a third eye on him in that way mothers do. “This is her punishment?” I blinked. “For forgetting that precaution.”
	“To tell you the truth, I’m just too tired to do it myself.” I settled back in the chair. “I suppose I could rationalize it that way, but it’s a dangerous habit to get into. I mean, it’s true enough that if I had her do all the chores around here for the next three years it’d be no more than just, but I wasn’t thinking about that when I said yes.”
	“What did she do?”
	I waved an arm dismissively. “It’s been fixed, don’t worry about it.” 
	“If that means you’re safe now, I’m glad,” she said. “Shriia...”
	“Yes?”
	“I’m sorry if I offended you.”
	“Offended me?”
	“I mean--of course it doesn’t matter that you don’t have children.”
	“Mna...” I began wearily.
	“I only--it doesn’t matter but--you can’t know--”
	“It does matter,” I cut in. “That’s why I needed you to call him. I never have and never will feel what you’re feeling. You’re a mother, I’m not. It makes a difference.”
	I wasn’t doing a very good job of convincing her that I wasn’t offended. “Mna, we give these things up when we take our orders and what we get in return is worth everything...but it doesn’t mean there are no regrets.”
	Mna looked at me for a long time. Finally, she said, “Shriias always tell the truth.”
	“Yes.”
	“Why then have I never heard a shriia say that?”
	“Most shriias won’t talk about this. As you can see, it makes us uncomfortable.”
	“I’m sorry--I didn’t mean--”
	“No, I know,” I said, heading to the kitchen. “I’m going to see how Aine’s doing with the supper.”
	“I thought you were going to let her do it.”
	“Yes, well, so did I,” I answered,.
	“I thought you were going to let me do it,” Aine said when I appeared.
	“I’ve said this before but apparently it bears repeating. I don’t like having you cook for me. It feels like taking advantage.” I opened the oven and threw some fire into it. 
	“You’re my dhiaoc--”
	“Don’t start, Aine, it’s been a long day. Where’s the fennel?”
	“Over in the--” A high, sharp tone, like the ring of struck glass, broke suddenly through the air. I closed my eyes in silent misery.
	“Aine, tell me I’m not on call tonight.”
	“I’m afraid I can’t do that, dhiaoc.”
	Saying many profane words in distinct and emphatic tones, I took the fire back and went to go answer the damn thing.
	Mna was a little surprised to see me stomping back through the living area. Passing into the laboratory, I flung open a chest in the corner and extracted the waterglobe.
	I placed it on its glass pedestal, tried to scrape together whatever scraps of politeness and courtesy might be left in me, and ran my hands over its surface. The water inside it shimmered, then broke into a wavering, unstable image of a man’s face. Beyond the fact that he had yellow hair and sunburnt skin I couldn’t tell much about it.
	“This is Theamh. Your call has reached me. What do you need?”
	“Shriia--” He sounded upset. Vaguely familiar, also, but primarily upset. “Shriia, I--it’s just that--” He trailed off into tongue-tied anxiety. My patience ran out.
	“It has been a very long day and I am not in a good mood. State the nature of the magical emergency, and it had better be a big one.”
	This did not make him any less nervous. “I--it isn’t very big, I won’t bother you--”
	“Wait a minute. Taric, is that you?”
	His relief was palpable. “Yes.”
	“You should identify yourself, you know, these things don’t reproduce images very well. How are you? What’s up?”
	“Well, shriia, it’s--I’m sorry to bother you--”
	“It’s not your fault I’m on call or that I’m in a bad mood, Taric, please forgive me for snapping at you. Just tell me what the problem is.”
	“I--Bearla is due to foal soon, or I wouldn’t bother--I’d just let them run it out--but I’ve only got the two horses and--”
	“Taric,” I said patiently, “are you trying to tell me that the rappari have got your horses?”
	“Yes, shriia.”
	“I’m on my way.”
	“Are you sure?”
	“Taric, it will be a positive pleasure for me to come out there and rid you of them.”
	“Really?”
	“I wouldn’t say that if I didn’t mean it. Wait by the summoning well.”
	“Thank you, shriia.”
	Aine was explaining to Mna when I reemerged. “It’s the water, see, all water is linked in the same source. So a message sent into one body will transmit to others. What you do is take a glass that will vibrate at the right--who was it, dhiaoc?”
	“Strangely enough, it was Mna’s new friend Taric. Seems he has himself a little rappari problem.”
	Aine’s eyes lit up. “Can I come?”
	“No, if I bring you that leaves Mna here alone with the twins. I don’t want to come back and find out Frih wandered into the vigileacha and got eaten by Zott.”
	I hoped Mna wasn’t offended. The unsaid reason of course is that I don’t trust strangers in my house. But it’s true enough that a two year old could get into a lot of trouble in there. Being eaten by Zott was probably one of the worst things that could happen to him but it was by no means the only one.
	I went out to the stables for Cinhe. When I was a child I had always wanted a white horse, but I was glad when I found Cinhe that she was a dapple gray. I realized the moment I looked at her--me, on a white horse, would be ridiculous. But an awkward, too-thin dapple gray with a long, nervous nose, large liquid black eyes and a flax-colored mane streaked with dark gray, that was a horse that could relate to me. 
	After the usual greeting, I swung myself onto her bare back. “We’re going after the rappari, Cinhe,” I said, twisting the strands of her mane in my hands. “What do you think about that?”
	She thought a lot of it. She was at the edge of the clearing almost before I could lift the shield. 
	“Easy, girl. We won’t get there if you don’t let me give you directions.” She slowed down, but I could feel the impatience. Most horses are skittish about this kind of work--they are, quite sensibly, terrified of the rappari and go near them only under duress and with extreme reluctance. Cinhe, on the other hand, appears to spend all of her free time just waiting for another crack at the bastards. She was foaled early by a mare who had been run down by them, which was why when I was looking for my horse nobody at the stables showed her to me--she was too small, too unsteady, too shy and high-strung. I found her anyway, after the owners had given up on me and left me to my own devices. When I first linked with her I found memories that went back to that unready birth, the long painful ride within the walls of her mother’s failing body, then the bloody fight out of that body, blinking through afterbirth over shaking legs at her exhausted, dying mother.
	I hung a globe of flame a few inches above her head. It threw enough light in front of and around her to give us some idea of where the path ended and the trees began. And to send the nocturnal animals scuttling away as we approached. 
	It wasn’t long before I saw the lit beacon at the summoning well. Taric was standing underneath it. I pulled up next to him.
	“Shriia, thank you for--”
	“Get on the horse and take me to them.”
	He swung himself up behind me. “Up the path to the left, shriia, about a mile and a half. That’s my holding.”
	Taric dismounted when we reached his farm. It wasn’t wretchedness-caliber, but it was clear from the size and construction of Taric’s cottage that his grip on prosperity was tenuous. A rickety paddock next to the house enclosed a small flock of sheep. They were on their feet and making noise as they stared red-eyed at the spectacle in the pasture. 
	In folk art the rappari are usually represented as wraithlike humans, trailing a lot of tattered, ethereal drapery behind them as they dig their undead heels into the horses’ sides. Of course, this is not what you see when you look at horses being run by them. What you see is an exhausted animal, with maddened eyes and gobbets of froth dripping from an open mouth, barreling hell-bent in one direction or another as fast as its legs will carry it.
	I scratched the hair around Cinhe’s ears. “Ready, girl?”
	The link clicked open.
	<We’ll take the mother first.>
	At my cue, Cinhe tore up the pasture toward the roan mare with the heavy, thickened abdomen who was skittering along the edge of the field. She wasn’t going very fast, which meant that she must be almost at the end of her strength. I shook out a handful of showdust and leaned forward over one of Cinhe’s shoulders as she gained on her. When I could hear Bearla’s labored breathing and see the sweat running in streams down her matted fur, I fired the showdust toward her on a small burst.
	The phosphorescence enveloped her briefly, then coagulated and clung to a vague, shifting shape that encircled her about the neck and withers. Cinhe shot past, doubling back on the other side. When we passed the shape, I fired at her from my free hand. 
	“Teir abhaile rapparan!”
	It contracted, shuddered, and then began to thin out, sliding along her back and down her flanks. Bearla let out a stricken, panicked whinny that rang with all the terror of a human scream. The thing that was wrapping itself around her now threw her off-course, zigging and zagging in crazy patterns across the pasture, but Cinhe has been through this before and isn’t thrown off easily. With a relatively simple feint she brought me head to head with the other horse. I gave it the fire from both hands.
	The fire ran crackling over the edges of the enveloping shape. Then it poured up into the air above Bearla’s back, pulling itself into a tight, spark-spitting ball. Bearla, after staggering forward, stopped and stood panting, sucking the air into her lungs in great shuddering gasps. A thin tendril of bright blue lightning ran over the ball’s surface. It exploded into a cloud of sparks, which flickered out as a wailing sigh documented this particular rapparan’s return to the ether.
	<Well done, Cinhe. Let’s take a rest before--all right then, let’s not.>
	Cinhe was already off after the next victim, an aging stallion with wide hooves, thick legs and a seriously outraged expression. He was holding up better physically, but he was equally terrified, if not more so. Since he was galloping at a pretty good clip it took me longer to bring Cinhe alongside him. We had done two or three laps of the pasture, which afforded me several different views of Taric attending to Bearla up in the northwest corner, before I was able to lift myself up on Cinhe’s back and fire the showdust.
	When the phosphorescence began dancing along his back, the stallion suddenly let out a screech and shot forward in a spasm of panic. I urged Cinhe after him. The dust was taking too long to settle; instead of defining a shape it swirled in a vague envelope, agitated in spirals and whorls and trailing thin wisps of blue pallid light. When Cinhe brought me within shooting distance I fired another burst.
	This time the light stuck, but it behaved very oddly. It seemed to separate, defining itself into two distinct and clashing but still joined shapes. I could make out a bluish glob that seemed localized over the middle of the horse’s back, but down his sides it bled into a sap-green form that clung like a bundle to the underside of his stomach. 
	<Cinhe, bring me up alongside his left flank. Not too close.>
	She strained forward and, with all legs pumping and her chest beginning to heave, hauled herself up until they were neck and neck. Clutching her mane with my left hand and keeping as tight a grip with my legs as I could, I swung myself down her side to get a closer look. It brought me closer to those pounding hooves than I really wanted to be, and with the jostling and bouncing it was hard to get a fix on it. But underneath the sap-green light that enveloped and blurred it, there was a darker, bluer form--a round shape attached by a neck to a body that, curled up as it was, seemed to have four limbs, all attached to the hairy underbelly of the horse who would run himself to death within minutes unless I got rid of the thing that was riding his back. 
	The round part of the bluish form turned to look up at what it was clinging to. The profile was unmistakable, even in the dark hanging from the side of a galloping horse. Human features. And not just human. Familiar.
	No. It really wasn’t possible.
	But things seem likely in this kind of situation that wouldn’t if you were sitting at home in the laboratory weighing the probabilities. 
	“Crann?” I shouted.
	The head turned. Two large eyes, veiled by the green but dark beneath it.
	Saving the stallion suddenly became my second priority. If I sent the rapparan back home he would take this...passenger with him, and I might never find him again. I was going to have to bring him in before I sent the other thing off.
	I pulled myself back into my usual position. <Drop back, this may take a minute.>
	She wasn’t sure why I wasn’t following the routine, but she did as I asked. It’s difficult to do this kind of precise adjustment on your inner space while riding bareback after a panicked and galloping animal. When I pushed Cinhe to catch up, I wasn’t entirely satisfied that I had sealed off the capture space, but it was either take the risk or lose the chance; the stallion was exhausted and once he dropped the rapparan would take no further interest in our plane. I swung myself down on a level with the stallion’s belly and extended my free arm. A slow, red-orange and transparent stream of flame left my fingers and traveled across the air toward the huddled green shape.
	A burst of blue light sizzled down the stallion’s side. Electric beams went forking up the stream toward my arm. 
	Fortunately when the convulsion threw me off Cinhe the stallion didn’t trample me. One must be thankful for small mercies. In the brief glances I got at my own limbs as I flailed about on the grass, I saw tiny flickering points of light dancing all over me, no doubt causing the spastic and painful muscle contractions that were turning me into a writhing lunatic. Above the noise of the stallion continuing his ride, and Cinhe whinnying in alarm and fear, I could hear Taric shouting. I tried to tell him not to come any nearer, but my face was no more under my own control than the rest of me, and it came out as an unformed shriek. He was fool enough to put a hand on my arm to restrain me.
	The sparks rushed up his arm. He jerked it back with a cry of pain. It was unfortunate for him, but the change of direction broke its grip just enough to give me an opening. There was an angry humming sound, and a burst of short white flame from every pore of my body, and my invisible scourge was repelled into the space around us.
	I got to my feet as quickly as I could, but it had already disappeared, dissolving into the air with a faint smell of burning but nothing else. Cinhe was already nearby, staring at me in panic. Taric was shaking his arm out in shock.
	I patted Cinhe’s neck. The link had closed when I fell off, but even without it I knew what she was thinking. Something along the lines of what I was thinking, which was “What the HELL?”
	“It’s all right, girl. We’ll take a minute and g--no, Cinhe, COME HERE!”
	She was off without me, after the rapparan. What she was going to do when she got there was something she hadn’t thought about. Being linked during these operations, she had probably gotten the impression that she was doing the banishment as well as the chasing down.
	“CINHE!” She wasn’t listening. She pulled up alongside the stallion, then past him. Then turned back toward the two of us, with him trailing behind her. Aha.
	By the time she sped past me, I had the second try ready. This time I would do it simultaneously--trapping Crann with one hand and banishing the rapparan with the other. The stallion swung into view. I stepped forward and threw both streams.
	Before they reached their target it was gone. Blue and green together melted into nothing and fire shot unresisted over and under the midriff of a staggering and sweat-drenched horse.
	Taric dragged the bucket over and pushed it under the stallion’s nose. Once his breathing had returned to normal he shoved his head into the pail and began gulping it. Taric sighed. He looked at Cinhe, whose neck I was patting down, then at me. 
	“That’s one smart horse,” he said.
	“Yes, she is. I’m glad both your horses will be all right, I was afraid we’d lose this one.” I swung myself onto Cinhe’s back. “They shouldn’t be back for a while.”
	“Shriia, you’re not going already.” It took him a minute, but he made the offer. “Stay and have something to eat.”
	“Thanks, but I need to get home--there’s something very important I have to do.”
	“Is it Mna’s boy?”
	I looked closer at him. “Why do you ask?”
	“I--I was just wondering about him.”
	“So am I,” I said. “Keep the horses as quiet as you can for the next several days and don’t let Bearla do any heavy pulling for at least a week. If they come back, call as soon as you see them and request me, not whoever’s on call.”
	“Why?”
	“I’m taking an interest.”
	He nodded. “Idair with you.”
	
	Aine was waiting up in the living area when I finally got home. I’m usually cheerful and a little punchy when I come back from a ride after the rappari, which was perhaps why Aine took one look at my face and exclaimed, “Idair and Cailte, dhiaoc, what happened?”
	“If I knew, I’d be a happier woman. Is Mna up?”
	“No, we had dinner and then she and the children went to sleep.”
	“Get her up.”
	“Dhiaoc?”
	“I think I know where Crann is.” 
	Aine vanished.
	I went to the laboratory. After a while Mna, blinking and anxious, followed Aine in. Aine must have given her one of my shifts; it was billowing ridiculously on her lanky frame. I had the candles lit around the workspace and myself as braced as I was going to get. “I’m sorry to roust you out of bed, Mna, but--”
	“You’ve seen him?”
	“I think I saw him, attached to the underside of a horse. A strange place for a taken child to be, but then there’s a lot strange about this long, horrible night.” Mna was already getting used to me; she took her seat without boggling. “I’m opening the link.”
	She was there. <Where are we going?>
	<To visit the rappari. Start calling.>
	I hadn’t been to their plane yet, because I had had no reason to think I would find him there. The rappari don’t take much of an interest in humans. They like animals with more speed and endurance. Their plane is long but narrow, a twisting ribbon with joined ends that snakes between, around, and through the others. They’re restless beings, constantly in motion and never reaching anything that could count as a goal. My theory on why they ride animals is that it offers them the closest thing they have to a destination. Once the animal collapses, it’s the end of the ride. Then they have to return to their own plane, of course, but it offers them some kind of rest, a standstill, a moment of collection and pause--temporary, futile, but still something they can’t have where they are.
	Which makes tracking one down a tiring experience. There’s finding the ribbon, then bursting into it, then grabbing the trailing ends of the first rapparan that goes shooting by you and trying to coast along with it while you get your bearings. The one whose ethereal coattails I ended up clinging to was a relatively sedate trail of dull yellow light and dark interstices. It also appeared to have a penchant for conversation.
	<You are not from this place.>
	It’s all you can do sometimes not to sass them back. Now that’s brilliance. You see me holding a human shape and you deduce that I’m not from round here. Your reputation as the dimwits of the spirit world is clearly undeserved.  But that sort of thing is unwise.
	<I am a stranger. I am looking for another stranger.>
	We zipped past the northwest corner of the engtras’ habitat. <Like you?>
	<Like me only much smaller.>
	<What do you want here?>
	<I want to take the stranger and go back to the place we came from.>
	For a few minutes it was silent as we rushed through the twists and turns in the company of other rappari. None of them appeared to be the one I had dealt with. None of them took much notice of me. Their perpetual motion keeps them occupied.
	<You do not want to harm us.>
	<Why should I?>
	<The stranger does.>
	At this point I was not sure we were talking about the same stranger. <How?>
	<You said you were like him.>
	<We are from the same place. That’s all I meant.>
	There was a pause, and its light got slightly brighter.
	<There is another stranger here.>
	Mna. <She’s linked to me. She’s looking for him too.>
	<So many looking for the same stranger.>
	<Are there others?>
	<You said you were like him.>
	This repetition was sounding ominous. <I’m a shriia. You’ve met shriias before?>
	<Of course.>
	<You know what I do. The stranger doesn’t belong here. I’ve come to bring him back. That’s all.>
	<We want him gone.>
	<I will be happy to serve if you can just find him for me.>
	The rapparan sped up, zinging along like a rock down a crevasse, weaving in and out among the trails of the other rappari. I tried to check them for familiarity or unexplained green-tinged infant-shaped passengers, but none of them appeared to be what I was looking for. Finally, it came to as much of a stop as a rapparan can.
	<We want him gone.>
	<You want what I want. Where-->
	Aha. There it was, up ahead of us, the same blue luminescence with the same green pouch. The rapparan gave itself a sudden wrench, and jerked its tail out of my grasp. I rode the currents forward, gaining on it slowly.
	When Mna’s cry reached it I saw the green sac suddenly writhing, as if the figure wrapped inside it were struggling backwards against his host’s motion.
	<Definite reaction. Try it again.>
	Mna put all the strength she had left into it. The green light was now undulating, agitated, stirred into whorls by the action inside the globe. The rapparan was traveling at a fairly good clip, but its blue light was bleaching, as if it were exhausted. 
	The closer I got the stranger this all seemed. This rapparan wasn’t right, somehow. The darkness that held the bits of light and color together seemed agitated--eddying in strange curls between the strands of brightness, threatening to swamp the light around it. 
	Pondering this must have opened a crack in my mind somewhere. I felt the link to Mna go suddenly taut, and I knew that she had gotten a glimpse of what I was seeing. There was a sense of queasy disorientation, a dizzy and exhausted terror--and then the cry came again, louder, more agonized.
	A dark slit opened up at the join between the rapparan and the green pouch. I pulled myself forward, ready to take him when he fought his way out.
	The blue light suddenly tore off the pouch and out toward me with what looked like unfriendly intent. I swerved and it went hissing past with no harm done. But when I looked again for the passenger, all I saw was a faint green shimmer dying at the far edge of the ribbon. Whatever it was, it had left the plane and taken Crann with it.
	The disappointment hit Mna like a fist to the head and she crashed. I had wanted to give chase, but instead I had to let us down before she broke the link and got lost.
	All I heard, the whole journey back, was a low, insistent throbbing, the slow ebb and ache of a pain that is already tired of itself. I would have found hysteria more comforting, and better company, than this resignation that wasn’t resigned--this anger that could neither hope for redress nor accept defeat.
	I came back to my body slowly, one sense at a time. I was aware of the chair, and of the dull ache in my muscles, then of the smell from the candles. Then of a high, breaking cry that cut the air in a torrent of fast, shuddering, gasping sobs. And slowly, from the exploded darkness of the incorporeal world, the image of Mna’s red, twisted, tear-raddled face formed in front of me.
	I specialize in possessions and related phenomena. I deal with people who have seen parents, lovers, children, friends, become strangers, people who have seen evil sprout suddenly in a heart they loved, people who are starting to wonder if we were given minds and spirits for the sole and express purpose of amusing the Dark One. You’d think I’d develop a method for dealing with distraught people. But I haven’t. Uncomfortable, myself, with emotional display, I assume the client will be so embarrassed that it’s best to take no notice. Of course that isn’t what they need.
	“I’m sorry, Mna. We were close.”
	She nodded, still sobbing. 
“We’ll look again, as soon as we’re both ready. He’s heard you now, he’ll want to come home. It will make things easier.”
	Mna wiped her eyes. “You think he does, shriia?”
	“Does what?”
	“Want to come home.” Her chin was quivering.
	“Mna...of course he does.” It had never occurred to me that she would doubt this. “You’re his mother. You’re his flesh. Of course he wants to come back to you.”
	“Maybe he shouldn’t,” she burst out, crying. “Maybe he’s happier... there...”
	“All right, stop it.” She looked up at me, shocked by my tone into momentary silence. “He is not happier there. I know what you’re thinking. You’re poor, you can’t provide for him, you worry what will happen when he grows up and poverty turns into danger, you’re thinking maybe you should have taken the guardians up on their offer of placement--” Here the surprise drove the tears back in and she stopped crying. “--you’re thinking maybe in a world where he doesn’t need food or a bed or clothing or shelter or a body, maybe he’ll be better off than he would here with you. Tarbhfnaa.” Now even Aine was staring at me. “He is your child, he is your flesh, and he wants to come home. He started fighting as soon as he heard your call. He ripped that thing off the rapparan trying to get to you. Crann is still mortal, Mna, he is still supposed to be here.”
	The candles had burned low during the session and were beginning to sputter and fail in their holders. Mottled in weak, shifting light, Mna studied me from the depths of her pain with the uncrushable curiosity that I could already see was one of her marking traits. 
	“How did you know the guardians made me that offer?”
	I flopped back into my chair. “I didn’t know. But it’s a safe bet. A poor mother, unjoined, bearing twins. Probably they said you could keep one and give one up.”
	Mna nodded.
	“To them, this seemed logical. Whereas to you, it seemed--”
	“--like a crock of fnaa.”
	Well, at least it showed she was getting more comfortable around me. “As it would. Children aren’t math.”
	“No,” she said, gathering both into her arms. “I couldn’t give up one. Not any more than I could give up both.”
	I read the unsaid thing.
	“Idair is good,” I said. “Maybe you won’t have to.”
	She turned to go. I began blowing out the candles that were not already gone. The darkness was almost complete when her voice came from the doorway.
	“Shriia.”
	I looked up at her. She knew there was nothing to say, nothing I could do that would make it easier for her to sleep that night. I knew that too. 
	“Shriias always tell the truth,” she repeated.
	“Yes.”
	“You think you can find him.”
	“I think it’s possible. I can’t say how likely it is because I don’t know.”
	The shadow of her head moved in the darkness, nodding. “Thank you, shriia.”
	“This is my job,” I said.
	She left with them. I cleared the space, said the closing words, and prepared to finally go to bed myself. Aine met me in the hallway.
	“Attached to a horse?” she said.
	“I’ll tell you one thing, Aine,” I answered, “and then I’m going to sleep. Tonight, I got to experience a rapparan from a horse’s point of view. I now understand why Cinhe hates them so much.”
	I went upstairs. She could ask me about it at freagair tomorrow. For today, I was done with being a shriia.
	I went through the undoing rituals almost asleep already. When I had finished, I blew out the candle, lay down on the floor and pulled the blanket over me.
	It was stupid. To sleep on the floor, but allow myself a blanket. Of course it was stupid. It was stupid to do this at all. As if it made any difference to her. As if it made any difference to anyone, except to me.
	I have flaws. Many of them. But Idair does not ask for perfection.
	Just as well.

III.
Comings and Goings

	“We may as well do it now, before Mna gets back.”
	Aine was facing me over the breakfast dishes and she had clearly been pondering more than was good for her. Mna had gone out with the twins to play in the clearing. 
Through the window I saw them, in the early morning sunlight, sitting together under the tree like any other family. Assuming of course that in this family one of the children was asleep. Which Crann wasn’t, although he lay on his side curled up next to her.
	“If you’re ready, dhiaoc.”
	“By Idair’s power and in the name of the spirit, which we will never know.”
	“Bi I go deo.”
	“Ceard a bfhuil thu ag iarradh?”
	“Ta me ag iarradh shri.”
	“Ask and I answer.”
	“You said...you were ridden by a rapparan?”
	I shook my head. “Not exactly.” I gave her a brief rundown on what had happened to me when I tried to trap Crann. She was surprised.
	“I thought the rappari didn’t attack humans.”
	“They don’t. We always assumed it was because they couldn’t.”
	“You think now that they can?”
	I paused. 
	“I’ll tell you what I think,” I finally answered. “That was a rappari trick, but it wasn’t rappari power. It did exactly what you would expect an attacked rapparan to do--enveloped me same as it would a horse, and acted on my muscles from the outside. But attacked rappari don’t do that, because they’re not strong enough to control something with a human will.”
	“So...?”
	“So that rapparan was getting help from somewhere. My guess is, from whatever’s holding Crann.”
	“Which is what?” She answered the question herself. “I know, you don’t know. I’m sorry.”
	“You’re right, I don’t.” I looked moodily into the distance. “And that puts this in a whole different light.”
	“What do you mean?”
	“If it were a kraikk, or a sowlth, or some other kind of spirit that lives in the ether and has its own plane, I’d have recognized it. Probably. I didn’t get that close a look. But if I’m right, and it doesn’t rightly belong to the ether at all...then it’s probably a guun.”
	“An artificial spirit.”
	I nodded. “And that means a dark user is mixed up in this somehow.”
	Aine was perturbed, but more than that she was curious. “How do they make them? Guuns, I mean.”
	I shrugged. “At the most basic level, their construction is pretty simple,” I said. “You find the material in the ether--there are places where it collects, in pools and streams, the loose remnants of spirits that have broken up or dissolved or otherwise ended whatever you can call life in the spirit world. Then you mold it to your specifications, and you have yourself quite a nifty little automaton. If you want it to do anything very complicated, though, you have to put a lot of work into the spells that build and bind it. We don’t know much about it; we don’t do that kind of work.”
	“Because of the First Rule.”
	I nodded. “They’re not living, of course, not the way people or animals are. But they are sentient, and they have a right to control their own...well, you can’t even call them bodies, but you know what I mean.” She nodded. “And anyway we know so little about the spirits, I figure meddling with their...stuff...could only lead to trouble.”
	She nodded. “So then how do you know...” 
	Something in my face stopped her from finishing the sentence. I gave it a few moments, but the question didn’t come. I was relieved, even though I felt guilty. It was something she could learn from, if only I were ever willing to talk about it. But I wasn’t, and she’d learned that early. It was her right, as my apprentice, to ask any question relating to the magic arts or to Idair, and I was bound to answer. But she knew there were topics to avoid and subjects not to touch on, just as I had learned what not to bring up when I was studying under Barant.
	“I’m interested to see it going after Taric,” I continued. “I don’t know if I like it. It suggests Crann has some power over what’s happening--that he wants to stay near his mother and this is as close as he could get. But it may mean a lot of hassle for poor Taric.”
	“What do you think--”
	<Theamh.>
	“Sorry, Aine, Lilea’s calling.” She nodded and waited for me to be done.
	<Lilea! Long time no link.>
	<I’m just outside the shield--will you let me in?>
	I moved toward the door. <A visit to the country! Has the Pharc burned down?>
	<I beg your pardon?>
	<You hate the forest. The sight of so many leaves in one place makes you ill, remember?> Under the tension, there was laughter in her mind. <So whatever dragged you all the way out here, it must be serious.>
	<I can’t just drop in on an old friend?>
	<When you want to see me, you invite me into the city. You know that and you know I know you know that.>
	<Stop trying to confuse me.> I opened the gate and Lilea stepped through. She shut off the link as I closed the gate. 
	“Well, Theamh.” She smiled sardonically. “It has been a long time.”
	“It has.”
	Suddenly, impulsively, she stepped forward and gave me a quick greeting hug. I patted her on the back, not sure what this meant. In a world of people who are uncomfortable with casual touching, I am known for my unhuggability.
	“It’s good to see you,” she said, her arms still around me.
	“You too. If you’ll just let go of me--”
	She released me, laughing. “You’re as tactful and polite as ever.”
	“You know me well enough not to be offended,” I said, ushering her inside. “So what does bring you all the way out here?”
	“I heard you’d been in a battle; I wanted to be sure you were all right.”
	I cursed under my breath. “Why am I a moron?”
	“Is that supposed to be a rhetorical question?”
	“I’m sorry, Lilea--it’s just, you know, I’m invaded by the most devious dark user there is in front of 40 terrified witnesses and so of course I forget the entire city is going to know about it by sundown and the Council will be waiting for me to come down and get scoured. I’d better go now before I forget I forgot--”
	“Oh, I can do that for you here; that’s why I came.” I looked at her. “Well, part of why I came.” I laughed. “Naturally I’m not going to traipse all the way out here just to save you a trip to the Pharc, but as long as I am out here there’s no reason I can’t scour you. It’s through here, right?”
	I followed her, poking my head into the kitchen. “Aine, Lilea and I are just going into the lab to get me scoured, I’ll be back. Keep an eye on Mna, will you?” She nodded, and bowed in Lilea’s direction. Lilea acknowledged her and swept off, trailing me. 
	“You use her name,” she said as I opened the door.
	“Why shouldn’t I?” I retorted. “No one likes being called ‘Scoilin.’ I sure didn’t.”
	“Respect--”
	“--is something I’ve never been entirely comfortable with,” I said, sitting her down on a chair in the middle of the room. The four columns of light swayed around us, then wove themselves into a multicolored canopy over our heads. With them surrounding us, Lilea finally relaxed. Even making allowances for the unearthly light from the vigils her face looked haggard, lined with something other than the signs of peaceful aging.
	“For Idair’s sake and everyone else’s, Lilea, what is the matter?”
	“You first. Assume the position.”
	I knelt on the floor in front of her, my head tilted uncomfortably toward the ceiling. She put one hand on each of my temples. “I’ll try to do this gently.”
	“Yes, I’m sure you’ll try,” I said.
	“If you want you can walk the 3 miles into town and get someone else to--”
	“No, no, go ahead, I’ve had worse.”
	“Nice to know you still retain your high opinion of my projection abilities.”
	“Shriias tell the truth,” I murmured demurely.
	“Yes, but they don’t all enjoy it as much as you do,” she retorted. “You ready?”
	“Fire away.”
	She opened the link. <That joke doesn’t get any better with age, you know.>
	<So sue me. Are you going to scour me or give me lessons in wit?>
	<Don’t make me forget I like you, Theamh.> 
	Fire flashed in a ring around my borders. I took a deep breath and dropped all the boundaries over which I had control.
	It wasn’t too bad at the edges, among the everyday memories and the professional knowledge and the languages and the rest of the mundane stuff. As she moved in toward the center there started to be more resistance on my part, more pushing on hers, and more shock or burn.	Especially--
	<OW!!>
	<I’m sorry, Theamh, but you know if she’s hiding anywhere it’d be here...if it hurts why don’t you lower the barriers?>
	<I have lowered the barriers.>
	<Well, thank Idair I’ve never tried to get in here while the barriers were up. I’m sorry, I’m going to have to-->
	<I know. Just do it.>
	There was a brief, burning interlude, and she got out with all deliberate speed. <I kept my eyes closed.>
	<Yeah, whatever, just finish it already.>
	In truth, I was glad that she was doing this instead of one of the other councilors, because despite the occasional shock or burn I felt when she barged her way through a membrane she didn’t have the finesse to dissolve, knowing and liking her made the process less agonizing. If something is possessing you and it wants to escape detection, it will go into the darkest, most private and protected places, the places hidden behind fortresses of your own construction, and hide. So your scourer has to go to those places. And when the flame of another spirit is licking into the dark, nasty corners of your mind, it may as well be someone you know, someone who will still respect you in the morning.
	It’s as well for the scourer, too, because a connection at that level of intimacy means you can read pretty far into her. She might have been finding out things I’d rather not have had anyone know, but I was picking up an intense anxiety--anxiety unlike the usual worry about her clients or her altercations with the medicals. This was something vaguer, something that ran from me as soon as I detected it. It was never put into words--more of an image, a gray looming something that wailed with the voice of an infant in pain but had the lined face of an elder.
	Scouring is never a pleasant experience, and the fact that it has to be done by a Council member doesn’t help. The snooty ones, who have been practicing for decades and have started to think maybe they’re not mortal after all, will pass remarks, when they find things in there that aren’t regulation. Unlike most junior shriias, I’ll snap back.
	But Lilea knew better than to try that. So it hurt--but her mind was quiet, aside from her nameless vague fear. What I felt from her, predominantly, was a relief that seemed disproportionate. She must have known as soon as she saw me that I was all right. This was supposed to be a formality, an unpleasant precaution we engage in on the off chance. She shouldn’t have been surprised to find me at home.
	Finally she closed the doors she had opened, said the sealing words and shut off the link. I shook my head slightly, got up and sat in the chair opposite her.
	“Thanks. I should be fine in about a week.”
	“Was I that bad?”
	I was no longer in the mood to tease her. “It’s all right. You were fine. Nobody can go in there without hurting me, not even me.”
	She knew what I was talking about. “You’re still sleeping on the floor.”
	“There’s no rule against it.”
	“Whatever.” She sat back, exhausted. “You’ve got a big head, Theamh. That’s a lot of ground to cover.”	
	“So what’s the matter down at the Mathair?” I asked.
	“Get to the point, why don’t you?”
	“To say you’re on edge would be understating the case so far as to risk untruth. Something’s gone wrong and you want to talk about it.”
	She laughed, bitterly. “Yesterday was a bad day.”
	“Must have been some kind of bad.”
	“It was.” She looked away.
	“Did you lose an infant?”
	“No.”
	 “A mother, then?” She sighed, exasperated. “Then what happened?”
	She fixed her blue eyes on mine. “One of the notborns wouldn’t go back.”
	Ah. “How far along?”
	“That’s the thing. At four, five months of course that will happen sometimes. But this was a very new mother--not more than six weeks, I’d say.”
	I leaned forward. “What happened?”
	“I linked as usual,” she said. “Its mindspace was no better defended than you would expect from something so unformed. It was easy enough to ask the question. I had no idea anything out of the ordinary was happening until I got this ‘No!’ that almost knocked me flat on my back it was so emphatic.”
	“What did you do?”
	“Well, you know, I explained to it about returning later and it still wasn’t having it. So I asked it what was so all-fired important that it had to be born right now.”
	“And it said...?”
	“It said...Let me see if I can recreate the impression...” She opened her eyes, keeping them fixed on the ceiling, and spoke in a sonorous voice. “ ‘The purification cannot wait. It must go forward now and I must be there.’”
	She looked at me. I looked at her.
	“Uh...did you ask this child if it was sure it was mortal?”
	“It was. That thing had the signature the power the everything else of an ordinary human child, but I ask it that question and it says this to me. Usually they say something like ‘I’ve never been a girl yet’ or ‘I might not get this mother again’ or some such thing.”
	“Usually? Has this been happening a lot?”
	“Well...” She shifted nervously in her seat. I’d finally hit what she was really worried about. “Yes. It’s been a gradual thing, but I’m sure of it--children are refusing more often, and they’re doing it younger and younger.”
	“How long has that been happening?”
	“Over the past several months. At first I thought I was imagining it but I’m sure now. You remember what they tell us as scoili--not one in one hundred refuses before the fourth month. Well, now it’s more like one in twenty.”
	“What could be causing it?”
	“I have no prayer of finding out. That’s why I came to you.” 
	“Lilea--”
	“I went into Comings and Goings because my heart is more sophisticated than my mind. I’m not ashamed of that and one of the reasons I like you is that you’ve never looked down on me for it. I’m good at helping sick, terrified people, at comforting women in trouble and at talking to frightened children who aren’t sure they want to go through with this birth business. I can link, project, enter, exit, animate well enough to do my job but I’m not the kind of  you are.” I laughed nervously. “I think--well. I don’t know. But I think--” She broke off, unsure how to put this. “I think,” she finally said, “that something is getting to them, telling them what to say. Because where is a six week child going to get something like ‘The purification cannot wait’? Not from its mother.”
	“No,” I said thoughtfully, “I suppose not.”
	She laughed. Lilea was ten years older than I was but a number of things brought us together, among them our penchant for facing bad news with a laugh and a sarcastic word. I knew she did it because otherwise her compassion would kill her. She spoke of her emotions as if she were nothing more than a good listener, but it was only because she was blind to her own talent--a kind of empathy I can strive for all my life in vain, a quivering attunedness that nobody else, even in Comings and Goings, can achieve. Looking at the face framed by its fine blond hair I could see the months of worry that had brought her here. Just one of many things I’d seen lately that didn’t bode well.
	“Have you spoken to Morat or anyone else on the council?” I asked.
	She waved a hand. “I mentioned it to Morat once after it started and she said I was probably imagining it. Since then I’ve filed a couple warning reports but got no response. They’ve clearly decided this isn’t a problem. Well, I think it is.”
	“I can see how you would.”
	“What do you say to a six-week mother after her child tells you something like that? ‘I’m sorry, you’ll have to carry it, it seems your child needs to carry out something called The Purification. Start knitting booties, and make sure you’ve got real strong protections against evil in your house.’”
	“You really think the child is possessed?”
	“I don’t know what that child is. All I know is, I’ve had to explain to a lot of mothers who don’t want to bear their children that they won’t go back, and I’m almost as tired of saying it as they are of hearing it. Almost.”
	“Are the other shriias reporting the same problem?”
	“There’s only two doing this kind of work in the city--Riina and Pel. Pel I try to avoid. I brought it up to Riina but she said everything seemed to be in order.”
	“But she didn’t say there hadn’t been an increase.”
	“I know what you’re driving at.” She was sitting forward now, animated. “But I’ve worked with Riina for years. I can’t believe she wouldn’t tell me if she’s noticed it too.”
	“But you think she has or you wouldn’t have come to me.”
	“Barant was right--you’re not well-behaved, but you are smart.”
	“Don’t mock me, it’s not nice. Have you kept records?”
	“We don’t do that, Theamh.”
	“No, I know, I just thought you might have since you started noticing--”
	Her eyes flashed. “They trust me to let the story be theirs to tell or to keep secret. If they don’t want me to know their used names  I work around that. What I see when I go in I keep secret. The stories those children tell me about how they were made would make your hair stand on end, some of them. I can’t write these things down.”
	“I understand,” I said, “but it does make it difficult to verify your suspicions, especially if Riina won’t give you a straight answer.” She nodded, preoccupied. “You might...you know...ask Pel...”
	She shook her head violently. “I’m sorry. No. We don’t talk.”
	“I know she takes a different approach--”
	“Look, Theamh,” she said. “Bottom line, Pel doesn’t think we should be doing this at all. The hoops she makes a mother jump through--she takes these women who already feel like fnaa on a hot stone and grills them until they decide it’d be easier just to have the child. She went into this area just for pure spite. It’s not because she likes children.”
	“Shriias tell the truth.”
	Lilea laughed. “All right, our personalities never matched and there was the Great Unpleasantness a few years back. But still. If she only wasn’t such a--”
	“Tolerance, compassion, humility,” I quoted.
	“You should talk. I’ve heard you call her worse.”
	“I don’t like her either, but I think you could find out something from talking to her.”
	“I suppose.” She sighed. “I’m just so tired of it, Theamh. I’m tired of watching people’s faces when I bring this up, you can see that ‘There goes the crackpot’ look. If I told Morat or Barant this story they’d just nod and look concerned and behind my back they’d put it down to my own incompetence--say I missed the link with the kid and got a passing spirit instead. But I know what I heard. And I know if I have to tell one more two-month mother that she’ll be having her first child at fourteen after all--”
	“They’re refusing for mothers that young?” She nodded. “Are they out of their minds?”
	She chuckled dryly. “I suppose that’s one possibility. But I can’t tell without you.”
	“What do you want me to do?”
	“Come down and spend a day with me. Link with the notborns and me and see if you notice anything I’m missing.”
	“It’s just I’ve got this taken child.”
	“Yes, I saw him on my way in.” She shook her head. “Rough, that. Any breaks?”
	“I’ve got a couple of leads but they’re leading me to very bizarre places,” I answered. “But I can’t be cruising the ether 24 hours a day, it would kill me, so I may as well come down some day this week and watch with you.”
	Her face broke into a real smile for once. “Thank you, Theamh.”
	“Thank you.”
	“For what?”
	“For scouring me. I know it’s not the kind of work you like.” She shrugged. “But you did it for me because you knew it’d bother me less, even though it might hurt more, to have you do it. So thank you.”
	As I said, she’s good. She knows the way to handle a moment like this, with me, is to deflect it after the briefest, nonverbal acknowledgment. “Why is it the Council doesn’t like you better?”
	“Why do you think?”
	“But you never--”
	“No, I never, but there’s a lot of folks on the Council who don’t think it makes a difference. And maybe they’re right. The letter is worthless without the spirit, you know.”
	“They revere the letter when it suits them.”
	“It’s not just that,” I said. “I don’t know--after the trial something changed. I think Morat has had it in for me since then because I made her look like a coward. She should have been the one who tested you, and she knows that.”
	“Yes, she should have. But you had the courage she didn’t, and that’s that. She can’t blame you.”
	“No, but I’ve given them all plenty of other reasons to wish I’d disappear. I don’t keep my mouth shut, I don’t take orders well, and there was all that trouble after--”
	“But you’ve done so much since then. They should have gotten over it.” I laughed. “Why haven’t they?”
	It wasn’t a rhetorical question. She was really asking me for a reason--and with an anxiety that didn’t seem to match the question. That the Council and I didn’t get along, and never really had, was beyond common knowledge. Everyone put it down to my history or to my personality or both. So had Lilea. Until, it seemed, this instant. 
	“Because they’re unforgiving, stubborn people?”
	She looked away, disappointed. And, I thought, upset. She’d wanted me to tell her there was some other reason. For the life of me I couldn’t imagine why. But from her manner, her face, and everything I could read from her, I knew she hadn’t told me the whole story about what had brought her out to my house.
	“Lilea, what are you not telling me?”
	Her face clouded. “Theamh...there is something. But I can’t tell you because I can’t even tell myself yet. I...”
	“What is it?”
	“I have nothing. No evidence, no proof.”
	“No proof of what?”
	“I’m not sure yet.”
	“Lilea, you’re not making sense.”
	“I can’t yet, not about this. Idair with you, Theamh. Come see me soon.” 
	“I will,” I answered, bemusedly. 
	I let her out through the gate and walked back into the house in a state of dissatisfaction. Aine met me in the kitchen. 
	“All clear, dhiaoc?”
	“All clear.” I walked over to the window. Mna had stood up and was walking across the clearing, looking into the distance. Frih sat on the grass next to Crann, talking to him. Crann, of course, paid no attention. Aine was next to me looking out, but not apparently seeing them. She had seemed withdrawn all morning, even during freagair. I supposed she was still feeling guilty about the vigils.
	“So that was Lilea.”
	“Yes.”
	“I’ve seen her around the Pharc but I didn’t know who she was.”
	“Were you not at the trial?”
	She sighed. “I attended the first week but that day I had an exam in Languages. My luck to miss the really exciting part.”
	There was a pause as we watched Frih pulling up blades of grass and passing them to Crann, who let them fall through his fingers.
	“I wish I could have seen it,” she finally said. “I heard the story from other scoili. They said you were amazing.”
	I shrugged. “The person who really deserves a medal for that experience is Lilea. May I never go through what she went through.”
	“But she was found true.”
	“Still.” 
	To my relief she changed the subject. “Isn’t it siulin today?”
	“I’m sure it would have occurred to me eventually,” I muttered, trotting off to gather my things.
	When I returned with my traveling bag Aine was still watching the group in the clearing. “What about them?”
	“That is a problem.” I thought. “It’s Felim Cloch this time, isn’t it?”
	“Yes.”
	“Problem solved.” She looked at me. “Taric.”
	“Dhiaoc?”
	“Taric’s holding is on the way anyhow. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind putting them up for the afternoon.” 
	Aine briefed Mna while I locked up, and soon the procession was underway.
	When I requested a country assignment most people who knew me were surprised. A shriia with any ambition wants a post in the City, near the Pharc and the Council. And everyone assumed I was ambitious. I am, I suppose, but not the way other shriias are. I never wanted to be on the Council. I wanted my own house, my own land, and a lot of space between me and the Pharc. Of course, that meant that I had to walk out twice a week to a village that was several miles away, spend the afternoon and evening consulting whoever showed up, and then walk back. I have Cinhe, of course, but the texts are very specific: you don’t go sweeping in on horseback. You arrive on foot, you sit on the ground and you stay there for as long as they need you.
	By the time we reached Taric’s Mna was looking slightly the worse for wear, and Frih had taken to asking when we would be there every two or three minutes. Taric’s farm, in the daylight, looked rougher and more embattled than before. Taric did a bit of this and a bit of that--a sheep pasture abutted a wheatfield whose green shoots looked healthy enough although a bit short for the time of year, on the other side of which was a vegetable garden and behind which were the stable, paddock and henhouse where he kept his livestock. He was probably lucky enough to actually own his land--otherwise he would have had most of it growing wheat, which was our region’s biggest cash crop. Most of the land in and around Felim was owned by the same three families, whose agents arrived at regular intervals to pick up the rent in the form of the entire crop, or thereabouts. Taric had managed to avoid this heartbreaking cycle of debt and repayment, somehow. But that bullock he’d sold was probably the only one he owned, and when a farmer converts useful livestock into cash that’s a sign he’s operating pretty close to the edge. 
	He was in the pasture with the sheep, and he looked rather surprised to see us. He made his way toward us across the fields, hands thrust into the pockets of his coverall, his yellow hair sticking to his damp brow. “What brings you out here, shriia?” he called.
	“I did you a good turn, now you have the opportunity to return it,” I answered. “I wondered if you would put Mna and the twins up for the afternoon in your house. It’s siulin today and I didn’t want to leave them home alone.”
	“You’re going over to Felim?” he asked, with I thought some reluctance.
	“Yes. Do you mind?” 
	He bowed to me and touched his lips, then nodded to Mna, who smiled at him.
	“No, no, shriia. My home is yours--such as...” He looked sadly at his cottage, which I could tell he was just now beginning to think of as definitely not good enough to receive visitors in. 
	“Thank you,” Mna replied. “The twins will be glad to have a place to rest; walking’s been hard on them.”
	He saw, as I did, that Mna’s use of the plural was becoming somewhat hesitant. “Let me show you where everything is.” He led them forward.
	“Dhiaoc?”
	“Yes?”
	“Do you think that’s wise?”
	“What?”
	“Leaving them alone together like that.”
	“You talk as if I were doing it on purpose.”
	“You are, aren’t you?”
	“Look,” I answered as we stumped down the path. “Mna’s a young mother with two children and no means of support. Taric’s a single man trying to run a farm too big for one person to work. If they find they like each other enough to join forces, there’s two problems solved. If not, they’ve spent a pleasant afternoon chatting. Where’s the harm?”
	“Supposing he leaves her with another set of twins and still no means of support?”
	“Not a man who reads like he does.” I shook my head. “Taric’s not a fast talker and he’s probably not a fast thinker either, but he’s good stuff.”
	“I couldn’t read him,” she said sadly.
	“Give yourself time. For me, anyhow, men are harder to read than women. And you don’t get much in any case--a vague kind of impression, that’s all. But enough that I don’t worry about leaving Mna with him, even though I can tell he’s interested in her.”
	“From his signal?”
	I laughed. “Aine, to read some things you don’t need shri.”
	The sun was high by the time we finally started up the hill that would lead to the center of Felim Cloch. At the crest of this modest incline I could see the silhouette of a small boy, who had been sent to watch for me.
	“Are you coming here?” he called as soon as he spotted us.
	“Am I needed here?” I answered.
	“Yes, shriia.”
	“Then I am coming.”
	He turned around, raised his arms and shouted toward the village below.
	“Tar an shriia!”
	He disappeared, running toward the village with his news. Aine and I followed, slowly. At the top of the hill we paused, watching the people assemble on the common.
 	It was a fair-sized village, being close to the city and in fairly fertile ground. A clutch of wooden buildings arranged in a quadrangle around a central common housed the shops and places of business that formed the town’s commercial center. I was paying less attention to the scenery than to the crowd that was forming on the green.
	“Take a look, Aine,” I said as we approached. “What’s different?”
	She looked. She thought.
	“There are too many people.”
	“Yes...and what else?”
	“There are too many children.”
	“Too many on that green,” I agreed, “and too many in my life, right now.”
	Most walkouts you’ll see between ten and fifteen people, depending on the time of year and how well the harvest is coming. There were at least 25 on that square of straggling grass and most were mothers with children. I walked onto the green and stood facing the group of worried, silent women and their small, restive progeny.
	I waited. The town leader in his blue jacket stepped out of the crowd.
	“Oinamid shriia,” he said.
	“Shriia anseo,” I replied, sitting down and crossing my legs. “Tabhair.”
	The first to come forward was one of the mothers, carrying an infant in her arms. She’d been crying; the infant was crying too. Lustily, with a red face and with tears spilling out the corners of its eyes as it twisted up its little fists.
	“Shriia...” She deposited the child on the ground between us. “My child.”
	I picked the baby up, rather awkwardly, and examined it. “What’s the trouble?”
	“I’m...I’m afraid...” The mother’s hands twisted in the folds of her skirt. “Since yesterday she’s been bawling like that--and she was always a quiet child--I’m afraid--”
	I was looking more closely at the child’s throat, which was on view most of the time since she was screaming at the top of her lungs. “Afraid that...?”
	“I’m afraid she’s been...” I looked up and met the mother’s terrified eyes. “I’m afraid she’s been...taken.”
	I blinked. I looked from her and back to the child.
	“What’s your used name?”
	“Timian.”
	“Well, Timian,” I said, “the good news is, your child has not been taken.”
	She gasped with relief. “Are you sure?” 
	There was nervous laughter from the people around her, and she flushed and dropped her eyes. It was not, of course, a polite question, but she had been grievously worried. “Yes, I’m sure. The bad news is that she has the chualagh.”
	It’s a common childhood ailment involving painful inflammation of the throat, which makes the child extremely irritable (and makes those around it irritable as well). It’s easily treated with a herbal preparation, which I gave her a packet of. She thanked me and left, clutching her girl to her and kissing her on the head. “Next?”
	The second woman I knew from other visits--Elayn, wife of a prosperous blacksmith and, so the village rumors went, perpetually disappointed at not being more. Evidently she had had ambitions of living in the city, which were thwarted when her first child arrived before her husband had earned enough to set up shop there.
	She was leading her three-year-old son, a sullen and spoiled boy I was never happy to see coming. He sat down and glared at me. “Shriia, you remember Parat, my son.”
	“Hello, Parat,” I said.
	“Parat has been very quiet these past days,” she began. “He won’t eat his breakfast, and he won’t play with any of his little toys, and he doesn’t speak to me.”
	“And you’re afraid...” I began, starting to see where this was heading.
	“I’m afraid he’s been taken.”
	I sighed. I moved a hand in front of Parat’s face; his eyes followed it. I moved around behind him and clapped loudly. He turned his head. I squatted in front of him.
	“Watch this, Parat.”
	I snapped my fingers and pulled a green flame out of the air. His eyes widened and he took in a loud breath through a gaping, astonished mouth. I pulled one out with the other hand and held them both in front of him, burning. I opened my fingers; the flames flew up into the air. Parat’s eyes followed them until they burst into yellow stars and fizzled out. He laughed and clapped his hands.
	“Again!” was his sole comment.
	His mother was in raptures. “He speaks!” She flew to him and picked him up, cuddling him and stroking his head. “You’ve brought him back! Oh, thank you, shriia--”
	“Calm down, Elayn. He hadn’t been taken.”
	“But you saw how he--”
	“Taken children have no will at all. Yours just has too much.”
	“Shriia?”
	“He’s stubborn, and took it into his head not to speak to you. That’s all.”
	She looked offended. “Parat has always been well-behaved.”
	“In any case,” I went on before she could get really angry, “your child is still inhabited by the soul he was born with, for better or for worse. Idair with you.” 
	Elayn carried her son off in high dudgeon. I saw some of the other women in the crowd smiling and whispering to each other. It’s not easy to become popular living in a village when you make it no secret that your dearest wish is to get out of it.
	Before the third woman could bring her child forward I stood up. “Women, men,” I called out, “let me see a show of hands--how many of you are here with a child you believe has been taken?”
	About ten hands went up.
	“Could you all move to the left,” I said, “and Aine will be with you in a moment.”
	Aine blanched. “Dhiaoc--”
	<Don’t worry. None of those children have been taken. Find out what’s really the matter with them and do what you can. If you run into trouble call me over.> She stared at me, her eyes very large. “Idair with you,” I said, with a wave and a bright smile, and turned to deal with the others. 
	I should have expected it. I’d seen Crann in front of a market day crowd; by now the news would be all over the back hills, and the panic would have taken root. It was perhaps not kind to assign Aine the task of calming these parents down, but her client skills needed the work.
	Meanwhile, I resumed my seat and called over a gaunt man of about forty who was there with a girl of fifteen. Since they shared the same high-cut cheekbones and steel-gray eyes I assumed they were father and daughter rather than an unfortunate example of the dowry system gone horribly awry. “And what can I do for you, friend?”
	This pleasantry passed by unacknowledged. “You can cast out whatever’s living in her,” he said, shoving the girl forward. She took a step, but didn’t lose her balance.
	“I see.” I looked up at the girl. “What’s your used name?”
	She made no move to answer. Her father barked her name instead. “Ilwath.”
	“Ilwath,” I said, “do you want to sit down here so we can see each other?”
	Slowly, with the reluctance of insolence, she folded her legs and sat down on the ground. Her head lifted finally and from under a tangled fringe of brown curls she shot me a stare of sullen, inscrutable anger.
	“She’s always been wild,” her father went on as I stared her back. “Since she could walk she’s been at some mischief or other. But I’ve always been able to keep her straight, shriia, one way or another I’ve raised her to be right.” I turned my eyes to him for a moment. His jaw was set and hard, his eyes as sharp and just as ungiving as his daughter’s. “Something’s overtaken her this time, that’s clear.”
	“Because...?”
	“Look at her,” was his only response. “Is that the look of a human thing?”
	Ilwath tossed her hair back and lifted her chin with the poignant, fragile courage of someone to whom resistance is a new thing. I looked up over her shoulder at her father.
	“I’d say it is, yes.”
	For a moment his voice froze in his throat. Then he found a louder one. “I tell you it’s not her. That’s no child of mine.” I looked at him. “She was never like this--surly, deceitful, always sneaking off to herself whenever you look the other way for a moment, never giving a straight answer or a polite one. I didn’t raise that.”
	“Friend,” I replied, “your daughter is of an age when--”
	“Don’t tell me that,” he shouted, now conscious that he had the full attention of everyone in the vicinity, including Aine, who had stopped her examination to watch the drama unfolding in my neighborhood. “Retha at the Two Branches told me the same, and the woman next farm over. I’ve told them and I’ll tell you, I know my blood and this isn’t it.” The crowd had gone quiet. In the spaces between his shouts I could hear Ilwath fighting to keep her breath quiet and even. “That thing is hiding, it’s doing something behind my back and I want it found and cast out.”
	“Ilwath,” I said, deliberately not looking at her father, “I’m going to touch your head while I look for the signs. It shouldn’t take long and it won’t hurt.” I put a hand around the back of her head. She stiffened and her jaw clenched but she didn’t pull away.
	 After a moment I dropped my hand. “Thank you.” I folded my hands in my lap and looked up at her father. “Your daughter is clean. There’s nothing to cast.”
	“You haven’t looked deep enough,” he said. “Look again. It’s in there.”
	“Friend,” I answered, keeping my voice even, “I am the shriia, and I am telling you she is clean. Whatever’s in her, you’ll just have to live with it, because it belongs there.”
	“I’ve lived with her fifteen years,” he said, putting a heavy hand on her shoulder. Her body went rigid at the touch. “You lay a hand on her for half a minute and you’re telling me she’s clean. I know my child and I know evil. Look again, you’ll see it.”
	Some of the others were staring at him; the rest were staring at me. Now was the time when I should have called up the chilling authority, the withering reserve that characterizes the true shriia, and quelled him with a word. That, of course, didn’t happen.
	“For the final time,” I answered, getting awkwardly to my feet, “your daughter is not possessed. She is unhappy. And frankly, I’m beginning to get an idea of why.” A ringing laugh burst from someone at the back. “You come here wanting me to turn your daughter back into what she was at ten, twelve years old, and I tell you as a shriia that this is not possible. Make your peace with this news and may Idair give you the guidance you will sorely need in your further career as a parent.”
	He didn’t turn his head, but he could probably sense that the crowd behind him was gearing up for a good laugh at his expense. “I’m not leaving until you cleanse her.”
	“Look,” I snapped, striding toward him so that he took a surprised step backwards. “You want the truth, ask a shriia. You want someone to tell you what you want to hear, go to the city and pay one of the medicals to lie to you. You have asked and I have given. Now quit my sight.”
	He stared back at me, still unconvinced. Finally he turned away.
	“Come, Ilwath.”
	The girl stood up, her eyes still fixed on me. “Idair go with you,” I said.
	“With you too,” she answered, slowly.
	Her father stomped away. With one look back, she followed him out.
	“All right,” I called, in the lull that followed his exit. “If you’re here to teach me my business, go home. If you want my help, come on forward.”
	The tension broke with a laugh and the other villagers began lining up. I had just finished dealing with my group when Aine came over, followed by a thin, mouse-haired woman with a three-year-old boy in her arms.
	“You were right about the others,” Aine said, “but I’m not sure about this one. Will you look at him?”
	The boy was inert enough. I took him from his mother and began the examination. His eyes were open, and watched me with a glazed stare as I looked at his sallow face. I turned to the mother, whose pinched, anxious face looked down from above the fraying collar of a faded gray work dress. The dress was in no better condition than her shoes, homemade leather boots whose seams had split and been restitched more than once. 
	“Is he your first?”
	“I have three others. He’s the youngest.”
	“What’s he been eating?”
	“Same as I give the others.”
	“Which is?”
	There was an embarrassed pause before she finally brought it out, in a suppressed and ashamed voice. “Pratai.”
	I sat back on my heels. “And that’s it?”
	She nodded, swallowing a lump in her throat and avoiding my eyes.
	“What’s your used name?” I asked as gently as I could.
	“Kitth.”
	“Kitth, your boy is underfed. That’s why he’s like this. Grown children can live on pratai alone but a boy his age needs more than that.”
	She was still looking away, still nodding. 
	“Do you keep chickens, or a cow?”
	“We’ve one cow,” she said, putting a nervous hand to her tight throat.
	“If you can get some milk, cheese, butter, that sort of thing, into him with some regularity, that would supplement--”
	She shook her head. “My husband sells the milk. We need the money.”
	“I understand,” I said, “but your son here needs to eat something other than pratai if he’s going to grow up healthy. If you can spare some of the--”
	Now her head was shaking violently. “He’d never agree to it.”
	“But if you explained to him that--”
	“It would make no difference.” Tears had now formed in her eyes, and were waiting to fall. 
	“Let me talk to him,” I said impulsively.
	“It wouldn’t make a difference, shriia--”
	“I can’t believe he wouldn’t give up some of the money to save the health and perhaps the life of his own child.”
	At those last words a shudder went through her thin shoulders and she twisted away from me.
	“Ah,” I said quietly. “It’s not his own child.”
	Her face was still averted, but I saw her nod, once.
	“Is there a neighbor you can ask--” She shook her head. “What about the child’s father, is he still--”
	“I can’t ask him,” she said flatly.
	No point in pressing her. “Have you not spoken to your village’s guardian about--”
	“They won’t give me anything,” she choked out.
	“Why on earth not?”
	She finally turned back, collapsing onto the ground as she burst into tears. “Because of the cow.”
	I was silent, watching her sob bitterly. The situation was finally clear to me. On their rounds, the guardians had looked at their farm--my guess was, one big wheat field and a small pratai patch for the family--and decided it was prosperous enough to support his family. The fact that they actually owned a cow, which was not only an expensive piece of livestock but a producer of consumable food, convinced them that her family didn’t need help. Mathematically this was true, but practically it wasn’t, since the husband refused to let the child of his wife’s love for another enjoy this bounty. So the milk was sold, the child was hungry and sick, and the guardians would continue to refuse assistance.
	“What about the fosterer?” I said. “I could take it up with him, if you don’t--”
	She turned almost white. “No, no, shriia, please don’t. I don’t want you going to the trouble. Please don’t go to him, please don’t.”
	The fosterer’s function is the education of a village’s children, which in one this size means essentially oral instruction in the lore, music and art, agricultural skills, and basic math. The older students, if they had an interest, would learn reading and writing. Fosterers were treated well enough by their communities but had very little power in the world of village politics. Why this woman should be trembling at the mere thought of my talking to their fosterer I could not imagine.
	“But you see things are available to him because of his job that he might--”
	<Dhiaoc.> 
	<What?>
	<He’s the father.>
	I stopped. <How do you know?>
	There was a pause, but she went ahead and said it. <To read some things you don’t need shri.>
	I shut the link off with a snap. “Well then,” I said to Kitth. “The guardians won’t help, the fosterer is not an option, and your husband is determined to see your child go hungry.” She balked a bit, but didn’t argue. “The only thing you can do, unless you want to either defy or leave your husband, which may not be practical for you--” She shook her head again. “--is to try to change his mind.”
	“I don’t think that’s possible, shriia,” she said quietly.
	“Let me talk to him,” I said. “Or let me take your case to the City. This doesn’t have to happen. All right, it’s not his child, but that farm runs on the sweat of your back too. I’m sure the gardai mhuintir would--”
	“Shriia,” she said, softly but with an obstinacy that her diffidence was no longer disguising, “I don’t want the law in my home.”
	“Then what are you going to do?”
	She stared back, her face blank. “I don’t know.” There was a pause, and I heard the unsaid thing. I thought you could help me.
	I couldn’t blame her. You expect that with something like Crann’s case your powers may not be equal to the task, and failure is a possibility. But a bone-simple thing like an underfed child--surely there ought to be something shri can do about that? 
	There are folk tales about cauldrons that are always full of soup, jugs of milk that cannot be emptied, loaves of bread that can be cut in half again and again without diminishing in size. Even in folk tales, these things don’t come from shriias. They come from dark users, or from spirits. Turning one thing into another is bonecrushingly hard work, although in some cases it can be done. Making a thing go away is possible, with a lot of effort. But to turn thin air into something a child can eat--that we can’t do. 
	Every net has holes, and Kitth’s child had slipped through one. There was only one thing left, but I was betting she would have none of it.
	“You could call scrainnte on him.”
	She withdrew, if possible, even farther. “I can’t.”
	“He’s starving your child. That’s cause enough.”
	“So is...” She looked away. You don’t understand.
	She was right. I didn’t understand what it would be like to be dragged out and shamed in front of an entire village, or to live with whatever sanction they imposed on her. I had never lived in a place like this. “I know if you call it on him he’ll probably call it on you. I guess it’s not much of an alternative. But it’s the only thing I can think of that might convince your husband to feed the child properly. Unless you let me speak to him.”
	She looked at me for a moment, then shook her head again. 
	I rummaged through a pocket and took out a square of parchment. In the center was a seven pointed star with flames radiating around it and “shri” inscribed on it. 
	With a sense of hopelessness, I handed it to her. “You’ll only be able to use this in one place, and only once, but you can ask for anything you need. My advice would be to take it to the market and pick up something that will keep for a while.” 
	She nodded. “Thank you, shriia.”
	“Kitth,” I said, “this isn’t a solution.”
	Kitth stood and lifted the child onto her shoulder. “Yes, shriia.”
	“Idair with you,” I finally said.
	Aine watched Kitth carry the child away. She had been the last one; the only person left on the green was the town leader, who was watching her too. I wondered how much things would really change if she took the risk and called scrainnte. It seemed everyone in the village already knew.
	“Have I given what you need?” I said to the leader.
	“Yes, shriia,” he answered, “except for the word.”
	“Bring me to where the listeners are gathered.”
	He nodded and led the way off the green up a path that wound toward a large stone house on the crest of the westernmost hill. I had been there many times before, of course, and knew the way,  but this was part of the ritual, just as it was part of the ritual that the same people I had just been consulting with on the green were already wending toward the building, and that I would hang back until I knew they were all inside before climbing the last few feet of hill toward the door to Ridac na Felchett’s warming kitchen.

IV.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

	Like most big houses, this one belonged to a landowner, who lived here during the growing season and spent most of the cold months in the City, which offered more entertainment than a snowbound farming village. Since the place was vacant half the time anyhow, Ridac allowed the town council to use a room in it for the readings. It was a common arrangement in the country. Idair expressly forbade the construction of special buildings for this purpose.  It’s still one of my favorite stories--Idair charging down into the valley where Cailte and Iandar are overseeing the initial construction of what would have been a temple and just letting them have it. Idair didn’t get really angry very often, but when she did it was spectacular. As the followers look on, stunned and openmouthed, she delivers a stinging tirade laced with pungent expressions which, unfortunately, no one can translate. Finally, grabbing a nearby beam and flinging it away from her in anger, she shouts, with tears in her eyes, “If you want me with you, let me into your house--don’t build me one of my own!” And then, relenting as she sees their disappointed faces, “I’m sorry. I know you meant well. But a temple? Honestly! Who do you think I am?”
	We halted a below the summit of the hill. Aine and I looked up at the impressive edifice looming above us, its windows catching the last light of the setting sun. 
	“You suppose they’re home?” Aine asked.
	A light blossomed in one of the front windows. “Yes, they must be, that’s the dining room. If it were just the servants they wouldn’t be using it.”
	“You’ve been inside?” 
	“Ridac has his faults, but the Felchetts are old-fashioned, at least. I’ve done protections on all three of the children.”
	“But they don’t come to the readings.”
	I shrugged. “They can afford other diversions.”
	“Diversions?” Aine looked shocked. “This isn’t a traveling show or--”
	“All right, sure, it’s sacred, it’s holy and it’s far more important than mere entertainment but it’s also a break in the monotony of a seriously monotonous life.” The town leader had gone through the door now. We approached the entrance, Aine looking at me as if she was wondering what she would do when I finally crossed the line into out-and-out heresy. Inside I could hear the buzz of people catching up on gossip, apologizing for treading on each other’s toes, arguing over floor space. The sun sank lower.
	“Ready?” Aine nodded. I closed the door.
	The buzz inside dropped and finally subsided into silence. Just as the sun disappeared over the horizon, I opened it again and walked in. 
	The blinds had been drawn, so the darkness was already almost complete as I negotiated my way toward the stand and scroll that had been set up at the north end of the kitchen. When Aine shut the door it became pitch black. Having done this for a while, I had already learned how to move without seeing, to use my ears and my body to judge the space around me. Aine was still working on it, as demonstrated by the noises of blundering that occasionally reached me from her corner of the room.
	I unrolled the scroll and held my hands a few inches above the parchment.
	“Ta se dubh anseo.” It’s dark in here.
	“Ta’n solus ag dorith,” came the response from all angles. The sun has set.
	“Thrinnair an linn.” Light the fire.
	“Ceard a bhfuil an linn?” they answered, each in his own voice, each with her own freight of anxiety, fear, longing, sorrow. What is fire?
	Into the space between my hands I pulled a globe of yellow flame, which hung above the open scroll, illuminating the parchment, the markings on it, and my hands. As I raised my hands the fire grew, lighting up my face and the space in which I stood. I heard the collective intake of breath. 
	“Ta se an linn,” I said, releasing the globe.
	Streaks of yellow light shot up to the kitchen ceiling, streaming along it and down the far walls, shooting around the sides of the room to meet in a starburst at the south end, then running along the floor, over the seated listeners who would shift their positions with a laugh as the flame licked across their ankles or around their feet, back to the spot where I stood. Those who were sitting near them drew the blinds open, so that what twilight there was trickled into the room. Aine, meanwhile, had the candles out and was lighting them at the starburst on the far wall and passing them to the listeners. There are never enough candles for everyone, and usually adults cede the privilege of holding one to the young, who are still fascinated by flame. This kind of fire is almost all light and very little heat, so it’s quite safe. We can even do this in a wooden building without danger to it our to ourselves, but we prefer stone. Idair is kind to us but it’s best not to push her.
	As usual, the fire prompted a burst of spontaneous applause, which died down gradually as the candles found their way into the hands of children and I sat down on a kitchen stool behind the lectern. It was a good crowd today--filling the floor space and even spilling onto the tables and stools that had been pushed out to the sides of the room. I could see some of the faces from that afternoon--not Elayn, of course, she would consider this entirely too provincial an affair, but Kitth and her child were there, along with most of the other pseudo-takens and their parents.
	The town leader had joined his wife, a pleasant round woman named Helte, who was brushing a strand of sweat-dampened brown hair behind one of her ears. “Shriia,” she called out. “What are you going to read us today?”
	“I don’t know,” I answered. “What do you want to hear about?”
	“The Cretid wars!” came the ready answer from a young boy in the front. 
	“Ah, pay him no mind,” piped up an older woman, cheered on by the contingent around her. “It’s always fighting with him. I want the Coming.”
	“No, the Burning,” from further back.
	“Enough with the Burning,” put in a stocky balding man, applauded by scattered partisans. “We had it last winter, we’ll have it again. Give us something different.”
	“The path to wisdom!” shouted someone in the back.
	“You wouldn’t know what to do with wisdom,” someone else called out. “Let’s hear about the birth of the seasons.”
	“Tell us about love,” came a girl’s voice.
	I looked in her direction. It was Ilwath, crouched on the sanded floorboards, arms hugging her knees, looking up at me with unreadable eyes.
	“Yes,” seconded one of the old women at the back. “Tell us about love.”
	There was some laughter among the crones, and the cry was taken up by other voices, most of them women. “Tell us about love, shriia. It’s the growing season, isn’t it?”
	“So be it,” I said, unrolling the scroll to the proper place. “You want to hear about love?”
	“Yes,” came the chorus.
	“Isn’t there a love story in the Cretid Wars?” persisted the boy, whose neighbors began pelting him with loose dried beans and other handy small objects.
	“There is. But that’s not the one I’m reading.” 
	From somewhere there was a cry of “Good for you, shriia!” and laughter after it. 
“This is from the sixth scroll, near the very end, the story of Sincil and Anron.”
	There was a murmur of assent and the crowd settled back expectantly. It’s a popular story. I do my best with the delivery, and they seem to enjoy it.
	“ ‘It happened at around that time, when Idair was preparing the First Followers for their final battle, that Sincil and Anron were much in each other’s company, since they had been entrusted with the job of gathering food. Anron had been a hunter, and although those talents were no longer useful to him, he still had great knowledge of plants and roots. Sincil had made the habits of birds her special study, and knew how to follow them to water. So they spent day after day in the woods alone, and what talking they did, had to be done to each other, and after some days of talking they found there were other things to be done during their long hours of wandering...’” Here there were knowing cackles from the old folk and nervous giggles from the young. “‘And Sincil was happy under the branches with his hand in hers, but also distressed, and wept many a night, thinking of what had passed between them, and what she wished would come to pass between them, and fearing another dream that would leave her troubled and damp under her covering sheet--’”
	“Damp from what?” cut in one of the boys.
	“You’ll find out when you’re older,” retorted a crone from the back.
	“She’s sweating, that’s all, from the dream,” someone answered.
	There were groans of dissent. “Look,” I said. “The text says ‘merbh,’ which is a word most often used to describe a day full of fine, steady rain.” The man who had advanced the sweat theory nodded, apparently satisfied. “In some places it’s also used to describe earth that has been moistened by that kind of rain.” A burst of knowing laughter drowned out the protests of the scandalized. “Draw your own conclusions and keep them to yourselves until we’ve all heard the story. If I may continue?”
	“By all means,” called Helte.
	“ ‘--Sincil determined that she must leave Idair’s fellowship, lest worse happen. She broke the news to Anron, who took it badly, and would have prevented her, but saw that her mind was set, and told her that since she had taken her decision he would wish her well, and that she need not fear him pursuing her. 
	“ ‘So Sincil made her preparations, saying farewell to Iandar and Cailte and the many friends that she had made, sinking beneath the weight of her heavy heart. But to Idair she was afraid to say anything, even farewell.
	“ ‘Anron could not or would not hide his sorrow, and though he voiced no complaint his face made his lament. Idair’s mind was at this time much occupied with the coming battle, but even so she saw Anron’s distress, and asked him the cause. He would only say that Sincil was leaving. What she guessed we may not know, but certain it is that the next instant found her bearing down upon Sincil, who stood trembling by her tent, fearing Idair’s wrath.
	“ ‘ “Sincil,” Idair said. “I have heard this, and I have heard that, but what I want is to hear why you are leaving me, now, just when I am going to have greatest need of help and comfort.”
	“ ‘And when Sincil saw that Idair was not angry, but rather sad, she could not keep the truth from her, and said, “It is not that my heart turns from you, or that my courage fails me, but that I am afraid to stay where I am beset by temptation and shame is my certain fate.”
	“ ‘ “Temptation?” Idair asked. “If the Dark One has reached your heart, this is indeed a sad day.”
	“ ‘ “No, Idair,” Sincil protested, “the Dark One can offer me nothing, I do not fear that. I fear myself, I fear the weakness of my own body.”
	“ ‘ “The body wants to live,” Idair said gently. “This cannot be changed. My body too is afraid--”
	“ ‘ “No,” Sincil cried. “It is not fear, it is--it is--my body wants--it dreams--and Anron--I--it is best that I go, before I bring shame to myself and disgrace to you.”
	“ ‘And Idair looked at her, and a look of vexation darkened her features, and she said, “How long have you been with me?”
	“ ‘ “Since the beginning, Idair.”
	“ ‘ “And have you been with me all that time,” said Idair, “and you still don’t know the difference between love and shame?”
	“ ‘ “What is love, Idair?” asked Sincil.
	“ ‘ “I cannot believe this,” cried Idair, and seizing Sincil by the wrist, she hurried her through the camp into the center of the clearing, where Anron was setting the day’s food out by the fire, and the followers were gathering to help prepare the meal, and Anron, thinking Sincil had already been judged and condemned, was rising with a cooking spit in his hand ready to fight for her, yes, even to fight Idair. And Idair said to him, “Put that thing down, you fool, and answer this poor woman’s question.”
	“ ‘ “What question is that, Idair?” he answered warily, the spit still in one hand.
	“ ‘ “What is love?” Idair said. “Can you answer this question, Anron?”
	“ ‘ “I do not think so,” Anron said.
	“ ‘ “That’s where you’re wrong,” Idair replied. “Here is Sincil. Tell me--tell all of us--what you feel for her.”
	“ ‘Anron looked at Sincil, and he said, 
		“Until I knew her,
		Until we spoke under the trees,
		Until her hand touched mine,
		I knew nothing of life
		Or of myself.

		Alone, I am half a man
		With half a heart,
		A dead tree with no pith.

		Idair, you know,
		And, but for Sincil,
		You alone know
		The pattern of wounds
		Marking my life,
		You know, and but
		For Sincil, you alone 
		Know from what pain
		You saved me,

		It is only the truth
		When I say that you saved,
		And for saving I thank you,
		But only Sincil
		Could heal me,
		Only with her
		Did I return
		To full life

		Nothing I say will
		Explain how she came
		To mean more to me
		Than my own poor life
		Nothing I say can
		Show you why now
		Her heart is the world,
		And all else is void.

		I only know that for her,
		To save her hurt or
		Bring her joy,
		I could do anything,
		Yes, even let her
		Leave me and take
		My life with her,
		Yes, Idair, it is
		Only the truth--
		even lift a weapon
		to defend her
		against you.”
	“ ‘Idair nodded, and turned to Sincil, and said to her, “You hear what Anron says of you; what reply does your heart make?”
	“ ‘And Sincil said,

		“My heart is not learned;
		I cannot speak in figures,
		My words lack your fire,
		
		But every good thing
		I feel has its root in
		His tender heart;

		Without him I am not
		Who I am; gone from here
		I would not be Sincil 

		What I cannot say
		He hears; and so much
		Must go unsaid--

		Nothing is perfect,
		A part always lacks
		In the whole, there is

		Darkness no light
		Can reach, but what
		One human can be

		To another, he is
		To me; the only speaker
		Of my strange tongue;

		For whom I would give
		My life, more than that--
		Yes, even your fellowship,

		It is only the truth--
		For whose sake I would do
		Any hard thing,

		Even to leave you, Idair,
		To save both our hearts,
		To keep pure and holy

		This thing we have made,
		This strange bright place,
		This new fire.”

	“ ‘ “Well, Anron,” said Idair, when Sincil had finished speaking, “you have made a fine speech, but she has made you a better.” And so saying, she lifted from a bundle of firewood beside her a length of creeper vine that someone had tied it with. “Listen to me, both of you, this is your answer:
		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.

		I will not say love
		Is happiness; great love
		Is not always happy,

		And when love cries out
		And cannot be answered,
		The bitterness of it

		Is a sorrow beyond
		Anything you have tasted,
		A cup I hope

		None of you
		Will drink from.

		But 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.”

“ ‘And Sincil stretched out her hand, and it met Anron’s, and their fingers twined. Idair took the vine, and wrapped it around their linked hands, and said,
		“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.”

And as she spoke, the vine, which had been dead, became green again, and buds appeared among its uncurling leaves. And before the followers, the buds opened, wreathing their joined hands with red and white petals, and the scent of pollen filled the air around them. 	“‘“You see blossoming on your wrist the flower of your love,” Idair said. “Will you care for this vine and keep it green, now, then, and always?”
	“ ‘ “Always, Idair,” said Sincil.
	“ ‘ “Always, Idair,” said Anron.
	“ ‘ “Not to me,” Idair said. “Say it to each other.”
	“ ‘And they turned to each other. “While I live and after,” Sincil said, “I will live in you.”
	“ ‘ “Always, forever,” Anron answered, “you will be my heart.”
	“ ‘ “Listen to me,” Idair said to the crowd that had gathered. “Through the words they have spoken and by the blossoming of the vine Sincil and Anron have shown that their spirits are joined. Where the spirits have joined, let the bodies follow, without shame and without fear. What you have made is true and right. Anyone who comes between you will answer to me.”
	“ ‘Sincil stood looking at Anron and Anron stood looking at Sincil. And they would have stood thus until sunset, probably, but Cailte called out, “So will you kiss him, or not?”
	“ ‘Sincil laughed, and kissed Anron. And she carefully unwound the vine from their hands, and made a circlet of it, and placed it on his head, and there was great laughter everywhere in the camp that evening, except in the tent of Sincil, where the silence was broken with other sounds, less mirthful perhaps but no less happy.’”
	I rolled up the scroll. There was some subdued laughter as the listeners settled back and I moved down to sit on the floor, waiting for the first question. It came from the Cretid Wars fan in the front.
	“So what makes this more interesting than a battle?”
	“Till you’re old enough to care for things that matter, let others ask the questions,” snapped a woman at the back.
	“Now, now,” I said. “It’s a fair question. And it’s funny you should ask it...Draph? That is your name?”
	“The shriia honors me,” he said.
	“I remember it because you asked the same question last time.” Laughter. “And the time before. No, it’s funny you should ask, because the story of Sincil and Anron occurs very close to the account of the final battle between Idair and the Dark One. The last thing that happens, actually, before the beginning of the battle, is Idair explaining the mystery of love. They go to battle with that knowledge in their hearts. And without it they couldn’t have won. It’s interesting, Draph,” I said as he began to look restless, “because without love there is nothing else, not even war.”
	“How does war come from love?” said Kitth.
	Well, I thought, of all people you must know the answer to that question. “The easy answer,” I began, “is that you only fight for what you love. No one would have followed Idair, none of them would have been by her side in her great trouble if they had not loved her. Without love the people of Amranth would not have stood together against the Cretid forces. Without love there is no battle, only attack, and destruction, and rout.”
	“But war is born of evil,” said Helte. “Without the Dark One there would have been no battle. If the Cretids hadn’t invaded there would have been no need to defend Amranth. How can war come from love? It comes from hate.”
	There were nods and murmurs. “I said that was the easy answer.” I tried not to look at Kitth. “There’s a harder one.” They waited. I gathered my hands in my lap, but they didn’t stay there. As soon as I spoke again they were in the air, tracing I don’t know what strange curves as I tried to put thought into words.
	“Where the spirit has joined, let the body follow,” I repeated. “It’s the only command about love that Idair ever gave, outright. It seems simple enough, right enough. Heart seeks heart, spirits entwine, and in the joining as in a birth an eternal thing takes on mortal shape for a while, entering the world of the flesh for the short space of a human life. So simple. So beautiful.”
	There was a pause in which my hands were stilled for once and in a kind of suspended silence I saw Kitth, Ilwath, Helte and the other women looking at me, expectant, anxious also, waiting for the end of the broken chain.
	“This was the gift Idair gave her followers,” I went on, “the great gift, the secret of their great love for her. That under her hands and in the sound of her voice these simple, beautiful things came into being. That near her and with her everything shone with the fire of a pure thing, that in the flame of her ardent heart the imperfections that stain our poor spirits burnt clear. So of course Sincil and Anron know each other completely. Of course what one gives the other returns. Of course Anron says ‘always’ with no hesitation, of course Sincil says ‘while I live’ with no second thought. 
	“Idair wanted to believe the best of us,” I said. “She tried to go on believing it long after we proved her wrong. So she didn’t tell us what to do when the whole heart isn’t given. Or when one spirit grows another way, and finds another match. Or when the body doesn’t want what the heart asks for. Or when, because the body needs a roof and food and clothing, the heart can’t have what it needs.” I could see a number of the women--and some of the men--nodding. “In the world as Idair would have it, there would never be a time or a place where the body goes where the heart cannot come--or where the heart joins, but the body cannot follow.”
	I realized that my hands had returned to my lap and that one was clutching the other. “But the world is not as Idair would have it.” Noises of rueful acknowledgment. “So love is not always what she would have it be, what it was for Sincil and Anron. Where the heart fights the body, where desire meets its obstacle, where the wish of one heart is for the hurt of another’s--that’s where love gives birth to war.”
	It took them a few minutes of awkward silence to realize that I wasn’t going to say anything more. 
	“But it does happen, sometimes,” pleaded a girl with golden hair sitting by Ilwath. “What came to Sincil and Anron, it does come to us, even here...doesn’t it?”
	“Yes,” I said, with a smile that wasn’t exactly happy. “It comes to us, right enough. Sometimes it even comes that pure, that strong, that everlasting. But even then...”
	“Even then?” she persisted.
	“Well. Even then...the end of the story isn’t always happy.” In the disappointed pause, I interjected, “But there are also plenty of happy endings. Look at Helte and Ifrym over there.” Helte colored and looked away; her husband laughed. “What is it, twenty two years, and you still sit in the shadows so you can hold hands?”
	The general wave of laughter broke the sense of gloom that, thanks to me, had begun to descend, and it was looking like time to wrap up. From the way Aine was looking at me I could tell the next freagair was going to take a while.
	“All right, one more,” I said. “Who’s got a question?”
	“I have one,” said Ilwath.
	“Fire away.”
	She waited for the groan to die away. They were used to me at Felim. “Sincil is a woman, Anron is a man. Does it have to be that way?”
	There was a hanging, suffocated silence. 
	“You’re asking,” I finally said, “whether a woman can love a woman, or a man another man. Do I understand you?”
	She nodded. The others waited, some staring at Ilwath, some pointedly not.
	“I don’t know whether you were happy with how our consultation went,” I said, “but if it happens you weren’t, you couldn’t have devised a more cunning form of revenge.”
	“I don’t understand, shriia,” said the woman near Ilwath.
	“This is what we call one of the uafach freagair, or Vexed Questions. It’s been debated since the beginning of shri and never answered satisfactorily. Idair never said a thing, before during or after that first joining, to indicate that what happened could only happen between a man and a woman. And yet that first joining, which is the model for all other joinings, was between a man and a woman.” I shrugged. “Did she leave it unsaid because it was too obvious to need saying? Or because she didn’t want it said? When that vine bursts into flower, is that Idair telling us that a true joining must be fertile? Or is what matters that the vine flowers, but never bears fruit?”
	In the disturbed pause I was fool enough to leave open, the stocky bald man said, “When Morat was shriia here, she gave a very short answer to this same question.”
	“Oh, if you want to know the Council’s position, that’s very easy,” I snapped. “The Council instructs us to celebrate only joinings between man and woman. They hold that this, on the whole, is consistent with Idair’s teaching and the more prudent course.”
	“They why not say so at once?” Ilwath shot back, suddenly angry.
	“Because that’s not what you asked me,” I replied. “You asked me if a woman can love a woman, or a man a man. Shriias tell the truth.” I took a deep breath. “Of men and their hearts, I am ashamed to admit, I know very little.” Some scattered laughter. “Can the spirit of a woman join the spirit of another woman, as completely and as wholly as Sincil’s joined Anron’s?” I opened my hands. “I am a shriia. I have to say yes.”
	To avoid their reaction I looked back at Aine. But she was staring at me too, her eyes the size of saucers. Fantastic, Theamh. Another week, another charming little visit with the Disciplinary Committee. Assuming you’re not massacred by irate peasants first.
	Ilwath’s lips parted. Oh, go ahead, I thought bitterly. Ask me how I know.
	Before she could speak, Helte slid off her stool and walked forward into the center of the room. “Shriias tell the truth,” she said.
	“The truth as far as we can know it,” I answered.
	“For this we thank you,” she said. “You have already given more than we can repay.” She turned around to face the seated crowd. “Have we heard enough to keep us until next time?”
	“Yes,” came the answer from various places, as the listeners got to their feet. I studied their faces with some anxiety. I didn’t find what I had expected--anger, shock, refusal. Instead there was puzzlement, some worry, perhaps, and something else, some strange, embarrassed kind of thing I couldn’t read. I stretched my hands above my head.
	“I have given you my fire,” I said. “Let me return bearing yours.”
	They lifted the candles, and one of the old women began the song. As other women picked up the melody, and the men began wrapping harmonies around it, fire leapt from the candles into the air, trailing behind them the streams of flame that left the walls and ceiling of the room, melting finally into my hands and gradually, gradually sinking into me until the place was dark except for the faint yellow glow that still surrounded my form. 
	Aine, who had advanced from her position at the back, followed me out the door. 
	We stood outside in the cooling air, drawing our hands up into our sleeves. From inside I heard the hiss of flame and the outburst of speech as ordinary torches and lanterns were lit. Even in the dark I could see Aine’s shocked expression.
	“Say it,” I snapped. “You may as well.”
	To my surprise, her eyes left me and traveled up to the facade of the house. “I wonder what it would be like to live somewhere like this,” she said wistfully.
	“I don’t.”
	“Best that way, I suppose,” she mused. “Not to covet what we can’t have.”
	“That’s not what I meant.” 
	My lecture on the futility of trying to get homiletic with someone who had been doing this for as long as I had was cut short by the exodus of listeners, who began trickling downhill toward home. Some were avoiding me, that was clear. But most still paused for a final greeting and the sign of protection before drifting away.
	“It’s a beautiful story, shriia,” said Helte.
	“The credit is Idair’s.”
	“But you read it well,” added a man who stopped to touch his lips and get his greeting. “Morat never read it so well.”
	“Don’t lead me down the path of contention, Heald,” I said. He laughed and continued on his way.
	“But it’s true,” said the next, an old one from the back. “Not Morat, and before her not Cleadd.”
	“Since you say it,” I said, making the sign over her.
	Ilwath passed by without stopping, as did Kitth. The stocky balding man wasn’t going to let me off that easily, however.
	“This is a small place,” he said, “and it’s always been quiet.”
	“Would I wish anything different?” I asked.
	“I know you wish us all well, but...” He stopped, clearly uncomfortable but clearly driven by something to continue this painful conversation. “With all respect to your robe and to the fire, shriia--don’t start what you won’t be here to see through.”
	“She asked, I answered. That’s my job.”
	He shook his head and left without waiting for the sign.
	I pulled out another globe and Aine and I started the long walk back.
	“Dhiaoc?” she said, after half an hour’s silent trudging under the pitiless stars.
	“Yes, Aine?”
	“Did you have to give that answer?”
	I sighed. “I could have gotten out of it by giving the Council position, I suppose, or I could have refused to answer, but damn it all,” I suddenly shouted, stopping in my tracks and wheeling around to address my exploding frustration to the trees, the empty sky and Idair knew what, “what in Idair’s name is the point of pledging your soul to tell the truth if you’re only going to do it when it’s easy?”
	Aine said nothing. This was foolish, as it meant she had to keep listening to me.
	“I’m so sick of it, I’m so sick of the same evasions and excuses and ‘The position the Council has taken is that...’ and ‘Idair never forbade it, but she never sanctioned it’ and--and--mac na mhada!”
	“How do you know?”
	“Know what?”
	“How do you know that’s the true answer?”
	“Are we doing freagair now?”
	“Tell me how you know!” 
	I couldn’t see her face very well but there was something arresting in her voice. 
	“How do you think?”
	“You talk about truth and then you answer a question with another question!”
	“Well maybe you’ll be able to, but I can’t do this job twenty-four hours a day!” I shouted, swinging around with such vehemence that she actually shrank away from me. She stared at me, her breath catching, as I tried to shake down what had risen up in me.
	“You must really want to know,” I said.
	Aine blinked the water back from her eyes.
	“Let’s go get Mna and the twins, and let’s go home,” I said. “When we return, if you ask it, we’ll do freagair, and I’ll answer your questions as I am bound to do. Meanwhile leave me with the secret failures of my own rotten spirit and talk about something else if you can’t be silent.”
	Neither of us was in a good mood when Taric met us at the door with his lantern. “The boys are asleep,” he said. “Mna’s gone to collect them.” 
	He was looking at me in the light from my globe. Looking at me with an interest that I didn’t think could be entirely explained by the situation. An interest that seemed to be tinged, at least, with anger.
	“Taric, I know we met before this, at siulin,” I said, figuring that the direct approach was the only one that usually worked for me. “I’m sorry I don’t remember exactly when or what it was. I know it must have been important to you, to bring you all the way out there.”
	I hadn’t actually apologized for hurting his feelings but he seemed to understand that that was the intent. I wouldn’t say he softened, exactly, but he did say, “It was almost three years ago, shriia. Of course you don’t.”
	He didn’t maybe know how true that last sentence was. Almost three years ago, I was still going out to Mablad twice a day trying to put Keanrih’s pieces back together. Almost three years ago, I was lying awake on the floor at night thinking about how if and when I finally got within range of Lythril, I would make the bitch account not just for me, not just for her, but for Keanrih too, for all the terror and pain and madness she had plunged him into. Almost three years ago I still believed that he could be saved. If I just didn’t let go.
Mna appeared, hoisting Crann and holding on to a blinking, sleepy Frih. 
	“I’m glad to see you, shriia,” she said. “I was beginning to think this was my new home.”
	She didn’t say it with much relish. Things must not have gone well. “Well, it was a long reading,” I said. “Come on. If I can scrape together enough speeder for the five of us it’ll be 3 miles home instead of ten.”
	I don’t use it much, but without using it some walkout would be highly impractical. Mna got used to the strange mismatch between our movements and the speed with which the road and trees rushed past us. In a blessedly short time we reached the shield and went through it to my home, which I was relieved to see still standing. My protections were good, but so was Lythril; and obviously exile wasn’t cramping her style as much as I’d hoped it would.
	Aine saw Mna and the twins settled while I checked the laboratory. I met her again coming down the steps, a lit candle throwing pale yellow light up her paler face. 
	“They’re all asleep,” she said. “Mna too. She went out like a blown candle.”
	“Not used to speeding.” Aine nodded. “We can do freagair now.”
	“I’ll wait till the morning,” she said.
	“Are you sure?”
	She watched my face for a few moments with those large unsettling eyes. 
	“I asked for you,” she said. “I told the docent I wanted you to be my dhiaoc.”
	“You actually spoke to Morat?” I said, incredulous. “You? Went up to Morat and told her what you wanted?”
	“Yes,” Aine said.
	“What under Idair’s heaven could have given you the nerve to do that?”
	“You are the best at what you do,” she said.
	When she said nothing, I prompted, “And are you having second thoughts?”
	“No, dhiaoc.”
	“That’s as well, since you’re stuck with me,” I answered. “Good rest to you, Aine.”
	I brushed past her up the stairs. I could feel her watching me as I disappeared into my room but I was too tired and heartsick to care.
	The first thing I should have done was walk over to the window and begin the undoing rituals. Instead, the first thing I did was sit on the floor and burst into tears.
	I know you aren’t born with a fixed supply of tears, that your eyes brew them continually and replenish the supply. But still. As many as I’ve shed, I’m always surprised that I have more left in me.

V.
Always the Last to Know

	I felt, on the one hand, as if I had been asleep for a hundred years and my joints had forgotten how to do their job. At the same time, I also felt I hadn’t got nearly as much sleep as I needed. But the dawn was about to break, and there was no point in putting it off. I pushed myself up into a sitting position, huddling under the blanket for a moment. The sun was still not at full strength and in the mornings it stayed cold, especially now, when the sky was just beginning to bleed from black into gray. 
	My head cleared relatively quickly; the dreams I’d had didn’t linger for the time it took for me to get up in the cold and the dark and stumble over to the tub. That was an unexpected blessing. The battle with Lythril had stirred up some memories, and the reading the night before had completed the job; I knew, as I stuck a hand into the tub to test the water, that I had dreamt that night, and that it hadn’t been pretty. But four years had taught me that dreams like that are better put away, quickly, before you have a chance to inspect them. By the time my reflection reformed on the cold, still surface of the bathwater, I’d forgotten everything but that unshakeable sense of despair.
	I had filled it the night before, after pulling myself together. The water was mighty cold, of course. I threw fire around it and shrugged off my shift. 
	Idair bathed whenever she got the chance. When she stays in one place for any length of time the chroniclers always mention her daily trips to whatever stream or pond or lake is nearby. It was something that seems to have struck the followers as strange, and on some mornings I can still see why--it’s a cold, shivery, unpleasant process. She evidently felt it was important, so we follow her example in this as in many other things. People complain about the pointlessness of it, and so had I, at first; but in those later years I’d discovered that it was, in fact useful. The shock of the water would purge the last of the nightmares, and I could face the dawn with a fresh mind and a willing heart.
	I dried myself and took a fresh shift out of the basket. It was linen and sleeveless like all the others and didn’t do much in the way of warming me. My bare arms prickled in the cold air as I crossed the floor toward the closet.
	In the darkness of the alcove my hreapa was a dim whitish blur. It doesn’t actually give off light, but its extreme whiteness gives it a kind of pale luster in the gray of early dawn. I lifted it off its peg and held it out in front of me toward the eastern window.
	Gray lightened and the over the tops of the trees I could see the first rays of the sun. I draped the hreapa around my shoulders, beginning the song. 
	Haons linn. First fire. It happens every day--we go from night to morning, and the bright world is born out of the dark one. Now, of course, we expect it, but it was a while before the old ones could sleep easy knowing that the darkness would end. And then there was that time, recounted near the middle of the second scroll, when the darkness didn’t end when it should have, and kept on until Idair talked the sun back into the sky.
	So there I stood, as I did every morning, saying the words she used to drag the sun back up from wherever the Dark One had been keeping it. Meanwhile I fastened the sleeves with the star-shaped brooches Slythe made for me. She went into practical magic against the wishes of her family, who found it hard to understand why she bothered to go to scoil if all she was going to do was work with her hands. I was surprised, and touched, when she made me a present of them. She was already too advanced to be spending much time on something so simple, and I had expected to have to have one of the other scoili make them for me in exchange for help with languages. I learned weaving, barely, and pottery and carpentry, but I could never get the hang of metalworking.
	One at each wrist, one at each elbow, and one on each side between the neck and shoulder. And one at the waist, after the folds are gathered in and pinched down and otherwise smooshed around until the thing looks like a garment rather than a hanging mass of drapery. If I had been a little more skilled at the loom I probably could have made it more economical, with less wasted fabric; it would be cooler during the hot season and it would make me look less disorganized. And I still wished I could have just done round sleeves like Harani or Pel or any number of other scoili in my cohort had, instead of having to waste six pins on the sleeves and leave only one for the rest of it. But I just couldn’t figure out how to keep them attached to the sides and still leave the shoulders bare.
	When I finished the chant, the sun was visible above the trees. I raised my arms to it and thanked Idair. Then I dipped a hand into the bowl of ash on the windowsill and made the marks, one on each shoulder, repeating the words.  I am the torch from which you flame, I am the fuel for your fire. From my ashes make me new. Let me burn again. 
	After I washed my face and hands in the basin, and scattered the water to the seven points, I closed the window. Turning around is always a letdown. From the glory of the sunrise your gaze falls on a bare little wooden room cluttered with scrolls, writing utensils, bedclothes, the detritus of your daily life, and you realize what’s ahead of you.
	On my way to the kitchen I ran into Aine, who was already up and worrying. “There aren’t enough eggs,” she said. “Not for a real breakfast, anyhow, and as far as lunch I think all we have is that baked pratai and cheese thing from last week.”
	I grimaced. “It wasn’t that great new.” Aine shook her head. “That’s good, Aine, you’re making progress. A month ago you’d have tried to say something nice about it.”
	She smiled briefly. It’s easy to make her happy but it doesn’t last long.
	“Well, I’ll be in the ether all morning--why don’t you take one of the scrips down to the market and get us some--”
	“But, dhiaoc, you gave the last one to Kitth.”
	“Was that really the last one?”
	Aine nodded. 
	“I really am a menace, aren’t I? It’s not enough I’m exposing you to vigils, rappari and potentially demon-ridden children, I have to starve you too. Well, all right, do what you can, I’ll go see if I can talk Pertlo into another couple of eggs.”
	“It’s outside of the contract,” Aine called as I went out the door. I knew that, and I knew Pertlo wasn’t going to feel like cutting me any slack, but I went into the hencoop anyway. When she saw me coming, she ruffled her feathers and settled back on the edge warily. 
	I sighed. Chickens are not smart, but they are stubborn, and that makes them a haggler’s nightmare. I squatted down in front of her.
	“All right, Pertlo. I need two eggs and I’ve gone through the week’s allowance. Let’s deal.” She clucked with that maddening smugness chickens have. “I could see if I could talk Ridac into lending me Fleh again for the weekend. Wouldn’t you like that?”
	A flurry of squawking and wing-beating indicated that this offer had not been accepted. Well, that was unfortunate, because the attentions of a rooster were about the only thing I could offer her that she didn’t already have. She was the best-treated chicken in the Vicinity. Still, there was probably something her chicken soul desired, and if I could find out what it was, maybe I could get those eggs out of her.
	“Look, what else are you going to do with them? They’re not going to hatch.”
	Pertlo refused to believe this. Chickens don’t learn from experience. As far as she knew, an egg was an egg, and Fleh was fun for an evening but had nothing to do with producing chicks. I’d tried to explain but she had only the weakest of grasps on the concept of cause and effect.
	“All right, perhaps something else...”
	Farmers don’t have to do this. They just grab the eggs and go. None of this bartering or wheedling or squatting in the straw. But there it is. Farmers buy, sell, slaughter their animals without asking permission; but then they can’t. We can; and when you can obtain a creature’s consent before using it, it just doesn’t seem right not to. Unfortunately I always seem to end up a loser in whatever contract I negotiate.
	In this case, the upshot was an increase to 8 a week for the duration of Mna’s stay followed by an immediate reduction to 4 until such time as Pertlo felt like reactivating the original contract. It wasn’t good for me, but it was good for Mna and the twins, so I took it. Pertlo then let me grab the eggs she was sitting on.
	“Here.” I handed them to Aine, who cracked them into the bowl. Mna was entertaining Frih by the table, at which Crann was already seated, looking into space with those still-empty eyes. It occurred to me that when he finally came back, if he came back, it’d be strange to see him moving and talking; I’d gotten rather used to him. 
	“So what terms did she give you?” Aine asked, whisking the eggs into the pan.
	“Don’t ask. You want this hot, medium-hot, warm, or what?”
	“Medium-hot.” I threw some fire onto the stove top. Aine put the pan with the eggs on top of it and started stirring. Mna and Frih were now both watching us. I took a jar out of the cupboard and spooned it into a dish. Mna came over to the counter.
	“Let me take care of their breakfast,” she said. “You’ve done enough already.”
	“Be my guest,” I said. “I’m not handy with children, so it’s probably for the best.”
	Mna went to work on the jellied carrots. I was glad someone was eating them. I hate carrots. I grew them because they were good for me and then I canned them because I didn’t eat them and then I never ate the preserves because they tasted even worse than the fresh so I had about 20 jars in the cupboard. If Frih never got tired of carrots, he was all set for food. Mna would be more of a strain. I could request a hardship continuance but the Council had gotten pretty hard-nosed about that, at least with me.
	Aine divided up the eggs and we all sat down. After eating her portion Aine projected into Crann and got him to swallow his. At least his being taken meant that he wasn’t going to throw tantrums if he didn’t like the taste. Unlike Frih.
	Mna clearly wanted to handle him herself, so we let her retrieve the spoon from the floor and went about our business. Frih continued smearing the carrots on the table, his face, Mna, and anything else he could reach. Mna’s voice, which started off tender and wheedling, had become progressively strained until, by the time I sat down to observe the proceedings, it was positively biting.
	“All right, Frih, it’s this or nothing, so if you don’t stop crying and--” Frih opened his mouth and dribbled the carrots out of it down the front of his shirt. “That does it. You can just go hungry.” She took the bowl to the sink. Frih, seeing the food disappear, began bawling. Mna’s back was to me, but I guessed she was crying too.
	Aine and I looked at each other. Finally, irresolutely, she went over to Mna and put a tentative hand on her shoulder. Mna flung it off and burst out crying for real. Aine left her by the sink and came over to where I sat with the increasingly distraught Frih.	
	“I guess he doesn’t like carrots either,” I said.
	“It’s not the carrots,” Aine answered. “He’s just scared. It’s too many changes.” She dabbed at his face with a moistened napkin. “A new place, new people, his brother gone Idair knows where, and now we’re trying to make him eat vegetables.” Aine glopped another helping of carrots into the bowl and began mashing them up with the spoon. She sat down on the other side with the spoon at the ready. “Here, dhiaoc, you distract him.” 
	“Frih,” I called. His head turned. I popped blue flame out of my fingertips. He laughed. As soon as his mouth opened, Aine had a spoonful of carrots in it. He was too surprised to do anything but swallow.
	“Try it again,” Aine said. I kept playing with fire, and Aine kept spooning carrots into him. Gradually Mna’s crying stopped, and she came over to stand behind Aine. 
	“Here you go,” Aine said, handing her the bowl and spoon.
	Mna got a few more spoonfuls into him while Aine cleaned up the unsuccessful attempts. She watched me warily, almost with distrust. 
	“I’m not manipulating him,” I said. 
	“Aine’s just smarter than I am,” Mna said, looking at her. She blushed.
	“It’s experience, not intelligence,” she brought out diffidently.
	“She’s the third of...what is it, seven?” Aine nodded. “So she’s fed her share of babies.”
	Mna looked at Aine with new interest. “Where are your people from?”
	Aine got up to clear the dishes. “Jipran.”
	When it became clear that Aine wasn’t going to say more, Mna looked back at me. “Well, what now?”
	“Into the lab,” I said. “Aine’ll clear up here, won’t you?” Aine nodded. We left the kitchen, each toting a twin.
	“Did I say something wrong?” Mna whispered.
	“Ever been to Jipran?” 
	“No, never. I hear it’s beautiful, especially along the coast.”
	“Beautiful it is, but poor and hard as nails. She’s homesick--but she’s not. It makes her tense.”
	Mna settled into the chair with Frih on her lap. I sat Crann in mine and began placing the candles. “What about you, shriia, where are your people?”
	“The canon answer,” I said, forcing a taper into its wax-clogged holder, “is that my people are everywhere. But of course that’s not what you meant.”
	She brushed her hair back behind her ears and watched, amused, as I started digging the wax out of the holder. “No, it’s not.”
	“My parents live in the City.”
	“That’s nice,” Mna observed as I finally wedged the thing in and continued around the circle. “So you can visit whenever you like.”
	Instead of answering I shot the fire out to the ring of candles. It flashed from wick to wick until they were all lit. I sat in the chair and pulled Crann onto my lap.
	I opened the link. <And away we go.>
	I went to the rappari first. He would be long gone, but there might be something I could get out of the rapparan that had been carrying him, if I could find it. Of course tracking an individual rapparan through that plane is a time-consuming business. But a few moments after I entered their plane--or what seemed like a few moments, time does weird things in the ether--I found myself being deliberately accosted by the yellow-tailed rapparan I had been riding the other night.
	<You have returned.>
	<Yes.>
	<You said you were like him.>
	<We’ve had this conversation.>
	<Can you undo what he has done?>
	Well, that got my attention. <Tell me first what he’s done.>
	<Come with me.>
	I grabbed onto it and we went shooting along the ribbon. <Where are we going?>
	<We will be there soon.>
	<That’s not an answer.>
	<Live with the disappointment.>
	Ripostes from a rapparan. This was a day of surprises. <That blue thing up ahead...>
	<Yes.>
	It was the other rapparan, the one the green thing had been riding. It hadn’t looked well then, but it looked much worse now. Instead of flying it sprawled lengthwise across the ribbon, its edges bleeding light and then contracting into tight, tensile cords. The dark spaces of its interior were pulsing, spreading and contracting with a unison throb. 
	Other rappari were hovering near it, thrumming with the strain of stasis; but they couldn’t stay for more than a few moments before being whirled off along the ribbon. My guide would abandon me as soon as we reached it. <The stranger did this? How?>
	<We do not know. Can you save this rider?>
	<I have no idea. But I will try.>
	<I will return. Tell me then what you know.>
	My guide disappeared. I swam toward the sick rapparan.
	I felt unfriendly toward it because of our encounter the night before, but that dissipated when I took a closer look. This rapparan was in serious trouble. The flow of its corona was troubled somehow--clotted, irregular, clumps of spark and fizz emanating from him in a thin drip of anemic whey.
	<You’ve seen me before.>
	Its response was faint. <On the horse.>
	<Do you remember attacking me?>
	<I have already been punished.>
	<Who punished you?>
	<The stranger.>
	<Who is this stranger?>
	<It promised help.>
	<In return for what?>
	<Transportation.>
	<Where did it want to go?>
	<Too many places.>
	<Explain?>
	<It wanted to find a mother. But it also did not.>
	<The foaling horse.>
	<It wanted the mother. But I got the wrong one.>
	Crann had wanted Bearla, and the rapparan had fixed on the stallion instead. A typical rappari blunder.
	<And it punished you for getting the wrong horse?>
	<No. No...for getting a horse at all.>
	< It didn’t want a horse.>
	<One did...but one didn’t.>
	<How many strangers are we talking about, rider?>
	<I do not know. It had two wills. Can you help me?>
	Ah yes, that had sort of been the point of this whole interaction. <What did the stranger do to you?>
	<There was a flash, and now this.>
	How very descriptive they all were. It seemed that whatever had happened had disrupted the matrix that held its light in balance. But instead of tearing or searing it had created this contractile pulse, the bleed and shrink that was tormenting him.
	Pulse.
	Hm.
	I extended my reach. The pulse was more intense in the dark stuff of the matrix, which was pooling and trickling toward a black blot in the center. 
	<What are you doing?>
	<Hold still.> In the middle of the blot there was a clenched wad of something, a tense mass of darkness. When I tried to force myself through it there was a sudden, erratic waver in the rapparan’s pulsation. It convulsed and threw me out.
	<You are hurting me.>
	<It’s that thing that’s hurting you.>
	<The thing that throbs.>
	<Yes. You’re not supposed to have one of these.>
	My guide returned. <What have you learned?>
	<Not much. The stranger has changed something in your friend’s matrix and now it’s become some kind of circulatory system.>
	<What is that?>
	<It’s...look, it’s not something you need and in fact it seems to be doing your friend a great deal of harm. Someone needs to return his matrix to its original state.>
	<Can you?>
	<I don’t think so. Our best bet is to catch the stranger. Where has he gone?>
	The sick rapparan brought out <Through the wall.>
	<And after?>
	There was no response. From the faintness of the signal it appeared that the blue rapparan was no longer capable of communication.
	<Thank you for all your help.> I broke out of the ribbon.
	I was hoping to pick up something anomalous, a trail of oddities or misfirings or disturbances...but there wasn’t one, at least nothing severe enough to detect. I went through a dozen or so of the planes I hadn’t been to yet, but without success.
	By the time I brought us out of the ether we were both pretty tired. Even though Mna didn’t actually project with me, and so didn’t experience these trips the same way I did, it was still draining, and she looked worn out and pale. And every time we went into the ether and didn’t find him she lost a little of the hope she was clinging to.
	“Not there?”
	“No,” I said. “I have a little more to go on, though. Maybe next time.”
	“Maybe.” She stood up sadly. As I extinguished the candles I could hear her discouraged, slow steps dying away down the corridor. I looked at Crann’s lumpen form.
	“So why did it want you, eh?” I asked him, not of course expecting an answer. “And why is it going around trying to give heartbeats to beings that don’t have bodies?”
	Crann sat.
	“I might as well ask Pertlo,” I said, lifting him up.

	“Where are you going, dhiaoc?”
	“Down to the Mathair. I promised Lilea I’d look into something for her.” I continued rooting through the drawer in the kitchen table. “That really was our last one, darkness take it.” I lifted my head and stared into the space ahead of me, wishing there were another option. “Make up a list, I’ll see what I can do.”
	“Dhiaoc...we can get by...”
	“Mna hasn’t eaten regular meals for at least a year, and while she’s here she should have them. Even if it means...ah well.”
	Aine fished a parchment scrap out of the drawer and began writing things on it. “I’ll get everything down now so you don’t have to go back.”
	“Thanks, Aine. Twice in one season is really too much...but it can’t be helped.” I took the list, sighed, and tucked it into one of the pockets. 
	“Good luck,” she said as I moved out the door.
	The walk to the City afforded me plenty of time for reflection. It was possible that the rapparan was confused about the green thing’s motives. But then again maybe it wasn’t. It would be a strange thing to do, but the guun could conceivably have put Crann’s spirit into the foal, for whatever reason. But that remark about it having two wills--Crann’s and the guun’s, most likely--suggested that it might have been Crann’s idea. If he couldn’t get back to his body or his mother--and the guun, if it had any power at all, wouldn’t let him--maybe he could get into one of Taric’s animals, and find some way of making himself known to her after his birth. 
	It seemed an unpromising hypothesis. For one thing, it would presume knowledge that a child Crann’s age couldn’t have. The young do understand the spirit world instinctively, but to plan on returning to his body through such a circuitous route would require a grasp of logic beyond his years. 
	One thing was clear, however. There was something at stake besides Crann. From what I’d seen of this guun, it could not only provide the power that rapparan had used to attack me, but act on spirit matter itself. That blue rapparan had been abandoned halfway through a painful transformation--a kind of transformation that shouldn’t be possible. Even dark users can’t actually take a hale, hearty, fully functional spirit and alter its nature. What had happened to that rapparan meant that either this wasn’t a guun after all, or whoever made him knew more and had more power than anyone we’d ever dealt with. 
	My mind went immediately to Lythril, of course. But even she didn’t know how to do this. She didn’t know, any more than we did, what spirits are made of. 
	At least, she hadn’t when we exiled her.
	So far as we knew.
	If that had changed since she went over the border...if she was developing the ability to interfere, transform, create or destroy the spirits themselves...it was impossible, almost, to imagine the consequences. Lythril wouldn’t be, had never been, limited by scruple, prudence, or lack of imagination. She’d think long and hard about the best way to use it--but once she’d decided, there was no limit to the amount of havoc she could wreak. 
	But the white stone walls of the Pharc were glinting before me with a brilliance that hurt my eyes, and my problem would have to wait until I had given Lilea’s my attention. I paused before the gate to the Mathair, looking up at the carved capstone.
	Idair was not enthusiastic about inscriptions; neither are we. The written word is too powerful to be put into something so permanent--carve something in stone now, and in three hundred years the thing will still be working whatever magic may have entered it on a people who no longer need or want whatever spell you accidentally cast. So on the lintel above the door there is not a word, “mathair.” Instead there’s a bas-relief in which a woman, hugely pregnant and in the throes of delivery, squats with both hands extended. One gripping the white fingers of her mate, who looks on with evident fear, and the other clenched on the shoulder of a woman who kneels by her with a hand on her rounded belly.
	The stonecarver took liberties with the iconography, as lay artists will. So the woman kneeling by the mother is dressed in the garment of fire Idair always wore after the Burning. Her hair flows upward in strands of flame and each hand is surrounded with a fiery nimbus. Which would have materially contributed to the poor mother’s discomfort, so it’s just as well that this scene really took place before the Burning--when Idair was wearing regular cloth, the fire was dormant inside her, and she was just an ordinary woman trying to help.
	I pushed the door open and passed under the portal. Most of the time you see Idair in carving, painting, tapestry, any kind of folk art, that’s what she looks like. People like her better revealed, already blazing with her power. In depictions of the Coming she looks more normal because that’s part of the story--that nobody knew who she was, or that there was anything strange about her except that she wasn’t from around here. But otherwise--flaming hair, glowing hands, and the garment of fire, that’s what you see. How they want her, and how I suppose they want to see us.
	For a building that looks like simplicity itself on the outside--seven triangular blocks arranged in a star shape around a heptagonal inner courtyard--the Pharc is a very confusing place once you get indoors. The outer structure hasn’t been altered in several hundred years so all the changes that have had to be made have happened on the inside. The Mathair, fortunately, hasn’t had to change much and is fairly easy to navigate: on each floor there’s a corridor running between two sets of client rooms, leading up to the larger counseling room at the wide end of the point, through which you could walk to the hallway that ran around the courtyard and connected all the points. 
	I went straight to the counseling room, ignoring the wails, groans, and other sounds proceeding from some of the doors. Sounded like three or four deliveries already in progress. Most women are delivered at home; the joke is that it’s called Comings and Goings because you spend your life coming back from one village and going out to the next. But women who haven’t got homes, or who for whatever reason don’t want to be delivered there, come here. Along with the women who don’t want to be delivered at all.
	I poked my head in. There were two armchairs, one occupied by a rather nervous young woman--a weaver, by her clothes--and the other by an apprentice who appeared to be explaining something to her. Both looked up as the door opened.
	“Ife, I’m looking for Lilea--have you seen her?”
	“Fourth room on the left, I think.”
	“Thanks.” I ducked down the hall and knocked.
	There was the sound of murmuring voices, and then Lilea’s voice said, “Come in.”
I  pushed the door open gingerly.
	Lilea was crouched on the floor in front of a young, brown-haired woman who was seated rather stiffly in a chair by the wall. The woman wore a loose-fitting shift; her clothing was folded neatly in a basket near Lilea, who had one hand over the woman’s womb and was waving me in with the other. I closed the door and tiptoed over to another chair. The woman watched me silently.
	“This is Theamh,” Lilea said. “She’s come to help me with some of the more difficult cases. Fortunately yours isn’t one of them.” Placing her other hand on the woman’s abdomen, she closed her eyes and spoke softly in the Old Tongue.
	I couldn’t hear the words but I knew what they were. Go with our thanks, with the love she has shown you. Return to a mother ready to be, once you once again are ready to be. 
	When Lilea opened her eyes and lifted her hands, the woman in the chair let out a breath she must have been holding. “It’s gone, isn’t it?” she said.
	“Yes,” Lilea answered, standing up. “It left without complaint.” Lilea went around and did something to the back of the chair, which caused it to extend into a couch on which the woman was now lying. Lilea went to the cupboard near my chair and returned with a basin full of water and an armful of towels. “In about an hour you’ll feel your body start to expel the matter. If you wish it, I’ll be glad to come back and see you through it.” 
	The woman nodded.
	“Call me when it begins; I’ll hear you.”
	The woman’s eyes followed her to the door.
	“Shriia...”
	We both turned, but of course she was talking to Lilea. “What is it?”
	“Was it a boy or a girl?”
	Lilea looked at her. “It hadn’t decided,” she said gently. “It will figure all that out when it returns.”
	The woman didn’t seem to want to say anything more. Lilea opened the door and we both stepped into the hallway.
	Once the door closed, Lilea let out a long, slow sigh. “Give me a minute.”
	I watched as she slid down to a seated position at the base of the wall, her head in her hands. I sat down beside her.
	“I thought you said it wasn’t difficult.”
	“Technically, it wasn’t,” she answered. “Nothing easier. Why should it want to stay, being the child of what it is?”
	“You don’t have to tell me,” I said.
	“And indeed I’m not going to.” She lifted her head. “She can’t bear it, doesn’t want to bear it, isn’t ready to bear it, and yet now it’s gone she’ll miss it. No wonder no one wants to do this job.” She laughed. “We like things simple.”
	“So we do.” I looked at her. “So when’s your next client?”
	“There’s one already waiting next room over. I’ll go warn her you’re coming.”
	Lilea disappeared. It was going to be awkward for Lilea to explain to this woman what exactly I was doing there, and I was glad I didn’t have to be part of it. After a few minutes she stuck her head out. “Come in, Theamh.” 
	The client had her hair up, as city women mostly did. Unlike most city women, she kept hers in place with a net of fine, small pearls on silver wire affixed at the scalloped edges with shining hairpins. She was in her shift, but from the material of the garments heaped negligently by her swinging feet I could tell they were expensive. Underneath the fair hair a pair of blue eyes locked onto mine, unafraid and unembarrassed. A confidence I recognized--the confidence of money.
	“This is Theamh,” Lilea said. “This is Karinn. Theamh will be observing the procedure, as I explained to you. It shouldn’t affect things at all.”
	“Of course,” Karinn said pleasantly. “If it will help prove your hypothesis, I’m happy to be your test subject.”
	Lilea winced slightly at the terminology, but said nothing. We took up positions one on either side of her as she sat in the chair, gazing mildly into the distance.
	Lilea put a hand on Karinn’s abdomen, which wasn’t yet swollen. I put mine next to hers. Lilea was better at estimating than I was, but the notborn to me seemed too young to be more than five or six weeks along. It had almost no borders, no defenses, and was still very much in flux. I made the link without any trouble and waited for Lilea to join it.
	<Who are you?>
	It was the notborn, not Lilea. <My name is Theamh.>
	<Are you my mother?>
	<No, child, I’m not your mother.>
	<What is my name?>
	<You don’t have one yet.>
	<Why not?>
	<You haven’t been born. So we don’t know yet if you’ll stay.>
	<When I am born I will have a name.>
	<Not for a year.>
	<Why not for a year?>
	<It will take your mother a year to learn what your name is.>
	<If you are not my mother who are you?>
	Where was Lilea? I looked across; she was concentrating, her eyes closed and worry creasing the skin between her eyebrows. She should have been linked by now.
	<I am a shriia. You don’t probably know what that means.>
	<I do not. What is a shriia?>
	<Well, she’s a...it’s too complicated for a notborn.>
	I waited for its response, but there wasn’t one. In fact, I was linked to nothing. It must have broken somehow. Annoyed, because it was an accident that wasn’t supposed to happen to someone at my level, I focused on reestablishing it.
	I broke into the middle of a phrase being formed by Lilea. <...better to be born to a mother ready for you than one who isn’t. You live in her; you have some sense for her feelings. Do you think she’s ready?>
	<I know she is ready.>
	<How do you know?>
	<I know my mother’s heart and mind. She loves me. She is ready.>
	I broke in. <Child, if you can’t recognize your mother I doubt you can read her mind.>
	<Who are you?>
	Even for a notborn this was too short a memory. 
	<You tell me.>
	There was a silence. Then, stubbornly, it returned to its former line. <My mother is ready. I will not leave her.>
	“Lilea,” I whispered.
	Lilea’s eyes opened in surprise. She hadn’t expected me to speak out loud. Neither had Karinn, who for the first time began to look concerned.
	<What is it?> Lilea answered.
	“Unlink.” She stared at me. I nodded.
	“What’s going on?” Karinn demanded.
	Lilea closed her link. I closed mine, lifted my hand and opened our private connection.
	<Theamh, what are you doing?>
	<That’s not the same notborn I was talking to.>
	<What do you mean?>
	<I mean that until a minute ago we were talking to two different notborns.>
	<That’s not-->
	<I’m telling you, whatever I linked with it had never heard of you. I was talking to it and I introduced myself and we were having quite a little game of freagair and then the link got broken.>
	<And afterwards?>
	<After I reestablished it was to whatever you were talking to. The one who, I take it, won’t go back.>
	We looked at each other. Karinn looked frightened.
	<Maybe it’s twins,> I suggested desperately.
	<It isn’t twins,> Lilea snapped. <I know my job that well, at least.>
	<Well, there’s two of something in there.> 
	“Shriia...what is it?”
	Karin was looking back and forth anxiously. <You’re in charge here.>
	<Oh, thanks, Theamh. Thank you so much.>
	“What’s going on? What’s wrong?”
	“Contacting the notborn has proved more complicated than I anticipated,” Lilea said. “Give us a few more minutes.”
	Karinn nodded, reassured by the multisyllabic words and the clinical tone. Lilea had to deal with the medicals enough that she could talk the talk when she had to. <Now come with me and let’s find this notborn.>
	We replaced our hands and tried again.
	This time we both ended up in the same place. <I am Lilea.>
	<I know,> answered the notborn. <My mind has not changed.>
	<Your mother that may be is asking you to wait. This shows that she is not ready. To be born against a mother’s wishes is a bitter thing. Why do you want this?>
	<My mother will see in time that she was wrong.>
	Not even born yet and it was already pissing me off. <Says who?>
	<Theamh.>
	<Sorry.>
	<I will be born to her. It is better so.>
	<Why are you so determined to be born right now?> Lilea demanded.
	<I have things to do.>
	<How long have you lived here?> I broke in.
	<Long enough.>
	<How long is long enough?>
	<I will be born to her. I will not return. Nothing else matters.>
	As far as Karinn was concerned, that was quite true.
	<Idair with you and with your mother,> Lilea finally said, defeated. We broke off the link to the notborn.
	<I’m going to have to tell her.> Lilea sighed.
	<That is not the child she started with.>
	<But it is human.>
	That was true; we’d both read that way. Which only made this even more baffling.
	<But-->
	<Look, Theamh, if we can’t explain what happened it’s best not to start. She’s got a child to bear that she didn’t want born. That’s more than enough for her to deal with.>
	Lilea shut down the link to me. She looked at Karinn. Karinn swallowed.
	“Theamh,” she said, “Will you wait outside, please?”
	I nodded. “Idair with you, Karinn.” You’ll certainly need her. I slipped through the door and let it swing shut on Lilea’s words.
	I was very glad not to have to be part of the conversation going on in there. If anyone could handle it, it was Lilea. But what a horrible thing.
	Eventually, the door opened as Karinn stormed through it, dressed in her own clothes and looking much less poised and confident. I let her pass, then reentered. 
	“Lilea--”
	“Theamh, what in Idair’s name is going on?”
	I had never seen her this upset. It must have cost her something to be so calm in front of Karinn. I felt I should comfort her somehow, but couldn’t figure out how.
	“Someone or something replaced her notborn.”
	“Yes, I know that. What I want to know is who, what and how.”
	“I don’t--”
	“You’re the expert, Theamh--or you’re supposed to be--”
	“Look,” I snapped, “I find myself talking unexpectedly to a notborn from nowhere, you can’t expect a complete solution in five minutes. I don’t know everything.”
	“Well, what do you know?”
	“I’ll tell you,” I spat back with some heat. “I know the child Karinn is carrying is not the one she conceived, I know the one she’s carrying is too old for the body it just entered, I know this is not a taking because that thing is human not demonic and I know its arrival was triggered by your attempt to link because it wasn’t there when I went in.”
	I hadn’t been planning to say that last point; it just came out. But it was true. Whatever it was must have appeared at the moment that Lilea opened her link. Which meant something was watching her. Waiting for this chance.
	Lilea was suddenly quiet, impassive, studying me thoughtfully.
	“Do you have any idea what could be responsible for this?” I asked.
	“Yes,” she said curtly.
	I waited.
	“Are you going to share this idea with me?” I finally prompted.
	“No.”
	“Why not?”
	“Because I can’t.”
	Lilea was as stubborn as I was, that I knew. Why she was suddenly closed to me, I didn’t know.
	“If that’s how you’ll have it,” I said, coldly.
	The water came to her eyes. “Theamh, you don’t understand.”
	“I don’t,” I said. “You ask me to help you and then as soon as I find out something you send me packing. You’re surprised when a strange notborn shows up but not surprised to hear you’re being tracked or watched or Idair forbid invaded. Even if you are possessed, this makes no sense.”
	“I’m not false, at least,” she said, a question wavering in her voice. “You know that. You’ve touched me.”
	“Of course you’re not false!” I shouted.
	Lilea nodded. 
	“Thurk it, Lilea, you’re not still worried about that, are you?” Anger is not a helpful response to this kind of crisis, I know, but then I’m not a helpful person to have around at times like this. “You can’t be turned without knowing it, Lilea, remember?”
	“I know--I know--it’s just--” She took a shuddering, strangled gasp, then another, then suddenly started crying. “I want to, but I can’t tell you anything more about this. It would put you in danger. Now please, Theamh, don’t press me.”
	Empathy is not my particular talent. But even I can’t stand there and argue with someone in that advanced a state of breakdown. “Lilea, I’m sorry,” I said, trying to sound gentle. “If you can’t, you can’t.”
	“It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s not that I don’t--”
	“It’s all right. You must have reasons. Maybe someday you’ll tell me what they are.” 
	She was now leaning on the arm of the chair, her bowed back toward me, still shaking with her emotions, whatever they were.  I put a hand awkwardly on her shoulder. One of hers shot swiftly up to cover it. She stood there for a long time, her hand grasping mine as if it were in danger of floating away, while the sobs got slower and farther apart.
	Finally she stood, brushing her hair back from her face. “Thanks, Theamh.”
	“For what? I’m more confused than I was when I got here. So are you.”
	“Yes,” she said, with the smallest hint of a laugh, “a lot of things are much more confused now...but some are clearer, and for that I thank you.”
	“Look,” I finally said, “It’s your practice, and not my business. But when you figure out what’s going on--for Idair’s sake will you tell me?”
	“I promise as soon as I can, I will.”
	Her eyes met mine. She was there, and she was in charge; that was clear, whatever else might be true. It seemed like a good bet to me that something was hovering, watching her and interfering. But whatever it was hadn’t actually overtaken her--and unless you have more to go on than a vague sense that all is not well, you can’t just haul off and start cleansing someone who doesn’t want to be cleansed. 
	“All right then,” I said. “Idair with you.”
	“And you too.”
	I sighed and pushed through the door into the corridor. In my abstraction I walked the wrong way up to the wide end of the point before I realized. Ah, what the hell, I thought. It’s been a while, I may as well make the circuit.
	I passed through the anteroom, now empty, and out the other side to the central corridor. Seven departments in the Pharc, seven brooches holding my hreapa together, seven points at the ends of the earth...the Mathair, the Scoil, the Raed, the Shriin, the Canon, the Scoil Chanon, and the Seat. Four for us, three for them.
	On one side, doors led into the other points; on the other, a low wall surmounted by glass casements, which were open now for the mild weather, separated it from the courtyard. The courtyard itself was open to the sky, its one great tilu tree lifting huge, dark limbs toward the sun. Under the tree, patches of filtered sunlight caught the pale blue flowers of mramha, which blossomed along the runners that crept among its roots. Clear of the shadow of its leaves, and bristling thornily up near the outer walls, were the rose bushes. They weren’t in bloom yet, but their shiny, dark stems thrust clenched fists of pale unopened petal past the casements. Students from the Scoil and from the Scoil Chanon sat on the grass, eating or stretching out in the sun, gray robes or brown spread out against the green. Looking at them, I suddenly felt a million years old.
	I opened the gate and stepped through a gap in the rose bushes onto the green. I had spent a lot of time here as a scoilin. The smell of the blue flowers threading the grass was the smell of that lost time--eagerness, earnestness, nerves and self-doubt. And happiness, of a kind I hadn’t really known since. I ran a hand over the grass. Still clipped religiously, plush and slightly stiff with its blunt-edged closeset blades. I sighed.
	“Theamh? Is that you?”
	I was being hailed by a tall woman whose hreapa clung much closer to her form than mine did. The apprentice sitting next to her looked in my direction, skeptically. 
	“Harani!” I called. 
	Leaving the apprentice goggling amazed in her wake, she crossed the green toward me, folding me in a pair of thin, wiry arms. “I heard. I’m so sorry.” She released me; I withdrew awkwardly into my own space. “Are you all right?”
	“Oh--fine. It was pretty painful at first, but you know, pain goes away.”
	“Until it comes back,” she finished. “Still, knowing your history, I was worried.”
	“Actually, you know, the history makes it easier in some ways.”
	“Really?”
	“The more often you do battle with someone, the more you learn. She’s a crafty bitch and she adapts but...” I trailed off because Harani’s face has suddenly discomposed itself. “What, Harani? Is it my hair?”
	She didn’t even register the joke. “Battle?”
	“Yes,” I said slowly. “I’m talking about my battle with Lythril. Is that not what you’re talking about?”
	Harani brushed a nervous hand across her shoulder. “So you don’t know, then.”
	“Know what?”
	Harani turned her head over her shoulder to wave at the apprentice, who had started eating. “Save some of that rongo for me, Elad!”
	The apprentice stared. Harani laughed as she turned back. “She’s new,” she said. “Still at the stage where she’s surprised by me. Like I couldn’t hear her peeling it--”
	“Don’t change the subject. What don’t I know?”
	Harani’s clouded eyes bent on mine, without of course seeing them.
	“I thought you’d heard. I thought that was why you came down.”
	“No...” I answered. “Other reasons altogether...what haven’t I heard about?”
	“I should have known you were taking it too well.”
	“All right, now I’m really getting impatient with this.”
	She brought a hand up to one earlobe and fingered the space where her earring would have been. An old habit, recalled to life by a sentence she wanted not to say.
	“They’re closing the book on Istria,” she said.
	It was very quiet for several seconds.
	“Theamh, speak, please, say something.”
	“When?”
	“Today,” she said. “In fact, they’ve probably just started.”
	“Thank you.” I started walking.
	“I didn’t know they hadn’t told you,” she cried, starting after me. “I wouldn’t have said anything. You shouldn’t find out this way.”
	“No, I shouldn’t.”
	“Theamh, you’re not going in there--”
	“Try to stop me.” I started across the courtyard.	
	“You won’t do anyone any good by--”
	“I don’t care!” 
	Harani stopped. I could hear her sigh and sit down on the grass, next to her wide-eyed apprentice, as I burst through the gate and across the corridor into the Shriin.

VI.
Ready Or Not
	
	The bottom floor of the Shriin is one large triangular hall, lined with windows on both sides. Aside from the circular dais taking up most of the floor at the wide end, and the seven-point star inlaid in that, it’s empty. When we need something for a ceremony--the scrolls, an altar, candelabra--we bring it down from the second floor, a far less imposing domain of tiny cluttered rooms and warren-like passages in which we keep the tools of our trade. The first floor is open to the public, whereas the second isn’t; that’s one reason for this arrangement. But the main one is to keep distractions to a minimum. Most days if you go into the Shriin you’ll see people there--apprentices or shriias or scoili chanon or lay people--sitting or standing, quiet and thinking. There’s something about the bareness of the lines, the uninterrupted sweep of the windows and floorboards up to the dais, that encourages contemplation. That and the play of sunlight through the glass. When we do rites at night, the place glows like a lantern in the dark heart of the City. As a child I remember staring at it from a distance, drawn even then to the magic of light.
	I slammed through the double doors at the far end with more clatter and bang than I had wanted. A startled apprentice whirled to face me, a candle in each hand and a stricken look on her pallid face. Staggering backward, she bumped some of the candlestands she had been arranging around the edge of the dais. She made a grab for them, but several fell clanging to the floor, where they rolled gently back and forth on the polished stone. 
	With a little exclamation of despair she was down on the floor picking them up before I could ask her where her dhiaoc was. But I found out anyhow.
	From above came the sound of deliberate, but quick footsteps. The edge of a hreapa appeared at the top of the staircase that descended from the second level to the hall floor. The wrought iron rang with her irritation as she rounded the first whorl, her skirts flapping after her. When she swung around to face us she was already remonstrating.
	“Scoilin, you must pay attention to what you’re--” Her mouth set in a thin-lipped line and her hand dropped from the railing. Clasping her thin hands before her, she shot me the kind of withering look I had never been able to imitate. “Theamh.”
	Morat can pack a lot of intimidation into two syllables. That stone-cold intonation was supposed to freeze me where I stood. And it worked, for about half a second.
	“Why was I not told?”
	The sound of my voice was almost as much of a surprise to me as it was to the apprentice, who actually jumped back. Morat didn’t turn a hair. 
“Obviously you were told, or you wouldn’t be here.”
	I started toward her. That did seem to unsettle her; one of her hands made a motion toward the railing but returned quietly to clasp the other. 
“You know damn well that I wasn’t notified by the Council. And you know damn well that I should have been.”
	By now I was at the foot of the stairs, my face flushed with anger and my hands shaking with the effort of defiance. Morat was as composed and quelling as ever. “If you wish to discuss this I suggest you return with me to the second story. Her family will be arriving any minute now, and Ofilant hasn’t finished with the candles.”
	The apprentice took this as her cue to stop eavesdropping and start jamming candles into holders. I took a step onto the iron staircase; Morat drew back warily.
	“I do wish to discuss this,” I said bitterly. “Whether we do it in front of her family and your apprentice matters little to me. It probably matters a lot to you, though.”
	Morat spun around and disappeared up the steps. I followed, more noisily and with less grace. The stairway opens out into a gray little passage that threads through the maze of rooms. Morat receded into the dim light as we traveled down one of its turns, finally ducking into a doorway. As soon as I had followed her in, she turned with a face that stopped me in my tracks.
	“Really, this is too much even for you. We’re here to celebrate a sacred rite for a sister’s spirit and you come barging in--”
	“It’s not time,” I said, against my better judgment. “It hasn’t been five years.”
	“It’s been long enough.”
	“Emril was recovered four and a half years after she--”
	“And that is the only such case on record,” she countered. “Istria was as bright as they come. If she weren’t already long gone she would have found a way to let us know.”
	“If she were gone, she would have found a way to let me know.”
	I could hear voices murmuring down the corridor. Even in a place like the second story, my voice carries. 
“The decision has been made and it is final. I will not stand here and defend the council’s judgment to you. Far too much of that has been done already.”
	Grinth’s narrow, bent silhouette appeared in the doorway. “What’s she doing here?”
	“She heard about it,” Morat answered over my head.
	“No thanks to any of you, apparently.” I stepped into the hall, figuring that as long as Grinth was joining in I may as well go public. “Why was I not told?”
	From behind me I heard the flapping of a shriia in a hurry. I turned to see Slythe tripping along, a glass bottle in one hand and a large, leather-bound book tucked under her arm, a quill feather poking out from behind one ear. She was too focused on her destination to notice us, but my involuntary cry brought her up short.
	“Theamh--” she began.
	“No!” I shouted. “It’s not time! She’s not ready!”
	“Oh, Theamh,” said Slythe, her eyes tearing. “You see, this is why we didn’t tell you.”
	“I don’t have time for this,” barked Grinth. She disappeared, leaving me stuck between Morat’s anger and Slythe’s pity.
	“She needs to rest,” Slythe said. The plume behind her ear nodded grotesquely as she spoke. “She’s been lost a long time, she wants to go home.”
	“For Ydra you waited the full five years.” 
	“Istria was advised against that mission,” Morat said.  “She chose to take the risk. She knew she was most likely not coming back and she accepted that.”
	“That’s what this is about, isn’t it,” I said. “If it had been a mission you ordered--”
	“She chose to go off on a mission we didn’t approve. If she had accepted the Council’s judgment--”
	“Now, Morat,” Slythe began, slowly lumbering to my defense. “This rite is a blessing, you know, not a punishment for--”
	“I never said it was--”
	“Well, what are you saying?” I burst in. “I can’t believe you can stand here and say to my face that that mission was unauthorized.”
	“The Council never approved--”
	I took a step closer and dropped my voice, which was getting untrustworthy at higher volumes. “If you weren’t a shriia, I’d call that a--”
	“Theamh!” whispered Slythe.
	“It’s true enough the Council advised against her going,” I admitted. “And I advised her against it too. But she felt like she had to go--to finish the work we failed at,” I turned on Morat. “Work we couldn’t help but fail at--work you set us to do.”
	“This is where I came in,” said Slythe, and turned to head for the staircase. 
	“NO!” I shouted, grabbing her by the hreapa. “You can’t do this! She’s still here!”
“Now you listen,” Morat hissed. “Just stop talking for a minute and listen to something besides the sound of your own voice.” 
I did. From beneath I could hear a distant hum, the low buzz of voices in conversation. 
“Istria’s family is already here. They’re here to let her go. If her own mother can accept it I can’t see why you shouldn’t.”
	“Her mother doesn’t love her like--” I broke off.
	“Oh, don’t hold back on my account,” Morat said, folding her arms. “By all means finish. Love her like who?”
	I was saved from having to respond to this by the sudden appearance of another shriia from around the corner. “What’s the holdup? They’re all assembled--oh dear.”
	Barant put a hand up to the chain around her neck; the star pendant glinted in the dusk as she fingered it. Her large brown eyes fixed on mine.
	“She’s not ready,” I said. “Tell them she’s not ready.”
	“Theamh,” Barant said gently. “Istria’s ready. You’re the one who’s not ready.”
	She was right, of course, and her mild reproach brought the water to my eyes at last. 
“Now we’re going down to see her safe home,” Barant went on, quietly, “and if you want to come celebrate with us you’re welcome.”
	“Barant, do you really think--” Morat broke in.
	“Hush, Morat. Will you help us send her home, Theamh?”
	I swallowed the pain rising in me. “I can’t. I’m not--I don’t believe she’s gone. It wouldn’t be right.”
	“I understand,” she said. “But we are going to do this, because she needs it done.”
	There was nothing to be done. I had known that when I walked in. But I was still crying, with frustration, with grief, with the anger that had been eating me for years.
	“Why was I not told?” was all I could say. “I had a right to be told.”
	“We knew you weren’t ready,” Slythe said. “We were afraid you’d do this.”
	“It was still my right,” I said. “It was my right to be here, ready or not.”
	Slythe looked at her feet. Morat glared at Barant.
	“Go down and sit in the hall,” Barant finally said. “We’ll give you time.”
	“After her behavior?” Morat burst out.
	“That we’ll take up with her afterwards,” Barant said. “Go, if you want your right.”
	I took a last look through my tears at the faces hovering around me--Morat’s scowl, Slythe’s embarrassed averted eyes, Barant’s lined brow and saddened mouth. I brushed past Morat and down the long, narrow passage that led, eventually, to the second staircase at the point of the triangle.
	It spat me out onto the aisle that led up to the dais between the rows of cushions that had been put down for the spectators. Her family was clustered on one side toward the front. It was a small contingent--the journey from Amst is a long one. Only her mother, her stepfather, and her two stepbrothers had made the trip. I wasn’t surprised that it was just the immediate family. But I was surprised that Sinal wasn’t there.
	On the other side was a group of less interested spectators--people who knew her as a scoilin, old men and women who come to every public rite no matter who or what it’s for, other shriias. Not many, though. Istria didn’t make friends easily. 
	I sat next to Pridh, who had been Lilea’s apprentice. “There you are. I was waiting for you to turn up. Where’ve you been?”
	“It’s a long story.”
	“Who’s that woman over there with the dark hair glaring at you?”
	I turned to look. “That’s Varen, Istria’s mother.”
	“How come she’s not--ah well, never mind.”
	Ofilant, who had just finished setting up a lectern in the middle of the dais, drew the dark blue curtain across the back of the hall. Everyone fell silent. We waited, in the slanting beams of the afternoon sun, for them to make their entrance.
	Grinth entered first, pulling fire into one hand and walking forward to the near edge of the dais. Barant and Morat followed her, each veering off to light the candles at one end of the semicircle outlining the far edge of the dais. When they had finished, they stood one on either side of Grinth, a pace behind her, hands clasped quiet before them.
	Grinth raised her hand. Washed out in its bright light she looked even older than I remembered. Being head of the Council does that to people. It’s a lot of responsibility, and a lot of headache.
	“In Idair’s name, in the name of the spirit which we will never know,” Grinth began. “Through us, Idair welcomes you. And through us, Idair calls her daughter home.”
	She began the chant. Barant and Morat joined her. The words are in the old tongue, and there’s nothing especially exciting about them. It’s the music that matters--the blend of voice and voice, the sorrow of harmony, the heart calling through the open throat. And they did it well. I had to give them that. 
	Beside me I could hear Pridh joining in. I couldn’t trust my voice; I was having enough trouble breathing. As the music swelled, Slythe advanced slowly from the far end of the hall with the closed book in her arms. Behind her walked a young man, carrying an apparently empty glass bottle and a quill pen. So that was where Sinal had been--getting ready for the procession. That made more sense.
	He was of slight build; not undernourished, but thin, without much promise of filling out. I knew he had to be at least nineteen, but his extreme shyness made him seem much younger. He had the same almost-black hair, the same challenging eyes and proud chin, that she had. And he was dressed in the coarse, heavy cloth of northern Amst, woven out of the rough wool of mountain sheep. Since this was a special occasion, over the shirt and trousers he wore a short knitted jacket, whose bright red wool contrasted with the oaten color of his trousers. He held the pen and bottle stiffly, as if they were dangerous. Slythe stepped up onto the dais and placed the book on the lectern. The boy halted at the edge of the dais, clutching his two implements, waiting for his next cue.
	“Who have we lost?” Barant called.
	They answered; I couldn’t. “Istria ni Vharen.”
	“Who brings her home?” Morat went on.
	“I do,” said the boy. “I am her brother, Sinal mac Vharen.”
	I glanced from him over to Varen, who was staring ahead of her with lidded eyes, her hair still in that bun that seemed to stretch the skin back over those sharp cheekbones. She didn’t move at all as Sinal stepped up onto the dais and turned to face the assembly.
	Slythe stood behind him and put a hand on each of his shoulders. Even from where I was sitting I could see his body tense up. Slythe bent her head to whisper to him; a brief, nervous smile lit up his face for a moment and then vanished. She patted him reassuringly on the shoulder as Morat and Barant took up positions on either side of him.
	“Idair promised us,” Morat began, “that nothing and no one will be lost forever.”
	“Knowing that,” Barant continued, “we have the strength to release her.”
	“From the earth she can no longer walk,” said Slythe.
	“To the place we cannot yet know,” Grinth finished. 
	“Sinal,” Barant said, turning to him, “will you call your sister?”
	Sinal nodded. He looked up at Slythe, petrified.
	“Ask her to come here,” Slythe said. “Call to her, the way you normally would.”
	Sinal swallowed, then raised his voice. “Issss-triaaaa! Come ho-ome!”
	There was some laughter from the more cosmopolitan spectators at this overly literal interpretation of Slythe’s directions. But Slythe nodded when he looked up at her. “Now tell her why you want her to come. Why you would like to see her here.”
	“Because...” he started, nervous. “Because...it’s been so long, you probably don’t remember what I look like. I’m bigger now than last time you saw me. And I can write my own letters. I write them, too, even though I haven’t got anywhere to send them.” He glanced at Slythe for reassurance. 
	“Go on, Sinal, you’re doing fine.”
	“You told me not to get too big, well, I don’t guess I need to worry. I just wish you would come home. I could give you my letters that I wrote you after you went away. I mean the news you must know, if you really are a spirit now. But there were things I wanted to talk to you about. I liked it when we could talk in my head, because it was faster, but I liked writing you letters because I could set things out better.”
	Sinal swallowed and kept going. “Patches is gone, but we have a new goat and I named her Sincil because you liked the story so much.” That got him. It got me too. It was a while before he could wipe his eyes with the back of his quill hand and continue. “I miss how you used to tell me stories. I miss seeing you at the feast days and how happy I was when you came to visit. Larc and Merth miss you too.” The stepbrothers nodded, the youngest snuffling into his sleeve. “And their athi misses you...and Mathi misses you even though she doesn’t say it much. It’s been hard looking out the doorway and thinking you’ll never come through it again. I know you can’t come home. But come here to say farewell.”
	While he was speaking, Morat, Grinth and Barant had extended their arms so that they formed a broken circle around Slythe and Sinal. Fire burst from their hands, the flames meeting in the space to complete the circle. Slythe held up her free hand, glowing with fire. She put her burning hand on Sinal’s shoulder, who started with the shock, until the fire finally traveled along his arm to settle in the bottle and the pen he was holding. They glowed in the hollow carved out by the candles against the fading sunlight. 
	Sinal stared at the implements in his hands, now certain that if he jostled them they would explode and take him with them. Slythe stepped around to face him.
	“Sinal, are you ready to give the word?” Slythe asked him.
	He gulped. “Yes, shriia.”
	Slythe put out her hands toward him.
	Sinal thrust the bottle and pen toward her; she took one in each hand, also holding onto his so he wouldn’t withdraw them too early. 
	“You were my sister,” Sinal blurted. “You were the only one I could say things to. I’ll have to stay quiet now, a lot. But you have to go home. So farewell.” He snuffled something back up his nose. “Idair with you, Istri. We love you.”
	Slythe took the bottle and pen over to the lectern. She opened the book, speaking quietly in the old tongue. Barant stepped forward. 
	“Sinal, did you bring something to send her home with?” Sinal nodded. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and brought out a wad of creased, dirtied parchment tied up with a rag the same color as his shirt.
	“It’s a letter,” he explained, unnecessarily.
	Barant took it from him. “Thank you, Sinal. You can join your family now.” Sinal retired gratefully. “Those of you who have brought things, come forward.”
	Each of her stepbrothers stepped up, one offering a small cloth toy that I couldn’t identify, the other a knitted cap. She’d probably made both; whenever she went home from the scoil she always brought them something like that. Her stepfather simply bowed his head and shoulders. Her mother stayed put, impassive.
	“What is up with her mother?” Pridh whispered to me. “She makes the brother do the whole ceremony and then doesn’t even bring anything?”
	“Things with her parents...they were complicated. They...”
	I stopped because Morat had produced a misshapen metal brooch and handed it to Barant. Pridh didn’t seem to notice I was no longer paying attention.
	“That’s no excuse. What about you, didn’t you bring anything?”
	I shook my head. “I wasn’t prepared. Nobody notified me.”
	“Nobody notified you?” she whispered, incredulous. 
But there was no time to answer; the offerings were already piled on the pages of the open book. Grinth stood behind it and raised her hand over the heap.
	“Istria ni Vharen, sister of light,” she said. “Follow the fire home to Idair.”
	The flame leaped from her hand and surrounded the heap of objects, consuming them. Then it rose from the pages of the still-intact book, spun into the air and was gone.
	Slythe dipped the pen into the bottle. With ink that was still invisible to the rest of us, she inscribed the page in front of her as the others stood behind the lectern. The beams of the sinking sun slanted weaker and colder through the glass.
	The first sob tore out of my throat loud and ragged, and turned every head in my direction. After that it was mostly just tears, pouring hot down my cheeks. 
	Slythe finished her writing and replaced the pen in the bottle. She lifted the book above her head, open pages toward us.
	There, at the top of the right-hand page, in letters of fire, was Istria’s name. Right under Ydra’s. 
	“Istria ni Vharen,” Slythe said. “Born to Varen ni Chrill, twenty-six years, five cycles, three weeks and a day from this day. Touched by the fire six years, six cycles, two weeks, two days from this day. Brought home to Idair, this fourth day of the third week of the first month of the growing season. Nothing is lost while we have light.”
	“Nothing is lost while we have light,” answered the other three, walking forward.
	“Another story opens,” Slythe said, slowly bringing the two halves of the book together. “This story ends.”
	She brought her hands together above her head. The book closed with a snap. I knew that at that moment somewhere, beyond the shadows thrown by the buildings around the Pharc, the sun had set.
	There was a silence during which the only sounds were me swallowing the lump in my throat and Sinal snuffling miserably.
	“Slan abhaile, inion na hIdair,” Grinth began.
	Barant, Morat and Slythe took up the song. “Slan abhaile, Istria.”
	They advanced to the front of the dais, Slythe still holding the book above her head. While the assembled watchers joined, they stood ranged before us, singing with resolution and joy the song of release, the song sung over all our dead. Take with you only our love, leave us your pain. Go singing to the place we cannot yet know. Nothing is lost while we have light. Safe home, daughter of Idair. Safe home, Istria.	
	Still singing, the four of them passed down the aisle toward the door to the outside. As they passed, the watchers followed them into the aisle.
	I waited where I stood until the Shriin was empty. Olifant came out from behind the curtain to extinguish the candles. Then, with a sigh, I made my way toward the dais. They would take a few minutes to put everything back in its place; then they would be waiting for me in the Raed. I knew the room. I’d been there before. 
	“Want some help?” I asked, as she struggled to get one of the tapers out of its cup.
	“Oh--I--I couldn’t ask--”
	“Just answer the question.” 
	She looked down at the pile of candles she was cradling awkwardly in one arm. Two of them slipped from the bundle and dropped to the floor.
	“Yes,” she said.
	I started at the end, twisting the candles out of their holders and collecting them under one arm. As I bent over one that had gotten loose, I heard her voice raised in alarm.
	“Hey! That’s not allowed!”
Sinal sprang away from the window, terrified. Ofilant was starting toward him.
	“It’s all right, I’ll talk to him.” Ofilant, with a venomous look in his direction, went back to the dais. I went down to where Sinal stood shaking in his cowhide boots.
	“I didn’t--I didn’t mean anything--”
	“It’s all right, Sinal, you haven’t done any harm. It’s just that people aren’t allowed to write in the Shriin, except as part of a ceremony.” He looked down at the scrap of used parchment in his hand, which he had been holding up against the window to flatten it.
	“Why not?”
	“Because the place has power, and it might get mixed up in what you write, and then it might have consequences.”
	“I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
	“No harm done.” I was going to leave, but he was still looking at me. And I was still looking at him, reluctant to stop. 
	“You look so much like her,” I finally said.
	“That’s what mathi says, shriia.”
	“My name is Theamh. We met once, but it was five years ago.”
	“I remember.” His hands were folding up the scrap, his eyes still on me.
	“You’ll miss her,” I said.
	“So will you,” he answered.
	My throat tightened. 
	“She talked about you,” he said, the words coming out faster now, his face animated. “She talked about you all the time. I mean when she talked. Which wasn’t that much. She just--she was different, when she talked about you. She was--happy.”
	“Thank you, Sinal,” I said. “That’s the best thing anyone could have said to me.”
	“Did she talk about me?” he asked, his voice small.
	“Yes. I was glad you brought her home. You’re the one she would have wanted.”
	A shy smile that made him look even more like her appeared and then mercifully vanished.
	The door to the outside opened. “Sinal? Are you in here?”
	It was Varen. “Yes, mathi.”
	“Well, come out. We have to get on to the guest house, night’s falling.”
	“Coming, Mathi.” He ran down the aisle toward his mother’s silhouette. I walked slowly in the other direction. I knew where I had to go, and I was in no hurry to get there.

	“You know, Theamh,” Barant said, settling wearily into her chair, “I’m getting tired of seeing you here.”
	“Well, I’m tired of being seen here, but there it is.”
	“And that’s exactly the kind of insolence that brings us back here,” Morat snapped.
	“Usually I would agree with you,” I said, “but it seems to me that what’s brought us here today is something quite different.”
	“Meaning what?” Grinth asked unwillingly, her eyes glinting out of their deep, wrinkled sockets. Grinth wasn’t a hundred years old, but she was close.
	“Meaning that if you hadn’t tried to do this behind my back--”
	“We would have had the same scene, only earlier,” Barant finished.
	I couldn’t deny that, so I waited for the next sally.
	“Discipline is part of the magic arts. And obedience is part of that discipline. And yet it’s the one thing you seem curiously unable to learn.”
	“Now that’s not fair,” I shouted, abandoning my attempts at composure. “Obedience! They should cite me at scoil when they teach the concept.”
	“As a negative example?” Morat replied.
	I leaned over the table that separated them from me, which brought me closer to Morat’s unfriendly countenance than I wanted to be. “If I were as insubordinate as you seem to think I am Istria would be here now.”
	Thus, I managed to make Morat even angrier. “You don’t know that. There’s no reason to assume you would have found her, even if you had been allowed to go.”
	“Well, we’ll never know now,” I answered. “Because while Dalen was leading the search effort, I wasn’t out looking for her like I was desperate to be doing. No, I was on my way to Dairc of all places, because you had ordered me off to the back end of nowhere to go swimming through that putrid river and Idair help me I actually went.”
	“And by doing so you saved the lives of thousands of people in Dairc,” Barant broke in, angry. “That mission was much more important than gratifying your own wishes. If you don’t understand that, what are you doing wearing that hreapa?”
	Suddenly I didn’t have a comeback. I had never thought about it that way. It had seemed then--it still seemed--as if there couldn’t have been anything more important than finding Istria. But she was only one person. Ubh was a river, it had been killing or sickening people at an appalling clip, and if it hadn’t been stopped the pollution could have poisoned everything from wells to waterglobes. 
	Morat seemed disturbed by my sudden silence. Grinth was still glittering at me. Old as she was she had lost none of her acumen and I was waiting for the devastating moment when she would make her scathing contribution. Barant went on.
	“I’m not trying to insinuate that you’re not fit for the work, Theamh. Even Morat here wouldn’t suggest that.” Morat forced out a dry chuckle. “But this is exactly why Idair forbade us to form the kind of...attachment you had with Istria.”
	Grinth cleared her throat. Morat and Barant turned to look at her.
	“It seems to me,” she said, “that since Istria has gone home, the nature and licitness of Theamh’s ‘attachment’ to her is now moot. The question before you, child,” she said, leaning creakily toward me, “is whether you can or cannot conduct yourself with the dignity befitting the profession to which you belong.”
	“What are you saying?” I asked, suddenly afraid.
	“She’s saying,” Barant answered, “that it is our fervent hope that having closed the book on Istria, we can also close the book on your disciplinary infractions. Otherwise,” she went on as I began to protest, “we will have to consider stricter measures.”
	“Stricter than the travel restriction?” I asked.
	“Yes.”
	I wasn’t sure, but I thought that about the only thing they could do to me that would be stricter than that would be forbid me to work at all.
	“I will do all I can to bring credit to the order,” I said meekly. “I have no wish to cause further trouble.”
	“Very well,” said Barant. She glanced at Morat and Grinth. “Now that you understand your position, I think we can consider this session closed.” I bowed to them; they stood up. It was over.
	“I’m sorry to have to put it to you that way, Theamh,” Barant said as she descended from the bench. “But you really have made it difficult. Nobody wants to see you sanctioned. It would be a serious loss to the order.”
	“I certainly don’t want to be sanctioned,” I answered dully. I was very tired and wanted just to leave the city and never have anything to do with them again.
	“Out of curiosity,” Grinth said, “how did you find out about the ceremony?”
	“I happened to run into Harani in the Pharc gardens. She told me. Please don’t yell at her for it.”
	“Of course we won’t,” said Barant. “We never instructed anyone to keep it from you.”
	I looked at her from across an open gulf that she couldn’t even see was there. It was so obviously futile to try to make her understand.
	“What brought you down to the Pharc anyhow?” Morat asked. 
	“Lilea asked me to look into something for her,” I said wearily. “If you’ll excuse me, Aiv, I’ll be going. The sun’s down already and I still have a lot to do.”
	They looked at each other in silence. “Of course,” said Barant. 
	I dragged myself out of the chamber and closed the door. I wandered down the hallway, hoping I’d find the staircase without any trouble. I was still capable of getting myself lost in the upper stories of the Raed. 
	After tentatively poking my head around corners and looking up corridors, I heard an explosive sigh and turned to see Morat bearing down on me, looking vexed.
	“Look, follow me, you’ll never find your way out otherwise,” she said, passing me by. “Honestly, how someone as smart as you can be such a mess with directions...”
	I fell in behind her. “Thank you, Morat, it’s very generous--”
	“Don’t mention it.”
	I didn’t mention it. Or anything else. We reached the outer door in silence. 
	Morat held it open for me. I waited.
	“You saved it all those years,” I said.
	“Saved what?”
	“The brooch you put in the fire.”
	For the first time I saw her face twist with something like emotion.
	“You miss her too.”
	“Why is it,” she finally said, “that you are so sure you’re the only one with the right to grieve? That you were the only one who cared about her?”
	“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe because I’m the only one who ever told her so.”
	That hurt her more than I had meant it to. “I’m sorry, Morat. I just...” I looked through the doorway at the night I was about to enter. “You forbade us to work together. You prevented me from joining the search. You put a restriction on me to keep me from looking for her. And now you were going to deny me this last thing. Just because I spoke instead of keeping silent.”
	Morat’s thin arms were folded across her chest, squaring her shoulders and making her stiffer and more remote than ever. “Why didn’t you tell the committee what Lilea called you down here for?”
	I shrugged. “They didn’t ask.”
	“She’s not still carping about those refusals, is she?”
	“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “Lilea knows her stuff, and she’s a damn sight smarter than people give her credit for being. And she was right--something very strange is going on with those notborns and if I’m not mistaken it’s also something very wrong.”
	With Morat’s gray eyes still on me, I finally stepped out into the city and let the door shut behind me. I didn’t think she had seen the tears.
	Don’t you touch him! Don’t!
	It’s all right. You’re not there. It was a dream. 
	I would have given a lot to be able just to go home. But unfortunately I had to turn down the brick walk that led to the Sixth Seventh.
	Your used name Theamh. 
	Yes it is.  
	I’ve seen you in class. You read well.
	The Sixth is the fashionable quarter. For a while it’s mainly shops--the well-appointed kind, glass fronts with gilt lettering, wrought-iron gates, with round, succulent fruit or rich embroidery or winking silver and gold plate heaped up behind the front windowpane. There are little cobbled paths leading past their doors, elevated above the street so the shoppers don’t have to mix with the traffic. Then it turns into tall, narrow houses attached to one another, each with its own painted doorway and colored front window. After that, the houses become larger and farther apart, with plots of grass and garden and iron lines of fencing separating them. Until finally, just before the forest gate, there are a few mansions each commanding what seems like a square mile of sward, the light from their bright windows carving long yellow slashes in the darkness. 
	What are you doing here?
	I came to learn shri, same as you.
	I mean next to my bed.
	It was dark, but I was perfectly safe. The law was seldom seen in the Sixth but it seldom had to be; what thieves and marauders there were knew enough to operate in the other parts of town where, if the pickings were slimmer, the chances of being punished were smaller. They say that the law and magic have nothing in common, but the Sixth is proof to the contrary. How else could they keep all those wide windows intact and immaculate, their smooth clear faces innocent of crack or fracture?
	I saw you fighting. I came to help.
	Nobody else awake?
	You were fighting very quietly.
	And then the laugh. The first time I ever heard her laugh.
	And you have sensitive ears.
	I was already up.
	Doing your own fighting.
	The door I stopped in front of was at least four feet wide, with a huge, ornamental brass handle in the shape of a tree branch. I reached up, but I couldn’t do it. I scurried down the steps and took the long walk through the grass around to the rear entrance.
	This door was painted just as carefully, but small and without either brass accents or transom windowpane. I rapped on it.
	It swung open. A reddened, lined face peered out from a nest of disordered, straw-blond hair.
	“Theamhin? You here at this hour?”
	“Hello, Iela. I’m sorry to bother you--”
	“It’s no bother to see you, chara,” she said, motioning me inside. “Would you like a cup of soup? I’m just making a pot for me and Frene.”
	“No thanks, Iela...” She looked at me. “You know what I’m here for, don’t you?”
	“Indeed I do, and you’re not getting it out of me this time. But sit and have a cup of soup. I don’t see you so often now.”
	I followed her into the kitchen. “But it’s market day. You must be loaded.”
	“If we are, I’ve still got to account for every coin we spent on it,” she said, directing me into a chair by the oven. “I learned the hard way last time. If it’s supplies you want you’ll have to go above to the parlor and take it up with Herself.”
	I sighed. “I never could keep anything from her very long.”
	“That’s what I said to Frene.” Iela ladled the soup into three small bowls standing on the counter. Frene, still tall and lanky with his gray sideburns and large hands, ducked through the entrance into the kitchen. He took his soup, glanced in my direction, and sat down with just the slightest trace of amusement on his long, grave face. “I said, ‘It’s lucky for her she got the call, because Idair knows the girl has no future as a liar.’”
	“Well, now she’s on to me, it wouldn’t be fair to press you.” I drank from the bowl, more to please her than because I was hungry. “But before I go up there, how have you been?”
	“We’re doing as well as we can expect,” Iela said. “Herself has managed to hold on to the new girl, so that’s a comfort. The last one cut a fair swath of destruction on her way out.”
	“Gardens are coming well,” Frene added. “A sight better than when you had anything to do with them.”
	“You say that practically every time I see you,” I said. “You really took that tomato plant incident personally, didn’t you?”
	“A woman that can do that amount of harm with nothing but a trellis should be a real terror to the spirit world,” he said. “I’ve always said that about you.”
	“I was only trying to help.”
	“We should all be glad you found someplace else to meddle,” he answered.
	“Don’t tease her, Frene. She’s had a hard day.”
	“What gave it away?” I said.
	“You have to get up early to fool Iela,” Frene said. “But even I can read something this obvious. What happened, or are we mortals not to know these sacred mysteries?”
	I set my bowl down on the hob. “They closed the book on Istria today.”
	“Oh, Theamh,” Iela said quietly.
	She put a hand on my shoulder, her honest face clouding with a reflection of the grief in mine. It seemed she wanted to say more, but didn’t. 
	Frene shook his head. “I suppose it had to happen sometime,” he answered. “I’m sorry for it, though.”
	“I know,” I said. “Thanks, Frene.”
	There was a pause, and then I stood up, realizing I couldn’t put it off any longer.
	“Well,” I said, “I suppose I’d better go out and come in the front door.”
	“That’d be best,” Iela agreed. “Herself doesn’t like to know you’ve seen us first.”
	I left the kitchen, stepping back out into the night. I slogged around to the front door and rapped my knuckles on the gleaming golden wood.
	It opened almost immediately. Frene was standing there with a perfectly straight face. “Welcome to our house. Do step in, I’ll tell the lady you’re here.” I followed him into the entry hall, wiping my shoes on the mat. He shut the door. “May I take your coat?”
	He didn’t expect an answer, and I didn’t give him one. After indicating one of the many cushioned seats in the parlor that opened off the hallway, he went off down the hall to have a muted conversation with what must have been the new girl. “Fada, will you tell the lady of the house that Theamh is waiting in the parlor.”
	“Yes, Frene,” she said quietly, and pattered up the steps.
	I looked nervously around the parlor. She changed the decor from time to time, bringing in new things and removing others, changing the pattern of a hanging or the color of a carpet, but somehow to me the room always seemed frozen. Like the rest of the house--sealed under glass, unchanged and unchangeable, a reflection in ice. Despite its thick piled covering and profusion of pillows, the low couch opposite me looked enameled, refusing to show a dent or crease that would indicate the pressure of a human form. It was the same with the chairs, the hangings draped above and beside the window. It had always been thus, it would always be thus. Frozen at the height of perfection.
	The chair creaked slightly as I shifted in it. The room was not haunted. Nothing evil had ever happened in it. It was well-lit by lamps near the window and on the mantel that gave off a soft yellow glow; the colors had been chosen to reflect and augment lighting without glaring. The effect she was shooting for, she had told me, was warmth and coziness. A change from all that formality that was so current five years ago.
	The click of heels down the hardwood floor of the hallway warned me she was coming. I was already halfway to my feet when she appeared in the doorway.
	“Theamh! What a nice surprise.” She crossed the floor toward me, confident, the gathered, heavy folds of her velvet skirt swishing around her knees. It was long, as the taste demanded at that time, with a shortsleeved tunic of lighter, shimmering fabric falling from her shoulders to her hips, where it was caught up in a low-slung leather belt. 
	“Hello, Mathi.” Awkwardly, I put my arms around her. 
	“And to think this was going to be a day when nothing happened. Or almost nothing.” I dropped my arms; she backed away, assuming her seat on the couch as part of the same graceful movement. I relapsed into my chair. 
	“So tell me. How are things going up there in your neck of the woods?”
	“Oh...all right, I suppose...”
	“Your apprentice working out well?”
	“Yes, Aine’s very bright. She’s a little timid but I hope--”
	“Timid? How do you mean timid?”
	“Well...for instance she didn’t feed the vigils when I asked her to, because...”
	“The vigils. Those are those things that steal horses, aren’t they?”
	“No, mathi, you’re thinking of the rappari.”
	“That’s right, that’s right. So she’s good?”
	“Yes...yes, she’s done very well. She should have her orders in a couple of years.”
	“Well, I’m glad they gave you a bright one. Otherwise instruction can be such trouble. Fada’s very eager, poor thing, but I’ve had a terrible time getting her to remember what to say when and where things go. But then she’s from Jipran and her people were in fishing, I understand, so I can’t expect miracles.”
	“What’s her line name?”
	“Whose?”
	“Fada’s.”
	“Why?”
	“Because Aine’s from Jipran too; I wondered if they knew each other.” She looked at me, still not understanding. “Aine. You know. My apprentice.”
	“Oh, yes yes yes. Well...I’ve forgotten. She’s ni hUisce, but so are half of them out there. Unimaginative, the Jiprani, but you can’t blame them for it.”
	“Well, you’re a na Chraoibh,” I said. “How original is that?”
	“At least it’s not Dirt, or Water, or Wood, or something.”
	“ ‘Branch’ is loftier than ‘wood’?”
	“And how are you? In good health?”
	When she changes the subject it’s no good fighting her. “Well, I’ve had a couple of nasty falls in the past few days but I’m used to--”
	“Falls? From where?”
	“From my laboratory ceiling, and then from off of Cinhe--my horse--”
	“What on earth were you doing on your laboratory ceiling?”
	“I was catching one of my vigils. See, when Aine didn’t feed them they escaped. Then I had to go get them back. They’re back now, though, I’m all right.”
	“And as part of this process you had to go on the ceiling?”
	“It wasn’t my fault, the vigil--”
	“Have you seen the medicals?”
	Not this again. “No. Why do you even ask me a question like that?”
	“I just think it’s a shame you went into this if it’s going to constantly put you in harm’s way and then prevent you from taking care of yourself.”
	“Is Athair home?” I cut in.
	“No, he’s off on business. He’ll be back at the week end. Look, you wouldn’t have to tell anyone, it’s just to make sure you haven’t injured--”
	“Mathi,” I said, as calmly as I could put it, “I cannot go see the medicals and if I could I wouldn’t.” She paused to look at me reproachfully. “Do you think we can talk for five minutes without fighting about the medicals? Because if not, I may as well just leave.”
	“All right, what do you want to talk about?”
	There was a space in which she looked at me and I looked at the carpet. 
	“I’ve got a new case,” I ventured. “A woman whose child was taken.”
	“Taken by who?”
	“I don’t know exactly.”
	“Are you sure he isn’t just sick?”
	“The medicals looked at him. They couldn’t do anything.”
	“Well, what makes you think the spirits have him?”
	“Well--I mean--he doesn’t talk, or move on his own, or respond to anything, any more. He just sort of sits there. He has no will.”
	“Children get like that sometimes when they’re sick. You should have the medicals give him some of that infants’ preservative--it comes cheap enough and Darin tells me--”
	“What do you know about it?” I finally snapped. “You haven’t seen this child, you have no idea how these things work, you don’t even believe in the spirits and you’re telling me what to do for him?”
	“I may not know much about spirits but I know a lot about raising children and I’m just trying to give you the benefit of my experience.”
	“And I thank you for it if that’s what you’re really doing, but--”
	“What’s that supposed to mean?”
	“--but this boy is in serious trouble and his mother is very upset and I’m getting pretty concerned that I haven’t found him yet so you’ll have to excuse me if I get a little sensitive when you start telling me I’m going about it the wrong way!”
	She settled back into the cushions with a wounded and put-upon look. “You never could take criticism. You’re afraid to ask for help, so you go on making your mistakes--”
	“I came here,” I said, slowly and carefully, “to ask for your help.”
	“Well, I’m trying to give it to you.”
	“What I mean...” I took a breath. “I need supplies. I was hoping you could help.”
	“Supplies? What kind of supplies?”
	I sighed, and looked up at her. “Food.”
	Her eyes traveled swiftly and disdainfully over my form. “It doesn’t look to me like you’re malnourished.”
	“Nobody asks us to starve ourselves,” I snapped. “Moderation, not mortification, that’s what she said.”
	“Oh, well if Idair says so...”
	“My point was,” I said, trying not to take the bait, “that the allowance the Council gives me is enough to support myself and Aine. But now I have the boy and his brother and their mother to feed and I can’t make what’s left stretch to the end of the month.”
	“Why doesn’t she contribute, since she’s staying with you?”
	“Because she’s indigent, mathair.”
	“Well then the Council should increase your allowance.”
	“It won’t.”
	“Why not?”
	“They’re trying to teach me how to budget it better.”
	“Still, that’s no reason to reduce you to begging for charity.”
	“Mathi, that’s not the point, the point is I want Mna and her children to have decent meals while they’re with me--”
	“Well, of course they should but I don’t see why it has to come to this. I should think you’d be embarrassed to have to go around asking for food from other people.”
	“You’re right,” I said, standing up. “You’re absolutely right. It is extremely embarrassing. I find this whole situation painful, bitter, and deeply humiliating. You’re right. It is very hard to be reduced to begging for charity, especially from my own family. Very hard. It makes me feel very, very bad. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
	The answer, whatever it was, did not come forth. “I’ve got my bag here, let me give you some cash. Then you can--”
	This was almost more than I could stand. “You know perfectly well that I’m not allowed to handle money.”
	“I don’t see what the difference is between this and those pieces of parchment you toss around. Here.” I opened my eyes. She was holding out a handful of gold and silver coins. “This should keep you for the rest of the month, anyhow.”
	“Mathi,” I said in a small and wavering voice, “don’t do this.”
	“You buy food all the time with those pieces of paper.”
	“Scrip isn’t money.”
	“I don’t see how. You trade it for goods and services just like--”
	“If I take that, I can use it for whatever I want. I can buy clothing, shoes, jewelry, whatever, whether I need it or not. I can use it to hire someone to do my work for me. I can use it to control other people. All I can do with a piece of scrip is go down to a victualler and ask him to let me have enough food to last me till the end of the month.”
	“It’s still a medium of exchange,” she persisted.
	“Well, I’m not going to take the money so get it out of my face.”
	“I’m only trying to help--”
	“That’s a lie and you know it!”
There was a pause while we looked at each other.
	“You know, Theamh, honestly sometimes I think you became a shriia just to have an excuse to be rude to me.”
	I’d about reached my threshold, and this put me over it. “There were a lot of reasons, but you know what, mathi, on bad days I think I did it so that at times like this at least one of us would believe what I’m saying.”
	She smoothed down the front of her skirt. “That’s a very hurtful thing to say.”
	“Yes it is.” She looked away. “Will you let me take some food with me, or not?”
	She looked back. A short, abbreviated sigh, a long, aggrieved glare. “Go down to the kitchen and tell Iela I said you could have whatever you want.”
	“Thank you,” I said.
	“How old are the children?”
	“Between one and two years. But they’re just being weaned.”
	“There should be some fresh fruit,” she said, impassively. “I was planning on a fruit salad, your Athi is giving a dinner for his trading partners at the week’s end. Mash it up with some water and a little bit of rongo sugar and then keep it in very tightly capped jars, it makes good baby food.”
	“Thank you, I’ll do that.”
	“Well.” She walked to the doorway. “I guess you have what you came for.”
	It was more depressing than usual, this futile struggle, this wrestling at the bottom of the pit that we had dug for ourselves. Neither of us knew how to get out of it. From time to time, one of us would give it a try, but it never seemed to work. And now there was nothing left but the backbiting and the guilt and the wish that something was different.
	“Thank you, mathi,” I said again. “I’ll see you again, sometime.”
	“Do you want to come for the week’s end?” she suddenly asked. “Athi would like to see you, and the partners ask after you, sometimes.”
	“I’m sorry, but I can’t leave the house alone overnight with strangers in it.”
	“Then come just for the dinner,” she said. “It’ll be very small, really.”
	“I will if I have time,” I said, unwillingly.
	She smiled. “Well. Till then, then. Frene?”
	Frene appeared. “Yes, lady of the house?”
	“Take Theamh to the kitchen, she needs to take some of the food home with her.”
	“Yes, lady of the house.”
	“Come again soon, Theamh,” she said, and swished up the stairs.
	Frene looked at me.
	“Don’t say a word,” I said. “Not a word.”
	“You didn’t come out of that very well, did you?” he replied as we headed for the kitchen. “A week’s food for a promise to come to their dinner party?”
	“I said I will if I have time. I don’t expect I will. Please Idair by then I’ll have some kind of a lead on this case and I’ll be too busy.”
	Iela was arranging the cups and bowls on the shelves and delivering bits of pithy wisdom to Fada, who was crouched disconsolate on a stool by the oven.
	“First rule of working here is to mind nothing Herself says about you or your people. It’s a good rule for service in general, but especially here.” Iela looked back at our entrance; Fada was obviously still unimproved by her cheerful counsel. “Look, there’s Theamhin, she’s learned not to mind her at all, haven’t you?”
	Fada looked around to see who she was talking to. Like Aine, she had brown hair, high color and that peculiar bright green that somehow gets into the eyes of the Jiprani. She was taller, though, with square shoulders, long legs, and sturdy hands poking out of the sleeves of a uniform that was really too small for her. Evidently they were waiting to see if she was a keeper before having a set made up.
	“I didn’t see you come in, shriia,” she said, getting up off the stool. “Please.”
	“No, don’t, really.” I haven’t come up with a graceful way to stop people from offering me seats and so forth. “I’m fine as I am, I’m just here to pick up some food.”
	“So Herself has given you the go-ahead,” Iela said. “Sit and I’ll pack you a parcel.” I handed her Aine’s list. “Frene says you’ve a mother and two boys with you? I had no idea.”
	“Frene,” I said, sitting down in the broken-backed chair, “a man with your eavesdropping skills could easily make himself a serious living as a professional blackmailer. What keeps you trapped here in service among us?”
	“You amuse me,” he answered.
	“Fada, I heard you were from Jipran?”
	“Yes, shriia.”
	“What’s your line name?”
	“Annan, shriia. Fada ni hUisce na Annan.”
	“You haven’t been here very long?”
	“I only arrived in the city last month, shriia.”
	“And because you’re new and have no experience you’re stuck here with this job.”
	She nodded, beginning to lose her shyness. “I was surprised when they took me, it’s such a good house and there are no complaints on file with the guild. I was warned to check.”
	“Herself has her points, I won’t deny that,” Iela said, stuffing things into a brown sack. “Never laid a hand on us, pays us on time and what we’re owed, doesn’t dock us for damage we can’t prevent. And you’ll have no trouble from the man of the house, he’s as quiet as they come. Frene’s too old and tired to give you any--”
	“--and too terrified of the dire consequences--” he put in.
	“--and we don’t have any other men about the place except the ones that come by to deal with the grounds and the wood. It’s the feelings Herself is hard on, but if you can put up with that, you’ll be all right.”
	“Which is hard enough to do, I grant you,” I said. “Iela, she mentioned the fruit--”
	“I’m putting it in.” She tied the sack and hefted it off the counter. “There, if you can get that into the forest without harming yourself you’re a stronger woman than I am.”
	It was heavy, but not unmanageable. “You made sure not to put in any--”
	“I’m getting old but I know better than that. Not everyone in this house is an unbelieving ingrate.”
	“Iela!” Fada whispered, shocked.
	“Get used to it, child,” Frene said.
	“You mean Iela speaking her mind, or working for an unbeliever?” she asked.
	“Both,” Frene answered. “Any great house will have them. They’re too good for the spirits. It’s all brass and glass with them now. If you can’t buy it, sell it, eat it, or wear it they don’t want to know about it.”
	“Oh, it’s not that bad,” I said, pushing open the door. “Out in the country it’s a different story. You just need to get out of the city, Frene. You’re too provincial.” 
	I walked into the night with his laugh behind me. As the door swung shut I heard Fada’s whisper again, and then, indistinctly, Iela’s voice. “Her counselor? Oh dear no, child. That’s Herself’s daughter.”
	It was chilly now, with a bit of a sting in the air. I set my face toward the center of the city. Through the heart of the star, out the other side, and home.

VII.
Safe Home
	
	“Dhiaoc, you’re back,” Aine sighed, hastening toward me as the door slammed shut behind me. “It’s so late, I was worried.”
	I handed her the parcel. “Get that into the kitchen. I’m not sure what’s in there but it was heavy enough.”
	Aine hoisted it to one shoulder. “What kept you?”
	“I don’t want to talk about it.”
	Aine took the parcel into the kitchen. “Mna and the twins cleaned up the last of what we had--they were hungry so I didn’t wait. I can make you some--”
	“I’m not hungry.” Aine opened the package. “Where are they, anyway?”
	“In the living area, playing shadows. Frih keeps answering for Crann. It’s sweet, even though it’s sad.” 
	I walked into the front room. One of the lamps was lit and Mna, Frih and Crann were sitting with their backs to it, looking at the dark shapes that lurched around them.
	“I see a man on horseback,” Mna was saying, pointing to the shadow cast by the armchair.
	“I see horsie’s tail,” Frih said.
	I’d never really heard him speak before. Usually he spoke only to his mother, and then so quietly I could never make him out. His voice was small and high, and he formed the words hesitantly.
	“Crann sees horsie’s hooves,” he added after a pause.
	Mna traced a hand lightly across Frih’s back. “I see a flower under its hooves.”
	I turned around and went back to the kitchen.
	Aine was unloading the package. “This is amazing,” she said, holding up a melon. “They grow these in north Jipran but I’ve never eaten one. They’re too valuable.”
	“Nope,” I said. “It’s not working.”
	“What’s not working?”
	“I’m mad as hell and I need something I can yell at.”
	“Why--”
	“You haven’t done anything stupid today, have you?”
	She thought. “No, I can’t think of anything.”
	“Pity. Well, I’ll just--”
	“I mean, there’s the vigils--”
	“That’s no good, I already yelled at you for that.”
	“Could you yell at Mna?”
	I shook my head. “I hadn’t the heart.”
	“Well, what about...”
	“Oh, never mind,” I said. “I’m going for a ride. I may be a while.”
	“All right, dhiaoc,” she said quietly.
	I went into the grounds. The stars were bright and insolent above my head, their light wavering slightly through the shield. I let Cinhe out of the stable and walked us through the shield.
	“Come on, girl,” I said, pulling myself onto her back and hanging a light globe. “Into the woods, anywhere you feel like. I don’t give a damn as long as you go fast.”
	You don’t need to say something like that to Cinhe more than once.
	So you can already read people.
	Not everyone. Just you, apparently.
	Don’t get excited, I’m easy to read.
	I’m not sure about that.
	The black trunks of trees rushed by on either side as the leaves and bracken crackled under her hooves. We were heading toward Felim, but not on the path; Cinhe enjoyed dodging trees and leaping over undergrowth. I paid enough attention to notice when to duck the boughs that swung by above my head, but otherwise my mind was racing through memories that had nothing to do with where I was or where I was heading.
	You’re from Amst. 
	So what if I am?
	All right then, let’s talk about the weather.
	You’re from the City, so there.
	And I worked so hard to get rid of the accent.
	It’s not the accent.
	So what is it?
	You walk too fast.
	She wasn’t any more gone now than she was before. So it didn’t matter. Except that now nobody would look for her. Nobody would wait for her. Except for me.
	You all right to go to sleep now?
	Don’t worry about me.
	It’s not worry. I’m just asking.
	I’m fine.
	All right then. Sleep well.
	Theamh.
	Yes?
	The name I use is Istria.
	I shouldn’t have gone to Dairc. But there was no alternative. If I’d disobeyed a direct order that flagrantly I’d have been bounced right out of the Order. And anyhow, people were dying, and I had taken vows. So I went, hoping Dalen would find her. And then by the time I got back the trail was cold, and the first time I tried to follow it they tracked me down and brought me ignominiously home. And now I was under orders never to leave the Vicinity without permission. Which, unless I told them exactly where I was headed and what for, they would never give me.
	Theamh. Thank Idair.
	So the dreams are back.
	And they’re worse.
	You won’t tell me what’s in them.
	I can’t.
	Can you show me?
	It wasn’t fair. Not to me, but worst of all not to her. I might have found her. It’s true Dalen was older and more experienced and had brought people back. It’s true too that once they found Lythril, but didn’t find Istria, I would have been as much at a loss as anyone. But I would at least have had the satisfaction of knowing I’d tried. It might have helped me believe she was gone. Then again maybe it wouldn’t have.
	Why couldn’t you tell me?
	I thought you’d hate me. Mathi does. They all do, in my village.
	You did the right thing. 
	The shame killed my father.
	You don’t know that. And even if it did, that’s his own fault.
	And the shame stuck to me. It followed me here. I can see it in their eyes like I could see it in Mathi’s.
	Can you see it in mine?
	No.
	Dark knotted tree limbs weighted with moss dusted my head with debris as I flattened myself against Cinhe’s neck.  I had no idea where I was. But it felt good to be moving, to be rushing through the air and feel her body pumping under me, to be headed out, out, out and away from all this.
	What the hell are we doing here? What were we thinking?
	What I want to know is what Morat was thinking.
	How can she not be on to us?
	I don’t know. Maybe she is.
	Then why aren’t we dead?
	I have no idea.
	Are you scared, Theamh?
	Are you kidding?
	The sound of a woman’s scream broke through the memory. I realized suddenly that there was a human form blocking the path ahead of us, on whom we were bearing down at an extremely dangerous speed. Cinhe scrabbled frantically to a stop as I hauled up on her mane. The woman dove sideways to the ground, rolling away from Cinhe’s hooves before bumping into a tree trunk. When I dismounted, she was still clenched up into a ball, her arms clutched protectively over her head and her knees drawn up against her stomach.
	“Idair strike me, I am so sorry. Are you hurt?”
	“No,” came a shaken voice from inside the ball. “No, I don’t think so.”
	“Lucky for both of us Cinhe can stop on a pebble,” I said. “Please, unball yourself and let me take a look at you, I want to make sure you’re all right.”
	One eye opened and peered at me through her fingers. “You’re not a spirit?”
	“No, I’m not. I promise.”
	The girl rocked onto her haunches, dropping her hands and lifting her ashen, tear-stained face toward mine. I recognized her now from the reading at Felim--it was the girl who’d been sitting next to Ilwath, the blonde girl who had asked me about true love.
	Her eyes lit and a hand shot out suddenly to grab the sleeve of my hreapa. “Shriia! Oh, shriia, thank all the spirits it’s you. You have to come with me, right now, please.”
	“What’s happened?”
	The tears started again. “Something terrible is wrong with Ilwath.”
	“Get on the horse and take me to her,” I said, mounting.
	With a little difficulty, she mounted behind me, wrapping her thin arms around my waist. “Felim, Cinhe, as fast as you can get there.”
	Turns out we had strayed onto the path; Cinhe took off up it without hesitation.
	“Damn it,” I muttered. “The one time I’m wrong and it has to be her.”
	“I didn’t believe it either, shriia,” she said. “He’s been saying that about her for weeks now, I thought it was just her father being hard on her. But now...”
	“What happened?”
	“I...she doesn’t look right, she’s all huddled up and rocking back and forth and...and...”
	“How did you come to discover this at this time of night?”
	Silence.
	Finally, with the unsteady courage of the young, “She was supposed to meet me in the field.”
	“Ah.”
	After a short pause, I prompted, “And when she didn’t?”
	“When she didn’t I...I thought her father might have...done something to her. So I looked in the back window, where she has her bed...and...and there she was.”
	“Here’s the crossroads--which way?”
	“Left, over the little river there.”
	Cinhe followed. The girl took a deep breath and continued. “I ran to wake her father. He sent me to go for you.”
	“Why me?”
	“We shook her and shook her and called her name and washed her face and everything we could think of,” she went on, her voice pitched high with the strain. “She isn’t herself, she just isn’t there. Except she kind of is underneath, I think, I saw it maybe a little bit, but he thinks she’s completely gone and something else is there now...”
	Through her sobs, the girl directed me to the farm. I dismounted and helped her off. She was still crying.
	“You ran right off and told her father,” I said, looking at her. “So he knows you were in her bedroom at this time of night.”
	She stared at me, panic dawning. “I didn’t think of it, shriia. She needed help.”
	“Ilwath is lucky to have you,” I said, knocking on the plank door of the cottage.
	It swung open and the father’s face peered out at me above a lamp, stubbly and haggard but still resolute and ungiving. “You’re here then. Well, maybe next time you’ll listen to a father when he speaks of his daughter.”
	“I am very sorry to have endangered your child,” I said. “It’s my fault and I take responsibility. You can have your satisfaction of me later as our custom allows. Right now she needs help. Where is she?”
	The cottage was really a one-room affair--a large square with plank floors and earth-and-wood walls under a thatch roof. The stove and chimney were in one corner with the cooking utensils; his straw pallet and what few personal effects he had were in another. But a wooden partition had been set up at one end to close it off, and a door cut crudely into it, swinging on homemade hinges. From behind it I heard a low, droning moan.
	“She’s in here,” he said, bending down to get through the doorway.
	On the other side of the wall was Ilwath’s bed--and unlike her father’s, it was actually a bed, with four posts, a stretched-rope undergirding and a mattress stuffed with something softer than straw. It was too small for a girl her size--it had probably been made when she was a child--but that didn’t matter at the moment, because Ilwath wasn’t lying down. She was sitting with her back to the wall, her arms wrapped around her trunk under her breasts, rocking back and forth and emitting the moan I had heard.
	“You see,” he said. “That’s not her.”
	I knelt on the bed. “Ilwath? Ilwath, it’s Theamh. Are you in there? Can you hear me?”
	Something was indeed terribly wrong. Her eyes were aimed in my direction but you would not call them focused, and she didn’t appear to be seeing me. From her slack, partially open mouth a line of drool ran down her chin. I put a hand on each temple.
	I went in carefully, as I always do in these cases--linking to a possessed person is very dangerous. My first guess had been that this was some kind of impasse--an incomplete attempt that left her without the ability to control her body but which wasn’t thorough enough to allow the other spirit to take over. But there was no indication of another life--no alien fire ringing hers, no charge repelling interference. The boundary wasn’t breached, or encircled, so much as warped. Flame burned slower, swirling torpidly over her mindspace more like some sluggish viscous liquid than the fire of consciousness. I pushed my way through them easily, but it was more like swimming than the usual flight.
	Inside things only got more confusing. I never felt the shock I was expecting--the shiver that comes of brushing against an otherworld being. What was there was her--it was just wrong. Nothing could be traced back to its place. Trails faded or broke in mid-path. Her mind wavered in a treacly, slippery kind of way that moved her language out of my reach. A barrier erected by a possessing spirit either burns, shocks, or flashes through you in an effort to seize. This was something different. 
	<Ilwath. Can you hear me?>
	<I...I...>
	<Listen to my voice. Try to grasp it.>
	<I...help...>
	<I’m right here. Can you come toward me?>
	<...Welbin...>
	<Yes, keep talking. Can you tell me what happened?>
	<...Welbin...>
	She disappeared under the treacle. I went in search, but it was slow going through this warping, bubbling, turbulent version of what she had been. It was a few minutes before I was certain I had lost contact. I unlinked.
	The girl from the forest was watching me, anxious. 
	“Is your name Welbin?” I asked her.
	“No, shriia,” she said. “It’s Gilish.”
	From her father, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a flicker of recognition. But when I turned my full attention on him he was looking down at the floor.
	“Is your name Welbin?”
	“No,” he mumbled.
	“Do you know who Welbin is?”
	“No idea.” 
	He was a poor liar. But he wasn’t going to give in, any more than he had when--
	“All right,” I brought out, leaping to my feet with a sudden energy that greatly startled both of them, “what did the medicals give you for her and when did she take it?”
	“I--don’t know what you’re--”
	“You thurking well do. You went down to the City and you convinced one of the medicals to prescribe something for her. What was it?”
	He looked at me, then at her. His mouth began working.
	“What did they give you?” I asked, trying to sound gentle this time.
	“They said it would put her right,” he finally protested, his face crumbling into despair with disturbing alacrity.  “If I’d thought it would hurt her--”
	“I know,” I said, alarmed by his transformation. In seconds he had turned from the gaunt, wood-and-iron authority I had wrangled with to this wet-eyed, fallen-cheeked ruin. “It’s not your fault. They said it would help her. But as you can see, it hasn’t.” 
	“What must I do?”
	“If you’ve still got the vial I may be able to help.”
	He disappeared into the other room and could soon be heard rummaging around in the corner. The girl looked at me.
	“Who’s Welbin?” she asked, jealousy giving her voice an unaccustomed edge.
	“This is it,” her father cried, running back. “Here it is.”	
	He handed me a small dun-colored vial with a flat cap. I could see through its sides to the outlines of the white pellets, but only blurrily. A shiny piece of parchment with black letters written on it was affixed to the side.
	“Gilish, meet Welbin,” I said, holding it out to her.
	She read the label. “Welbin. For Ilwath ni Choirin, one tablet twice a day.” Puzzled, she handed it back to me.
	“This is what’s doing this to her?”
	“Yes.” I unscrewed the cap with some difficulty. The walls of the vial were strange to me--not glass, something thinner and less cold, smooth like the skin of a snake and about the same temperature. “There’s plenty left. About a week’s worth, it looks like.”
	Her father nodded. “They said if there was no change I should increase the dose.”
	“And did you?”
	“Why would I?” he cried. “Look at her! Wouldn’t you call that a change?”
	We looked at Ilwath. She was on her side now, clutched up, still droning, still staring insensibly ahead of her.
	I looked into the vial. Twelve little round white pellets, innocent as pebbles, winked back up at me.
	I opened my link to Aine. <Aine? You still up?>
	<Where are you, dhiaoc?>
	<I’m in Felim on an emergency call. I may not be back for a while. Don’t wait up.>
	<All right.>
	I closed that one and sent one out to Lilea.
	<Lilea. LILEA. Hel-LOOOOOO-->
	<Theamh?>
	<Wakey wakey.>
	<Iandar and Cailte, Theamh, what time is it?>
	<I’m sorry, it’s an emergency. What do you know about a drug called Welbin?>
	<Never heard of it. What’s the real name?>
	I squinted at the label. <It means nothing to me.>
	<Bleed through, maybe I can read it.>
	I deepened the link so that she could see what I was looking at. <Way too long, and not one I recognize. But it looks like what I think you think it is.> 
	<I was afraid you were going to say that.>
	<Who’s the victim?>
	I looked at Ilwath.
	<Idair save that poor child.>
	<Yeah, well, let’s hope Idair does.>
	<You be careful, Theamh, that stuff is vicious.>
	<Thanks, Lilea. Idair with you.>
	The link closed. I took a deep breath. “Do you have any water drawn?”
	“There’s a little left in the bucket by the hob.”
	“Would you bring some for me in a cup, please?”
	He disappeared. 
	“What are you going to do?” the girl asked.
	The father returned, holding out a wooden cup. “Do you need anything else?”
	“No,” I sighed, shaking one of the pellets into my hand. “Now, man of the house--what’s your used name?”
	“Owdan.”
	“Well, Owdan, in a few minutes you may see me doing some of the same things as Ilwath. That isn’t necessarily a problem. But if I’m not back to normal within, say, an hour, go into town for the medicals and ask for Darin. He may be able to help. You understand?”
	“I think so, shriia.”
	“Well then.” I stared down at the pellet in my hand. Closing my eyes, I brought up the vision of my body. The barriers were in place; I hoped they would hold.
	“Down the rabbit hole,” I said, with a highly unconvincing smile. I popped the pellet into my mouth and washed it down with the water. 
	With an effort I was able to speed its process down my throat into my stomach. Accelerating the muscle action allowed me to grind it quickly down, although it also gave me a terrible bellyache. Then I sat back, metaphorically speaking, to await developments.
	The first sensation was a chill spreading from the base of my neck in branching rivers across the inside of my skull. The poison spidering out through the network of veins into my brain. Then, with a sick kind of seeping, it started to penetrate.
	So this was how it worked. First by coating the boundary with this cold, slick patina, then soaking through the quotidian, starting with recent memories. Links dissolved; event floated from event; cause left effect and last week’s breakfast irresistibly brought to mind the hare I had startled on my way back from the City a month ago. Instead of threads looping from thought to thought with their own raveled but inimitable logic, there was this floating medium, a kind of liquid resin in which thoughts hung suspended, distant, unconnected and unclaimed. And the stain spread, slowly, into the other regions.
	Back through the memories of my practice, of Cacht and Dairc and the trial, back through that horrible month of fighting the Council, back through my apprenticeship, but always coming back to her. And every time, the trail went a little slower...the steps were farther apart...the memory swam, trembled, and broke into droplets that rolled out of my weakening grasp.
	Istria laughing, Istria walking, Istria’s white fingers clutched on my wrist in terror, Istria’s eyes filling with tears, Istria dragging me out into the sunlight, Istria turning her head toward the mountains...but so far away, and moving farther, floating off in the treacle. It wasn’t her riding away, it wasn’t me shuddering in her arms, it wasn’t us huddled under that evil roof. No. Something...different. Someone...else. It wasn’t...she wasn’t...I wasn’t...there...here... anywhere...
	so this was how it worked   image first   and   farther farther   memory not memory   so this is how it works  edges   gone   nothing cuts nothing hurts   nothing   means   so this is how you get   to be   nowhere   once   no one   happens      why      speak
	so	this	is	how	it	works		when you	are not you nothing that	mattered	matters		who are you	without	your spirit what’s		your body		what’s		the world	nothing underwater	sit still for	Idairsake	stop 	floating like that	it’s just a wall	so why won’t it	sit still
	sothiss 	howett	Welbin	Gilish	slan abhaile 	tag is ith is          nilachaon
	nilachaon
	you’re coming with me
	nilachaon
	I can’t
	nilachaon
	I’m not leaving without you 
	sothis 		ishowit			works
	sothis		ishowyou		fight it
	claim 	one	thing 	one	thing 	too	sharp	to	lose
	we have to get out	we’re not done		it’s too late
	one thing	that can’t	float
	she’ll turn us		she can’t	she can
	one thing you that can’t go
	that’s why she hasn’t killed us  	I’ll never turn on you
	hard sharp yes but you
	that’s not how she’ll do it
	claim the pain
	we’re not leaving
	build from it
	listen to me Istri
	forge the links
	we can’t go back failed
	to the rest of you
	that dream you wouldn’t tell me
	growing again from the dark side out
	a dream can’t hurt us
	branches thrusting up around out
	I know what was in it
	and the resin dropping off them
	how can you know
	the leaves on the branches
	because it wasn’t a dream
	and the sun on the leaves
	you’re right we need to leave
	both of us
	both of us
	now
	right now
	So this is how it works. Memory to memory, link to link, building the dark tree, forcing it to bear its bitter fruit. So the bright leaves fly from its branches, so that you become, once again, who you are. It starts with the refusal. The refusal to forget what hurt you.
	oh no no Theamh you’ve got to get up
	I’m trying but
	I really will kill that bitch
	it’s no use it’s started we’ve seen how this ends
	I’m not leaving you
	we both know I’m dead already now just go
	I won’t leave you
	she’s getting closer 
	come on, I’ll help you
	run Istri she’s coming
	no
	The world around me was still doing some strange things. But my world was back together. Now it was just a question of translation.
	run you’ll make it she’ll stop to finish me
	don’t talk like that
	Istri please she’ll kill you
	I’ll die with you before I’ll live without you
	My vision cleared. Gilish was staring at me, terrified. Owdan’s hands were twisting in front of him, held anxiously up by his chest as his breath hissed through it. I wiped my mouth; my hand came away wet. I shook my head to clear out the last of it.
	“Well,” I said, relieved that my voice was working. “I think I’ve got the hang of this now.”
	“I’m glad to hear it, shriia,” croaked Owdan.
	“It shouldn’t be too difficult,” I said, as cheerfully as I could. I resumed my position on the bed and put my hands up to Ilwath’s damp temples.
	Now I knew what I was looking for it was easy to find. Somewhere in the sodden flux of her mindspace there was a jagged sharp stone, and I could get there by following the partings of the waters. Trace the disturbances back to the stone...back to the rock that breaks the ripple...
	mathi
	Just the cry, at first
	mathi mathi
	And then the image. A body, laid out on a wooden bier, its arms straight at its sides, the red skirt of its departure dress flapping in the wind. The image bouncing suddenly as whoever was holding her adjusted her position. And the woman in the hreapa with the iron-gray hair and the set eyes, raising a hand toward the bier.
	slan abhaile choirin
	And the fire flashing over the bier. Her mother, turning to ash in front of her tearless husband and the daughter too young to understand even the words. The first loss.
	<Ilwath.>
	<Mathi...?>
	From here to her father’s face, younger but just as grim, looking over the edge of her cradle. And the tears dropping onto the sunburnt hand that rocked it as the tuneless lullaby came almost involuntarily from his throat.
	<Ilwath.>
	<Athi?>
	To her running down a hillside as fast as her short, unsteady legs would go, him in pursuit, shouting for her to stop, in a tone that failed to match the severity of the words.
	<Ilwath.>
	<Where...>
	To a ring of students grouped around the fosterer, singing, and the bright, sharp glance of a girl with golden hair.
	<Ilwath.>
	<Gilish?>
	To a field after sundown, the darkness under the wheat, the gleam of her eyes in the moonlight, the pressure of her mouth and the warmth of her hands.
	<Ilwath.>
	<I’m...what has...>
	To my face, puzzled but seeming kind, peering up at her; to the touch of my hand on the back of her head. It shouldn’t take long and it won’t hurt.
	<Ilwath.>
	<Shriia?>
	<Can you hear me?>
	<What’s happening to me?>
	<You’ve been poisoned. I’m here to help purge you.>
	<Welbin.>
	<Exactly.>
	<I should never have swallowed that thing.>
	<All right then, let’s follow the anger.>
	With her helping it went faster. But it was still slow, laborious, the painful reconstruction of broken bridges and reassembly of lost connections. Memory by memory. Him building that little bed and cutting the window for her in the wall behind it. His singing at night, every night, for her. The discovery of her blood, her fear and his confusion. The long nights of conflict. The longer nights of stony silence. The second loss.
	<I can’t believe he did this to me.>
	<He didn’t know the effect it would have.>
	<Well, what was he trying to do?>
	<He thinks he’s lost you and he wants you back. It got into his head that this was how to do it.>
	<If he wants me back he can-->
	<All right, we’ve got you together in here, let’s see if we can bring you out. What do you see?>
	<I...there’s kind of an oval-shaped blur with some darker blurs inside it...and a kind of moving halo thing around it that’s orange...>
	<That’s my face. You remember what I look like.>
	<You don’t look like what I’m looking at, shriia.>
	<Not right now. But keep looking and telling yourself that it’s my face.>
	I motioned to her father and Gilish to come over to the bed. Gilish leaned over my shoulder; her father hung back, uncertain. “I think...” She looked back at the father for confirmation. “Doesn’t that look--a little--like her?”
	<Now you have two heads, shriia.>
	<That’s someone else looking over my shoulder. Can you make out who it is?>
	“Yes,” the father said slowly. “In the eyes, a little.”
	Gilish smiled nervously. 
	<Is that...Gilish?>
	<Yes.>
	The flush of emotion brought her closer to the surface than anything I’d done. Gilish and her father saw the change too, subtle as the signs were.
	“Ilwath?” Gilish asked.
	<I can hear her.>
	<Try speaking. It might work.>
	“Galshalg,” said Ilwath.
	Gilish nodded, sadly. “Yes, Ilwath, I’m here.”
	The light that had flickered in Ilwath’s eyes dimmed slightly. <It didn’t work.>
	<Wait.> I projected far enough in to get control over her fine motor functions. <Think it first, then follow what I do.>
	<Gilish, I’m sorry.>
	Ilwath’s mouth slowly formed the words. “Gilish, I’m sorry.”
	“You’re coming back,” Gilish sighed. “Thank Idair.”
	One of Ilwath’s arms jerked forward, flopping over Gilish’s shoulder.
	<Why can’t I hug her?>
	<Give it time.>
	<Tell her I’d been waiting all day for this.>
	<Tell her yourself, see if it works.>
	“I...I’d...”
	<So far so good.>
	“I’d been...waiting for you...and then...this...happened.”
	The clatter behind me turned all three of our heads. It was Owdan, who had dropped to his knees on the roughhewn floorboards. His head hung from his bowed shoulders, so we couldn’t see his face. But I knew he was crying.
	“I’m sorry,” Ilwath brought out creakily.
	Gilish climbed onto the bed and threw her arms around Ilwath’s shoulders. “You’re home, you’re safe, that’s all that matters.”
	Ilwath’s arms snaked around Gilish’s back, then tightened as she drew her closer. With a sigh she rested her head on Gilish’s shoulder and closed her eyes.
	“I wanted to meet you,” she repeated. “I wanted to be there. But I couldn’t.”
	I broke off the link. Owdan finally raised his head.
	“So that’s where you’ve been going?” he barked, with a little of his old sting.
	“Yes it is,” Ilwath countered, disengaging from Gilish. “I’m not ashamed.”
	“Neither am I,” echoed Gilish, with a little more trepidation.
	“Child,” he groaned, squatting on his haunches, “why did you not just tell me?”
	Ilwath stared at him, incredulous.
	“I thought you were out doing the will of the Dark One. If I’d known you were only meeting a lover--”
	Despite their protestations, both of them flushed. “I thought you’d forbid it,” Ilwath answered.
	“Of course I would have forbidden it,” he roared. “I’d have forbidden it and you’d have done it anyway and I’d have punished you for it. But I wouldn’t have--”
	“Why should you forbid it? What have we done wrong?”
	“What have you--can you ask such a question?”
	“Owdan,” I cut in, against my better judgment, “before you start this fight...maybe you want to tell her you’re glad she’s back?”
	He didn’t have to. It was clear that Ilwath had never seen the look of white, sickened concern that suddenly swept his features when he remembered where she had been called from. Or the trembling anxiety with which he put out a hand to pat the bedclothes, gently, instead of touching her.
	“Athi,” Ilwath said gravely, “this is who I am. It’s all me.”
	He nodded. “I know.”
	“And you are bound to hate me for this. That’s you.”
	“No, child,” he said simply. “Anger may burn in my gut for thirty more years but I’ll never hate you. You’re my flesh. You’re hers.”
	A yawn that I was unable to suppress filled the silence.
	“We’re keeping the shriia,” Ilwath said.
	Owdan turned to me. “I’d forgotten, shriia.” He glared at the other two. “I’m sorry you’ve had to see this.”
	“There are a lot of things I’m sorry I’ve seen today,” I said, gesturing back at the two girls, “but that’s not one of them.”
	“What else should I do for her?” he asked.
	“How do you feel, Ilwath?”
	“I’m tired.”
	“All she needs is rest, I think,” I answered. “And water--that will help flush the poison out. I don’t predict any more trouble from our friend Welbin.” Ilwath’s face clouded. “Owdan, I need to speak with you in private. It’ll only take a moment.”
	He left the lantern in with Ilwath, so we had our conversation in a lurching, uncertain and striped light that fell from the open doorway into the kitchen. With the shadows stark on his face he looked even more haggard and broken.
	“I’d like to take the vial with me,” I said.
	“Take it and welcome,” he said bitterly, handing it to me. “I never want it or any other of their potions in my house again.”
	“Also, I want you to know that I’m going to report this down in the City.”
	He nodded grimly. “To the gardai mhuintir.”
	“No, actually,” I said. “Owdan, you surely don’t think I’d charge you with--”
	“I almost killed her, shriia. It’s only my desert.”
	“The gardai mhuintir are for people who try to hurt their children,” I said. “If they investigated every parent who did it by accident the entire country would be under writ. No, I’m not going to bring the law down on you. But whoever gave you this,” I said, holding up the vial, “either knew what it would do to her, or should have. Either way, he’s in trouble. Tomorrow I’m going down there to make it for him. That’s what I meant.”
	He nodded. 
	“If action’s taken, you may be asked to testify--identify the man, swear to what he told you, and so forth. Would you be willing to do that?”
	“Oh yes.”
	“What did he tell you it would do, anyway?”
	Owdan sighed. “He said it would make her happy.” He passed a hand wearily through his thinning hair. “I must have been mad to believe him.”
	“It’s my own fault, really,” I said. “I put the idea in your head.”
	“You told me the truth. I knew it even then.” While he was talking, he moved over to a small chest in the corner by his pallet. “I wouldn’t believe, and I paid for it.”
	He got the lock opened and drew something out, which he kept hidden in his fist. Returning to me, his arm outstretched into the square of light from the doorway, he straightened his shoulders for a formal speech.
	“She is my only child,” he said, holding onto his impassivity with difficulty. “All that’s left to us. I lost her, and you have brought her back. Please, take this from us.”
	The fist opened. Across his callused palm lay a thin silver chain, with small discs of colored stone dangling from it at intervals. It was the only thing in that small, stuffy room that caught and reflected the light.
	Handmade, and not too skillfully, but with great care. Every one of those pendants had been polished, slowly, with water and sand; and just drilling the holes to attach them must have consumed hours of after-dark labor. Never mind guiding the filaments through them with his large, knotted fingers, or hammering each link in the chain closed. The candles he had burned working on it probably cost more than the finished product would have brought at a City market. 
	“It’s beautiful,” I said. And it was the truth. Work of the heart is always beautiful. “You made it for Coirin.”
	“Yes.”
	I turned it over, watching the light play among the stones.
	“Keep it for Ilwath,” I answered. “It’s too precious to give away.”
	“But you saved her.”
	I handed it back to him. “I’m honored that you want me to have it, but it wouldn’t be right. It belongs to you and Ilwath.”
	“I was going to give it to her when she was joined,” he said dully.
	“You’ll be ready to give it to her, one day,” I said. “When that day comes, you’ll know.” He looked up at me. “Meanwhile, keep it.”
	He took it back, relieved I think. “But you must let us give you something.”
	One good piece of advice I got from my dhiaoc: Never accept the first thing offered, but always accept something. “You know what, Owdan,” I said, “it’s just occurring to me now, but I haven’t eaten all day.”
	He moved away with as much enthusiasm as was in him to a cupboard, whence he produced a large, round something with a flaky crust and a savory aroma.
	“It smells wonderful, Owdan--what is it?”
	“Ilwath made it,” he said. Now I was getting to know him better I could hear the slight changes that carried his emotions, the faint note of pride in his voice. “There’s no meat in it, shriia, never fear.” He lifted it out of the pan and began wrapping it in a cheesecloth. “Take it and may it give you strength. It seems too small a thing.”
	“Well,” I said, as I took the pie, “there is one more thing you could do for me.”
	“Anything.”
	I waited for a moment, watching his lined, worried face.
	“Don’t throw Gilish out as soon as you go back in there,” I said. “She risked exposure, punishment and all kinds of talk to let you know that Ilwath needed help. Respect the courage that took and...and try to like her.”
	I had expected him to bristle at this. Instead he merely nodded, slowly, the light and shadows moving along his closed, narrow jaw. He was more than I’d taken him for.
	It would be a long time; but eventually, things would be all right for them. It was there in the bed he had built for her, in the consideration that had made him put up that partition, in the way he shook from the fright her danger had given him--he loved her, and he’d learn. Slowly and with a lot of trouble and pain, but it would happen.
	“I will, shriia,” he said, opening the door. “The spirits be good to you, and see you safe home.”
	Safe home.
	Think about it later, Theamh.
	Outside, I swung myself onto Cinhe and patted her neck.
	“Well, girl,” I said. “Next time I’ll try to think twice before passing remarks about the medicals.”
	Cinhe snorted. She could have just been cold; or she could have been doubtful of my chances in carrying out this resolution.
	“Come on,” I said, finally. “Home.”

	It wasn’t until after I’d stowed the pie in the kitchen--well, the half I hadn’t eaten, anyhow--that I noticed Aine asleep in a chair in the living area, a taper burning near her. She had decided to wait up after all. I lifted the candle off the table and shook her gently.
	She came awake with a start. “Dhiaoc! You’re back.” Then, realizing she had been asleep, she looked frantically around for the candle. “Oh, Iandar and Cailte--”
	“It’s all right,” I said. “I had Slythe proof the house for me. Everything in here is fire-closed.” Aine looked relieved. “If you’re a shriia, it’s a good idea to get it done.”
	“Is everything all right in Felim?”
	“Well, the case was solved successfully. As for whether everything’s all right in Felim...” I sighed. “For a village that size they’ve got a lot going on.”
	“It’s the same in any village,” Aine said. “For gossip and intrigue, all you need are two families.” She stopped outside the door to her bedroom. “What was it about?”
	The anger came back to me as I thought about it. “I’ll give you the details tomorrow,” I said. “Just remember in case I forget: tomorrow morning early I need to go down to the City and kick some serious medical gleacha.”
	Aine had finally stopped reacting to my use of profanity. “What have they done now?”
	“As far as I can tell, they’ve violated our laws, disregarded their own rules, and almost destroyed the mind of a fifteen year old girl,” I said. “In my book, that’s grounds for an action.”
	“I would think so.”
	“In fact, why don’t you come with me,” I said. “We can leave Mna and the boys in the gardens for the morning, and you’re going to need to learn how to take on the medicals. And I have to say,” I said with a smile, “in my own admittedly subjective opinion, nobody does it better than I do.”
	“I’m sure you’re right,” Aine answered. “I’d like that.”
	“Idair guard you,” I answered, and hurried down the hall.
	Undone and unrobed, I sat on the floor, the blanket wrapped around me.
	“You’re not gone,” I said, to nothing. “You wouldn’t leave without me.” 
	There was, as usual, no answer.

VIII.
The Other Side of the Pharc

 	“What is it, dhiaoc?”
	I was wandering about the living area peering at things, lifting up the covers of vessels, and poking around under furniture. “I can’t find the thurking vial.”
	“Do you remember where you left it?”
	In the kitchen my search was no more successful. “If I remembered where I left it, wouldn’t I be looking there?”
	“You’re sure you had it when you came back?”
	“I remember putting it by the door so I’d remember to bring it with me...and then I brought it down here...” I put my hands on the windowsill. “And then we had breakfast...and I went out to feed Cinhe...”
	“Maybe it dropped out of your hreapa on your way to the stable,” Aine suggested.
	“I suppose that’s possible.” I went back out to the living area and through the door to the clearing. Mna and the twins were sitting in the sunlight. She was rattling something at Frih, who reached for it and laughed; Crann sat in his usual lumpen state. “All right, I walked along here...” I said, retracing the path.
	“What are you doing, shriia?” Mna called.
	“I’m looking for something I’ve--name of the Spirit!”
	Mna froze in mid-gesture, stunned by the look of horror on my face. So did Aine. Cold beads of perspiration had broken out on my forehead.
	“What...what’s wrong?” Mna finally ventured.
	“I just...uh...could I take a look at your rattle, there?”
	Mna shook the vial in her hand; the pellets rattled against its dully translucent sides. “This? Of course, shriia.” She handed it to me. I wrestled the cap off it, looked in, and counted the pellets. There were eleven left. Plus the two for Ilwath and the one I’d taken fourteen, a full week’s dose. All accounted for.
	“May I ask...where you found it?”
	“It was on the kitchen table,” she said. “I didn’t think you wanted it. I’m sorry if--”
	“No, no, you’ve done nothing wrong,” I said hastily. “No harm done. Sorry I’ll have to confiscate Frih’s toy, but I need it and besides it’s...it’s really not good for children, this stuff.”
	Mna nodded. “I’ll be more careful in future,” she said. “I forgot for a minute this is a magician’s den.”
	“Yes, you never know what you’ll find lying around here,” I said. “I’ll try to be more careful too--I’m not used to having children around the place. Idair with you.”
	Aine followed me out to the shield. I brought us through the gate, closed it, and stood for a moment collecting myself.
	“What was that about?” Aine asked.
	I handed her the vial. “What do you make of this?”
	She examined it as we walked. “Looks like one of the medicals’ prescriptions,” she said. “The bottle is very strange--some kind of glass we don’t have in Jipran, I suppose.” Aine stared at the label. “The name means nothing to me.”
	“Nor me either,” I said. “And Lilea couldn’t identify it. But from its operation,” I said, “which I know more about than I’d like to, it seems to belong to a category that we’re unfortunately familiar with.”
	“Which is?”
	“The medicals call these psychoactives,” I said. “After the Lesser Plague of the Third Kyelran, we have a different name for them.”
	Aine threw it back to me as if it were a hot coal.
	“Sirr ag an hriina,” she said, watching nervously as I tucked it into my sleeve.
	“Exactly.”
	“Where did you find it?”
	I told her the story. I was pretty angry, still, so there was a lot of detail. And she had a lot of questions, which lasted us well into the City.
	The medicals’ building is stuck off the main street in the back of the Fourth. It had been built in a hurry about fifty years ago; they were doing a fairly good job of expanding it and keeping it in good condition but from Darin I knew how frustrated they were with it. “It sounds silly, but we can’t get it white enough,” he’d told me. “That drives us crazy. We like things very white and very clean. And instead we have this drab brick affair. Isn’t there any more marble where the Pharc came from?”
	I fingered the vial in my sleeve as we approached the glass door. The medicals don’t have a problem with inscriptions; it was right there in red paint above the doorframe. “CITY HOSPITAL.” I pushed the door open, holding it for a man with his arm in a plaster cast. He bowed as he passed, looking embarrassed. “Broke my arm, shriia.”
	“I hope it’ll heal quickly for you,” I said with the friendliest smile I could produce. He nodded and ducked out into the street.
	Aine’s eyes got larger as we made our way down the corridor. There’s a lot more glass and metal in their compound than is usual for us--some of it made here, some brought in when they first came. At that point nobody had the time to stand on ceremony and some things got through that shouldn’t have. We let them keep what they had, after the Greater Plague was over; it wouldn’t have been grateful to make them give it up. The medicals guard these gadgets as if they were made entirely out of gold, and if something goes wrong with one of them there is great wailing and sadness. 
	I stopped at the desk, behind which a woman in a white cotton uniform with a stiff cap was sitting. “Excuse me, I’m looking for Darin mac Donald.”
	“He’s working the walk-in clinic. Is this the patient?” she said, looking at Aine.
	“No!” Aine said.
	“We just need to talk to him. It’s through here, isn’t it?”
	“You can’t go in there without an appointment.”
	“You said it was a walk-in clinic,” I said, towing Aine down the hall.
	It was a slow day at the clinic, evidently; they mostly were. They’ve been here fifty years but they haven’t yet figured out that patients won’t come to them. For a bunch of pretty smart people, medicals seem to be slow learners.
	Past a woman with some kind of complaint about her feet, who was being examined by a young man in a long white coat who looked bored, and a mother with a child even crankier than the chualagh usually makes them who was giving a lot of trouble to the woman who was trying to examine her, I spotted Darin. Darin came over in the second wave, replacing the ones who’d come during the Greater Plague. A lot of people on both sides of the Pharc weren’t sure they should be replaced at all; but at the time they seemed very set on it, and they weren’t doing any great harm. Yet.
	Darin stood up from the chair in which he had been crouched inspecting some small rectangles of glass that he kept in a dilapidated box. His hair was gray shot with white; when I’d gone to him as a child it had all been black, but that was a long time ago. Foreigner that he still obviously was, he looked in most ways almost like he’d been born here--clean-shaven, dressed in homespun under the white coat.
	“You bringing me business, Theamh?”
	“Don’t start, Aine’s scared enough already. Aine, this is Darin, my pediatrician.”
	“Your what?”
	“Back when her mother still had some say in what happened to her, she used to come to me for her immunizations and so forth,” Darin said, putting a hand out toward Aine. She stared at it.
	<You’re supposed to grasp it with your right hand and move it up and down.>
	<Why?>
	<It’s their way of greeting you.>
	Still not sure about this, she took his hand and wagged it timidly. He laughed.
	“Nice to meet you, Aine.” 
	<All right, you can let go now.>
	“So what brings you here to brighten my miserable existence?” Darin asked, waving us into the chairs. It was unfortunate that Aine settled on one of the ones with casters on the bottom, which rolled back into the wall as she plumped into it. She didn’t want me to notice her distress so I didn’t.
	“Actually, I’m not here to brighten your existence, I’m here to darken someone else’s.” I took the vial out of my sleeve. “At least I hope it’s someone else’s. It must be. You wouldn’t be fool enough to have done this.”
	He looked at the vial. “Where did you get this?”
	“Somebody prescribed it for a girl in Felim Cloch. Any idea who would have seen her? She’d have come in with her father, either yesterday or the day before.”
	“Any one of a half-dozen of us,” he said. “Unless it was a nighttime visit, there’d have been a different staff then.”
	“I doubt it. We don’t like traveling after dark. Spirits, you know.”
	“Ah yes.” He smiled. He thinks we’re all insane about the spirits, but we’ve had all the arguments and he doesn’t bother me any more. “Well, there should be a record in the clinic notes.” He opened a drawer in the table and lugged out a huge leatherbound book. “You people with your technophobia,” he fulminated. “How can you expect us to read our own records if we can’t type them? You’ve seen our handwriting.” 
	It is true that the medicals produce some of the most pathetic scrawl I have ever seen. That’s one of the reasons we don’t mind them more than we do. It’s hard to imagine that writing that sloppy could possibly have power.
	“What was her name?”
	“Ilwath ni Choirin.”
	Squinting down the pages he found something. “This looks like it could be ‘Ilwath...’ and here we are, ‘affective disorder’...that’d fit.”
	I looked at it. “So who treated her?”
	He looked over at the young man I’d passed on my way in, whose patient had departed with a scrap of parchment out the door to the dispensary. “Technically I shouldn’t tell you,” he said. “Technically I should tell you that this information is protected by the doctor-patient relationship and cannot be divulged to third parties.” He closed the book and nodded toward one of the other doctors. “That’s him. Do your worst.”
	I took up the vial and headed back toward the young man, who was now writing something at one of the desks. He let me wait a minute or two before looking up.
	“I’m Dr. Shearer,” he said, with a bland glance. “What seems to be the problem?”
	Not over twenty-five. Couldn’t have been here long, either, or he would know not to ask that question.
	“Did you treat a girl from Felim Cloch who came in here with her father?”
	No recognition. “I see a lot of patients here. Can you be more specific?”
	“Her name was Ilwath ni Choirin. Both her and her father are stubborn as chickens and he asked you for something that would put her right.”
	The phrase jogged his memory. “Yes, I do remember her. Why do you ask?”
	“Did you prescribe this for her?” I showed him the vial.
	“I may have,” he said, beginning to get evasive. “What is all this about?”
	“You may have? Don’t you people keep track of your poisons?”
	“What I prescribe for my own patients is my own business,” he said, standing up.
	“Well, last night when she went into total mental shutdown it got to be my business,” I shot back. “So did you prescribe this to her or not?”
	He looked at me steadily for a moment, then swallowed. “Welbin was developed to treat low-level depression of exactly the kind she was exhibiting.”
	I slammed the vial down on the desk so hard I dented the bottom. “Do you people learn nothing from experience? What were you thinking?”
	The woman who had just finished dealing with the fractious child looked up. Darin was slowly walking in our direction.
	“Simply because your religion doesn’t recognize the validity of scientific knowledge, that doesn’t give you the right to withhold treatment from people who need it,” he said, the smug mask still in place.
	“I would never keep one of my clients away from something that would actually do her good,” I spat back.
	“You and your order have been implacably hostile to--”
	“You want to stop a plague? We thank you for it. You want to set broken bones and repair muscle injuries? Great. Go to it. You want to make women infertile? Fine. Why not. You want to deliver children? We wish you joy of the patients fool enough to go to you. You want to fill the veins of children with dead beagi to protect them against diseases we’ve never had? I don’t like it, but I can’t stop you. But once you start taking healthy people and reducing them to drooling idiocy, that I have a problem with.”
	For the first time he seemed worried. “Welbin has been approved for use by--”
	“When are you going to get it through your heads?” I shouted, now genuinely horrified. “You cannot give out this kind of poison here! Name of the Spirit!”
	He looked to Darin for help. Darin stared back unhelpfully. The woman was watching him, intently but silently and, I thought, without sympathy. With, if anything, anger--and not on our behalf. More like personal resentment, for an injury done to her rather than one done to others.
	“It isn’t poison,” he said, speaking slowly. “It’s what we call an antidepressant--”
	I grabbed him by the lapels of his white coat and dragged him across the desk until he was looking up at me from very close by and with a very startled expression.
	“Listen to me, puling and headstrong child that you are,” I said quietly. “I know what you call it. Know what we call it?” He shook his head. “We call it mind poison. That’s because every time one of us swallows that fnaa it leads, to put it terms you can understand, to hallucinations, catatonia, and brain damage.” I shook him. “There are still people down at the Mathair drooling and looking out windows all day because twenty years ago it did not occur to your predecessors that although our bodies are just like yours our minds are different. You do some good in this city and I’m all for that but I am not going to let any more of my people be brought to the brink of destruction by some wet-behind-the-ears beyond-border bastard.” 
	I released him. He toppled back a step, then regained his balance. “I don’t understand,” he finally said.
	“Fortunately the good people down at the Courts will explain it to you. Let’s go.”
	“I’m not going anywhere with you! Why should I?”
	“Because you’re under shriia’s arrest,” I said.
	He laughed. “You’re not serious.”
	“She’s completely serious,” Darin answered.
	“Surely you’re not going to let this lunatic prosecute me for trying to do my job.”
	“I am,” Darin said, “and if they don’t convict you, I’ll send home for a motion to get you struck off.”
	“Why--what have I done?”
	“I oriented you myself,” Darin said, anger shaking in his voice. “I know I told you about their reaction to psychoactive medications. How in good conscience you could--”
	“It’s been twenty years, for God’s sake,” Shearer snapped back. “Pharmaceuticals have come a long way since then. Welbin’s not Hydrol, or Dozin.”
	Darin walked up to stand next to me, laying his hands calmly down on the desk and leaning slowly over it toward Shearer.
	“So,” he said quietly. “You with all the wisdom of your twenty-five years decided that you were going to be the first doctor to prescribe psychoactive drugs in Ideire in twenty years, without consulting anyone, is that it?” Shearer didn’t answer. “You’re damned lucky these people have not yet grasped the concept of punitive damages. And you’re damned lucky Theamh was there to clean up your mess.”
	Shearer looked around for support. His glance fell on the woman in the white coat.
	“Traditions have to be challenged or we’ll never make any progress here,” he said. “Everyone else thinks so. Isn’t that true, Dana?”
	The woman finally spoke. “Get him down to the Pharc, shriia, before something worse happens to him.”
	Her voice seemed level enough. But her mind was noisy--noisy enough for me to catch echoes even from where I stood. Anger, but also fear, and with it guilt. Not sharp enough to be attached to Ilwath or the Welbin. But strong enough to detect from quite a distance. I didn’t have time at the moment to ponder it. 
	“Come with me,” I said grimly.
	“I’m not going anywhere,” he insisted. “I have work to do.”
	I looked at Aine. “Would you like to do the honors?”
	“You mean--?”
	“I’ve been neglecting your education shamefully, what with all these distractions,” I said. “Go ahead, give it a try. I’ll help if you need it.”
	Shearer looked from me to her. “What do you--”
	Aine’s eyes bored into his. He stopped talking. After a few moments, his arms swung suddenly out from his sides, flailing in panic. Aine’s eyebrows lowered, furrowing her perspiring brow. One arm dropped suddenly to his side and stayed pinned there.
	<I can’t seem to get that one arm-->
	<Don’t let it distract you.> His face was starting to twitch. <Get a real solid wrap on the rest of him, then you can deal with the arm.>
	The twitching stopped. Darin was watching, amused. The woman tucked a strand of red hair behind her ear and stepped forward for a closer look.
	<That stupid arm-->
	<Start with the shoulder and work down. The hand’s too far away.>
	<This is a lot easier on the twins.>
	<You did ask Mna first, didn’t you?>
	<Of course I did. I’m not a medical.>
	Shearer’s elbow was now caught next to his waist, leaving him flapping frantically with forearm and wrist like some kind of demented seal.
	“What’s she doing?” the woman asked.
	Darin laughed. “Our technical term for this is ‘the whammy.’”
 	 Shearer’s hand dropped to his side and stayed there. Aine had him wrapped.
	“How do they do it?”
	Darin shrugged. “If they’d just let us attach some electrodes to them once in a while--”
	“Enough with the electrodes,” I said. “I said no and I meant it. You think you can walk him out, Aine, or do you want me to do it?”
	“I think I can do it.” 
	“It would have been easier for all of us if you’d gone under your own power,” I said to Shearer. “But so be it. Onward.”
	His leg jerked stiffly forward. The first few steps were slow and halting as Aine worked out how to move him; it took us several minutes to get down the hall. We attracted some attention, but since Darin was escorting us nobody bothered us.
	“If you don’t mind,” he said at the door, “I’d like to come with you. There are certain...aspects of this case I’m not sure you’re aware of, and somebody should be.”
	“By all means.” We began our march up to the Pharc. 
	“How is she doing that?” he asked, after fighting his curiosity for a few minutes.
	“With a lot of sweat and pain,” I answered. “You all right, Aine?”
	“I’ll make it,” she grunted.
	Shearer was moving faster, but he still looked like a jointed wooden doll, hopping along with his arms stiff at his sides. A few heads turned, then turned back; they’d seen it before, and as long as we were arresting someone it made sense for it to be a medical. 
	“Well, Aine,” I said, as we reached the Pharc. “Here we are at the sign of the sword.”
	Aine craned her neck to look up. We don’t get around to this side of the Pharc much, unless there’s a magic trial going on. So the sight of Iandar’s blocky figure above the door, raising his sword and looking out with a stern but also somehow unreadable face onto the people who come and go through the portal beneath him, is still impressive. Nowadays, of course, most people don’t know that’s Iandar; the lawyers say it’s an allegorical figure of justice and we let them say it. The Pharc was built a long time ago, when people weren’t taking the separation injunction quite so seriously.
	Bustling through the hallway on the first floor we passed other people in a hurry--ferrying documents from room to room, having hurried but very intense conversations in corners, gray robes and blue robes and the ordinary drab dress of the clerks and recorders and criers flashing past us. The actual courtrooms are at the back, toward the center courtyard, but fortunately we reached the stairway to the second floor before we had to run that gauntlet. By this time Aine was flagging, and the wrapping had slipped enough to allow him to speak. “This is an outrage. I demand to see a lawyer.”
	“You’ll be seeing one soon enough,” I said. “You don’t want to be dealing with the stairs. I’ll take over from here.”
	“Thanks,” Aine said. She dropped the wrap. Shearer had about three seconds to realize he was free before I had him wrapped back up. For fun I left his head free.
	“What gives you the right to do this to people?” he cried, now as frightened as he was angry. 
	“You did,” I said. “If  I trusted you as far as I could throw you this wouldn’t be necessary.”
	Things were both quieter and louder up here; less bustle, but more contention. This was where we brought Lythril first to fix the charge, and after her conviction for the proscription order. You could still see some of the scorch marks scarring the corridor in parallel lines. She didn’t go quietly, even when the battle was over.
	We had to stop halfway up when one of the doors flew open, slamming against the wall as a burst of shouting leapt through the opening into the air. Aine scuttled behind me. The shouts were coming from a man in a gray shirt and trousers who was being hauled through the doorway by two of the gardai, one hanging onto each arm. His hands had been manacled, but he was still giving them trouble, until they dragged him across the corridor and slammed him against the wall. At rest, he looked pathetic rather than dangerous; his face was pale except for the diagonal slash of the proscription mark. With the sweat he’d worked up the ash was beginning to run, leaving dirty trails across his face, and into one eye which was red from the sting. One of the gardai put a hand on his throat.
	“You’re going one way or the other,” she said calmly. “This can either be a pleasant jaunt through some beautiful country, or two weeks of hell. It’s up to you. But if I were you I’d quit making it hard on yourself. Because if you keep this up, you’ll be traveling out there in a wrap sheet and a hood; and it’d be a shame, on your last passage through the land of your birth, not to be able to look out the window.”
	The man’s only response to this speech was to start breathing faster and shallower. Finally he threw back his head, and let out a roar of despair that probably rattled the windows in the first story. The gardai sighed and began wrestling him down the corridor.
	“I can’t,” he was still screaming. “I won’t! I can’t live there!”
	“Well, you should have thought of that before,” said the other garda.
	The gardai nodded to me as they dragged him past us. “Can’t stop to chat, shriia,” observed the second one, tossing her hair back and taking a tighter grip on his arm. “Got our hands full here.”
	“So do we,” I said. I made the sign of protection over him. He disappeared behind the door to the stairwell, his protestations still echoing into the corridor.
	Aine stuck close to me. Coming from Jipran, she had all sorts of exaggerated ideas about crime in the city. Most of our crime was petty property stuff; things that could be more or less put right with a public expiation, restitution to the victim, and some long-term follow-up by the gardai. It was much rarer for things to get as far as they had with this man--if he was going into exile it meant some kind of harm on the body, a murder or a rape or an attack so serious the victim would never heal.
	I knocked on Ethir’s door. He opened it, taking a silent look at the four of us grouped on his doorstep. He blinked.
	“Is the Seat in session already?”
	“I’ve got someone I want to charge,” I said.
	Ethir looked at Shearer. “Didn’t they tell you at orientation not to mess with Theamh ni hUlnach?”
	“Of course,” Darin answered. “I always go over that on the first day.”
	We straggled in, Shearer protesting all the way, and grouped ourselves around Ethir’s desk. Once the door shut I released him. He fell into his chair.
	“So what are we writing up for him?” Ethir said, pulling out a scroll and a pen.
	“I’m charging him with dispensing harmful drugs in violation of Section 2 of the Medical Regulation Act,” I said, producing the vial and handing it to Ethir.
	Ethir picked it up. “He gave this to one of your people?”
	“A girl named Ilwath ni Choirin. Her father said he’d be willing to testify; I don’t know about her. I can certainly testify to its effects.”
	Ethir wasn’t listening to me. He was turning the vial over and over in his hands, looking at the cap, the dent on the bottom, the shiny paper stuck to its side.
	“What is it?” I asked. “You don’t think I’ve got grounds?”
	“For a Section 2 charge? Oh, definitely.” Ethir looked up at Shearer. “But let me tell you, my friend, you’ve got bigger problems than that.”
	“What are you talking about?”
	“Ernth,” Ethir called out toward the front of the office, “can you run down to Stomk and see if he’s around? I want his opinion on something.”
	Ernth left. Ethir held the vial out toward me. “You see this?” He tapped the dent on the bottom. “Glass doesn’t do this, even the really thin kind. It holds its shape or it breaks. And this white square over here,” he said, turning it up so that the label bounced the lamplight back at us. “We don’t make this kind of parchment. The gloss is higher than what you can get with the processes we use. Never mind whatever they’ve done to make the cap impossible to get off.”
	“If you kind of push down and twist on it--” I said.
	Ethir was still struggling with it when the door shut behind Stomk, who bore down on us with all the intimidation of his Amstian frame. Up north in the mountains they come either tall and rail-thin or short and solid as granite, and he belonged to the latter category. “What’ve you got?” he brought out, without greeting any of us.
	He took the vial as Ethir handed it to him. “If I’m right, something very big.”
	Stomk turned the vial upside down. “You’re right,” he answered, handing it back.
	“Someone want to fill me in?” I put in.
	“You see this material,” Ethir answered, as he and Stomk both bent their heads to point out its features to me. “This is what they call plastic. It can’t be made out of natural materials, at least not without doing all kinds of unholy things to them.”
	“Very lightweight, very durable,” Stomk nodded. “Also never, ever decays. You find pits full of this stuff in the Zone from fifty, sixty years ago.”
	“So it came from over the border,” I said. “All their drugs come from over the border.”
	“But the vial it’s in didn’t go through official channels,” Ethir explained. “They should have confiscated it at the border. This is illegal material.”
	We all looked at Shearer.
	He started to seem genuinely worried. “I...I don’t know anything about how it got down here. I just found it in the dispensary.”
	“Uh huh,” said the highly unconvinced Stomk.
	Ethir smiled at him. “That’s a lie so bad you almost have to believe it.”
	“There’s something else,” Darin added. “Welbin’s a new drug. It wasn’t around even five years ago, and it certainly wasn’t around nineteen years ago when the MRA was passed. That means it came into this country after the ban.”
	Ethir leaned back in his chair and whistled. “Stomk, you want to be his lawyer?”
	“Not me,” Stomk answered. “I’m good, but I’m not that good.”
	“Well, he’s going to need someone,” Ethir said, writing furiously. He finished and looked up to stare Shearer down with those electric blue eyes. “Listen carefully, you’ll need to repeat this. On the authority of the Seated Leaders of this city and this nation, I charge you with the following violations of law: one, that you have knowingly received and distributed materials excluded from this nation under the terms of the Treaty of Mypril signed three hundred and fifty-seven years, four months, two weeks and four days from this day. Two, that you have introduced into this city and this country a drug belonging to the category denominated under the law of your country psychoactives, and under the law of this country sirr ag an hriina, contrary to Section 1 of the Medical Regulation Act. Three, that you willfully prescribed said psychoactive to a citizen of this country in direct violation of Section 2 of the Medical Regulation Act, Subsection 4 of which constitutes psychoactives as by definition harmful drugs.” Ethir rolled up the scroll and handed it back to me. “Do you have anyone willing to guarantee your appearance at the Court at such time as it will be ready to hear your plea and begin your trial?”
	Darin nodded. “I’ll vouch for him.”
	“My assistant Ernth will take down your address, full name and identifying marks,” Ethir said. “After that, you are released on Darin’s responsibility. I suggest you start looking for a good lawyer. If you wish the court to appoint one for you--”
	“Thanks,” Shearer sneered, “but I think I’ll hire my own.”
	“By all means, and spare us the indignity,” Stomk growled.
	“Let’s go, jailbird,” Darin said, taking one of Shearer’s elbows and hauling him to his feet. “And don’t think I’m not going to report this to Cretid General, either. Goodbye, Theamh; I hope to see you again sometime under more pleasant circumstances.” He bowed to Aine and led the somewhat dazed Shearer down to Ernth’s desk.
	Ethir was still looking at the vial. Stomk had pulled up a chair and was looking with him.
	“I don’t like this,” Ethir finally said. 
	“Every net has holes,” I ventured.
	“This isn’t a hole,” Ethir answered. “This is a giant, gaping tear.” 
	Stomk shook his head. “Who knows what else has already come through it.”
	The silence fell again. And I let it fall, because I was thinking.
	“We do know of one thing that already has,” I said finally.
	Ethir looked at me. “Lythril.”
	“Come on, Aine,” I said, assuming a smile. “We’ve got a lot of work to do, evidently.”
	Down on the first floor I fought my way through the crowd to the office that handled these things and served the charge sheet to the clerk, a mild-mannered little fellow who only raised one eyebrow when he saw the list of offenses. That done, we fled out the other end of the corridor.
	“Come on,” I said, opening the gate into the central courtyard. “We need the air.”
	It was beginning to get on toward midday, and people were trickling out of the other gates in small groups, wandering about on the lawn or chatting by the rosebushes. Clerks from the courts, scoili chanon, shriias, apprentices, gardai, presiders. The Seat wasn’t in session, but there were a few of the support people hanging around--readers and writers who’d been drafted into the service of their secular government, young eager types with big ambitions.  Most would eventually leave for the Sevenths, heading for one of the food vendors that seemed to appear out of nowhere around this time and then melt back just as suddenly into the residential areas. 
	I could see Aine’s eyes following the figures in the courtyard, her face impassive in the dull light shed through the overcast sky. She was watching the group of women in short brown robes, their pale forearms jutting out of the rectangular ends of the sleeves as they punctuated whatever conversation they were having. One of them turned toward us, poked her neighbor, and waved in our direction.
	“Aine!” The call came faint in an adolescent treble from across the courtyard. Aine waved back, a little wistfully. The woman who had called out motioned for her to come over. Aine shook her head.
	“Go on,” I said. “You don’t get down here often.”
	“But dhiaoc,” she said, looking at me both reproachfully and beseechingly.
	“Go on. I’ll call you when it’s time to go home. Meet me back here.”
	“Thank you, dhiaoc,” Aine said. She bowed, opened the gate, and started across the courtyard, breaking into a trot about halfway there. The little circle of brown robes and bare heads opened to admit her.
	She’d given up a lot to work with me--society, an easy relationship with the Council, and the company of other apprentices. Her shyness was still on her, even with them; her gestures were less frequent and less emphatic, she listened more than she spoke. But it was good for her; I could see that. Not everyone is the hermit I’ve become. 
	Well, I might as well call around and see if any of the three or four friends I had left in the City were around. <Lilea.>
	<Theamh. Are you all right?>
	<Should I not be?>
	<Last I heard you were about to suck down some horrific thing called Welbin, if you remember...>
	<Ah. Well, that’s all turned into a very interesting story--are you busy right now?>
	<If I say yes, will that mean I don’t get to hear the story?>
	<It’s just I’m in the Pharc and I let Aine go run with the pack for lunch, and-->
	<Turn up in the Mathair in an hour and I’m all yours.>
	<See you there.> I shut the link off and sat down on the grass near the roses.
	Any way you looked at this situation it was ugly. Suppose, for instance, Shearer was telling the truth and the drug had just turned up in the dispensary. In that case, not only had someone managed to smuggle an illegal drug in an illegal container across the border, but that person either worked in the hospital or sold it to someone who did. In which case, we had collusion between the medicals and whoever was running stuff across the border. But why import stuff like Welbin, which they can’t use here, except on the few beyond-borderers who’ve come down to stay? Unless someone was trying not only to make a pile smuggling but to poison us as well?
	Suppose, again, that Shearer was lying, and that he somehow smuggled the stuff along with him when he came to the hospital. In that case, he must certainly have had a confederate on the Seat agency that oversees the medicals, because otherwise, even after the container made it through the border, it would have been found and confiscated when he was searched at the gates of the City. Which was perhaps more disturbing.
	Either way, the real problem was the fact that the border had suddenly become porous. I knew women from my cohort who were up in Amst and Daircri or out on boats off the coasts of Jipran and Kengda doing nothing all day long but maintaining the border. It’s more challenging than you would think, or so they tell me--the beyond-borderers are constantly inventing new things that have to be defended against in different ways. But something as fundamentally proscribed as plastic should never have made it through. Whoever was carrying it should have been repelled by the border, bounced right back into the Zone. No, that hole had to have been opened by magic. That much was clear.
	What wasn’t clear was why anyone should want to smuggle something as useless and unsaleable as Welbin. There were a lot of things they had up there that our people might covet, but mind poison wasn’t one of them. It would be more in demand up north, where as I understood it people were known to go to great lengths to poison themselves.
	I stood up. I had an hour. Time enough for a visit to the doctor.
	Because of Darin, I’d spent more time in their hospital than most shriias, so I knew a bit about the building. I knew, for instance, that the dispensary was at the back, with a window opening on an alley along which people lined up to receive their medicines. And I knew that there was a side door around the corner, where the wagons stopped to unload the boxes of medicine that came in from over the border. That was the door I went in. I had to use a little mindstrength on it, but it wouldn’t cost them much. Locksmiths’ rates are very reasonable in the City.
	The door didn’t stay quite shut behind me, and let in a thin wedge of diluted City light. The place was as clean as they could get it, although the metal shelves were so old that it was impossible to remove all the stains and rust. But the boxes ranged along them were clean, white, with crisp cardboard edges and neat lettering. Gauze pads, bandages, glass vials full of vaccines and other medicines--all stuff I’d seen before. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Except for one shelf, tucked away in a corner.
	The medicals are very particular about what goes where. So my eye was drawn immediately to a shelf that seemed to have too much on it. Someone had shoved the normal inventory down a foot or so to wedge in about twenty smallish rectangular boxes. Boxes that were wrapped in a very thin, very smooth material that was so transparent I wouldn’t have noticed it except for the glare it reflected. Through which glare I could read a number of words. One of which was Welbin.
	The material tore easily once I got a nail under it. I opened the box and pulled out a vial. A vial identical to the one I had just turned over to Ethir, except for its blank label.
	Behind these boxes were others, much larger and in brighter colors, wrapped in the same transparent shroud. Turning one around in the dim light, I read what I could of the text. There was a lot of vague talk about “freshness” and “flow” and “absorbency,” but I couldn’t figure out what the point was. And behind them, right at the back under the shadow of the shelf above, were some clear glass bottles, each with its own label. The liquids inside were different--some clear, some amber, some darker brown. 
	I wasn’t sure what this stuff was. But I was sure it wasn’t supposed to be here.
	Stranger and stranger. That medicals should be involved in smuggling made sense, when I stopped to think of it. They received regular shipments from over the border, and routinely sent blood samples and other nasty things back to have things done to them in beyond-border laboratories. If you were going to try to sneak something either in or out of the country, sticking it into a medical shipment would be the easiest way to do it.
	But if the medicals had taken to actually storing their smuggled goods in the dispensary, they were getting mighty careless. I was willing to attribute many kinds of flaws to Shearer and his ilk, but not carelessness. Especially considering the fact that aside from the actual medicals, the hospital staff was local, and would recognize...
	Or maybe they wouldn’t. 
	I hadn’t realized the vial was proscribed material until Ethir pointed it out to me. Maybe someone else had also seen the smuggled stuff and assumed, as I had, that it was legal. Someone on the staff, who had opened a box he wasn’t meant to have opened. And who, not finding a space set aside for the contents, created one, stuffed the anomalous items into it, and went about his business.
	My ponderings were cut short by the sound of a door opening. It wasn’t the one I’d come in--this one swung in from one of the hospital corridors. And someone was coming through it. A woman with short, straight red hair, wearing a white coat. Dana.
	It’s hard to hide in a hreapa, but I did my best. She was combing the shelves, quickly and efficiently but with an anxiety she was no longer bothering to disguise. And she wasn’t finding what she was looking for. In a few minutes she had worked herself into something of a state, and also into my immediate vicinity.
	“Is this what you’re looking for?”
	She spun around with a gasp, putting a hand out to steady herself on the shelves. “What are you doing here?”
	“Why don’t you just tell Darin?” I said. “Since it bothers you so much.”
	Her bangs bobbed as her head tilted. “What?”
	“Shearer’s a pompous gleachinai who doesn’t give a rat’s fnaa about us or our welfare,” I said. “You’re not. So of course it bothers you.”
	She didn’t want to give anything away, but her curiosity was stronger than her instinct for self-preservation. “How can you tell?”
	“That it bothers you, or that you’re not a pompous--”
	“Either.”
	“They’re both easy things to read,” I answered. 
	Dana crossed her arms, debating her options.
	“I can see how you wouldn’t think it was a crime,” I said. “Bringing in a few little items for your personal use, to make your own life easier. It’s not as if you were going to sell them on the street.” She didn’t answer, but she didn’t contradict me either. “And maybe it wouldn’t have mattered, if it weren’t for Shearer.”
	The woman followed my glance toward the shelf. Her eyes went from the Welbin to the other boxes, then to the bottles. It was the sight of the glass containers that made her gasp, then bring her hands up to her mouth in fear.
	“What--” I began.
	Her hand was already on my shoulder. “Don’t tell Darin. You can’t tell Darin. You don’t understand. I’ll tell you everything I know, I’ll go to the authorities if you want but please, for his own sake, don’t tell Darin about this.”
	“You’ll have to do some fast talking before I make a promise like that, friend.”
	“Look,” she said, now suddenly desperate for my sympathy. “I don’t know who’s in charge of it, all I know is every month there’s a box that comes in with things for the doctors on staff here, and every month we put our wish lists and our money into an envelope that someone picks up. You can’t imagine what it’s like living here, for us. I tried so hard to really do it right and live like the people but I just--” She grabbed one of the large boxes and tossed it to me. “That’s it. That’s all I ever asked for. I know it’s stupid, but I couldn’t live without them. I just can’t use that spongy moss you have, it’s--it’s--I just can’t.”
	I looked down at the box. Well, now I knew what “flow” meant.
	“So the Welbin, who’s that for?”
	She laughed, darkly. “Could be anyone. I think half the doctors here are on it.”
	“Why?”
	“It’s common knowledge that you can’t make it through medical school without medication. In fact, the only doctors I know for sure aren’t taking it are Darin and Shearer. Darin’s too old, and Shearer’s too driven to care if he’s miserable.”
	“Well what about--” I lifted one of the bottles out.
	“Please,” she repeated. “Don’t tell Darin. He’d--”
	“What is this stuff?”
	She ran a distracted hand through her lank hair. “If Darin knew his staff had been bringing that down here...” 
	“Is it some kind of plague juice, or what?”
	She swallowed. “Has he told you much about his life before he came here?”
	“Hardly anything.”
	“This stuff is poison to your people. He’s so proud of what he’s built here, if he knew we’d used his hospital to bring this in it would just tear his heart out. He’s--it’s hard to be a woman doing this job. But he’s been such a support to me, and I respect his work so much and--I’ll take whatever your law wants to give me, but I don’t want to hurt him like that.”
	“So he can know about the Welbin but not about this?”
	“I know they’re both poisonous, but--” She sighed. “He wouldn’t want you to know this, but I don’t see any other way. He was--” She stopped, stymied by my expectant face. “How can I explain? You people don’t even understand what addiction is. You all die before you have the chance to find out. You’re lucky that way.”
	“Lucky?”
	“If you drank this, it would probably kill you right off,” she said, holding out a bottle. “If I drank it, it would just get me buzzed. Which is another thing you don’t understand--all right. How about this. This stuff did Darin a lot of damage, before he came down here. I know, from what he’s told me, that he never wants to see it again. So if he knew that the same stuff that had ruined his life had followed him down here...it would make him sadder, and angrier, and more depressed than anything I can think of.”
	I considered this.
	“Who told you about this little system, and how long has it been operating?”
	“I heard about it from one of the new doctors, about a year and a half ago. I’d just gotten down here, and I’d been trying to make do but I just couldn’t stand it.”
	I looked down meditatively at the box, which smiled up at me with its cheerful promises of cleanliness and purity.
	“So what you’re saying,” I said, “is that you violated the Treaty of Mypril because our line of ‘feminine hygiene’ products just can’t deliver that ‘fresh clean feeling.’”
	Her eyes dropped, embarrassed.
	“History has turned on more trivial matters,” I said. “How does the stuff get distributed?”
	“We find it in our mailboxes, in plain paper bags.”
	“So you don’t actually know how it gets in here.”
	“In one of the shipping boxes, I’d imagine. That must be how it got onto the shelves. Whoever was supposed to intercept it didn’t, and then the stockboy unpacked it and shelved it with everything else.”
	“And Shearer, being the twit that he is, found the stuff in there and decided to share the wealth.” She nodded. “Is he in on this little game?”
	“Of course he is. But he doesn’t know what other people are bringing in--none of us do. I don’t know, for instance, who it is who’s decided he can’t get along without this,” she said venomously, pulling the bottles down and shoving them into an empty box that had been pushed under the bottom shelf. “Shearer must have come in here, seen the Welbin, and thought we were keeping it in stock.”
	“And he figured if the rest of you didn’t give a fnaa about the MRA, why should he?”
	She stared moodily down at the box, toying with its cardboard flap and not answering me. I was still angry, but I also felt bad for her. Lilea had never had a bad word to say about Dana ni Rowen in the year and a half she’d been down here, and that in itself was proof of her integrity and compassion. Not being from this place, she didn’t understand our restrictions, and must have told herself that if she was breaking the law, it was a victimless crime. And then, thanks to Shearer, the crime had found itself a victim.
	Her eyes, which had been looking vaguely into the middle distance, focused suddenly in on the label stuck to the box. 
	“What the hell?” she said.
	The label looked to me like all the others--white, with the hospital’s address printed on it black letters. They have machines up there that stamp out their writing, one letter exactly like another. It bothers me to look at it--writing and the machine shouldn’t have anything to say to each other. But that wasn’t what was bothering Dana, who was staring at the return address in the corner.
	“DeVane Pharmaceuticals,” I read. “Who are they?”
	“I’ve never heard of them,” she said. “It’s not one of the companies we do business with.”
	I looked at the box. It had been opened, unloaded, and shoved under the shelf with the other empties. But none of the others had that return address. It was printed small enough that it would escape notice, if you weren’t looking for it. But if you were, it would be enough to tell you that this box was different from the others. If would be easy to hide the box in a wagon full of others, and easy to pick it out again once it had been unloaded. 
	“DeVane,” I repeated, slowly.
	Dana looked at me. She knew things were happening in my head. And she wanted to know what they were--not to be a step ahead of me, but to figure out who was behind this. Curiosity, winning out against prudence.
	I looked at her face and made a quick decision.
	“All right,” I said. “I’m a shriia, and if anyone asks I have to tell the truth. But if you clear this fnaa out of here, nobody’s likely to ask.”
	She stared. “You’re just going to walk away and forget this happened?”
	“Did I say that?” She dropped her eyes with a rueful little laugh. “This is going to stop, one way or another. But why should we go upsetting Darin, if we can find other evidence that will come in just as handy?”
	“What do you mean?”
	“When does your next shipment leave for the border?”
	“This afternoon. I saw them piling the boxes up by the delivery entrance.”
	“Let’s go.”
	Without arguing, she brought me back out the door I had forced open and around the corner to where the wagon would stop to pick up their mail. Inside the glass doors, there was a small stack of cardboard boxes, all with different labels on them directing them to different places over the border. I started picking them up and inspecting the labels. Finally, I uncovered a small carton addressed to DeVane Pharmaceuticals. “Aha.”
	Dana started when she saw the label. “Why are we sending them stuff? They’re not even a laboratory.”
	I tried to lift the box. My back immediately cried out in protest. The thing was too heavy--much heavier than I’d expected, considering its size.
	“What are you sending them, rocks?”
	Dana gave it a try. “What can they have put in here?”
	“I wonder,” I said, tearing the box open.
	The weight should have tipped me off. But it wasn’t until I had brushed aside the layers of sterile gauze pads that had been carefully arranged on the top that I suddenly let fly a blistering oath and recoiled violently. Dana peered cautiously into the box, probably expecting a poisonous snake. 
	Her hands shot into the box and began pawing at it. Gauze flew left and right out of it as she dug through it, muttering to herself above the clink of shifting metal.
	She turned a white face toward me.
	“There must be--” Her hands raked briefly through the contents. “This box is full--full--of gold coins. Full.”
	I nodded.
	“What...” She seemed to be dazed by the sight of so much gold in one place. “This can’t just be our money. Nothing we’re buying could possibly cost that much.”
	“I’m sure,” I mused.
	“Then...whose money is it?”
	“Whoever needs to get it out of the country,” I said. “And into the hands of someone over there.”
	“Someone at DeVane Pharmaceuticals,” she said, looking at me closely.
	“If there really is a DeVane Pharmaceuticals.”
	“There better be,” she said, still in shock. “If someone’s mailing them all this cash.”
	I shook my head. “That name’s not a coincidence. It’s her sense of humor.”
	“What do you mean, ‘her’?”
	“They don’t teach you people Old Tongue up there, do they?”
	She shook her head.
	“DeVane,” I said. “Dubh Aon.” She waited. “Dark One.”
	Dana looked at me, skeptically. Of course; I’d forgotten for a moment. To her the Dark One was a piece of local mythology, an interesting variant on her own culture’s ideas about good and evil, but not something that could get involved in a smuggling racket. And indeed, it was unlikely that this gold was going directly to the Dark One. It was going to one of the minions.
	“Dana,” I said quietly. “Why don’t you gather up those bottles and take them somewhere the authorities won’t find them.” She nodded. “And then, I’d be much obliged if you’d run up the street and bring back the first garda you run into.”
	She disappeared.
	I wasn’t, after all, either in the gardai or on the Courts. I was under no obligation, yet, to disclose what I’d found in that dispensary. If anyone asked, I would have to answer. But as long as no one asked, there was no reason anyone had to know about the bottles, now that we had much more serious and much more damning evidence of wrongdoing on both sides of the border. Because that was our money that I’d almost touched--our gold, collected by our people, sent across the border to a woman who, exile that she was, was still one of us. 
	It had to be Lythril. Of all the users we’d exiled for as long as I could remember, she was the only one prominent enough to command that kind of a price. And the only one who’d choose to operate under an alias that was an obvious giveaway to anyone on our side. It was a conflict she’d never resolved--her prudent desire for secrecy against her burning and insatiable desire to be known and feared.This was just one of a number of compromises she’d made between her common sense and her pride.
	I’d timed it about right. By the time the garda and I had walked Dana and the evidence back tot he Courts, and left Dana telling Ethir her story, it was about an hour. Time to find Lilea and tell her the good news.

IX.
Fancy Meeting You Here

	The main drawback to the otherwise wonderful feat of architectural skill that became the Pharc is that anyone going from the courtyard into the Mathair has to pass through the main counseling room. The only people who do that besides the actual clients are shriias, though, so usually it doesn’t matter--the hreapa is not only a cloak of anonymity but a promise of silence. They know we don’t talk about who or what we see in here outside of the Order, so they don’t worry when they see the white skirt flapping past as some embarrassed shriia tries to hustle through the chamber and out before the client can tell she’s there.
	Unfortunately I chose a particularly sensitive moment to open the door and try to duck through. Ife was on the couch putting a consoling arm around a woman about my own age who was bent over her knees weeping loudly into a white lace handkerchief. She had the misfortune to be doing this in front of Pel, who was sitting in the chair opposite her waiting rather impatiently for her to stop crying.
	Pel has been in practice almost as long as I have, but she’s about five years younger than I am--and twenty-four is young to be a shriia at all, never mind one with four years of practice behind her. Young as she was she was in the cohort behind me, having been educated at home by her learning-crazed father and thus run through the lower stages of the scoil as if they weren’t even there, and there had been a huge fight over whether she was going to get her orders at twenty or not. By then I wasn’t in quite as much trouble as I later would be, and I heard a lot of the details through the grapevine. Nobody could argue with her faith, her ability or her evident and consuming desire to do shri. And she had been given her fire. But as Lilea put it, there was a singlemindedness about her that frightened a lot of her teachers--an unshakable conviction that she and only she knew exactly what the Chronicles meant, exactly what Idair wanted, and exactly what her duty to shri was, and that anyone who had a differing view was misguided at best. People who take that approach usually end up doing harm to themselves or others, and there was a sizable faction on the Council that didn’t want to ordain her as she was, including Lilea. To recommend against your own apprentice’s ordination must indeed be bitter, but that’s what Lilea did. Her idea was that Pel would wait a few years and see some other parts of the country before going straight to the Mathair. By a slim majority they decided to ordain her after all. Lilea accepted the decision, but Pel saw her recommendation as a betrayal, and never got over it. This meant not only that she did not speak to Lilea, but she had no love for me either.
	“...but you’re perfectly healthy and you’ve got the means to support the child, and that’s a lot more than some mothers have,” Pel was finishing. Ife glanced at me as I came in, her irritation with Pel appearing briefly in her face as she recognized me. Unfortunately this attempt at surreptitious communication alerted Pel to my presence.
	“Impeccable timing,” she observed dryly as I closed the door.
	“I’m sorry,” I said quietly, “I’ll be out of here as soon as--”
	The weeping woman looked up. “Theamh?”
	I looked back. “By Iandar’s trousers. Mielen?”
	She nodded, her nose still red and running, and tried to smooth some of her escaping hair back into its bun. “How are you, Theamh? It’s been a long time.”
	“Yes, it has,” I said, amazed that she felt the need to make small talk even under these conditions. “But the honest answer to your question is longer than you have time to hear, and you’re busy, so I’ll just be going--”
	“No, it’s all right, I was just leaving,” she snuffled, standing up. From the look on Ife’s face I could tell this was clearly a bald lie. I could also tell that for whatever reason, Mielen wanted to keep talking to me. “Where are you headed?”
	“Uh...down to see a friend of mine...I’ll walk you out.” She nodded. “Idair with you, Pel.”
	“Idair with you,” she snapped. “I’d say it was a pleasure to see you, but...the truth thing. You know.”
	“Gratuitously unpleasant as always,” I answered, ushering Mielen out. The door closed.
	In the hallway, Mielen burst out weeping again and sank into a little heap at the base of one of the walls. I crouched down next to her, at a complete loss as to what to do. Mielen and I had been playmates in childhood; she grew up three houses down from us and our parents were friendly. I had been supposed at one point to marry her older brother, but going into the scoil changed all that. We’d had little in common aside from geography and the other things that went with a house at the end of the Sixth, and since I hadn’t seen much of her since I entered the scoil we had less now. She had married one of the na Billiens, a Sixth family with two boys about my age, and was running her family’s stables at a very respectable profit.
	“Mielen, what is it? Can I do anything?”
	“I don’t know,” she snuffled. “Do you do returns?”
	“I’m not trained in it.” Mielen nodded and kept crying. “Would Pel not do the return? Is that it?”
	“No,” she snuffed. “She tried, but it wouldn’t go back.”
	I sat down next to her and put an arm timidly around her shoulders. “I’m sorry, Mielen. It happens that way sometimes.”
	“Why? Why someone else’s but not mine? Why does it have to be me?”
	“I don’t know,” I answered. “Did Pel say anything?”
	“She just said--” She broke off to blow her nose. “She just said it was comfortable where it was, and it didn’t want to leave.”
	“Oh, Mielen. I’m so sorry. I know it’s not fair.”
	“It’s not fair!” she sobbed. “Just because it knows it’ll get fed and clothed and it’ll never want for anything. What does it care what it puts me through as long as it’s getting good food and plenty of rest and--and--”
	“Children are selfish,” I said, patting her shoulder in what I hoped was a soothing way. “Mathi tells me that all the time.”
	“Yes, but your mathi is mean and hateful,” Mielen wailed. “I don’t want to be mean and hateful, I just don’t want to have to do this!”
	I let the slur on my mother pass. “Is it that you don’t want more children, or--”
	“I just don’t want this one!”
	“I’m sorry.”
	“What am I going to do?” she repeated. “What am I going to tell Felthan?”
	Felthan was her husband. I had a bad feeling I was about to find out more than I wanted to know.
	“You could tell him the truth, I guess,” I ventured. “Whatever that is, and I’m not asking--”	
	“I don’t want him to know,” she said. “He doesn’t need to know this about his brother.”
	“Idair, Cailte, Iandar and Anron,” I muttered, pulling her into an awkward sideways hug. She kept on crying, and I kept sitting there, my arm moronically around her. If she hadn’t told her husband when it happened, I could see why she didn’t want to tell him now. But keeping the secret from him had been strain enough. To go through the rest of the pregnancy, to raise a child, hating its father, hating the memory of its conception, never able to say where the anger and pain came from...how could she do that? How could anyone do that and stay sane?
	“Mielen...you can’t keep this quiet.” She went on weeping. “Why didn’t you say anything when it happened?”
	She shook her head. “Felthan’s family hates me, they always have,” she said. “His mother thinks I didn’t bring enough into the match and his father wanted him to marry someone else and if I take them on he’ll turn me off, I know it...”
	There was a very long silence. 
	Finally she said it again, without much hope of getting an answer. “What am I going to do, Theamh?”
	“I don’t know,” I said. She cried for a little while longer, and then began a little snuffling laugh.
	“Who would have believed it,” she said, blowing into her handkerchief again. “The two of us meeting here of all places after all this time.”
	I shrugged. “It’s true I don’t get down here much.” She laughed. “So how is your life? With three children it must be a little hectic.”
	“We’ve got help, of course,” she said dully. “It’s not the children--it’s true Nicar is hitting that obnoxious age, but up till now he’s been good as gold, and the two little girls are no trouble, except for Jena, but she’s the youngest, and that’s bound to happen.” She pulled out a small hand mirror and started rearranging her hair. “Of course they’re not good enough to satisfy his bitter twisted old mother, who has a problem with every decision I make...” The tears started again.
	“Well, considering she’s raised a criminal, I don’t think she needs to be giving you advice on child-rearing,” I said.
	Mielen looked at me. “You can’t tell anyone about that, Theamh. I don’t want anything else coming between me and Felthan.”
	“But Mielen...”
	“And it wasn’t what you think, anyway.” She stared ahead of her, not seeing much. “I go back over it now and I don’t even understand how it happened. I didn’t want him, never liked him, hate him even more than ever now, and yet...here I am.”
	“There are all kinds of ways to force someone,” I said quietly. “With the mind if not with the body.”
	She nodded. “It seems crazy to me now, but I just...at the time, I just didn’t think I could refuse.” She rubbed her eyes, having forgotten about the sodden handkerchief. “I don’t know what I thought would happen...”
	“It doesn’t seem crazy to me,” I said. “Delth’s always been a nasty piece of work.” Mielen nodded. “Was joining that family your idea?”
	“Felthan’s a good man. He’s done right by me. Well, as right as it’s in him to do.” She laughed joylessly. “Naturally he’s scared of that woman too, just like I am.”
	“Are you sure it’s not Felthan’s child? I mean--”
	She nodded. “We only wanted three. Felthan was emptied after Jena.”
	Down the corridor I saw a door open to admit Lilea. She waved at me.
	“I wish I could tell you something helpful,” I said, waving back. “Or, failing that, that visiting Delth and beating the fnaa out of him was consistent with my shriic responsibilities.”
	Mielen got to her feet as Lilea approached. “It’s all right,” she lied. “Maybe he’ll think the procedure didn’t take. They fail sometimes...don’t they?”
	“Not to my knowledge,” I said, “but if he never asks a shriia, he doesn’t have to know that.”
	Lilea had now reached us. “Know what?”
	Mielen shook her head. Lilea looked at her.
	“Look at me,” she said gently, lifting Mielen’s chin to look at her reddened eyes. Mielen looked back, surprised. They stood that way for maybe a minute, Lilea’s face registering, with changes so slight Mielen probably never saw them, what she was reading.
	“I know you haven’t asked me,” Lilea said.
	“If you have any advice, shriia, please give it to me,” Mielen answered.
	“Tell your husband what happened,” she said. “It’s what you really want. He loves you enough to believe you.”
	Tears came back to her eyes, silently this time. “Thank you, shriia.”
	“See, Mielen,” I said, “this is why Lilea works here and I don’t.”
	Mielen laughed. “Thank you--both of you.” She finished redoing her bun and stuck the gold pin through the net of gold wire that held it in place. “It’s been good to see you again, Theamh.” She arranged her scarf around her throat. “Well. Wish me luck.”
	“Good luck, Mielen,” I said.
	She laughed. “Idair with you.”
	Lilea watched her go. She sighed and turned back to me.
	“So this is what you do in your spare time?”
	We started the walk out toward the street. “I’m glad you turned up when you did. I wasn’t making very much headway.”
	Lilea shrugged. “You were a familiar face in a strange setting at a horrible lonely time; that’s what she needed you for. The counsel had to come from someone else.”
	I pushed the door open. “Well, it wasn’t coming from Pel, that’s for damn sure.”
	“Don’t lead me down the path of contention,” Lilea answered as we stepped into the street. She stopped in front of one of the vendors to look at the fare. 
	“Don’t covet what you can’t have, Lilea.”
	The vendor smiled, holding up the tin and its contents. “But this is a special pie, shriia. It looks like meat, smells like meat, and tastes like meat, but it’s made of peas and sorghum.”
	“Really?” Lilea said, brightening.
	He burst out laughing. 
	“You ought to be ashamed, taking advantage of the gullible that way,” I said.
	“Oh, shriia, I would never cheat one of you. There’s no money in it.”
	“Lucky for us. Come on, Lilea, you know and I know where we’re headed.”
	Sadly, she turned to follow me to the refectory. The refectory is primarily for us, but it’s open to everyone, so the crowd is a curious mix of people--shriias, apprentices, clerks who are trying to save their salaries, the very old, the very poor. The food is not good, so it doesn’t tempt most people. But it keeps life in you, and the company makes it festive, at least for those of us who work on our own.
	“So hers refused,” Lilea said. 
	I nodded. Poor Mielen. I hoped Felthan would be kind to her. At least the child wouldn’t suffer want, whatever else he grew up lacking.
	“Hey, Harani!” Lilea shouted toward the front. “Sometime this kyelran!”
	“Give them time,” Harani shouted back. “Presentation is important for a food artist.”
	Lilea laughed. Harani stepped out of the line, carrying a plateful of mashed things that had clearly been slapped down by someone who had never heard of presentation.
	“It smells awful,” Harani said as we reached her.
	“It looks worse,” I answered.
	“Theamh! Twice in one week. You’re making me nervous, popping out of nowhere like that.”
	We moved slowly up in line, Harani starting to spoon at her food as we shuffled forward. “How is it?”
	Harani made a face. “It’s not a hard thing to remember--never order regional dishes from a city cook.” She slurped mournfully on a spoonful of yam root. “Why do I keep forgetting?”
	“Hope is a hard thing to unlearn,” Lilea quoted.
	There was a silence while Harani remembered the circumstances under which we had last met and Lilea wondered whether it was something she’d said. We reached the window.
	“Gimme two of whatever’s moving fastest,” I told the apprentice.
	She handed us two platefuls of steamed vegetables with a sad-looking bun on each. “Enjoy it if you can.”
	“Idair with you.” I handed Lilea her plate and the three of us walked up the hill toward the Pharc, sitting down on one of the grassy slopes between two of the points.
	I scooped up some of the vegetables with a piece of the roll. “So, you and Harani both--I’ve really won the pot today. Is Slythe anywhere around?”
	“She’s probably out undoing a septic pit,” Harani answered. “Most people in her position would delegate the sewage responsibilities, but that’s Slythe for you.”
	“I think she actually enjoys it,” I said. “She says she got into practical magic because she likes making things disappear.”
	“How’s that taken child?” Harani asked me.
	“And you would know about this how?”
	Harani laughed. “This is Harani you’re talking to. Empress of the grapevine, spider in the gossip web, queen of the fishbowl and the sea into which all rivers of news eventually flow.” I waited. “Heard about it from a client who heard about it from a colleague whose cousin’s hired hand saw you with the mother in the marketplace.”
	“Well, I know a little more than when I started, but the child’s spirit is still out there at large. At least I hope so, because it’s not back in him.”
	“You think that has anything to do with that mind poisoning in Felim?”
	“Oh come on, I just arrested the man half an hour ago. How can you have--”
	“Heard from an apprentice who’s friends with a clerk who goes with Ernth who--”
	“Never mind.” I moved through my vegetables. “You know, if you’d asked me that an hour and a half ago I would have said no. Now, I’m not so sure.”
	“What mind poisoning?” Lilea interruped. 
	I told them the story. It rather broke the mood, especially the part about the big box of money.
	“You didn’t touch it, did you?” Lilea said, concerned.
	“I came this close,” I answered. “But I didn’t. It was a shock.”
	“DeVane Pharmaceuticals,” Lilea repeated. “She hasn’t changed, has she?”
	“You don’t think I’m jumping to conclusions?”
	Lilea made a sharp noise of dissent. “With Lythril? You can never jump too early. No, she’s up to that chain on her neck in this, that’s obvious. But I don’t see how. You don’t think someone paid her to take that child?”
	“It’s not the kind of work she normally does,” I agreed. “But maybe she’s diversifying.”
	“Why would she want to?” Lilea answered.
	“Why does she do anything?” Harani responded. “For the sheer pleasure of causing suffering, like as not.”
	I shook my head. “She’s not like that. She’s got reasons for what she does.”
	“What about poor Krenham?” Lilea argued. “Invading the body of a dying man? What’s the point of that, other than breaking the hearts of his wife and children?”
	“Could have been a lot of things,” I said. “Maybe he owed her money. Maybe to distract all of us from her other projects. What do I know.”
	“Well, did he do anything while she was in him?” Harani asked.
	“He did every insane thing you could think of,” Lilea answered. “Got out of bed, went out to the farm, did some heavy lifting, ran around the barn for an hour or so, his poor wife trailing him all the way screaming for him to stop and lie down...”
	“So she was just trying to kill him,” Harani answered.
	“But he was dying anyway,” Lilea protested. “They’d already called me out there to watch him out. Because of her, he died a couple days early. That’s all.”
	“It does seem pointless,” Harani agreed.
	“Well, there were some points,” I said. “We just couldn’t connect them.”
	“Like what?” from Harani.
	Lilea sat back. “Spirit and body, the hours we spent with Ethir going over it,” she sighed. “I can still remember him sitting there with that stylus and tablet--”
	“One,” I said. “Krenham dies one or two days before his probable appointed time.”
	“Two: His wife collapses from emotional exhaustion.”
	“Three: His children grow up traumatized.”
	“Four: he departs before the relatives from the City can get in for the rite.”
	“Which might have happened anyway,” I added. 
	“Five: He’s already dead when I get there, so I can’t watch him out.”
	“Which also might have happened anyway,” Harani said. 
	“Six: Lilea investigates the body and finds evidence of recent possession.”
	“Which wouldn’t have happened otherwise,” Harani said.
	“Seven, I call Theamh in to see if she can trace the traces,” Lilea answered. “And surprise of the kyelran, they go back to Lythril.”
	“So really, the only things different are that Krenham’s lonely at his departure, his wife is a nervous wreck, and Theamh finds out Lythril’s up to something,” Harani said.
	“That’s right,” Lilea answered.
	“Pointless.”
	“My point.”
	I was staring down at my empty plate. Truth be told, that whole episode had always seemed pointless to me, especially considering the risk involved. It was possible, it’s true, that Lythril had done this just to get me out to Kengda; it was while I was messing around with the Krenham case that she had done all of that damage out in Mablad. If I’d been at home then instead of investigating his death I could have saved both of them. That had occurred to me, often, in the months and years after it had all been finally finished up in that room in the tower. But even supposing Lythril needed a diversion, this was a little much. Krenham had had protections done on him at his birth and at his naming by Leoma, a legend in her time and one of my personal role models. He had to have been incredibly hard to break into--and discovery was almost inevitable, considering how obvious she made the possession and how soon Lilea was destined to arrive at the scene.
	“So what was it, a show of force?” Harani asked.
	I gave a short laugh. “No, I don’t think so.”
	“Well, so if it wasn’t that--” Harani said.
	Lilea answered with her mouth full, pointing with the spoon for emphasis. “Revenge, spite, malice and pure mean spirit. That’s it and that’s all.”
	“You know Harani’s missing the emphatic gesturing,” I said.
	“It’s all right, I can imagine it.”
	“I think there was a reason, we just can’t--”
	“Revenge?” Harani asked.
	“She had dealings with him,” Lilea answered. “He’d bought potions off her, we found them in his kitchen. So I figure he promised her something he wouldn’t deliver--and she took it out of him.”	
	“In return for what?” Harani asked.
	“See, that was my question--” I broke in.
	“Who knows. But there is no point in killing a man who’s going to die anyhow, unless you know he’s scared of dying.”
	“Everyone’s scared of dying who has sense,” Harani said.
	“Not like Krenham,” Lilea said. I laughed; she chortled a bit but felt guilty. “You’ve never seen sickbed whining like that. ‘What happens afterward? What will happen to me? Where will I go?’ Over and over till you just wanted to shake him and yell, ‘Idair didn’t know and I don’t care!’”
	“Which I would have probably done,” I said.
	“Lilea, when I die, don’t let her watch me out,” Harani replied.
	“Don’t be silly, Harani, she’ll be dead long before you will,” Lilea answered. “Anyhow, she took him because she knew the worst thing that could happen would be for him to be rushed into death early. And I’m sure it was a torment for him, poor man.”
	“Now, I have a different take,” I said. “I think it had to have been some kind of experiment. Lythril’s into death. It’s sort of her specialty. Causing death, postponing death, animating things that already are dead...”
	“What for?” said Harani, disgusted.
	“They’re useful,” I said. “Till they decay, at least. They take orders well and they scare the fnaa out of people.”
	“But how can you animate something that doesn’t have a mind?”
	“It’s got a mindspace; that’s all you need.”
	“How do you know?” Harani demanded.
	“Because I’ve done it,” I shrugged. 
	Harani’s jaw dropped.
	“You have?” she whispered, horrified.
	“Well, not after I got my fire, of course,” I said.
	“Still!”
	“We were supposed to be Lythril’s apprentices. What did you think she had us doing all that time? Watering her plants?”
	“Theamh ni hUlnach, I am appalled.” 
	“So be it,” I said, plowing through my vegetables. Harani sat without moving. Lilea, who’s heard all about this already, kept eating placidly.
	Suddenly Harani leaned forward with a conspirational whisper. “What’s it like?”
	“Harani ni Linnin, I am appalled,” Lilea answered.
	“Oh please, please tell me. You can’t leave me hanging like that, you know me.”
	I didn’t feel like eating any more. “You’re not missing anything. It’s a very unpleasant feeling.” 
	“What’s this now?” said a voice behind me.
	I turned. “Slythe! This is my lucky day. Have a seat.” Slythe plumped to the ground, her skirt billowing out around her. “How are things in your corner of the Pharc?”
	“All right,” she grunted, starting in on her food. She was obviously too hungry to care what it tasted like. “Except the metalsmiths’ guild is giving us trouble again, but you can’t make those people happy.”
	“What are they after now?” Lilea asked, sympathetically.
	“Same as always,” she said contemptuously. “But I don’t want to talk about work, this is my lunch break. I want to know more about this unpleasant feeling.”
	“Harani was asking about Lythril...” Lilea began.
	“Never mind,” Slythe said quickly, holding up her hands in surrender. “I thought you were talking about something else.”
	Lilea laughed. “This is Theamh, Slythe. You want that kind of gossip you’ll have to go to others.” Harani looked at her. “It is an unpleasant feeling, all the same,” she added. “I don’t miss it.”
	“Not even a little bit?” Harani pressed. 
	Lilea shook her head. “Never enjoyed it, didn’t think I was ever going to. I was very relieved when I got the call.”
	She continued eating in silence. Harani was dying to ask her more, but she’d learned from experience not to. Like me, Harani had gone straight from fosterage into the scoil; neither of us had time to experiment. Lilea came to it older; she got the call after having a notborn of her own returned. To Harani, she wouldn’t say anything more than that. I knew the story, but it was something I kept to myself.
	In defeat, Harani returned to me. “But really. What’s it like?”
	“It’s horrible,” I said. “It’s dead quiet and moving is like slogging through clotted blood or failed cheese--it’s a curdled, soft, would-stink-if-you-could-smell-it mess, and then when you hit the boundary it’s like a cold, slimy viscous kind of sweat--”
	“All right, Theamh, I’m eating,” Slythe interrupted.
	“How come this never came out in the trial?” Harani asked.
	“That’s the really ingenious thing about it,” Lilea said, getting interested again now that there was a legal question. “You can’t prosecute for this because who’s the victim? Dead people have no legal rights.”
	Slythe shook her head. “Crafty bitch that she is.”
	“Surely something--” Harani began.
	“Your rights to spiritual privacy, bodily health, psychic integrity and emotional stability disappear along with your spirit. Your right to property survives through your descendants, but she wasn’t messing with that.”
	“But think how horrible, to have your body paraded around after you’ve left it,” Harani went on, outraged. “Or to have your relatives have to see it, or your friends--”
	“Exactly,” I agreed. “Like I keep telling Darin, we burn our dead for a reason.”
	“Where did she even get the bodies?” 
	“Do we have to talk about this now?” Slythe interrupted, irritated.
	“Some she found--people who didn’t have homes or relatives, who nobody had discovered. And she must have killed some herself.”
	“That you could prosecute for,” Harani said.
	“If we’d ever seen her do it. She didn’t let us watch that part.”
	“But again, it seems like the only point would be just to be evil,” Harani went on.
	I shook my head. “Everything had its use. They did the dangerous work--making preparations that were too lethal for her to mix herself, that kind of thing. And she used them for fund-raising.”
	“Fund-raising?”
	“She’d send them out onto the paths at night to rob travelers,” I said, sopping up the last of the broth with the last of my roll.
	“You’re kidding me.”
	“I’m not. An establishment like hers costs money, to say nothing of what she blew on clothes and food and various other pleasures. And it’s a good idea, you have to admit.”
	“No I don’t,” Harani retorted.
	“Say you’re out on a dark road by yourself, and suddenly this lurching hulk of rotting flesh comes lumbering toward you and demands your cashbag. Do you stand there and argue with a five-day corpse, or do you drop the bag and flee for dear life?”
	Harani said, after a moment’s reflection, “I think the first thing I’d do would be thank Idair I lost my sight.”
	Slythe and Lilea laughed. I laughed too, although laughing about this was still a bitter thing for me. I had had to get used to it; so had Istria. But neither of us ever got over the revulsion we felt.
	“I think that’s about enough on this topic,” Slythe finally said. 	
	“By all means,” Harani answered. “You ask me, Theamh, you were both out of your minds to agree to that mission. Why’d they use you, anyhow?”
	“Tell her, Slythe,” Lilea said after the pause. “There’s no point in keeping it secret now, Lythril’s gone and...”
	Slythe swallowed uncomfortably. I knew she was already feeling guilty enough about not having informed me about the ceremony; this would only aggravate that.
	“They couldn’t use a shriia  because shriias can’t lie,” I began, so she wouldn’t have to. “So if they were going to do it at all, it had to be with apprentices. Morat may have been a little crazed, but she’s never been stupid; she knew that if she sent in an apprentice alone the only result would be a new dark user or a dead apprentice. So it would have to be a team.” Slythe got busy with her food. “But if she sent in two, the danger was that Lythril would play them off each other. She’s a good manipulator.” Lilea nodded, her face showing the pain of the memory. “Why us?” I sighed. “Morat is no fool. She knew that what she had in us was two women who, no matter what happened...” Harani looked puzzled at the pause. “No matter what happened, she knew we would be absolutely loyal to each other.”
	“And you were,” Harani said quietly. Nobody else said anything. The bells of the Pharc tolled the midday hour.
	“I told Aine I’d meet her back in the courtyard,” I said, standing up. “It’s been great to see you all, really, but--”
	“I’ll take the plates back,” Lilea said, collecting mine.
	“Idair with you.” I started away.
	“Theamh,” Harani called.
	I stopped and turned back. She stood with a plate in her hands, holding it out for Lilea to collect. “You know, I hate to bring this up,” she said, “but has it occurred to you that maybe that gold was her payment for that attack on you?”
	It hadn’t. Nor had it occurred to the others, from the general reaction. Lilea’s head turned from Harani back to me, browns drawn in worry. Slythe stopped in mid-scrape, the plate dangling from her fingers as she turned a disturbed stare on me.
	“How could it be?” I said. “That was a lot of money. I mean, I have enemies. But how could I be worth that much to anyone, dead or alive?” They remained unconvinced. “Besides, why pay Lythril for something she’d be more than happy to do for free?”	
	They laughed, but they were clearly still worried. So was I.
	Lilea glanced from Harani to Slythe to me, no doubt reading all of us.
	“Watch your back, Theamh,” she said.
	I swallowed. “Idair with you.”
	With their eyes following me all the way, I went in the door to the Shriin.
	<Theamh.> It was Slythe.
	<Sorry we didn’t get to talk more, Slythe, but I really do-->
	<I’m sorry, Theamh.>
	<No harm done, I got to the ceremony...and you were right, I’d have tried to stop it no matter what.>
	<No, I mean...> I pushed through into the courtyard and stood scanning the thinning crowd for Aine. <I mean, for...everything.>
	<It’s long done and past curing, Slythe.>
	<It wasn’t right, the way they used you.>
	<It’s not your fault.>
	<Still. I want you to know.> I spotted Aine saying her farewells to two other apprentices. <I never wanted anything to happen to you, or to Istria.>
	<I know, Slythe. It’s not your fault. Idair with you.> I closed the link.
	“What’s the matter, dhiaoc?” Aine said, pulling up short. “Am I late?”
	I shook my head. “I’m not angry with you, Aine,” I said, ushering her out. “All my old wounds are opening again, that’s all. Let’s go home.”
	Wisely, she decided not to ask. “All right, dhiaoc.”
	“Did you have a good time with the others?” I said.
	“Yes, dhiaoc. How about you, did you have a good lunch break?”
	“It was certainly eventful,” I answered. 
	We kept walking.

X.
Bad Company
	
	By the time I’d finished telling her the story and answering her questions it had begun to rain--suddenly, as it sometimes does here. The farmers call these surprise showers perin na hIdair--Idair’s Whims. The regular seasonal rains are uisce ointe--needed water. In the City, of course, rain is just rain. I know more about the farming calendar than I used to, but I’m still glad all the agricultural magic is handled by specialists. It’d be a sad lookout if I was in charge--it would take about two years of my forgetting to do rituals or remembering them late or calling for sun when I’m supposed to call for rain before I turned the whole place into a famine-stricken desert. Harani is rainmaker for the Vicinity, and I’ve heard no complaints about her. There hasn’t been a famine in our country since Idair came, unless you count the scarcity during the Cretid wars. But that wasn’t the rainmakers’ fault. War can make famine out of plenty in no time at all.
	Aine plodded on, trying not to mind the rain pelting down on her bare head and soaking through her brown robe. The sound of the drops pattering through the leaves above us was soothing, although my feet were less than happy about the situation. Wool stays warm, but that doesn’t mean it’s not wet, and the rope soles are water-repellent but they won’t stand up well to a strong rainstorm.
	After several minutes of Aine watching me enviously, I said, “I’d lend it to you, but...”
	“I know.” You don’t wear someone else’s hreapa, it would be like borrowing someone’s skin. Even if it weren’t waterproof, and fireproof, and weaponproof, after what I went through to make it I’d still be plenty attached to it.
	“Dhiaoc?” she ventured timidly.
	“Yes?”
	“Do you think I should maybe start on mine soon?”
	I shook my head. “You’re not ready yet.”
	“I thought...” she trailed off sadly.
	“Thought what?”
	“You said...I thought...I was...”
	“What is it, Aine?” She looked truly distressed. Then again, with the rain plastering her hair to her head and trickling in rivers down her face she could hardly look otherwise.
	“I thought I was making progress,” she said in a small, unsteady voice.
	“Of course you are, Aine,” I said, surprised yet again by her inveterate habit of underrating herself. “Your mindstrength is growing, your projection and differentiation are getting much better, and I can see you soaking up knowledge like a sponge. The timidity around the spirits, well, that is going to be a problem but that will change. You’re doing very well, Aine. Don’t get discouraged. You’re only nineteen, for Idair’s sake. That you should be in tutorial at all at your age is an accomplishment in itself.”
	“But why am I not ready?” she said mournfully. “What am I not doing?”
	My foot went into a particularly deep puddle. “You’re making very good progress, and I expect you’ll keep on making it, but you’re just not ready to start your hreapa yet.”
	“How would I even know if I were ready or not?”
	I laughed. “Don’t worry. I’ll let you know.”
	“How will you know?”
	With a sigh I held a branch up for us to duck under. Now that we were off the path it was hard going. “I can’t tell you that, Aine.”
	She looked up at me, surprised. “Why not?”
	“I can’t tell you that either.” Aine blinked, the water running off her lashes. 
	“How am I supposed to get ready if you won’t tell me what I need to do?”
	“There are certain things I’m not allowed to tell you, because you have to find them out for yourself. This is one of them.”
	She nodded. Either she understood or she was unwilling to push me further. I wasn’t paying attention, anyway, because I had noticed a strange silhouette ahead of us in the trees. It was large, male, and draped in an oilskin cloth that was protecting him somewhat from the rain. I motioned for Aine to be quiet. 
	I moved up slowly, as quietly as I could do it. In the rain, at least, the leaves didn’t crunch and the patter of the drops obscured other sounds. He was still staring ahead of him, his back to me, his hands under the oilskin, shifting from boot to boot.
	“Taric?”
	With a jolt he spun around. It was indeed Taric, and I seemed to have taken a year or two off his life.
	“Idair’s boots, shriia, you startled me.” 
	“Turnabout is fair play,” I said, motioning Aine forward. “You’re lucky I could recognize you from the back, otherwise I might have struck first and asked questions afterwards. For future reference, it’s not safe to hang around outside the shield like that.”
	“I’m sorry, shriia, I didn’t know how else to find you.”
	“How long have you been standing here?”
	He shrugged. “A while.”
	“You haven’t had more trouble with the rappari, have you?”
	“No, shriia. I just came...” He trailed off. I tried to look friendly and non-intimidating. “Mna said something about...feeling like she was a strain on you. So...I thought I could...” He decided to abandon language in favor of action. “Here.”
	Behind me I heard Aine gasp. It was a hare, gutted and skinned, probably earlier that morning; the pink raw muscles were cold now but the rain spattered faintly red in blood that was still wet. “I know you can’t eat it, shriia, but for her and the children...”
	Aine turned her face away. 
“Yes...thank you, Taric, that’s a really kind thing to do,” I said. “I appreciate it and I’m sure Mna will too. But I’m...I’m sorry to have to tell you this, after all your trouble, but I can’t bring that into my house.”
	Disappointment crossed his broad features. “You can’t?”
	“You see if I brought something that had been intentionally killed in there, it would void the protections I have on it. And I assume that hare didn’t die of natural causes.”
	“No, shriia,” he said, with what I thought was a trace of mirth.
	“That’s what I thought.” I looked up from the dead hare to his saddened face. “I’m very sorry, Taric, it was a good thought. But if that hare is going to get eaten it’ll have to be by you.”
	He nodded. “I’m sorry, shriia. I should have thought.” 
	“Come in and visit,” I said. “You’ll have to leave the hare out here, of course...”
	He shook his head. “I need to get back to the farm.”
	“Don’t be ridiculous, Taric. You walked ten miles and stood in the rain for Idair knows how long and now you’re going home without even talking to her?”
	“I just came to deliver the hare,” he said. “Since you can’t take it, I’ll be going.”
	“How did you know it was going to rain?” I asked suddenly.
	“Beg pardon, shriia?” He looked genuinely confused.
	“You trekked all the way out here with that oilcloth even though it can’t have been raining when you left. How did you know?”
	He shrugged. “I was just leaving and I thought, ‘I’ll take this in case it rains.’”
	“Prudent of you,” I said. “But to return to our previous topic, you must come in and at least dry off before you--”
	No, he wasn’t going to. Without seeming defiant, or obstinate, or disrespectful, he managed to convey that no attempt I made to dissuade him would be successful. “I’m honored, but I have to go.” He replaced the hare under his oilskin. “Eggs don’t count as killed things, do they, shriia?”
	“No, they don’t,” I said. “But we’re all right, really, Taric. We’ll get by.” 
He bowed to me, then to Aine. “Health and life to both of you.” 
	We both stood there watching him leave, having forgotten the rain for the moment.
	“You think he has it?” Aine asked finally.
	“I wouldn’t be surprised.” I started searching for the gate. “Predicting rain isn’t conclusive but--Idair, Cailte and Iandar.”
	“What?”	
	“I left them in the gardens,” I said. “I locked the house. They must all be soaked.” 	I opened the gate and we got through. A glance across the clearing did not reveal them. The rain was falling through the shield, warping the refracted sky before landing in large plopping drops on the grass.
	“The stable, dhiaoc,” Aine said, trotting toward it.
	And indeed, there they were; Mna with the twins, settled into the straw, comfortably waiting out the storm. Cinhe was standing near them, reaching down to lick Frih’s head as I entered.
	“I’m sorry, I had no idea it was going to rain, and then things took longer than I had planned...”
	“It’s all right, shriia, Frih’s had a wonderful time in here,” Mna said, getting up and brushing the straw off her dress. “He loves your horse.”
	“I’m glad they’ve made friends,” I said. “Come in, we could all use a fire and some hot soup.”
	Eventually, we were all sitting in the living area, holding out hands out to the fire. Aine’s boots were drying on the hearth next to mine; her robe was hanging over the screen as she huddled under some blankets sipping cautiously at her soup. Mna and the twins had escaped without too much of a wetting.
	“I ran into Taric outside the shield,” I said.
	“Oh?” Mna answered, without much enthusiasm.
	“He came by to bring you a hare he’d killed,” I went on. “I couldn’t bring it in here because of the prohibition, which is too bad.”
	“It was a nice thought,” she said, neutrally. “But he didn’t stop?”
	“He seemed very set on getting home,” Aine ventured.
	Mna nodded. We lapsed into silence. 
	“Do you understand him, dhiaoc?” Aine added, after downing some more soup.
	“What I understand about men could be written on an oak leaf,” I said. 
	Mna smiled. “Don’t feel bad, shriia. I don’t understand them either.”
	We finished our soup, Mna staring thoughtfully into the flames. In the few days she had been there she had already started to change. She was still wearing her red dress, but she was arranging her hair carefully, washing her face and keeping the twins clean. But that was only part of it. Her worry over Crann would come back to her as she looked at him, but the chronic, pinched anxiety that had lengthened her face was fading. Now the light came easier to her eyes and her mouth lifted in more subtle changes. With Crann on one knee and Frih squatting at her feet banging his cup repeatedly on the floor, she looked younger--almost young enough to be nineteen. It made that much of a difference to have a bed every night and to go to sleep sure of a meal in the morning. 
	She saw me looking at Frih. “Say hello to the shriia, Frih. Can you say hello now?”
	“Hello,” he said gravely, looking up at me and setting down the teacup.
	“Hello, Frih,” I answered. “I’m pleased to hear your voice.”
	“Thank you,” Frih said.
	“He knows you now, you see,” Mna said apologetically. “He’s shy of strangers.”
	“Is Crann shy too?”
	“Oh no--he’s...he was a happy baby, laughing more than he cried, you know...”
	Of course now he was doing neither. He was staring glazedly into the fire. “He was the leader,” Mna said. “In everything, including mischief.” One of her hands went to stroke Frih’s hair. 
	“He still is, somewhere,” I said. “I know it’s hard, but talk about him as if he’s still here. The more we treat him like he’s gone, the weaker the tie to his body will get.”
	Mna nodded. “So, Frih,” I said. “Your mathi says you and Cinhe are friends?”
	His face lit up. “I like Cinhe.”
	“I’m sure she likes you,” I answered. “What did you two talk about?”
	“She doesn’t like rabiree,” he answered, blinking seriously at me.
	I got out of my chair and knelt down on the floor so I could look him in the eye. He looked back at me, puzzled but not seeming frightened.
	“That’s very interesting, Frih,” I said. “Did she tell you that?”
	He nodded. “I don’t like rabiree either.”	
	“Don’t you?” I asked. He closed his eyes and shook his head vigorously from side to side. “Why don’t you like rappari, Frih?”	
	“Cause they’re DUMB,” he said emphatically. “Dumb dumb dumb.” He accented each word with a bang from the teacup on the floor. Mna took it away from him.
	“That’s enough, Frih, we mustn’t break the shriia’s things.”
	She was a little worried that I didn’t seem to care about the teacup. The only reason I was not loudly cursing my own stupidity was that I didn’t want to scare him. Suddenly he was balancing on a wire stretched taut between me and his brother. The only thing that kept him from falling off was not knowing he was walking it. I really wanted him to make it to the other side.
	“That’s all right, Frih,” I said. “The rappari are pretty dumb, you’re right.”
	“Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb,” he repeated, his smile getting bigger.
	“What else don’t you like, Frih?”
	He thought. “Don’t like carrots.”
	Mna was going to apologize for his rudeness, but Aine held up a hand to stop her. I nodded. “I don’t like them either. Too carroty.”
	Frih laughed. “What else?”
	Now he was getting shy again. He put a finger in his mouth and kept it closed.
	“Here, Frih,” Aine said, sitting down next to me. “You want to play a game?” He nodded, lifting his hands as if he had been going to clap them and then forgot about it. “I’ll tell you something I don’t like and then you tell me something you don’t like.” 
	“Your turn,” he said.
	Aine squeezed her eyes tight shut to indicate that she was thinking. “I don’t like...” She leaned in and opened her eyes wide with a little burst of air. “Squirrels!”
	Frih screwed his eyes up just as she had. “I don’t like...rats!” he said, opening his eyes and lifting his hands with a little laugh on “rats.”
	Sweet Idair’s hairpins. At least he could laugh about it.
	Aine took this in stride to the extent that she could. “I don’t like...pratai!”
	Well, that was news to me. I’d have to remember not to get so many on my next trip to the market. Frih scrunched his eyes up as tight as he could, seeming to enjoy this part of the game more than anything else. “I don’t like...sorghum!”
	Aine nodded. “I don’t like...vigils!”
	No surprise there. Frih now found it necessary to put his little fists in front of his closed eyes while he was thinking and shake his head as he spoke. “I don’t like...mebidebberagh.”
	Mna laughed. Aine’s eyes widened. I scrambled to my feet and grabbed the fire out of the fireplace. 
	“What is it, shriia?” Aine had pulled her robe off the screen and was already out the door.
	“Grab the boy, Mna, we’re going to the lab,” I shouted, hoisting Frih.
	 “What’s going on? Why the hurry?” Mna yelled after me as I tore through the vigileacha. 
	“Teach me to make assumptions,” I muttered, grabbing candles out of the cupboard and shoving them into the holders. Mna halted on the threshold, a little out of breath. Frih had initially been too surprised to cry, but once I set him on the floor he remembered. Mna picked him up and dandled him as I hurried to finish the circle.
	“Shriia, what on the earth or under it is going on?” she demanded.
	“It’s because they’re fraternals,” I continued, firing a burst around the ring to get the candles lit. “I never thought to check for it, if they’d been doubles of course I’d expect there to be some linkage but--”
	“Shriia,” Mna said dangerously, advancing into the circle, “will you please just tell me exactly what is happening to my child.”
	“Here’s the summary,” I said, motioning her into the chair and taking my seat as Aine arrived, having wrestled herself into the robe. “I think Frih has a natural link with Crann and that he just told us where he is.” Mna nodded. “And if I’m right, we better get there fast, because etherically speaking, your boy is in a very bad part of town.”
	Mna put her arms around Crann. “Where is he?”
	“With the medbhurdh,” Aine answered. 
	“Aine, I want you to link up too.”
	She nodded eagerly. <Of course, dhiaoc. But why?>
	<If there’s trouble your job is see Mna safe home.>
	“What are the medbhurdh?” Mna repeated in a hushed voice.
	Aine swallowed. “In Jipran we call them lurers.”
	Mna didn’t say anything, but when I made the link I could hear the scream.
	<Try to calm down, we need to go into this steady.>
	<You calm down! My child is going to be torn apart by-->
	<That won’t happen. His body is safe with us.>
	<Well, what will happen?>
	<Call for him, I’ll do the rest.>	
	<What are they doing to him?>
	<We’re not going to find out if I can’t get there!>
	Her mind was too noisy for me to pick out the call. I paused to collect myself.
	<Please, Mna. He’s out there and he needs you to be strong for him.>
	Things began settling down. <All right, shriia, I’ll try.>
	<Call for him.>
	She let loose the cry. I sent us off.
	Getting there is difficult because their plane is right at the edge, just under the first encircling sphere. But there they were, spinning in their demented, raging way, spiky thorned bursts of angry light. How they manage to keep themselves under control long enough to hold human form is a mystery. But they do it, somehow. The witnesses who survive tell different stories about them--sometimes they take on the appearance of a loved one, sometimes the victim simply sees a heartbreakingly beautiful man or woman in a simple white garment. Occasionally they appear as children. But in all the stories there are two common themes: a lonely, dark place, and the faint reflection, if there happens to be a body of water nearby, of a cluster of flickering yellow lights. We know little else, because most witnesses who survive do so because they have the sense to flee.
	I moved among them with extreme caution. These things are not like the rappari. They’re smart, they’re powerful, and they’re not inclined to chat. Solitary in the ether, they come together in packs when they visit us, and although nobody knows for sure our best guess is that the last thing a lurer’s victim sees in this life is that human figure exploding into a shower of bristling, buzzing yellow stars, all headed straight at him.
	It was difficult, what with Mna calling and Aine being terrified and my own fear, but eventually I did think I was noticing something. The ether in which these things move is itself a substance, with its own currents, and it resonates in sympathy with their movement. Each plane has its own register and tones. But something here was different--and that was what I had hoped for. A trail, a wake in the ether indicating the passage of a foreign spirit. It brushed past me almost without my detecting it; before I could double back, it crossed me again, but wider and more pronounced. I followed it.
	The lurers are bright, so it wasn’t until I got fairly close that I saw what I had expected--that green luminescence with the dark form inside it. This time it wasn’t attached to anything. It was making its way, under its own power, but the zigs and zags I had been tracing were the result of a curious kind of wobbling. It seemed to be attracted somehow to the spinning of the lurers, drifting closer and closer in as it passed by one, and then suddenly wrenching itself away and tumbling in the opposite direction. 
	<All right, Mna, I want you to raise the volume very, very slowly.>
	The cry grew gradually louder. The lurers went on spinning; they would have noticed a sudden burst but this slow crescendo remained buried under the noise of their own rotations. The guun began traveling slower, and with more trouble. As I got closer I could see the dark form struggling toward me as he had that first night. He’d heard her.
	I put as much speed on as I thought was prudent. If the lurers noticed this little drama I couldn’t vouch for what the effect would be on Crann, or on me. Riding against the wake was hard, so I swerved out and tried to parallel it, which helped me gain on it but which brought me uncomfortably close to some of the lurers.
	I prepared two capture spaces. Crann would go into one, and the guun into the other. I wanted to know what this thing was and I was pretty sure the Council would be interested too. Slowly, I let out the stream of fire that would bring them in.
	Ahead of me I saw the green sphere contract suddenly, glowing brighter. The space around me wrenched, rippled, and twisted, crushing me and a nearby lurer into a tight, narrow ribbon, a thin string of light knotted up in constrictive, tympanic pain. The only thing that occurred to me to do was to panic, flailing blindly against the sides of this ethereal bottleneck. Worse, the lurer was doing the same, its jagged light ripping through my specter and causing me pain it would take a year of trying to describe. 
	<Dhiaoc, what’s happening to you?>
	The struggling and pain continued with no sign of abatement.
	<Get a hold of Mna’s signal, I’m going to close the link. Can you bring her down?>
	<Yes, dhiaoc, but what about-->
	<Never mind, just do it.> They’d be all right, since they were only linked and not actually projecting with me. I, on the other hand, was still squeezed into some kind of ethereal tunnel with a panicked lurer’s thorns shredding my specter.
	<Quit it, will you!> I sent out, forgetting in this new crisis that they were dangerous things.
	<What have you done to me?>
	<I haven’t done anything, it’s that green thing up ah--aaagh!>
	The walls of the bottleneck contracted.
	<Who are you?>
	<Why do you care at a time like this?>
	Since I figured I would be definitively extinguished momentarily, it seemed an insanely irrelevant question. But the walls relaxed. I tried to calm down. My spiky new friend was still flailing.
	The lurer screamed as the walls contracted again. I had now satisfied myself that the contracting wasn’t going to kill me. But being crushed into a panicking lurer would do nothing for my health.
	<Listen to me, friend. Do you want out of here?>
	<Of course I--AAAAAAAAGH!!!>
	It relaxed enough for us to communicate. <This thing is a tunnel, and you’re blocking up the wide end. Can you st---uuugh.> I waited. <Can you stop spinning?>
	<Can I stop spinning?> it shrieked. <Can a rapparan stop mo-ooo-ooo-->
	<All right all right just stop FLAILING like that!> Another contraction, another release. <When it crushes us on the next...> Or not. <On the contraction after this one, try to hold that shape and I’ll push you out. Think you can d--> This was becoming tiresome. <Think you can handle that?>
	<Of course I can handle it!>
	<That’s good, use that rage. All right, here it comes--> 
	I crouched behind the wad of buzzing light into which the contraction crushed the lurer. The walls rushed back; and in the second before they returned I fired myself forward in a burst that knocked the lurer out of the tunnel. Unfortunately, half of me was still in the tunnel when it contracted, leaving me dangling out of the opening like a worm in a robin’s beak.
	The lurer, now free of whatever this thing was, spun rapidly in the ether nearby, settling gratefully into its accustomed shape. I was struggling to get myself clear but could only pull forward a fraction before it caught me again.
	And now the lurer was moving toward me. This was not how I had wanted to die.
	But the lurer bobbed slowly to a halt with a narrow space still separating us. And then it started spinning faster. I could feel myself caught in the wake that was swirling around it. When the tunnel opened again, the centripetal motion pulled me clear of its grip, wrapping me into a circle around this spinning yellow star.
	<Thank you.>
	<I felt like I had to.>
	This was as close to gratitude as I was going to get from a lurer. <I’ll be on my way now.>
	<Hey!> it called out as I was limping toward the edge of the plane.
	<Yes?>
	<That other stranger. The one in bud.>
	“In bud” is how spirits refer to mortals who are pregnant.
	<Yes?>
	<You’re after it, aren’t you?>
	<Yes.>
	<Good. You keep it and its kind out of here. They cause nothing but trouble.>
	<If I can, I will.> At last I was at the edge. Gratefully, I began the slow, painful journey back to reality.
	The first thing I noticed, when my eyes were registering material objects again, was Aine’s face, extremely close to mine and white as a sheet. From the way her hair was dangling around it I realized that I must be on the ground. And that Aine’s clenched fingers were digging into my hands. 
	“I’m back,” I croaked.
	With a sigh that seemed to collapse her whole body she let go and sat back on her heels, tears flooding her eyes. Mna was crouched next to her, an arm around each twin, her face already drawn and wet from crying. They hadn’t been able to see what was happening, but Aine surely must have felt my distress. I rolled over onto my stomach. I felt like using what strength I had to bang on the floor and curse, which I did.
	“Thurk it, I almost had him.”
	“Where is he?” Mna cried, hugging the boys tighter. “What are they doing to him? What’s happening? What is that horrible place?”
	I pushed myself up on my hands and knees but thought it unwise to tax myself further. “I don’t know where he is right now,” I said, in a voice that sounded emptied and dead.
	“What have they done to him?” she shrieked.
	“He’s no worse than before.” 
	“Why can’t you find him?” she demanded.
	I didn’t have an answer. I was still leaning on my hands hoping I would start hurting less real soon.
	“Mna--” Aine started.
	“You keep saying you’ve seen him. Well, why can’t you find him? Why can’t you bring him back?”
	“Sighting and capture are two different...” I said, slowly settling back on my heels.
	“Every day we go into that place and it’s always the same story and I’m sick of it!” she went on, standing up and pulling Crann into her arms while she glared down at me with her red, watering eyes. I propped my elbows on my knees and put my head in my hands. “My baby is at the mercy of those things and all you can tell me is ‘better luck next time.’ If you knew what you were doing at all you would have--”
	“LEAVE HER ALONE!”
	I lifted my head. The sudden anger that had exploded in her voice was still burning in Aine’s eyes. Mna was staring at her, because she’d never seen Aine look like that--dangerous, at bay, with a violent blush streaking each cheek. I’d never seen her look like that either.
	The strain in her voice was more than anger. “Can’t you see she’s hurt?”
	Mna looked back at me. Her eyelids were swollen and red, and her chin was still quivering, but Aine’s outburst seemed to have broken her anger. “I--I’m sorry, shriia.” She watched as I dragged myself over to one of the walls. “Where are you hurt?”
	I gave out a short, bitter laugh. Aine shook her head.
	“Everywhere and nowhere,” I answered. 
	Aine trotted over to sit next to me. “What happened, dhiaoc?”
	“I got trapped in some kind of passage with one of the lurers.” I leaned my head back against the wall and closed my eyes. “That thing that’s holding Crann, whatever it is, seems to have some kind of power over the element--that’s the second time I’ve seen it do something like this.”
	“Something like what?” from Mna, who had forgotten about being angry.
	“The first time was with that rapparan Crann was riding,” I said. “This thing had done something to its dark matter that made it pulse just like that tunnel I was caught in--like a heart beating, or like a throat constricting. Except this time it was the ether itself doing that.” Aine looked surprised, and I couldn’t blame her. 
	“What is he?” she asked. “The thing that’s taken Crann?”
	“I can tell you what it’s not,” I answered. “It’s not one of the denizens of the 98 planes. It’s not a vigil. It’s not a dark user’s specter. It’s not friendly and,” I added, as the lurer’s last words recurred to me, “it’s not alone.”
	“What do you mean, dhiaoc?”
	“There are more like it,” I said. “The lurers have seen its kind before.”
	“So what is it?” Mna asked.
	“It’s big trouble,” I responded.
	My strength was coming back, slowly, but it would be suicidal to make another attempt. I would have to wait and try tomorrow. Hopefully the link between Frih and Crann was still in good repair and I would be able to track him that way. 
	“You know, Mna,” I added after several minutes, “if you’re not happy with the way I’m handling things, I can refer you to someone else. Barant’s very busy with the Council responsibilities and doesn’t practice much now, but she--”
	“No, no, shriia,” Mna broke in hurriedly. “I don’t want that, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said those things, I just--I just--please don’t be angry with me,” she cried, her voice suddenly breaking. “Please don’t turn me out, I didn’t mean it, I don’t want--”
	“Oh, Mna, don’t,” I said. “Of course I’ll work on the case for as long as you wish it, and you’ll stay here as long as you need to. I just thought--”
	“No, no,” she said. “You’re the shriia Idair sent me and I’ll stick with you.”
	“If you’re sure.”
	“I’m sure.” 
	“Well all right then.” I looked over at Aine. “How long was I out there?”
	She looked at the waterclock. “Four hours, dhiaoc.”
	The extent of their shared breakdown was suddenly understandable. They had been watching me struggle for hours, having no idea what was going on or whether I would ever come back. It was painful enough for me, but at least it seemed short.
	“Must be about time for supper, then,” I said. 
	“I’ll get it,” Aine and Mna answered together.
	“Yes you will,” I said. “I’m going to take a little nap. Wake me when it’s time.”
	I curled up on the floor and closed my eyes. I heard Aine scuffle to her feet and start away, then stop.
	“Is she going to sleep right there?” Mna whispered.
	“Yes.”
	“Wouldn’t she be more comfortable in a bed?” 
	“She does this all the time,” Aine answered. “She can sleep anywhere.”
	Their footsteps started moving off toward the kitchen. “But why the floor?”
	“I’m not sure.”

XI.
Failure

	The best thing about a post-ether nap is that you’re too tired to dream. I awoke a little stiff, but feeling much better, and Aine had done something interesting and really rather tasty with the cheese and broccoli, so I was in a better mood at dinner than I had a right to be. Frih took his mashed pratai without too much trouble; I think he was too frightened to make any. I wondered what part all of this was going to play in his adult personality. Aine was in high spirits, in her own quiet way; convincing me to let her cook was a victory she didn’t often achieve, and it gladdened her earnest heart. Evidently while I was asleep she had made it up with Mna, and they had a good time down at their end of the little table, talking about one thing or another. My mind was elsewhere for much of the conversation, but it returned to reality when I heard Taric’s name come up.
	“...and he’s holding out this--very--dead--” Aine was appalled even after the fact.
	“The poor man,” Mna said. “He was just trying to do something nice for you.”
	“I think he was trying to do something nice for you,” I said. “Of course what do I know.”
	“Maybe, shriia.” Her face seemed to darken a little.
	“Did something happen while you were staying over there?” I asked. “Because if he’s done something that bothered you--”
	“No, no, shriia, nothing like that,” Mna protested. “He’s been very kind.”
	“So how come suddenly he’s about as interesting to you as cold pratai casserole?”
	She laughed. “I guess you noticed.” She picked up her fork and began picking absently at the remains of her dinner. “I appreciated your trying, shriia, I really did--”
	“And here I thought I was being subtle,” I said mournfully.
	“With all due respect, shriia, your own mother wouldn’t call you subtle.”
	“No she wouldn’t,” I agreed. “But you were saying--”
	She set the fork down and turned to face me. “How shall I put this...” Aine looked at her. “I don’t think I’m his type.”
	Something in the way she said it seemed at variance with the words. “You don’t think he likes you?” 
	“Dhiaoc!” Aine reproached me, embarrassed.
	Mna laughed. “I thought so at first, sure, but...” She shook her head. “We must have been wrong.”
	“Why?”
	“He’s already got a lover.”
	“Oh.” Aine looked scandalized. “He told you?”
	“No of course he didn’t tell me,” she scoffed. “But there are other ways to tell these things.” Mna smiled, a little condescendingly. “Of course I suppose this kind of cunning is no use to you.”
	“Not much, no.”
	“I was putting the twins down for a nap in his sleeping area--”
	“--and while you were at it you took a look around,” I said.
	She blushed, but held her ground. “I put everything back exactly where I found it.” Aine started clearing dishes, rapidly. “He’s got a picture hidden away, shriia--a miniature portrait in a little copper frame.”
	“Could be his sister,” I shrugged.
	Mna looked at me with pity in her eyes. “I don’t think so, shriia. This portrait is of a man.” Aine bobbled the plate she was carrying. “A young one--nice-looking, too, at least from the neck up.”
	“Brown hair?” I asked.
	She looked surprised. “How did you know?”
	“I don’t--but Ridac’s got brown hair, and it could be a presentation likeness.”
	“A what?”
	“A couple hundred years ago it got to be a custom here for landowning families to give portraits of themselves to their tenants at festival times. I don’t understand how they got the idea that this would be a nice gesture. ‘Happy Burning! Here, have a picture of the person who’ll be taking your harvest come autumn.’ ‘Wow, thanks, Aiv, I was just telling the little ones that what I really need is an image of my landlord to hang over the stove so I can be reminded constantly of who owns my hide.’” Mna and Aine laughed. “So it could be a portrait of Ridac, since that’s who’d own his land.”
	“Really?” She looked suddenly much more interested in this conversation. “Are you sure?”
	“No, I can’t be without seeing the thing for myself.” Mna nodded, discouraged. “Why don’t you show it to me?”
	There was a pause. “I didn’t take it with me, shriia.”
	“No, I know, I meant think of it and I’ll go in and take a look.”
	“All right.” She closed her eyes. I linked in and deepened the connection until I could see what she was calling to mind.
	A young man, yes, with brown hair, dark eyes and a tentative, oddly appealing smile. But it wasn’t Ridac. And it wasn’t a presentation likeness--none of that stiff, formal, stylized quality. This had been done by an amateur, but a good one. A self-portrait, like as not. He was a good artist; and he wouldn’t have wanted anyone else in on the secret. Not even me.
	I closed the link. When my eyes blinked next I discovered that they were wet.
	“What is it, shriia?” Aine had resumed her seat and was also looking concerned. “Is it not what you thought?” I shook my head. “Then what is it? What’s the matter?”
	“You think a story can’t get any sadder.” I wiped my eyes. “And then it does.”
	Mna’s eyes were large and serious. “It is a lover.”
	“Was. He went home to Idair almost three years ago.”
	Almost three years ago. Which was when I had met Taric. Who had come to me to ask me to read something. And never told me what it was.
	“Who is it, dhiaoc?” Aine asked.
	“Keanrih mac Minead. He was before your time but I’m sure you’ve heard the story.”
	“I haven’t,” Mna said.
	“You must be from pretty far away,” I sighed.
	“Who is...Keanrih?”
	“You’ll meet his mother tomorrow when we do siulin,” I answered. “His family is one of the big houses out in Mablad, where we’re headed next. The na Polls.” 
	“How...how did he die?” Mna asked.
	She could tell I didn’t want to answer the question. But she wanted to know; and she deserved the story. Since she seemed to have decided to trust me.
	“I don’t repeat gossip when I can avoid it,” I said. “But this story the whole province knows, because of the trial.” I sighed and leaned back in my chair. Aine got Frih out of his seat and sat with him on the floor, alternately keeping him entertained and looking up to follow the story. “People tell Keanrih’s story like it’s one of my successes. Which only proves that outside of the Order, most people can’t tell the difference between a success and a failure.”
	“It wasn’t a failure, dhiaoc,” Aine shot back.
	I shook my head. “To understand you have to know his parents. The land belongs to Keanrih’s father’s family. Nocc mac Deira na Poll.” Aine nodded. “It’s good land, and the na Polls do well for themselves. Nocc’s a shrewd, thrifty landlord, which is perhaps why he’s so unpopular with the tenants.” Mna laughed. “Nocc was their only son, so he grew up getting his own way. From the time he could possibly have a use for them he kept women, and made no secret of it. He assumed this arrangement would continue after his joining...” Mna was starting to look a little angry. “He made a little miscalculation.”
	“How do you mean?”
	“Instead of joining one of the other landed families, he picked one of his tenants. He thought, I guess, that his wife would be in such a weak position she’d never object.” I laughed. “I guess even after all those women, Nocc never learned--if it’s yes my Aiv you’re looking to hear, don’t ask a country woman.”
	Mna laughed. “So what happened?”
	“His wife, Minead, brought nothing in the way of dowry,” I went on, “but she brought an iron will and a strong mind, and soon he didn’t know what had hit him. He’d take on a mistress, and Minead would smile and not seem to mind, and then he’d see the two of them washing the pots together or walking out in the fields, and then in about a week the mistress would leave. He found out later that Minead was taking part of the household budget and using it to set these women up in business for themselves in the City--at whatever they were interested in doing, weaving or metalworking or anything. If the woman did well, the return on the investment came back to Minead...so the more affairs he had, the richer she got.” Mna broke into a short, sharp laugh. “So anyhow--from the beginning it was a battle, and from the beginning he was on the losing side, although Minead was good-natured about it. And then Keanrih was born.”
	Rain poured down the outside of the windowpanes. The candles on the table were glowing brighter as the darkness grew more complete. 
	“Keanrih wasn’t the kind of boy his father wanted,” I sighed. “That’s why we were friends, I suppose--as friendly as we had the chance to get. He was a beautiful little boy; I’ve seen portraits. But he was slight, and he was shy. He was a gifted artist, at least I thought so. A good horseman; not much of an athlete otherwise, and not a hunter.” I drew my knees up and put my arms around them, talking into the candle flame. “But he was a good land steward and he took the job seriously. He’d have been a better landlord than Nocc is--better than Bilhad will be, for sure. 
	“But it was something Nocc could never leave alone. They had other children--two boys and a daughter--and Bilhad and Trebor were romping, tree-climbing, creature-shooting boys, but that didn’t satisfy him. Keanrih was his first son, and he wanted Keanrih to be like him, and he wasn’t, and things were black and bitter between them.”
	Aine resumed her seat at the table, carrying a sleeping Frih. 
“So by the time I started my practice here, Keanrih would have been maybe twenty-six, a couple years older than I was. All of his family are strong believers, so they wanted to meet me and have me go around the house and renew their protections and all of that. Nocc disliked me on sight, I’m sure--he preferred Morat, naturally...”
	“Mrowr,” said Mna, raking the air with one hand in imitation of a cat.
	“All right, so there’s a little history there. Anyhow, Keanrih and I became friends, which made Minead happy...” I shrugged. “It makes no sense, of course, me being a shriia, but on some level it made her feel better that he had a woman friend. That should have been my first clue.”
	“But it wasn’t.”
	No, it hadn’t been. And the more of the story I told the more I was kicking myself for not having seen this. I figured out at some point that he had to have a lover he wasn’t telling his family about. I could never have guessed who his lover actually was. But certainly I of all people should have realized that only one thing could explain his terrible fear of letting anyone find out. 
	“So...” Mna prompted, beginning to look impatient.
	“So Nocc arranged for Keanrih to join with Ridac’s younger cousin, one of the na Felchetts, and he wouldn’t do it.”
	Mna and Aine both looked at me.
	“No reason given, just refused. Wouldn’t say why, wouldn’t budge. And Nocc simply lost his mind. At least that’s how I saw it. He fixated on getting Keanrih to do this one thing--it was the single thing he would talk about.” I leaned forward to rest my chin on my knees. “I had thirteen separate private consultations with him in that hideous study of his and it was always the same thing. Why wouldn’t he do it? Was a spirit holding him hostage? What could cause a boy to be so obstinate? Had he been put wrong at birth?” I sighed. “And all I could say was, that’s his own spirit, it’s his will, and I can’t change his mind for you.” I laughed. “The man would not take ‘live with it’ for an answer. He wanted me to scour Keanrih and find out what he was hiding.”
	“What’s wrong with that?” Mna asked.
	“There are only two situations in which we can enter someone’s mind against their consent,” I said. “One is if the person is possessed, or if you have reason to believe the person is possessed. The other is with a known or suspected dark user. Anything else is considered mindforcing and that’s a loss violation.”
	“What’s a loss vio--”
	“Something that if you do it, you lose your fire,” Aine said, hushed. “Idair just takes it right back.”
	Mna looked at me. “You mean you couldn’t do shri any more.”
	“That’s right.”
	“Are there a lot of these...loss violations?” I laughed. “I mean, what if you broke a rule by accident?”
	“It’s not like that. There are only three kinds of LV and they are--all together, Aine--”
	“Abuse of the truth, abuse of the fire, abuse of the body,” we recited.
	“What?”
	“Lying, handling or using money, exploiting your power, and--well--having sex,” I said. 
	“And intentional killing,” Aine added.
	“And intentional killing. Of anything that has a spine, except to protect yourself or others from imminent death. That’s basically what it comes down to. Mindforcing is an abuse of the fire.”
	“And he asked you to do it?” Mna demanded.
	“Yes, he did. I reported that to the Council. This did not improve our working relationship.”
	“I don’t guess it did,” Mna answered.
	I laughed. “Morat--to do her credit--came out to the house personally to tear his head off. No wonder he hated me after that. I’d have hated me too.”
	Aine seemed to agree. Morat taught projection at the scoil and entire cohorts trembled at the mere sound of her voice.
	“Anyhow, I started to feel that something was very wrong in that house. I warned Keanrih that his father had asked me to mindforce him, and he brushed it off; but a lot of things made me suspicious. And as it turns out I was right to be.”
	Minead finally prompted me when the silence got too long. “Suspicious of what?”
	“Mainly I suspected that Nocc had started dealing with Lythril--trying to get her to change Keanrih’s mind. That part…well, it’s a long story, but the point is that by the night of the Turning, I was pretty sure Lythril was intending some evil against Keanrih. And it was the next day that Lilea found Krenham murdered out in Kengda and called me out to look at him. So I went…and it was while I was gone that the change came on Keanrih.”
	“What change?”
“He’d never seemed especially interested in women,” I said sadly. “Of course now I understand why, but the thought never entered my mind.”
	But I was willing to bet, now that I knew, that it had entered Nocc’s mind. It would explain a lot.
	“So this change...” from Mna.
	“Yes. Well, all of a sudden he couldn’t control himself. The women in the house, the kitchen staff and the waiting maids, started complaining that he was pestering them--coming upon them in odd corners and empty rooms, that sort of thing. He was a good-looking man, and he did find willing partners; his mother was at her wits’ end about it. It’s bad for discipline to have your son thurking the servants--” Aine splorted the water she was drinking. “Sorry. Minead must have realized something was wrong; but she didn’t realize what it was. I’ve often wondered why she didn’t. She’s not a shriia, of course; but he was after all her own son.”
	The candle was guttering. Aine stared at it, too interested in the story to get up for another. She’d heard it, of course, but never from my point of view. Mna was looking up in the flickering light of the dying candle, as if she had an idea what was coming next.
	“Well, after a few days of this, it finally happened.” I wrapped my arms tighter around my knees. “He went after a girl who wasn’t willing--a girl named Weroda who worked in the kitchen--and raped her.”
	They were both still staring at me. This was the part that was hardest to tell. 
“The girl went straight to Minead. And Minead, loving Keanrih as she did, sent for the gardai right away.” Mna looked surprised. “It’s not something every big house mother would do, but remember she was a tenant’s daughter. She knew what was right.”
	“What happened to him?” Mna asked after a long silence.
	“He was arrested, over the rather violent objections of his father,” I said. “And brought to court, and charged, and held. Nocc tried everything to get him off--wanted to hire Bric mac Chlos as his defender, no less, only I talked Minead out of it.”
	“Why not?”
	“Bric is famous in the legal community,” I said. “His nickname among the lawyers is Bric na Cholis-- ‘Bric of the Price.’ Pay him enough and he’ll do anything, up to and including pimping for Lythril. I wanted to make sure he had a lawyer who wasn’t working for the Dark One. So I recommended Ethir to Minead,” I said. “We’d worked together after...well. That’s a long story about something else. So she hired him, and that was the smartest thing she could have done, because he did something not every defender would risk.”
	“Which was what?” 
	“He asked me to do a shriic evaluation.”
	Mna looked at Aine.
	“To see if he had done this while he was possessed,” Aine explained.
	“Possession is always a possible defense,” I said, “but a lot of lawyers won’t ask for an evaluation because it’s a gamble. If you ask for an evaluation you need to show the court and the shriia probable cause to assume possession--which means, essentially, you have to admit that your client physically performed whatever crime he’s being charged with. So once you do that, if the evaluation is negative, you’re kind of up a creek.”
	“So he was guilty,” Mna said.
	“He’d done what he was accused of, certainly,” I said. “So I went to the court, with Ethir and Keanrih and his family and the presider and the victim and the Finders...”
	The candle went out. Aine got up and started rummaging for another. Finally extracting one, she put it in the holder in front of me. I flicked a pale, sickly bit of flame at it. It caught, but not without a struggle. I still wasn’t working at full steam, and this story wasn’t raising my spirits any.
	“Keanrih didn’t say a thing to me.” I could still see his face, above the gray shirt they’d given him for his holding, looking back stonily as if it had never seen me. “I looked for the signs, and indeed, they were present.” I blinked. “So I went in...” I shivered suddenly, my shoulders twitching under my robe. “Understand that at this point in my career I’m still pretty new at this. I’m in the head of a man I’d called my friend, and I find out he’s been seized by a kraikk.”
	Aine shook her head. Mna just waited for the explanation.
	“The lurers are dangerous, maybe more so than any other kind of spirit. But nothing is as mean as a kraikk. They’re amoral, vicious, poison-minded things who appear to care for nothing but the pleasures of the flesh, which they can only experience by overtaking a human host. And they have very odd ideas, some of them, of what ‘pleasure’ involves.” The tears were coming back. “So there it was. Keanrih had been under there, the whole time, powerless, and this thing had been forcing his body on women he would never have touched.” Mna crossed her arms protectively over Crann’s chest. 
	“In an evaluation, all you’re supposed to do is go into the memory. The court doesn’t care whether you cleanse the victim, they just want your word on whether he acted under his own power. But I found this thing still in him--and I heard him underneath, begging me to help him, that he couldn’t live with it for another second.” 
	I shifted in my chair. “So I said, ‘Not only was Keanrih mac Minead possessed at the time of the offense, he’s possessed right now. And I advise anyone who is not legally required to be here to vacate the courtroom, because I’m going to cast it.’
	“Well, that stirred things up, but I wasn’t paying attention because I was already locked in battle with the kraikk and let me tell you, it fought like a bastard.” Aine was giving me that look again, the look that bothered me. “The details you don’t need. But I got it out of him.” Mna exhaled. “For a few seconds it was flying around the courtroom--bright orange, spitting foul-smelling smoke, and shrieking like slate on iron--and then I sent it back home.” 
	The candle burned in silence. Finally, Mna said, “And was that what killed him?”
	“No.” 
	They waited.
	“I said this was a failure,” I finally resumed. “Not because I failed to cleanse him. That part went as well as it could have. He was totally clean. The court recessed, and Weroda agreed not to pursue the case. She’d seen the cleansing too; she knew who was to blame.” 
	Which must have been why I’d done it. To do a cleansing in public like that was incredibly irresponsible. I was shocked at myself after I was finished. The only explanation I could come up with for my own conduct was this: I wanted witnesses. I wanted to make sure that everyone knew, the way I knew, that he was innocent. People talk about the spirits and even fear them but when it comes down to brass and glass it’s often hard for them to really believe. I wanted everyone to see the damn thing. And that much I had accomplished.
	“So.” Mna’s voice broke in on my reverie. “You cleansed him and...?”
	“After…things had calmed down a little, and I’d checked to see he was clean….” I looked over at Aine; her eyes were still bright, still eager. “He was still sitting there at the table with his hands still bound and he was just so wretched. And I said, because it was what I was thinking, ‘You’ve got Minead, and you’ve got me. We’ll get you through this.’ And he was just so miserable--Aine will tell you, it doesn’t come easy to me, but I went to touch him, I thought if he felt my hands he would know he was safe and things would be all right.” I brushed a hand across my nose. “He lurched away from me like a flounder dodging an eel.”
	“What for?” Mna demanded.
	“He was afraid to touch me,” I said. “Afraid that if he did he’d hurt me.”
	Now Mna’s eyes were starting to tear up. “Because of what happened.”
	I nodded. “That thing broke him. He never had an hour’s happiness afterwards. He was afraid to touch anyone, afraid even to be alone with anyone. Wouldn’t leave the grounds under any circumstances no matter what. Spent almost all his time locked up in his room alone. I went out there every chance I had to work with him and I thought he was getting better, but--I couldn’t make him believe it was over. I could never get him to feel safe. Day after day after day and he would get a little closer…and then the next day it would take me five hours just to get him to open the door and let me into the room again. It went on like that for months. One step forward, one step back. He kept trying and I kept trying but we could just never get him back together.”
	Frih stirred in his sleep with a brief little cry. Aine handed him over to Mna, who rocked him back into safety.
	“And then one morning he wasn’t at breakfast, and Minead went to his room and found him. Face up on his bed with a red slash across his throat. Dead by his own hand.”
	Mna sat, a twin in each arm, looking at me with horror. Maybe she was too young for a story like this. But then again, she’d seen enough, maybe, that it was just one more thing. A lot happens on the street that no one ever finds out about.
	“So that was the end,” I said. “Him taking his own life because he knew it would never be any good to him again. Because he knew that it would never get better. Because he knew that I would never give up. He had to be the one to tell me, it’s no use, it’s over, let go.”
	I sat silent for a while.
	“That’s terrible, shriia,” Mna finally said. “The poor man.”
	I could see her embrace contracting slightly, drawing the twins closer to her.
	“It is,” I said wearily. “A terrible story to tell anyone. I tell it to you because it shows you two things you should know about the woman you trust to find your son.”
	I thought that even through her horror at the story I could detect some amusement at my clumsiness. “And they would be what, shriia?”
	“One,” I said, “is that I fail. Spectacularly. The two people in my life who were closest to me, who I above all wanted to save, are gone. You’ll hear people telling stories about me but they’ll never mention that.”
	Aine looked as if she wanted to interrupt, but she waited to hear the second thing.
	“Two,” I went on. “I don’t let go. No matter how bad it looks I don’t let go. If we stop looking for your boy it’ll be because you’ve decided he can’t be found. I won’t give up. When you know it’s hopeless, you’ll have to tell me.”
	From Mna’s face it was hard to tell what she thought of all this. 
	“I don’t give up either,” she finally said.
	After a decent pause, Aine started arguing as she had long been wanting to do. “It wasn’t a failure, dhiaoc. You cleansed him. You won the battle.”
	“The point isn’t to win the battle, the point is to save the victim.” I shook my head. “I couldn’t do that. And now to find out that even before that thing took him, the whole time I knew him, he was eating his heart in silence...” I picked up a stray bit of bay leaf  and threw it into the candle flame. “Running out at night to meet him Idair knows where, refusing that marriage and not saying why. Already suffocating himself under the shell of what Nocc wanted him to be. Then to have that thing in him...to be so terrified, and in such pain, and to know that unless it left he would never see Taric again, that Taric would never know why...” Tears dropped onto the skirt of my hreapa and rolled off unseen to the floor. “The agony of knowing that if he could only tell someone, it would all be over...and that he couldn’t speak.”
	A wind that had risen around the house rattled the kitchen windows. The rain had kept on; probably it would continue until the morning. Mna still held the twins close to her, as if for protection. Aine had her arms crossed across her chest, a hand on each shoulder. She was learning the reflex.
	“He never told me,” I finally said, after the tears dried up. “Maybe because I was a shriia and he knew if anyone asked I’d have to answer.” The rain continued streaking the panes of the windows. “He should have told me. It might have helped. If not before then after.”
	And Taric should have told me too, damn it. He was one of my people. And thinking back on it now I could place that memory I had of him on the grass in Felim Cloch waiting his turn for siulin. It was about two weeks after I’d cleansed Keanrih. After I’d finally gotten him to open the door. There Taric had been, sitting in front of me, holding out a piece of paper with four things written on it. 
	Godeo. Cuideo. Mo fearr chara. Nieaftidh.
	Forever. Whatever. My man, my love, my husband. Wait.
	It had been a message. Something Keanrih had somehow smuggled out in writing to him, telling him not to give up, that he was still there, that he would work to get well and get out. And since Taric wasn’t a reader he had brought it to me. I read it for him. But only he knew what it meant.
	The tears streaking my face now were as much anger as grief. Eight months. I had gone out to Felim for siulin once every two weeks. Taric could have told me, any time. And maybe if I’d known…I could have done something to bring them together. And maybe it would have helped.
	Or maybe it wouldn’t have. Maybe he was just too broken. In spite of what I had spent those long hours trying to get him to believe.
	Or maybe Taric had decided, that day on the grass in Felim’s town square, that he wouldn’t wait. That he had to get on with his life. Some people knew when to cut their losses. Not everybody was me. 
	Aine got up and finished clearing the plates. 
Things that had never made sense were starting to become clear. Why Taric lived in such a lonely place and kept himself so much apart. Why he was used to walking long distances and thinking nothing of it. Who knows how they met, or how things had gone with them. A landed son and a small farmer; it would have been an unequal partnership from the beginning. It couldn’t have been easy. He would have felt like a mistress, an inferior with no hope of joining the family and no illusions about permanence or children or happy ever after. 
So maybe he hadn’t waited.
But then Keanrih could have married and kept his lover, as landed people do; and he had refused. And almost three years after the death, Taric still had that portrait. 
Maybe he had waited.
What did it matter. There was nothing now for him to wait for.
	I got up to help Aine with the dishes. Mna took the twins upstairs to put them to bed. My hands were still a little unsteady as I washed the plates.
	“I can do it, dhiaoc.”
	“I know you can, but so can I. I’ve got pride too, Aine.”
	She watched me stacking them carefully inside the cupboard. I’d be back to normal in the morning, I hoped. Five years ago it wouldn’t have taken me so long, but I wasn’t twenty-four any more, and this job ages you faster than some.
	“You think you were right?” Aine asked. “That it’s a guun?”
	I nodded. “But a guun with knobs on. That ability to alter the ether is not a standard feature.” I sighed. “But with no more of a will or a brain than any other guun.”
	“It seems strong-willed enough.”
	“Think about it. Both places I’ve found him are planes with exits into this world. Rappari attack horses, lurers attack people--riding either one would give Crann the chance to come back to this plane and be rescued. It almost worked with the rappari; we’ll never know how it would have worked with the lurers.”
	“You think Crann is what’s driving this thing?”
	“I think he’s trying. It has some control over what happens, but it doesn’t have enough to take Crann wherever it wants to go. Yet, anyhow.”
	“But how does he know what to do?”
	I shrugged. “That is a question. If I’m right, he’s certainly a very intelligent boy.”
	We finished up the dishes. I took up the candle and we made our way up to the sleeping wing. I looked in at Mna, who was settling into bed. She looked pensive.
	“I’m sorry I lost my temper, shriia,” she said. “I’m grateful for all you’ve done.”
	“It’s my job,” I answered.
	“If we find him...”
	“Yes?”
	“Will he...will he be all right? Will he remember all this?”
	“When he returns to his body he’ll forget anything that happened while he was out of it,” I said. “It will probably have some effect, down the road.” Mna nodded. “But it won’t necessarily be bad. Contact with spirits can have interesting benefits.”
	“Thank you, shriia. Idair keep you.” I made the sign over her and left. Behind me, I heard her say, “You’re not still mad, Aine?”
	“No, no,” came Aine’s voice, embarrassed. “Please--forget what I said. I’m sorry.”
	“No hard feelings,” Mna answered. “Spend a good night.”
	She followed me out into the hallway, surprised to see me waiting there. I’d remembered something I had been going to ask her.
	“Aine...”
	“Yes, dhiaoc?”
	“Aine...are you all right? Is there anything you want to tell me?”
	She looked suddenly stricken. “What do you mean?”
	“I know I’m not the easiest person to talk to,” I said. “But if something’s bothering you, and it’s something I can help with...”
	Aine shook her head emphatically. “No, no, I’m fine, dhiaoc. Why do you ask?”
	“You just...the past few days you seem kind of unsettled. Have you had bad news from home, or--”
	“No, dhiaoc, nothing like that.”
	“I just want you to know,” I repeated. “I don’t want you to think you have to hide things from me because I’ll think less of you. I’ve got faults too.”
	She nodded, seriously. “Thank you, dhiaoc. I’ll remember.”
	“Idair guard you,” I finally said.
	Whatever it was, she was keeping a lid on it. But the way she had turned on Mna bothered me. Not because I’d never seen her angry before--you don’t learn everything about someone in a year. But because there had been that note of self-blame in her anger, as if she were holding herself responsible for what happened to me. And she had enough problems, at her age, without feeling responsible for mine.

XII.
Fire and Water

	“Are you feeling well enough, dhiaoc? Because I can wait.”
	She said it, but she didn’t really mean it. She was sitting there across the table with those big starved eyes and that dark frame of hair and looking like if she couldn’t get answered right now she might just faint away or die altogether.
	“Ceard ta thu ag iarradh?” I said.
	“Ta me ag iarradh shri.”
	“Ask and I answer.”
	She opened her mouth, and there was a moment of stammering confusion as fifteen questions fought to be the first out the gate. It had been a while since we’d had the time to really do freagair right, what with everything.
	“Can all the spirits enter our plane?”
	“Not all of them--and not all are capable of interaction with humans. I’d say seventy-five out of the whole 98 show up in our world often enough to be problems. Of that 75 there are fifty-three that generally interact only either with animals or with the rest of the natural world, including those who become geniuses. That leaves twenty-two distinct varieties that interact with humans.”
	“And are they all evil?”
	“Evil...ah, it’s hard to say. For instance, lurers do no kind of good to the humans they meet. Sometimes people find the limbs a hundred yards apart, the head at the bottom of a pit and the torso bobbing in a well somewhere...”
	“Dhiaoc,” said Aine, blanching.
	“But to them, maybe, that’s not evil. To them maybe it’s just feeding, the way a cat eats mice.”
	“Feeding on what?”
	“We don’t know, but the guess is that their victims produce something that they need--and that either they have to rip them apart to get to it, or that this something is released in the terror and pain the victim feels during his dismemberment.”
	“What about the kraikk?”
	“Well, I think they’re evil, but then I’ve got a personal grudge.”
	“Are there spirits that...well, that wish us well?”
	“Oh sure. The sowlths are very nice things, really; sometimes you’ll see one get attached to a human--adopt it or its family like pets. And the vigils--once you bond them, they’re good as gold and loyal to the death. Before that, of course, they’ll rip you limb from limb as soon as look at you. But there are about eight or nine other very friendly sorts. I’ll take you through all those regions on your first trip and introduce you.”
	“Which will be when?”
	“I hope soon. The quicker you can start helping me with Crann the happier I’ll be.”
	She smiled. “I’ll like that, dhiaoc.”	
	“I thought you would.”
	“Will I be able to start my hreapa after that?”
	“No. Next question.”
	Aine sighed, but declined to push it. “What will happen to that man Shearer?”
	“If we’re lucky, he’ll be convicted and sent packing back over the border.”
	She nodded, angry. “I don’t see why we need them here in the first place.”
	“I don’t like them either--some of what they do is useful, a lot of it is worthless or downright harmful, in my opinion. But we owe them a great debt for stopping the Greater Plague.”
	“Why do people go to them?”
	“There are things they do that we can’t. They have things they can give patients to take their pain away; even with an empathic transfer we can’t get the same results. And they do well with mechanical problems--bone breaks, displacements, muscle injuries, paralysis. They also have the ability to make women temporarily infertile.”
	“But we have leagruh,” she said.
	“Leagruh’s cheap and plentiful, and you can grow it yourself, so it has that going for it. But if you use it long enough your body adjusts, and then you find yourself down at the mathair. The medicals have stuff that doesn’t fail that way.”
	“For men too?”
	I smiled. “No. I asked Darin and he gave me some sob story about it being too difficult.” Aine snorted. “Exactly. They haven’t tried, is what it comes down to.”
	“But that Shearer--and the others I’ve heard of or seen--they all think they’re so powerful. I don’t see that they do anything so great.”
	“You have to understand, they’re from over the border. Most of them only stay a few years here--it’s some kind of training program for them, I think. They like to get some practice working in ‘primitive conditions.’”
	Aine’s eyes flashed. “So we’re ‘primitive’?”
	“Because we don’t use machines. See...well, you know the story.”
	“We chose shri, they chose the machine,” Aine summarized. “So that makes them better?”
	“From their point of view. Of course, we think shri makes us better, so there you are.”
	“Have you ever been over the border?”
	“My parents took me once when I was very young, but I don’t remember much about it. Really all I know is what I’ve heard from Darin. At some point my turn will come and I’ll be posted to the border; so will you, someday.”
	“Is it true that the Zone is poisoned?”
	“Yes and no. It doesn’t belong to either place, so both of us treat it like a national dunghill. We dump criminals there. They dump...other things. Some of which are poisonous.”	
	“Which means the criminals must die, don’t they? Eventually?”
	“Well, they don’t stay in the Zone forever, you know.”
	“What happens to them?”
	I shrugged. “Apparently some enterprising Cretid concern runs regular passages from both ends of the Zone to parts beyond. The Cretid Nation itself won’t take them in--they don’t want our garbage--but evidently Hendai and Plenana will. So they get out of the Zone, mostly, one way and another. And they get protections. We’ve worked out things that protect against most of their poisons.”
	Aine nodded. “Like against the long slow burning.” There was that look again. “Because of you.”
	I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. To everyone else that was my shining success--perhaps more than anything else, what established my reputation. But those weeks I spent in Dairc and more often than not in the river Ubh were the darkest time of my life. Nobody understands that when they congratulate me on that all I can see is Istria’s face as she pulled up on Zeppa’s mane, turning away from me for the last time, riding off for that mission she never came home from. I went out there, I did my job, I cleaned the river and I saved a lot of people. I stood on that bridge over the water glinting pure in the sun, with garlands of small white flowers festooning me and a whole choir singing vausha over me, a crew of Seated Leaders, shriias and provincial dignitaries assembled before me for the sole purpose of praising my skill and thanking Idair that she had sent me to them, and the world still seemed so black and empty that I could hardly keep from crying.
	“I happened to be the one they sent. Another shriia might have done the same.”
	“But the provincial shriias couldn’t do it,” Aine said. “It took you.” I shook my head. “How did Ubh become fouled?”
	“Over the border, they can’t make fire the way we do,” I said. “So they have to get the fire out of other things--wood, you know, but there are other things they get out of the ground to burn. They need a lot of fire to keep their machines running, so they’re always looking for ways to make more. About fifty years ago they learned how to--well, Darin has tried to explain this to me but it’s never stuck in my head for long. You know how shri works.” Aine nodded. “We bring the fire inside us outward. But we don’t immediately burn up and die, and that’s because Idair sends us hers. We’re the spark, if you want to look at it that way, but Idair provides the flame. For them over the border, Idair doesn’t step in. Getting the fire out of something means burning it up--and the bigger and brighter the burn, the better it feeds their machines. Well, they figured out how to take ordinary matter and get all the fire inside out of it.”
	“What do you mean, all?”
	“Well, that’s the part I could never understand. Apparently the amount of fire that’s really in a piece of matter is much greater than you can release just by setting a flame to it. It works out so that even with a very small lump you can make yourself a really, really big flame.”
	Aine was trying to follow, but I couldn’t blame her for being confused--I always was when I talked about this, and I knew more about it after the Dairc experience than almost anyone else in shri. “But isn’t that dangerous?”
	“Of course it is,” I said. “They have ways of controlling the reaction--that’s what it’s called--so the fire comes out very slowly. They put all sorts of safety nets around the thing they’re burning. Of course, every net has holes.” I sighed. “Idair forbid anything really serious should go wrong, considering what happens when there’s a minor problem.”
	“What happens then?”
	“That’s when you get the long, slow burning,” I said. “The fire leaks out of what they’re burning and it seeps into other matter, and then that matter begins to burn, and then that burning seeps into whatever that matter touches, and it begins to burn...and so soon everything for miles around is burning, but so slowly that you can’t see the flame.”
	“So that was what happened to Ubh?”
I nodded. “Ubh originates on the other side of the border. Over there they’ve never been very particular about keeping their rivers clean. Even before the Treaty it was a struggle for us to keep Ubh decent. With the help of its genius we managed to ward off the actual debris, and discharges they dump into it, and to keep the temperature at a comfortable range, but this took us by surprise.” 
	“How did you stop it?”
	“Oh--that’s complicated. It...the burn happens in the essence, right at the heart of the matter. It’s matter that won’t stay put. So you heal the burning by settling the matter down and to do that you have to take the fire and put it back where it came from.”
	“Not so hard,” Aine said.
	“In theory, no. But this isn’t ordinary fire. It took me a long time to figure out how to apply the skill. After I finally figured out that it was fire. You see, that’s what nobody understood--Ubh looked perfectly normal, and anyway how can a river burn?”
	“How can it?”
	“Apparently,” I said, putting the images of Dairc’s victims out of my mind, “fire this slow will catch on anything.”
	Aine nodded. “And we’re safe from it now.”
	“I taught the technique to all the shriias who were in Daircri and Amst at the time. They’ll teach it to their apprentices. And as long as they don’t come up with some even more hellish kind of burning over the border, yes, we’ll be safe.”
	“What about over the border?”
	“The medicals handle it, there.”
	“They can put fire back?”
	“Not really. That’s one of the reasons they send people down here--hoping to learn how we do it. But you can’t teach a horse to sing, and you can’t teach a medical shri.”
	“It seems strange,” Aine said after a moment’s reflection.
	“What does?”
	“We can’t make that kind of fire, but we can cure the burning. They can’t cure the burning, but they can make the fire.” I laughed. “Isn’t that backward?”
	“You know, it’s interesting,” I said. “Darin read the Chronicles once because I dared him to. He said the biggest surprise was that Idair makes mistakes. Over the border they pray to something they call the Lord. He doesn’t make mistakes.”
	“I’m still not--”
	“Idair taught us to be careful--”
	“--because everything has consequences,” Aine finished for me. “Last words of the First Instructions, middle of the seventh scroll.”
	“She learned that the hard way,” I answered. “In the beginning, before she understood her power, she made some things that did us some harm. Not because she wished us any, but because she didn’t think about consequences. Now, their Lord never does harm, because he already knows the consequences of everything. So they have this idea that they, also, can do no harm--the Lord wouldn’t let them.” Aine looked skeptical. “All right, it’s just my theory. But I think it explains the long slow burning. They start things they can’t see the end of because they expect the Lord to clean up after them.”
	“And does he?”
	I smirked. “Well, they think he does.” 
	“But you don’t.”
	“If the amount of dreck we stop at the border is any indication,” I said, “their Lord needs a much bigger mop.”
	Aine smiled. It was taking a while, but she was developing a sense of humor.
	“Where do you think Keanrih is, now?”
	“You know perfectly well Idair never--”
	“I’m not asking what Idair said, I’m asking what you think,” Aine replied.
	“Well...” I ran a hand through my hair. “What I hope is that he’s with Idair, wherever she is. And that she’s taking good care of him.”
	Aine digested this in silence.
	“Why didn’t Idair tell us what happens after?”
	I met her earnest gaze with one of my own. “She didn’t know.”
	“She must know now. Couldn’t she tell us? Now?”
	“A lot of people think she has,” I answered. “Morat thinks she knows, Barant thinks she knows, Grinth’s got her own ideas--and then the country people have all kinds of extremely elaborate theories about who goes where and why and for how long.” I shrugged. “Many stories, one Spirit, like she said. We don’t know which story is the true one and we have no way of knowing.”
	“Doesn’t it bother you?”
	I laughed, without much joy. “Yes, it does. But I live with it.”
	“I think she should have told us.”
	This time I smiled for real. “Well, when you see her, you can tell her that.”
	“Will I see her? I mean while I’m still here. Will that happen?”
	Trust her to take that seriously. “It doesn’t happen to everyone,” I said gently. “It doesn’t happen to most of us. It hardly ever happens at all, really.”
	“Have you ever seen her?”
	I paused before giving her the answer she hadn’t been hoping for.
	“No, Aine, I never have. Neither has anyone I know.” 
	Disappointment fell on her like a shadow. But another question came to brighten her up. “What would you ask her? If you did see her?”
	I pulled one foot up on my chair and wrapped my arms around my knee. 
	“I guess I do have to answer this one,” I said. “Since it’s about Idair.”
	Aine nodded.
	“I’d ask her why she wanted us to be celibate.”
	She didn’t say it, but I could hear the shocked little cry.
	“You asked, I answered.”
	“Of all the questions in the universe, that’s the one you’d use?” Aine finally said.
	“You never said I could only have one question.”
	“But that would be your first one.”
	“I suppose it’s frivolous,” I said. “I ought to ask how the world will end, or what happens when we die, or why evil continues to exist, I suppose. Well, if you meet Idair you can ask her all that. I just want to know why we’re denied the one thing everyone else seems to get the most happiness out of.”
	“Because of what we’re given,” Aine said, with that simple trust and acceptance I had lost forever. “It’s only right we should give ourselves back to her.”
	“Yes,” I answered tonelessly. “That’s the answer given.”
	Aine looked pained. “Do you not believe it?”
	It suddenly occurred to me how vulnerable she was, how young, and how much power I had over her. It was one thing for me to try to get her to loosen up, laugh more and take a less starry-eyed approach the texts. It was another to drag her into the morass of doubt and frustration and anger that had been my reward for my service to the Council.
	“What we get is worth what we give,” I answered. “I do believe that. Most days.”
	Aine looked at me with all her intensity. “What do you do on the other days?”
	“Idair gets me through them one way or another.” A line of worry appeared between her eyebrows. “Oh, don’t fret over me, Aine. I love this job. So will you. It’s just hard sometimes, that’s all.” She looked unconvinced. “ You have any other questions?”
	“Where do the spirits come from?”
	I stared at her. “Are you serious?” She nodded. “Most children go through this phase at around age three, you know.”
	“When I was three years old I didn’t have a dhiaoc.”
	“Well, Aine, I don’t know where the spirits come from. I don’t know why the sky is blue either.”
	She sighed. “It was worth a try.” I waited. “I think I’m done for today.”
	“All right then.” I stood up and stretched. “You’d better go feed Crann.”
	She started forward. “You might want to exercise him a little too,” I said. “It’s getting on toward a week that he’s been gone. Get Frih to give him a game of catch, or something. We shouldn’t just let him sit.”
	She nodded. “Remember you have to name that Nould baby today.”
	“I do remember some things,” I said. “Holler up when you’re ready to go.”
	I went into my room and started rummaging. I do have a system for where things go and for the first few months of my practice I actually put them back in their little labeled cubbies. This particular morning, however, I had the scrolls for the readings stuffed into the Departures pigeonhole and the bag of showdust was wedged into the amulet drawer and the amulets were dangling off the handle of the other desk drawer and the space I had labeled Arrivals held, at that moment, six half-burnt candles, two blank scrolls, and a tin full of speeder that had sprung a leak and was littering the floor of the cubby, where a family of ants was frantically scurrying among the dust motes wondering what on earth had happened to the universe and when it would stop.
	“I’m sorry, little guys,” I said, scraping up the excess and putting it back in the canister. I tore a strip of parchment off the scroll and bandaged the spot with the hole in it. The poor ants were still charging about in panic, their legs almost a blur and their little antennae flicking back and forth quicker than a blinking eye. I reached an arm into the back of the cubby, but of the many things my hand touched on none felt like what I was looking for. I gave Burning a try. Wadded up in the back was the headdress left over from last winter, now a sad and grimy collection of red, orange and yellow rags. It had been crushed by a large box which I had somehow wedged into this very small space. I rooted through the box. My hand closed around a heptagonal glass bottle.
	“Aha.” Another dive into the box brought up a thin-handled inkbrush with a horsehair tip that didn’t look too ragged. I shook the bottle next to my ear. I thought I could hear the slosh, but it was hard to be sure. I took the stopper out and dipped a finger into the bottle. About two inches in I felt liquid. I restopped the bottle carefully and put it in my traveling bag with the brush and the tin of speeder.
	I slung the bag over one shoulder and started down the steps into the living area. Through the windows I could see them all outside on the grass. Mna was standing behind Frih, helping him throw a ball back and forth to Crann, who was standing in front of Aine. She was still accompanying his motions with echo gestures of her own--an arm drifting forward as he tossed the ball, her hands swinging together as he caught it, knees bending as he dropped onto his to crawl after it--but the differentiation was much more marked. She’d learned a lot in just a few days.
	Frih wound his little arm up and gave the ball as fierce a toss as he could. It bounced off Crann’s dark head and onto the grass; Aine gave a little involuntary wince. Mna laughed. Aine laughed too--a real laugh, from the pit of the lungs, one that transformed her whole face. Frih, seeing that nobody was angry, smiled. Mna picked him up and settled him against her shoulder, speaking to him in muffled baby talk and tickling his nose. Aine stepped over to Crann and put her hands around his chest under his arms. When his knees buckled as she broke the link she held him up for a moment, then set him gently down on the ground.
	It was a strange group. Mna and Frih, laughing and talking like any mother and child; the silent stranger sitting motionless on the grass; and Aine’s unconscious tenderness, her second-nature solicitude. She had never known Crann, the person, at all; even I had had some contact with him through the ether but Aine had no access to anything but the corporeal shell. And yet I could see a bond forming--between her and this strange being that was a child but not a child. Mna was touched by the care she took of him, and that was a tie between her and Aine. It had been such a short time, really, since that day in the City, and there they were--almost, already, a family.
	I locked the door. Now Frih was toddling toward the stables, evidently on his way to visit Cinhe. Mna trailed him, pretending to chase but giving him a suitable lead. Aine followed with Crann in her arms. Their feet left dark trails across the wet grass.
	Looking across the empty lawn, I realized suddenly how much I would miss them. Mna and the boys, once Crann was brought back or she gave up; and Aine, once she got her orders and went out on her own. That wouldn’t happen, probably, for another year and a half, but at the speed she was progressing she wouldn’t stay much longer than that. And then I would be alone again, in my empty house, with no one to talk to but Cinhe. 
	Aine reappeared, leading Cinhe behind her with Frih on his back, held in place by Mna and clinging to her mane with his little fists. Mna followed with Crann. She had him turned to face over her shoulder with his arms draped limply around her neck. I could see that her good mood was becoming more tenuous.
	“Hop on, Aine, and we’ll hand up the twins,” I said.
	Aine swung herself onto her back with far more grace and agility than I ever do. They have excellent horses in Jipran but most of them belong to the inland dwellers, the ones who somehow manage to raise sheep on those rocky, thin-soiled hills. Aine’s family was right on the water. But Aine had taken to horses naturally at the scoil, apparently. She would be ready to choose a foal soon from one of the stables.
	“All right, then, you know the drill.”
	Mna closed her eyes; Aine covered Crann’s with one hand and Frih’s with the other. I led them out through the gate and closed it. When we were clear of it, I shook some speeder over me and Mna. 
	“Mablad, at a trot, Cinhe.”
	Mna was still not used to speeding, and I had to catch her arm several times to keep her from tripping over obstacles that went by faster than she thought they would. I was unable to defend her from one particular wheel-rut, which sent her sprawling into the path. I stopped and went back to help her up, only overshooting her once.
	Mna’s cheeks were red and she was panting as I lifted her up by one damp arm. “We’re nearly there,” I said. “The speeder should start wearing down soon. I’m sorry to drag you all over the Vicinity like this but--”
	She laughed, once she got her breath back and brushed the pebbles off her hands. “I don’t know how you do all this traveling.”
	“I’m used to it,” I said, piloting her back down the road. “This isn’t the hardest day, actually. Beginning of next week is Vinha, and that’s almost half again as far as this.”
	“I’m so happy to hear it,” Mna sighed.
	“Don’t worry--it’s out beyond Felim, so as long as it’s all right with Taric you and the twins can stay with him. That is, unless that would bother you--”
	“No, no, shriia,” Mna said quickly. “It’s--I’ll be happy to see him again.” Her eyes clouded with something she didn’t want me to read. “We just misunderstood him, shriia. It’s not that he liked me, that way. He just realized...”
	“Realized what?”
	“We have something in common, that’s all,” she said.
	“I thought you were a stranger here.”
	“I am,” she answered. “My people are in the south, far from here. I kept close to them until...until the twins.” She looked toward them on the horse, whose legs appeared to us to be moving at an unnaturally slow speed. “I only came to the City two weeks ago and now I wish I’d never seen the place.”
	I could feel us slowing down. Aine looked back, and adjusted Cinhe’s speed accordingly. “I can see why you might,” I answered. “It hasn’t been lucky for you.”
	We were now slowed down to a walk, and the trees moved past us at their usual leisurely speed. Aine held Cinhe back until we reached them. The sun was higher, dappling Cinhe’s back and Aine’s bare head with the shadows of the leaves that nodded in the slight breeze. Bits of pollen drifted down through the beams onto us as we passed under the canopy toward the edges of the farthest-out fields.
	Mna had enough breath left for a little gasp of surprise once we reached the crest of the hill. It is an impressive sight--the valley falling away in swaths of green and gold toward the town center. The hills here form a natural bowl, several miles wide and blanketed with the farms and cottages of the tenants. On the far side, where the hills begin to rise again, the orchards were blooming--cherry blossom, apple blossom, and the dark red flowers of the rongo bushes tossing and ruffling in the breeze. And crowning that hill, lifting its two turrets above the froth of these fluttering branches, the na Poll house. 
	“Is that where Keanrih lived?” Mna asked in a hushed voice.
	“That’s it,” I answered. “He had one of the turret bedrooms. This was his favorite time of year,” I added. “Because of the blossoms.”
	Aine handed a twin to each of us and dismounted. Next to Mna, who was still looking out toward the house with an expression of quiet amazement, she shaded her eyes with a hand and swept her gaze across the valley. The breeze lifted her short hair slightly, sending wisps of it trailing across the bridge of her freckled nose. She’d seen Mablad before, of course. But with the story fresh in her mind, she was taking a good long look.
	“Come on,” I finally said. “We’ll leave Cinhe here and walk down.”
	I led the little procession down the path as it zigged and zagged around the corners of various fields and pastures. Aside from the orchards, and the green pastures dotted with sheep of various colors, it was mostly wheat, still in the shoot stage. To Mna and Aine, the cottages we passed must have seemed unremarkable, the same kind of haphazard board-and-thatch constructions that can be found anywhere. What I saw, glancing at a door hanging off its hinges or a square of tarpaper stretched over a breach in the wall, was Keanrih’s absence. He had never been able to sell Nocc on the idea that keeping the cottages in repair was an investment in the land, and now that he was gone Bilhad was following in his father’s footsteps. Most of the places we passed were decent enough--no caving walls or gapped roofs--but decay was being let to take its course. 
	A half-mile from the town center I spotted a little figure with flying hair, short skirts and bare feet pattering up the hill towards us as fast as she could go. Aine smiled. Teala was six, and this was still the most exciting job in the world to her. Eventually she would outgrow her enthusiasm and some other child would get a crack at it, but for the past year she had been so insistent that none of the other children bothered asking.
	She came to a breathless halt in front of us, speaking to me but darting her dark eyes at Mna, inspecting her from head to foot.
	“Are you coming here, shriia?”	
	Teala took it so seriously it was hard not to laugh. “Am I needed here?”
	“Yes, shriia.”
	“Then I am coming.”
	Teala spun around and raced back toward the town center, shouting all the way at the top of her child’s voice. “Tioc an shriia! Tioc an shriia!”
	“She really gets into it, doesn’t she?” Mna observed, amused.
	“She’s got an aunt in the Order out in Mannt,” I said. “She’s at that age when she wants to be just like the grown-ups, you know.”
	Aine nodded as if she knew what I was talking about. The buildings got closer together, and we progressed toward the village green. Keln, the town leader, was there in her blue jacket, looking even more like a jaybird than ever, with her husband, Elom the Glum (as I liked to call him), moping about nearby. It looked as if, aside from the Naming, there were no other cases, which was a relief. Heren ni Nould was there, carrying the baby in its bright yellow dress, surrounded by a small army of relatives and neighbors. Mna’s arrival, and the presence of the twins, started a barely perceptible murmur among them. The story must, of course, have reached them by now.
	“Oinamid shriia,” said Keln, advancing on me with a broad smile.
	I touched my lips. “Shriia anseo. Shall we go straight to the river?”
	“Yes, but first...” Keln said, interrupting her own sentence with a little giggle of anticipation. “We have some news for you.” I waited. “Tell her, Elom.”
	She nudged her husband, who unhinged his lantern jaws long enough to say, with almost a trace of enthusiasm, “We’ve got the Burning next year.”
	“Oh, that’s wonderful!” I said. “You must be very excited.”
	“Excited all right,” Keln said, fluttering ahead of me as I walked toward the Naming party. “Everyone from Minead down to Teala is in a tizzy. The regional seat announced it yesterday. We’ve got such ideas--Kronn wants to take your measurements for the costume--don’t let me forget--and Minead’s going to try to talk Nocc into letting us use the turrets--not that she’ll succeed--it’ll be a beautiful thing, shriia, you’ll see.”
	“I’m sure it will be.” Heren smiled as I greeted her. “You ready, Heren? Haven’t forgotten it or anything?”
	Heren tapped her temple with one forefinger. “Burned in here, shriia.”
	I handed Crann off to Aine. “And who’s giving the used name?”
	An elderly woman standing a little ways behind Heren raised her hand. “Nould ni Behar, shriia. My mother.”
	“Pleased to know you,” I said. “Had you a long journey?”	
	“Not so long I couldn’t end it,” she said proudly. “From Vinha, that’s all.”
	“I’m glad you arrived safe and in such good health,” I said. She squared her shoulders proudly. “Well. Everyone ready?” They nodded.
	I stretched out my arms. “Give me the child.”
	Slowly, gravely, Heren placed her in my arms. I stepped out onto the path that led to the riverbanks. Heren followed with her husband on one side and her mother on the other; everyone else trailed more or less pell-mell after her. The procession would accumulate others as we passed through town and countryside on our way to the water.
	I raised my voice above the ambient noise of a group of villagers on the move. “C’en t-ainm an t-ort?” What is your name? 
	The song is a call-and-response, taking for its text the dialogue between Idair and Cailte in the first scroll. The mother takes the part of Cailte, the shriia the part of Idair and the rest of the walkers sing the narration. They practice for weeks, learning the lines and the music by heart. Like freagair, it’s performed in the Old Tongue.
	Heren sang the response back. I have no name.
	My turn again. Why not?
	I was not given one.
	Take your mother’s, then.
	My mother has no name.
	Why not?
	She was never given one.
	This goes on for several minutes until Idair establishes that as far back as anyone can remember, no one in Cailte’s family has had a name. Then the chorus comes in, narrating Idair’s gradual realization that she needs to explain the concept of naming to her people, who are practicing the custom haphazardly. I tuned this part of the song out for a while, picking my way carefully among the tree roots down the slope to the river. The timing worked out, for once; the participants were ranged along the riverbank, looking toward me as I stood at its edge, when my absent mind recognized my cue.
	I held the child up in a seated position facing the group and sang my part.
	Here is what a name is:
	The secret seed
	About which your spirit
	Will grow;
	The stone that shapes
	The ripples above it;
	A glyph only you
	Can read; the one sign,
	Untranslatable,
	That means “me.”
	As the chorus started up again, I passed the baby to Heren, who took it solemnly. I withdrew the bottle, opened it, and began reciting the spell over it, silently. This text is one of the most secret things we have; even during namings we don’t say it aloud. 
	Having finished, I raised the pen and bottle as a sign that they should wind down. I broke in after their final “and Idair said...”	
	There is one name
	To be known by
	And another
	To know yourself by;
	The first can be given
	But the second
	Must be discovered.
	Keep the secret
	When you find it;
	It is the key
	To your spirit,
	The bright line
	Of fire holding
	Your spirit apart,
	Making you one
	And not another.

	The chorus began again. I opened my link to Heren.
	<Heren? Do you hear me?>
	<Yes, shriia.>
	<Give me the name.>
	Carefully, she cleared her mind until it was the only thing left.
	I sent it back to her. <This is the name you’ve found?>
	<Yes, shriia.>
	I dipped the brush in the ink and closed the link. Saying the rest of the spell in my head, I wrote the child’s name invisibly on its forehead. Heren held her breath until I put the brush back and stoppered the bottle. I took the child from her and, accompanied by the strains of the chorus, waded with it into the river.
	This is the tricky part. You have to get right in up to your waist, and the bottom is usually uneven. If the current is very strong it can get hairy. In this case I felt the edge of what seemed like every sharp rock Idair had ever made through my rope soles before reaching a point where the water was deep enough. While I was at it I also had to link to the child, which made it harder to negotiate the river bottom.
	<Who are you?>
	<I’mTheamh. I’m your naming shriia.>
	<What does that mean?>
	<I’m about to show you.> I projected into him. When I closed my nostrils with one hand and held my breath, the infant held his, gripping his little nose fiercely in one fist.
	<Down we go.> I dropped to my knees so that we both sank under the water.
	I passed my hand over his forehead. The letters blazed through the water. He closed his eyes.
	<Child, do you know your name?>
	<My name is...> There was a slight pause, but he sent back the right answer.
	<This is who you are. Remember it always.> I rose to my feet, lifting him out of the water and holding him above my head.
	“An t-ainm ord e,” I called.
	They broke into cheers and laughter. I slogged back out of the river and up the bank, feeling ridiculous. The hreapa was all right, of course; the water and algae and other dreck slid right off it. Underneath it, though, my shift was sodden and clammy, clinging to me in damp and unpleasant folds, and of course my hair was straggling down my neck in unsightly wet clumps. It can’t be helped, but it makes that ritual dignity hard to maintain. Which is maybe why, once the name is given, the ceremony suddenly becomes less formal.
	“All right then,” I said, moving back into the spoken vernacular, “Keln, I forgot to ask, but you better have brought the book with you.”
	Keln handed it to me with a laugh, opened to the last used page. I relinquished the soggy baby to Nould, who got its dress off and wrapped it in a blanket. I got the ink back out. “What name will this child be known by?”
	Nould looked down at him with a grandmother’s love. “Jinnit,” she said. “Jinnit mac Heren na Giall.”
	I wrote the used name in ink in the book and brought the fire out of the letters. I lifted it up so the crowd could see.
	“Jinnit mac Heren,” I said. “Born one year, three weeks and two days from this day. Given his name this day of the fourth week of the growing season. May his story be long and have a happy ending.”
	“Life and health to Jinnit mac Heren,” shouted the crowd.
	Heren took the baby back from her mother and kissed its forehead. The crowd began pressing forward to pay its respects. I struggled through it up toward the treeline, where Aine, Mna and the twins had been looking on.
	Mna was staring at the baby as it was handed from relation to relation, now beginning to get cranky. They didn’t much care. Even now, when we’ve made such progress, it’s always a relief when a baby is named successfully. With all the protections we give them after birth, they’re still vulnerable until this point.
	Crann, of course, had a name; only he, Mna, and his naming shriia would know what it was. Unless that thing had managed to probe him and learn it. But we put their names in the darkest, farthest part, and even very young children guard them instinctively. It would have been about a year since some shriia had taken him out into a pond or river and brought him under to tell him his name. And it hadn’t helped, after all.
	“Well,” I said damply. “There’ll be the feast at Heren’s house, and then the call on Minead, and then the reading...I should be almost dry by the time we get home.”
	Aine sat with her chin on her knees looking out over their heads to the river.
	“At home we do it in the sea,” she said. “When it was my turn I almost got washed away. Gela--my naming shriia--she was getting old.”
	I smiled. “I’m glad she kept her grip.”
	Aine’s eyes followed Heren and the child. “How do they do it in the City?”
	“In the Third there’s a little park with a pond; they do it there.”
	“I suppose your naming shriia isn’t still with us?” Mna asked.
	“Actually, she is,” I said.
	“Anyone I know?” Aine asked absently, her attention still on the scene by the river.
	“It was Lilea.”
	Aine’s head snapped around so fast I could almost hear it. “How long has she been practicing?”
	“Thirteen years,” I said. Her face clouded. “No, you’re right, the math doesn’t work.” I stretched my feet out in front of me. “I wasn’t named until I entered the scoil.”
	Mna’s deference evaporated in the face of her outrage. “You weren’t named?”
	“My mother doesn’t believe,” I said, trying to be patient. “She thought--”
	“My boys have done without a lot, but--”
	“Wasn’t it dangerous?” Aine asked, equally alarmed. “Didn’t she worry-”
	“She took care of me the way she thought was best.”
	“But what about demons?” Mna broke in. “To leave you a target for anything--”
	“Look, she doesn’t believe in spirits, so she didn’t think she needed to protect me against them. She was wrong, but that’s not her fault.”
	Mna rattled along on her maternal rampage. “I don’t care. I’ve met some of the worst mothers in Ideire, I’ve traveled with women who would eat their childrens’ food, but I’ve never known any woman who wouldn’t take the trouble to name her baby.”
	Ah, the righteous anger of the young. Aine joined in at almost the same volume.
	“Even unbelievers name their children. At least they do in Jipran.”
	“How did you survive?” Mna demanded.
	“Idair must really have been looking out for you.”
	“Well, the Spirit knows your mother wasn’t,” Mna said hotly.
	“No wonder you don’t like her.”
	As soon as Aine realized what she’d said she clapped a hand over her mouth, staring over it at me with enormous and terrified eyes. Mna suddenly stopped talking.
	“Friends,” I said, carefully, “I’m touched by your concern for my welfare. But I spent the first third of my life defending my mother, and I’ve spent the last two thirds of it fighting her, and I’m really tired of doing both.”
	“I’m sorry, dhiaoc,” Aine said, her voice unsteady. “I forgot myself.”
 	“Come on,” I said. “They’re on the move. We’d better go follow them.”
	
	Heren’s barn was already full by the time we showed up. Courtesy dictates that you put in an appearance at these things, but they’re really for the family and the villagers, and while they’re glad to see you they’re also relieved to see you go. People feel constrained around someone in a hreapa, no matter how much we try to put them at ease, so the party doesn’t really get rolling until after we take off. 
	The family had done it up right--musicians, bright decorations, and a good spread. Leaving Aine to chaperone Mna, I went to inspect the meatless dishes. We pick up free food when we get the chance; it makes the allowance stretch further.
	As I bent over the rongo halves I felt someone standing on my shadow. “He’s a sweet little thing, your client.”
	“Minead!” I cried, standing up as I turned to see her. “I should have known you’d make it down here sooner or later. How are you?”
	“Oh, well enough,” she said. She was looking over at Mna, who sat on a bench holding Crann. “I’m feeling almost young enough for my age this week.”
	She looked better than last time I’d seen her. Minead got herself through what she considered her duties by bringing to bear on herself the same will that had cowed Nocc, but it was a struggle. Losing Keanrih was a shock from which she had never fully recovered. To her tenants, she was still the same Minead--hard-headed, good-natured, with a comfortable laugh and a shrewd tongue. But she’d lost the inner content that had made her who she was. Now, with a crying heart bruising itself against that ironbound sense of duty, she would never really be at peace again.
	“You’ve caught the Burning fever, then,” I laughed. 
	“It’s about time,” she said. “Vinha made a shambles of it last year. For once this winter it’ll be done well and done right.” I shrugged. “She’s very young, the mother.”
	I wasn’t surprised that she knew the story; it was the kind that would travel quickly. “Yes, she is. This is aging her by the minute, though.”
	Minead nodded. “It must be an agony for her.” I had started back toward them; as we got closer, she seemed to get more sad, struck perhaps by the preoccupied look on Mna’s face. Thinking, probably, about her own loss.
	“You’ll bring them up to the house with you, won’t you?”
	“Certainly, if you’d like. I was going to ask.”
	She nodded. “Nothing will make her feel better. But...I am a mother, and it might do her good. Or me good.”
	Answering a question someone had asked her, Mna shifted Crann a little, and his vacant face turned toward us. Minead, getting a good look at it for the first time, took a frightened breath and stopped in her tracks.
	“Minead?”
	In a moment she was back to normal, or almost. “I’m sorry, it’s just...such a shock.” I waited. “He’s so...completely gone.” She shook her head. “Yes, come up to the house, I’ll be glad to see you.” With a final sigh, she turned away from them.
	“There are days when I can’t believe it goes on,” she said. “Without him. The world, I mean.” She stretched her arms above her head and settled her face.
	“Nothing and no one is lost forever.”
	She nodded. “I’ll see you at the house.”
	As she moved off, I found Aine. <Come on, let’s pay our respects and get going.>
	She followed me, not without some reluctance. Aine is even less naturally suited to chatting with villagers than I am, and to move across a crowded barn is something of an ordeal when you’re a shriia. Everyone you meet has something they want to say to you, and everyone you speak to will remember your answer for weeks, so conversation is both continual and tiring. If it’s not the weather, or the crops, or the antics of the Seated Leaders, or their niece in the scoil or their second cousin practicing law out in Thelman or the next municipal election or whether Idair would consider it permissible to cross-breed yellow and blue sheep in hopes of creating a strain of green ones, it’s something deeper or darker, something that really shouldn’t be spoken of in a barn full of dancing youngsters and bright sunlight, but there you are and you’re a shriia and if they ask you have to answer. But we were finally able to wend my way over to Heren.
	“Long life and health to Jinnit,” I said. “We’ll be on our way soon, I hope, but I wanted to wish the little one well.”
	Heren touched her lips. “With you on his side he can hardly do otherwise,” she said. “Thank you and thank Idair, shriia, it’s a great comfort to have him named.”
	“I live to serve,” I said. “I’m glad the dunking doesn’t seem to have done him any harm, at least.”
	“He’s going to be a swimmer,” Heren said, dandling him. “Isn’t he, Lapid?”
	Her husband nodded. “Why not.”
	“Is this your scoilin?” Nould asked, smiling at Aine.
	Aine nodded.
	“Aine ni hEmer,” I said. “She’s making great progress.”
	Aine blushed. “I--I’m learning a lot,” she answered. “Congratulations on the little one, I’m sure he will do well.”
	Heren nodded pleasantly; she could tell Aine was nervous. We looked out to the dance floor. Pernan, the leader of the little band, had just wound up one of the tunes and was introducing the next one.
	“We’re going to do a number we picked up on a trip to the coast, which will give us a chance to feature Symdel.” The drummer laughed and readied her mallets. “It’ll be a rough ride, but we’ll give it a go. It’s a Jiprani tune called ‘The Mermaid’s Husband.’”
	Aine turned on me with a positively beseeching look in her eyes.
	<Go on out there, Aine. And have fun.>
	She bowed quickly to Heren and Nould. “Idair with you both,” she said. “And may the Spirit bless the little one.”
	Aine made it to the dance floor in about a second and a half, and found a partner with more speed than I would have given her credit for. When the music started, she moved out with a confidence and grace that surprised me. I’m not a dancer--I never learned as a child, and although I picked up a little from the scoil entertainments my lack of training always showed. But Aine took to the floor as if she were born to it, released for the time being from her self-consciousness and timidity.
	“So is she actually from Jipran?” Heren asked politely.
	I nodded. “A little fishing village practically in the ocean.”
	“But she seems so intelligent,” Nould put in.
	Heren turned on her. “Mathi, you shouldn’t say such things in front of the shriia.”
	Nould turned to me anxiously. “Oh, I’m sorry, shriia--are your people from there?”
	Where do you start with the old ones. “No, Nould, I grew up in the City.” She looked puzzled; Heren looked mortified. “But as a shriia my people are everywhere--”
	Nould nodded. “And everyone is equal in Idair’s eyes. Yes, you’re right, of course.” I nodded, but she wasn’t finished. “Have you ever been to Jipran?”
	“I haven’t.”
	“Ah, well you can’t understand what they’re like, then.”
	“Mathi!”
	“What, chara? It’s only the truth.”
	“I’ll tell you this, Nould,” I said, casually. “If there are any more people like Aine out there in Jipran I hope they all come here and join the order. Congratulations on the little one, Heren, I’m sure you’ll raise him well. Idair with all of you.”
	I caught up with Mna and the twins. She and Frih were watching Aine too, obviously just as surprised as I was. It made sense to me, when I thought about it. Aine wasn’t like me, awkward and uncomfortable in a body that was too big and the wrong shape; her insecurities were all about the intangibles. Whether she was smart, whether she could learn fast enough, whether she was behaving correctly or serving well enough. Which made more sense to me as I thought about Nould’s little demonstration. So for her it was just about feeling the music, flying along with it, leading her more bemused comrades from one figure to the next, taken for the moment out of that trap of self-question and self-doubt and set free on the swept space of a cleared barn floor.
	By the time the dance was over, I’d almost stopped being mad at Nould. But Heren, who’d been watching me for a while, seemed to feel a need to atone; she made a point of bringing Nould with her to find Aine as she came off the dance floor and talk to her. It was painful to see the shyness come back; it was as if the space around her contracted as her body stiffened under the scrutiny she wished she could avoid.
	Finally I saw Heren bow, and Aine bow back, and she headed gratefully toward us.  
	“Ready to go?” I called.
	She nodded. “Thank you, dhiaoc.”
	“Glad you enjoyed yourself,” I said, shepherding them out of the barn. “You deserve it, and Idair knows there’s not much opportunity for dancing out in our neck of the woods.”
	Mna smiled. “I noticed you weren’t dancing, shriia.”
	“I never really learned how,” I said.
	“Can you not dance at all?” asked Aine, with pity.
	“I only learned the formal kind. In couples, you know, with all that twirling.”
	Mna looked puzzled. Aine looked at me. “You mean like in the big houses.”
	“Yes,” I said, hauling myself up the hill. “Like in the big houses.”
	“I’ve never been to a dance like that,” Aine said wistfully.
	“Don’t sigh over it. What you were doing looks like a lot more fun.”
	We climbed in silence until we had finally scaled the hill and stood in front of the ironbound oaken doors of the na Poll house.
	“Are we going in here?” Mna asked, a little warily.
	“Yes,” I said. “Don’t worry, we’ll all come out alive.”
	Mna gave a little nervous laugh. I rapped the knocker on the door. It swung inward, groaning on the hinges. 
	“Come in,” said Rince, the steward. “The lady of the house expects you.”
	Mna stepped cautiously behind me.
	“Ever been inside a big house before, Mna?”
	“I have,” she answered, subdued. “But I never went in through the front door.”
	It closed behind us with a clang.

XIII.
Big House

	“You’ll have to excuse my husband not coming to greet you, Mna,” Minead said, sitting down on the divan that ran along the parlor window. “He never had good manners, and since the tragedy they’ve only gotten worse.”
	Mna shifted a fidgety Frih in her lap. “I understand, Aiv.”
	“Oh, please don’t call me that,” she said quickly. “Minead is good enough.” Mna nodded, uncomfortably. “Your boy...has he been gone long?”
	One of Mna’s hands dropped down below her knee to pat Crann absently on the head. He had been plumped down by her feet and was staring dully at the carpet. “It’s been six days since I knew something was wrong,” she said. “Five since I met the shriia.”
	“Is that all?” I asked, leaning forward. “It seems like a lot longer.”	
	“Yes,” Mna echoed. “It does.”
	Minead nodded. “It’s the opposite with me,” she said. “It’s been two years, five months, two weeks and a day and it seems like it happened a week ago.”
	Mna was looking at her searchingly. “I suppose because yours is completely gone, and mine might come back,” she said. “So I’m waiting for something. But you’re...not.”
	Their moment of silent understanding was disturbed by Frih, who was struggling to get down. Mna bent down to admonish him.
	“Oh, let him run around,” Minead said. “It’s been so long since we had a young one in the house.”
	Mna set Frih down. “Now behave yourself and don’t touch anything.”
	Frih nodded solemnly.
	“Well, if you’ve been in this country a whole week,” Minead resumed, “you’ve probably heard the story about my Keanrih.”
	Mna’s eyes followed Frih as he wandered over to the bookshelf. “Yes, I have. Frih, don’t open the lady’s books.”
	“Really, it’s all right. I’m not just saying it,” Minead said. “I never wanted to have one of those houses full of things that can’t be touched. I let the children have the run of the place and I want Frih to have it too.”
	Mna finally appeared convinced, and directed her attention back to Minead. “The shriia says he was a fine painter,” she ventured.
	 “I always said so, though I never saw half of what he worked on,” she answered sadly. “We found a lot of them after he left us, behind a dropcloth in one of the upper rooms.” She sighed. “They’re still there. Nocc won’t let me hang them.”
	“Doesn’t he think they’re any good?”
	Minead drew a shawl closer around her shoulders. “He doesn’t approve of the subject matter.” She turned her head to look toward the window behind her. “I think they’re beautifully done.” A breath left her and with it her face seemed to contract, grow a slight shade grayer. “And anyway he’s with Idair now, where nothing can touch him.”
	“He’s at peace, at least,” Mna said gently.
	“Yours isn’t,” Minead answered. “What you must suffer.”
	“I have hope,” Mna said, trying to sound brighter for my sake. “The shriia has--where’s Frih got to?”
	Aine seized the opportunity to escape. “I’ll keep an eye on him, Mna, don’t worry.” She ducked into the hallway.
	Aine didn’t like these visits; for all her dewy-eyed curiosity about the rich the place made her nervous. And then there was the occasional accidental and awkward meeting with Nocc, who still refused to speak to me. Which was just as well, since if he hed, it would certainly have turned ugly. I had never been able to prove, in legal terms, that he had been responsible for what happened to his son. But I was absolutely certain in my heart that he had hired Lythril to put that kraikk into him. Minead didn’t believe me, but of course she could hardly afford to, if she wanted to stay joined with him. 
So it was as well that Aine had the chance to go chasing after Frih, because Mna and Minead were clearly settling in for quite a talk. It was a relief to Minead to speak to someone who could understand what she’d lost. And for Mna, too, I suppose, although it was also disturbing to see what she had to look forward to if Crann didn’t come back.
	“What’s your boy like when he’s at home?” Minead asked.
	Mna looked down at him. “How can you describe them?” she said. “Especially so young. I’d know him out of a hundred thousand, but I couldn’t explain to you how...”
	“He would barely have been talking, I suppose.”
	“Oh no, he talked early,” Mna said eagerly. “Him first, and then he taught Frih. He was making very small sentences almost at the end of his first year.”
	“Really! Keanrih didn’t do that until he was almost two.”
	“Early talker, late walker,” Mna said with a half-smile. 
	Minead laughed. “Bilhad was like that...and then it was so long before I could get either of them out of diapers.” Mna clucked sympathetically. “I suppose all that’s not progressing at all while he’s away.”
	“Oh no,” Mna said. “Frih won’t do anything without his brother, and even before he was gone his brother showed no interest. On the road, it’s very inconvenient, but that never bothered them; I’m the one who had to beg or borrow some rag to wrap them in...”
	Minead nodded. “I had Bilhad and Keanrih both in diapers for a year and it nearly killed me. The smell, and then with Bilhad always spitting up...”
	I stood up and made my way quietly to the door. They wouldn’t miss me, and I had nothing to contribute.
	I wandered toward the great staircase that led to the entrance hall. I hadn’t thought of it before, but Mna and Aine must indeed be making a great effort to preserve my state of blissful ignorance regrading Frih and Crann’s excretory activities. Just as well.
	A big house is a different thing in the country from what it is in the City. The part I was standing in was at least five hundred years old, judging by the stonework and the architecture. It was the core, the fortress built back before the border was sealed and when attack from the north was still a possibility. It had been altered since then to make it livable--paneling over the stone, hangings and carpets and enlarged windows--but preserved its quiet hostility. The later accretions had a more homelike feel; the side wings, and the turrets that had been built a few generations back when some na Poll had a fit of nostalgia, were airy, bright things with modern furniture. 
	But the staircase that swept down into that flagstoned entry hall, that was old, and it was not for show. Nothing of value was located on that first floor--just the kitchens, and the servants’ quarters. To get to anyone in the family an invader would have to get up this stairway, and there would be plenty of time to organize a defense. City houses, like my family’s, were built to imitate the country ones but the differences were clear to anyone who knew. My family’s grand staircase was a double one, rising from both ends of the foyer to meet in the upper balcony. If my family’s house was ever invaded they would have to defend that balcony from both ends, and it would be next to impossible. 
	So in the country, along with the weight of money, is the weight of history, making the places heavier, darker, more forbidding. They crop out of the hills like works of nature, inevitable and unchangeable things.
	My musings upon architecture were interrupted suddenly. From far above, in what sounded like one of the turret rooms, I heard something that seemed very much like Aine screaming. It was followed immediately by the unmistakeable sound of Frih bawling.
	<Where are you? What is it?>
	Her mind was exploding with noise that made it impossible for me to communicate with her. I rushed toward the spiral stairwell that led to the north turret. I had a pretty good idea of where she might be.
	The room, when I barreled into it, looked innocent enough. The windows had been opened to let the air in, and with it came the smell of the blossoms waving below. Tucked securely into the corner under the window was a bed on which a bright yellow and orange counterpane was neatly spread. Against one wall stood a small desk of some dark wood, its leather-covered surface clean of any papers or clutter, or indeed anything at all except for an inkstand and quill pen. The white rug was bunched up against the foot of the bed, because Aine had slipped on it when she turned to run out of the room. She was now kneeling facing the door, her eyes squeezed shut, her arms crossed around the chest of a screaming Frih, whose red face was covered with hysterical tears.
	“Aine?” She bent her head down. I knelt next to her and touched her gently on the shoulder. “Aine, it’s all right now. Whatever you saw, it’s gone. You can open your eyes.”
	She sat back, looking around carefully. Taking in the room as it was seemed to increase her distress. Her feet scuffled on the floor as she pushed herself back against one of the walls, leaving me to deal with Frih. I picked him up and held him as comfortingly as I could, patting his back and murmuring at him.
	“Shhhh. Shhhhh. It’s all right. It’s all right.”
	“Mathi,” he sobbed.
	“We’ll go see your mathi soon. It’s all right. Don’t be scared.”
	Frih was clearly going to be whimpering for some time, but he was also clinging to my hreapa and showing signs of calming down. “See?” I said, to Aine as much as to him. “It’s all right. There’s nothing scary here.”
	“It wasn’t like this,” Aine hissed. “When I came in.”
	“What did you see?”
	Aine shook her head. “It--it--the bed was over here, by the door.”
	I nodded. “And the desk was...”
	“I didn’t see the desk, shriia,” she whispered. 
	“Instead you saw...” I prompted.
	She shook her head.
	“What was he wearing?”
	The questions seemed to bring her down a little bit. “A...a kind of...it was brown and it had long sleeves with...with some kind of white trim but...”
	“But you couldn’t see more because...”
	“It was--it was just--it was all over blood.” She pulled her hands in close to her chest. “Bright red and dark red.”
	“Was it dark in here?”
	“N-no...the sun was coming in through the window.”
	Going back for the details made it less frightening. “And--there were no hangings around the windows.”
	“See anything besides the body?”
	She gulped. “The...there was a knit rug...blue with green figures...it was all matted with blood and the...the knife was lying there, on the matted part.”
	“What kind of knife?”
	“Not a kitchen knife, or a weapon...narrow, with only one edge.”
	I sat next to her against the wall, with Frih facing me. He was calming down, slowly. “Well. This is a useful thing to know about you, so I suppose it’s worth your having scared the fnaa out of us all.”
	Aine swallowed. “That I’m insane?”
	“That you’re locographic.”
	She looked at me.
	“This used to be Keanrih’s room.” Aine didn’t seem surprised. “As you now know, they had it redone after the death. New counterpane, new rug, new window hangings and they moved the furniture.”
	“So what I saw...was the death.”
	“That kind of history doesn’t disappear,” I said. “Places have memories just like we do. Some people have an ability to read them.” Aine closed her eyes and sighed. “This isn’t the first time something like this has happened to you, is it?”
	She shook her head, her eyes still closed. “No.” 
	“I thought not.”
	Aine’s eyes opened, boring into the wall opposite her, fixing in her mind the state of the room as it was. “When I was a child...but I always thought it was just my imagination. I never...” Her hands wrapped around her bare shins as she drew her legs up. “I’ve never seen anything like this, ever.”
	“This was a place of horrible struggle. The memory’s fresh.”
	Aine nodded silently.
	“Anyway, we can start developing your faculty. You should really train with someone who has it, though. I don’t. We should ask if Dalen will give you an hour or so a week, maybe. Or you know, what you really should do--”
	“Dhiaoc, can we get out of here?” Aine interrupted.
	“Out of here,” Frih echoed.
	“Of course.” I stood up; so did she, slowly. “Frih, you ready to go?”
	He nodded, his little chest still heaving with fright. “Don’t--like it here.”
	“I don’t blame you,” I said, taking his hand.
	He toddled as fast as his short legs would go. Aine was still shaken. She put a hand on each side of the stairwell to brace herself, eyes darting around nervously.
	“I can see now why you never liked it here,” I said. “A big house isn’t a good place for someone with your gift.”
	“I didn’t think you could tell,” she said, chagrined.
	“Out of curiosity, have you ever seen anything in my house?”
	She thought hard. “I...once, maybe. I’m not sure.”
	“What was it?”
	Aine ran her tongue along her dry lips. “I went into your room one morning looking for you and...I thought I saw another person there.”
	“What did this other person look like?”
	“It was a woman,” she said, folding her hands very primly in front of her and looking straight ahead as we neared the landing. “She was thin and she had dark hair and she was wearing a shift. You were there too.” We followed the hallway until we came back to the room we’d left. “But it went away so fast. I thought it had to be a daydream.”
	“Serves me right for asking.” I nudged the door open and stepped into the room. Mna and Minead were sitting where I’d left them. Unfortunately, Nocc was with them.
	One knotted hand was clutching a sheaf of papers, about which he had probably stepped in to consult Minead. The other was clenched into a tight fist at about the middle of his back. His gray head was turned sharply away from both of them to stare out the window. As I entered he pivoted toward me and began making hurriedly for the door.
	Usually I let him get by but that day I was feeling a little punchy. “Good evening, man of the house! How does this day find you?”
	Nocc’s face got black with anger and he barged his way out of the room without a word, turning his head to scowl at poor little Frih as he passed.
	Frih put his other hand out to catch Aine’s. “Don’t like that man,” he whispered.
	“What a bright boy you have, Mna,” I said, catching him up. “He doesn’t like carrots and he doesn’t like Nocc.”
	“I have tried to speak to him,” Minead said apologetically.
	“Don’t blame yourself,” I said. “I don’t. Sun’s going down, we’d better get outside. Keln will be up to lead us to the reading. Are you coming, Minead?”
	“Of course.”
	“Then you can show Mna the way.” I set Frih down near Mna. “I’ll see you there.”
	We walked back out the front door. The sun had already gone beyond the crest of the hills. Keln’s blue-jacketed figure was wending up the steps, followed at some distance by the mournful form of Elom.
	“Dhiaoc?”
	“Yes?”
	“What if...”
	There was a long pause while Keln got slowly larger and closer. “Yes, Aine?”
	“What if I don’t want to develop this...faculty?”
	“Oh--” I said, rubbing one of my arms as the evening chill started to set in. “Of course you don’t have to. Strictly speaking it’s not part of shri.”
	“Dhiaoc,” she said again, as we continued waiting and it got darker.
	“Yes, Aine?”
	“The woman I thought I saw...was I right?”
	“Yes.” 
	“Did something happen to her there?”
	I sighed. “You mean something bad?”
	“Yes.”
	A wind rose as the light faded. Keln’s lantern was glowing now beneath us.
	“Not all memories are memories of pain,” I said.
	
	“What are you going to read us, shriia?”	
	“What do you want to hear about?”
	It came at me from about ten different places at once. “The Burning!”
	There was a cheer as candles were waved in the air, hands clapped, and small children became too excited to contain themselves. Everyone comes to the Burning--and it can only be held in one village in each practice because the shriia has to be part of it. My practice is pretty big, so it only comes to any one village about once every five years. Which means they get pretty pumped about having it. 
	“I can’t say I’m surprised.” I unrolled the end of the scroll. “I’m going to leave all the stuff about the abduction of Iandar for the festival and just start with the good stuff, unless anyone has objections.”
	“You know best, shriia,” someone called out. Nobody seemed to mind.
	“Here it is, then, near the middle of the seventh scroll, the story of Idair’s final battle with the Dark One, known to us here in these latter days as the Burning.”
	They settled down. “And so on the sixth day they saw appearing on the top of the ridge the minions of the Dark One in their black garments, with their sharp swords girt at their waists and the black and blood-red flag of their sovereign snapping above their heads. They were more quiet than the fall of night and more numerous than flies on a lake of blood. And the first followers saw this, and their hearts stood in their mouths. Then one ran to find Idair, and she came out to them. And she looked at the minions, and said, ‘Are you sure there are enough of you? I think you only have us outnumbered by three to one.’
	“ ‘And one stepped forward, who wore around his neck the silver chain that was his badge of service to the Dark One, and said, ‘You have given your promise; now perform it.’
	“ ‘First release the hostage to me,’ Idair said.
	“And the host parted and Iandar was thrust from their midst, stumbling down the hill with his hands bound behind him. Cailte ran to help him. Seeing her run, one of the minions put an arrow to his bow.
	“ ‘Hold your hand!’ shouted Idair in a voice that froze him there. ‘Let her bring him safe home. It is in the pact.’
	“So the host suffered Cailte to lead Iandar back down the ridge toward Idair and the first followers. And Idair said to them, as he approached, ‘You know I am going with them, and neither you nor I know what will become of me. If I do not return in seven days I wish you to leave this place and return to your homes. Do not try to save me.’
	“ ‘But Idair,’ said Anron, ‘what will happen? Will they kill you?’
	“ ‘Perhaps,’ Idair said. ‘Perhaps not.’
	“ ‘But...if they kill you,’ said Sincil, ‘what will happen to you? Where will you go? Can you still be with us?’
	“And Idair looked at them, and at Iandar and Cailte who had reached them now, and said, ‘I do not know what will happen if they kill me, or where I will go, or if I will still be with you. This is a question to which I have no answer.’ And they were silent for a long while, and she said to them, ‘It is a hard thing. I do not want to go. But the Dark One wants me, and if I do not go, it will destroy you, and all that we have done and made.’
	“And he with the chain about his neck shouted harshly, ‘You have given your word. Come to us instantly or the pact will be void.’
	“ ‘Idair,’ said Iandar, with tears in his eyes, ‘you should not have done it. It is too high a price for my rotten life.’
	“ ‘Do not blame yourself,’ Idair said. ‘It would be this stratagem or some other. I should not have waited for them to take you, but have offered myself at once.’
	“And as the minions above on the hill began to put hands to their weapons, Idair shouted, ‘I am coming, you vultures, give me one-half minute to say goodbye.’
	“And Idair raised her hands above them, and said, ‘Whatever happens, I have loved you all, and you have taught me much. Bring home what you have learned, and share it with your families, with your villages and your people.’ And they saw the tears in her eyes, and they were sore afraid. ‘I am leaving you now,’ she said to them, walking backwards away. ‘But remember this at least. Nothing and no one is lost forever.’
	“And turning away from them she walked slowly toward the minions in black on the hill. He that was their leader saw her coming, and shouted, ‘My sovereign grows impatient. Bestir yourself or I will order my archers to hurry you along.’
	“ ‘Hold your noise, you bitch’s bastard,’ shouted Idair. ‘I obey no man’s voice.’
	“When their leader heard this, he was sore enraged, and summoning four of his strongest men, they charged down the hill to meet her. And when they reached her, they laid hands upon her, and bound her hands behind her. And then their leader ordered that she should be stripped, that any magic in her garments should be destroyed. She fought this, but there were too many, and the first followers could not help, for the Dark One had made it so that there was a great and paralyzing fear among them, that nearly put them out of their minds. But at last they had taken from her her skirt and the tunic she wore, leaving only her white undergarments. And they hauled her over the ridge, and Idair disappeared from their sight.”
	When I read this I always pause here, to give them the sense of what it was like for the followers, waiting, not knowing even if there would ever be an end to their waiting, if there would ever be any news. Of course everyone, except for young children or new believers or people who have spent their lives buried head downwards in the sand, knows how the story ends, so this little effort at verisimilitude on my part is rather ineffective.
	“And for six days and six nights the followers made camp in the valley,” the text continued. “Every morning and every sundown they would send one to the top of the ridge to look toward the mountainside where the Dark One’s forces had their cave. And every morning and every sundown the follower returned with the same news--there was no one to be seen, and no sign of Idair, and all was as silent as the grave.
	“And on the seventh morning, when Cailte was sent up to the ridge top to watch, the followers still asleep were awakened by her cry.
	“ ‘Come to the hilltop,’ she shouted. ‘I see fire.’
	“And the followers rushed up to where she stood. And indeed, at the mouth of the cave, where all had been black rock and no light, there was a mighty glow, as of great flames playing about inside the cavern. It was long that they watched, but at last from out of the mouth of the cave came a great and terrible cry, and the minions of the Dark One ran streaming out of it, scattering like ants in great confusion and distress. And behind them, chasing them out into the open air, was a great ball of flame, that swung and whirled and seemed from their distance to perhaps have a shape but not quite.
	“And when the last minions of the Dark One had been scattered, the flame began moving swiftly toward them, and Anron, who was afraid and clutching Sincil’s hand for comfort, cried, ‘What is it, what is this thing coming toward us that has destroyed the host of the Dark One without blade or arrow?’
	“Sincil craned her neck to look. ‘It is Idair,’ she said. ‘And she is on fire.’
	“And they were sore amazed, but they saw that it was true, and so following Cailte and Sincil they rushed down the slope to greet her. When she saw them she stopped, and seemed as if she would embrace them, but feared that they might burn. And Sincil, going as near to her as she might for fear of the flames, said to her, ‘Tell us, Burning One, are you Idair, and have you come back to us?’
	“And she said to them,
		I am Idair,
		And I am not Idair;
		I am she who you knew
		And also I am different.
		I have met the Dark One
		And all is changed,
		And neither I nor you
		Will ever be the same.
		But yes, I am here;
		And the Dark One did not kill me;
		No, did not harm
		A hair of my head;
		And the host of the Dark One
		Is scattered and gone.
		I have not come back,
		For I never left;
		All this time
		I have been in there
		Fighting for you,
		Learning, for your sake
		And mine, the secret
		Of the fire I bring you.”
“And Idair touched her shoulders, and the fire withdrew, so that they could see her body, but there remained fire in the hair streaming behind her, around her hands and her feet. And where her undergarment had been after they stripped her, instead there was a garment of fire, woven of tiny flames that danced and were never still. And Cailte ran to her and embraced her. And Idair folded her arms around her, and when she released her, Cailte saw that her own hands too were glowing with this fire.
	“And Iandar saw this, and he cried, ‘Put her out, put her out, she is burning!’
	“But Cailte laughed, and said to him, ‘Yes, I am burning, but it does not hurt me.’
	“And Idair said, ‘You understand, then.’
	“And Cailte said, ‘A little, Idair, but there must me much more that I do not understand.’
	“ ‘I will stay with you, so that I may teach you more,’ she said. ‘I have brought this fire to you that you may use it to fight the darkness, to make for each other a world that is better than the one to which I came, all that time ago. I can stay only a short time, and I must return; but you will remain, and your descendants, and they will keep the fire in the land, and the fight will go on, until one day if the spirit wills it there will be no darkness.’ And they looked at her, and she saw on their faces their joy at her return, and she said to them, ‘I am glad to be back. It was very lonely there, and I missed you greatly.’
	“ ‘We missed you too, Idair,’ said Anron.
	“And Idair smiled. And then she said, ‘Is there any food left? I am very hungry.’
	“So they returned to the camp, and there was much rejoicing, and there was great feasting and merry-making and song and dancing, for Idair had come back to them safe, and the Dark One was beaten, and all was well in the land.”
	Someone in the front burst into spontaneous applause, and it caught on. It’s not the custom to do this, but they were excited, and I was willing to spot them the breach of decorum, even though Aine was a little disturbed by it. Hands were already up. I took the first question from a young woman in the middle of the floor.
	“It’s very ignorant of me to ask this,” she began, “but it’s always bothered me.”
	“Idair answered all questions,” I said. “No matter how simple. Don’t be ashamed.”
	“The story doesn’t show the battle in the cave,” she went on.
	“No, it does not.”
	“Why not?” she demanded, her diffidence fading. “Isn’t that the whole point?”
	There was some laughter around her, which seemed to embarass her. “Don’t be sorry, Finna,” Minead said gently. “I’ve often wondered that myself.”
	“The scrolls were written after Idair left this world. So they tell only what the first followers witnessed. They couldn’t tell that part of the story because they never knew it.”
	“But, I mean--why didn’t Idair tell them?”
	“Well, that’s a question to which there’s no set answer. Anyone want to take a stab at it?”
	Bilhad, a dour-looking lad, ventured a guess. “They wouldn’t have understood.”
	“Possible,” I said. “Whatever happened, it must certainly have been a powerful thing. I know from experience how hard it is to describe the ether to people who’ve never been; maybe she couldn’t find the words to convey it to her followers.”
	“But Idair could tell any story,” countered Heren. “She always had the words. Surely it would have been possible.”
	“Maybe she didn’t want us to know,” said Elom.
	“Why wouldn’t she want us to know?” Keln said immediately.
	“So we could have more fun at the festival, maybe,” Heren put in.
	In the laughter that followed, I said, “You’re joking, Heren, but who knows? Maybe that’s the answer. Maybe she wanted to leave it a mystery for us, so that there would be one part of the story that we have the chance to tell. It’s what keeps the Burning fresh for us, in a way--every year there’s a different story about what happens in that cave. At Vinha last year, for instance--” From the noise it seemed everyone shared Minead’s appraisal of last year’s Burning. “It was original, I thought.”
	“Boring!” shouted Minead. “You sit through all that and then you’re stuck watching Idair and the Dark One play cards? What kind of a battle is that?”
	“As the director explained it to me...” I began.
	“And everyone in modern dress,” scoffed Nould. “I told them it would be a failure.”
	“It’s because they have that outdoor theater,” Minead came back. “They’re hardly a village at all, it’s just a resort for City people. They should never have been let host it.”
	Minead seemed to have touched a nerve. “You ever listened to them talk up there?” Pernan said. “It’d give you a pain in the head the way they go on about the art of the drama--and then they wonder why they can’t get country people to go to the things--”
	“And Ayre may have been born in Vinha, but the City’s had enough to do with his making.” Nould’s quavering voice was part of the mix now.
	“It was a right mess,” agreed someone in the back. 
	“Shriia!” called his seatmate. “What did you think of it?”
	They all stopped talking and looked at me.
	“Well,” I began, “when Ayre explained his concept, it sounded like a good idea.”
	“If I might ask...why?” Pernan’s incredulity was barely subdued by his civility.
	“Ayre’s plan was to get down to the essentials. To strip off the extraneous stuff and concentrate on the main elements--the people, Idair, and the Dark One. He set it in modern times so the costumes and scenery wouldn’t distract. Now that I do agree with. The Burning isn’t just something that happened a thousand years ago; it happens every day we use the fire, and Ayre was just trying to show that.”
	“He was rooking Vinha’s dressmaker out of a fee, that’s what,” Minead insisted.
	I laughed. “All I can tell you is what he told me. He thought that the way the battle is usually handled, there was so much stress on the spectacle that the drama was lost--”
	“Oh and I suppose that’s why all the minions were represented by a pair of ravens,” snorted Symdel.
	“Yes, it probably was...” I sighed.
	“But the cards,” Minead pressed. “Why cards, for Idair’s sake?”
	I cleared my throat. “Well, we did argue about that...” 
	Pernan stepped into the breach. “Some dark majesty he had...a Big House wastrel in ordinary evening dress. Was that all he could come up with?”
	“And the way he kept looking at her,” Keln added. “What was that about?”
	“Yes, that made no sense whatsoever,” Heren concurred.
	“All right, maybe not, but I have to take part of the blame for that,” I broke in. “See...Ayre wanted to do the battle as a seduction scene, that’s what the cards were for. They’re playing cards for the followers, but really he’s playing for her, and--”
	There was a general shout of refusal. “What a load of fnaa!” shouted someone too far back to identify, who was supported by a round of applause. 
	“I agree it would be a hard sell,” I said. “Especially with me in the role.” The hubbub quieted down somewhat. “Ayre had professionals to work with--most of the people in that staging were real actors and actresses, people who get paid for it. Unfortunately, his leading lady was played by an amateur.”
	“You’re twice the actress any of them was,” Minead shouted.
	I shook my head. “He explained what I was supposed to do but I just couldn’t do it. Especially the seduction stuff--it was supposed to look like Idair’s tempted and then at the last minute she rejects him.” Those who remembered the show started laughing. “Yeah, that didn’t really come across. I did try.”
	“The better for you,” an old one called. “She’s made of harder stuff and so are you.”
	I put a nervous hand up to scratch behind my ear. “Are we done bashing the Vinha Burning? Has anyone got a question about the actual text?”
	“When Idair comes back,” said a young boy sitting next to his mother.
	“Yes?”
	“Why is she hungry?”
	There was some indulgent laughter from the adults. “Well, because probably the Dark One didn’t feed her much while she was with them.”
	“But she’s a spirit now.”
	“No, young one,” I said brightly. “She’s still alive. The Dark One didn’t kill her.” 
	“Oh,” he said, embarrassed.
	“She seemed very concerned that the followers know that,” I added, to make the boy feel less silly for asking his question. “That she hadn’t died and then returned, I mean. She says several times afterward that death remains a mystery to her.” I shrugged. “I don’t know why she thought she needed to dwell on it so.”
	“Maybe she thought they’d be frightened,” the boy ventured. “If they thought she was a spirit.”
	“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe she was warning them that she wasn’t going to tell them what happened after. Maybe she knew they’d keep asking.”
	There was enough of a pause that I thought it was about time to wrap up. And then Mna, who had been watching me with laughing eyes, said, “I have a question, shriia.”
	“I’m sure it’s a good one,” I said, warily.
	She smiled. “What’s your favorite thing about the Burning? The festival, I mean.”
	I considered the question.
	“You know,” I said, “I think my favorite part is getting to really curse the Dark Leader out.”
	“And you do it well,” called Minead over the laugh that erupted. Keln stood up.
	“Have we heard enough to keep us?”
	“Yes,” answered the others.
	I raised my arms.

	“Come and see us again, Mna,” Minead called, seeing us back out the front door.
	“I will.” Mna struggled out behind us, towing a reluctant Frih, and the door shut. I pulled out a globe to light us home and we started carefully down the hill.
	Aine had projected into Crann to get him a little exercise, which meant that it was slow going for a while; differentiation was still a problem and he would try to take steps too big for his short legs. She and I were engrossed in this difficulty, so that it was a few minutes before we looked back to see how Mna was doing. Frih was still looking over his shoulder back at the house, and Mna’s patience was wearing thin.
	“First you scream your head off about having to stay there, and now you don’t want to leave,” she lamented. “You just can’t be pleased, little man.”
	“Wanna go home,” was his sulky response.
	“Well, you’re in luck, because that’s where we’re headed. Walk up, Frih.”
	“Are we there yet?”
	“No, we’re not there yet.”
	Frih was toddling along obediently now. I turned my attention back to Crann.
	“You’ve got him going pretty well there,” I said. “You’ve improved a lot.”
	Aine nodded. “Do you think I should try to develop my...what is it called?”
	I shrugged. “The folk term for it is ghost vision. The technical term is locographia...we just call it aftersight.”
	“My aftersight, then. What good would it do?”
	We had negotiated the hill, finally, and were walking through the town center. Kronn had, alas, remembered to leave a light on for me, and so I reluctantly diverted our procession toward her shop. “Mostly it’s handy for tracking,” I said. “That’s why Dalen has the job she has. If you’ve got an interest in that kind of work, it’s definitely worth developing.”
	“And if I don’t?”
	“Then it’s a personal choice. In a way, it’d be more important if you weren’t in shri.”
	“How?”
	“A lot of people with aftersight go into the gardai,” I said. “It’s handy for investigating crime scenes. Or, if the sight of blood bothers them, they become historians.”
	Once we reached the top of the hill, I managed to persuade Mna to mount Cinhe with the twins, but she refused to take on the responsibility of directing her. I led her at a walk. It was cold, it was dark, and it was going to be a long trip home. Aine was even more jittery than usual. She seemed to derive some comfort from standing next to me. 
	“So,” I said. “You had a good time at the dance?” She nodded, slowly. “But something’s still bothering you.”
	“I worry sometimes,” Aine began.
	“About what?”
	“You get along so well with all of them,” she said. “You know what to say and how to treat them. I’m just afraid I never will.”
	“Oh nonsense. You’ll learn.”
	“I don’t know what to say. I can’t joke with them, like you do.”
	“But most shriias don’t do that,” I said. “That’s just me. You’ll work out your own way to relate to people. You can only be yourself.”
	“I know,” she said, sadly.
	“Don’t treat it like a punishment,” I said. “You’re a good person to be, Aine.”
	She looked at me. In the dark I couldn’t read her expression very well but the tilt of her head seemed surprised, and her voice was a little thick when she answered.
	“You think so, dhiaoc?”
	“Yes,” I said, because she seemed to need this said simply and direct. “You’re going to make a good shriia. And you’ll do it in your own way. You won’t be like me, but that will be all to the good. Idair didn’t want us all with the one mind and the one heart.”
	She nodded. From the quality of her silence I could tell she was working up to something difficult.
	“Now that my mindstrength is better,” she began, breaking off.
	“Yes?”
	We plodded through the leaves in silence. “I can hear what they think about me.”
	“What who thinks?”
	“People,” she said. “Like Heren and her mother.”
	I sighed. “I’m sorry, Aine. You shouldn’t have to listen to that.” She shook her head. “Heren too, huh?”
	“Both of them.”
	“That’s disappointing.”
	“What am I supposed to do?” she said, plaintively. “I can’t be from somewhere else. And if they won’t trust me, how will I be able to work for them?”
	“You intend going back to Jipran to practice, don’t you?”
	“I’ll ask, but you know there’s no guarantee.” She lifted her head. “It shouldn’t matter.”
	“No, it shouldn’t. And in the world as Idair would have it, it wouldn’t.”
	“So what if I practice here, or in the south, or in the mountains? Or the City, Idair forbid?”
	“I don’t know,” I said. “It was hard for me at first having a country practice. Of course, this isn’t real country. But they still didn’t trust a City woman.” I spread my hands. “The people who can be won over will learn to respect you for the work you do. And you’ll do some work that gets noticed, Aine.”
	“And the others...”
	“The others pay for their stubbornness,” I said. “Like poor Owdan.”
	“I don’t understand it,” she said, tears in her voice. “Why are they like this?”
	I shrugged. “Pride of place has its drawbacks.” She looked at me. “The Jiprani must have some tales they tell about us landlubbers.”
	I thought I could see her smiling. “Yes, we do.”
	“Well, here in the hills they’re convinced only a moron would live anywhere else,” I said. “Therefore, persons who live elsewhere are by definition morons.”
	Mna laughed. “But there’s more to it, there must be,” Aine said. “They’re not like this about the Amstians.”
	I let out a sharp, unexpectedly resonant laugh. “Talk to some of the Amstians in your cohort about that.”
	“It’s the same thing, anyhow,” Mna suddenly broke in. “Jipran’s poor country, so is Amst. And the poor are stupid, and they live like beasts, and that’s all they’re fit for. Otherwise they wouldn’t be poor, would they?”
	Aine looked at her. “You don’t mean it, Mna.”
	“Of course I don’t!” Mna spat bitterly.
	“Well, how would I know--”
	“It’s what they think!”
	“They who?”
	“They everyone!”
	“Everyone?”
	“Don’t give me that, you’re not a shriia yet.”
	“Well I don’t think that!”
	“Well bully for you!”
	“Boy,” I ventured. “That house just made everyone cranky, didn’t it?”
	They burst out laughing. We had to stop there on the path for a while, Cinhe looking from one to the other of us as if we had all gone mad. Mna, after a few minutes, was under control enough to speak first. “You hate the place, that’s obvious,” she panted, pointing at Aine. “First chance you got, you were out of that room so fast--”
	“Well, you were cosying up to that woman and talking about diapers--”
	“Minead’s a good woman,” Mna said, “but if I never see the inside of another big house, I won’t complain.”
	“How can anyone live there?” Aine demanded. “It’s so dark and so lonely and I’d spend my whole life terrified of breaking something that was worth more than me.”
	“I’m just glad Frih ran out when he did,” Mna laughed. “My heart was in my mouth the whole time imagining damage he could do.”
	I let them go on. It was good, in a way, that they’d forgotten where I came from, or that I might have a reason to feel uncomfortable. They were still at it twenty minutes later when a sudden cry from Aine brought us all up short.
	“Teir abhaile feicann dubh!”
	I stopped dead in my tracks and spun around to look at her. Aine’s face had gone white and she was pointing into the trees with a shaking hand. 
	“Where do you see her?”
	“There...through the trees...I saw...” She closed her eyes and shook her head. 
	“Saw what?” Mna clutched the twins closer.
	“Nothing,” she said. “It’s gone now.”
	“What did you think it was?”
	Aine gulped. “It was a woman in black,” she said. “All in black, with dark hair. With bright red lips and a silver chain around her neck.”
	I stared into the moving darkness between the thick trunks of the trees. It looked like it was empty. But I couldn’t swear to it.
	“Mna, you stay here,” I said. “Aine and I will be right back.”
	Aine looked at me with huge, terrified eyes.
	<You’ve got to learn the nerve.>
	I started off the path into the trees. It was a few moments before I heard Aine’s footsteps following me. But when I looked back, there she was, hurrying to catch up.
	<Where did you think you saw her?>
	<Through here,> she said, pointing between two trunks into a small clearing. 
	We picked our way toward the clearing, into which the moonlight shone brokenly through the limbs of the trees that ringed it. The place had been cleared by a fallen tree--one of the giants, which must have gone down years ago and taken everything in the immediate vicinity with it. It was years dead--stripped of leaves, the smaller limbs crumbling with rot and fungi, the bark gone from patches that stood out smooth and unlined. The brambles and saplings that had been crushed underneath it were turning into loam, thick spongy dust that gave under our feet. I stood by the exposed mass of roots and looked up. Branches were encroaching on it now, but at one time not too long ago there would have been a clear view of the moon from here, especially if it were higher.
	I sighed, looking at the broad trunk of that fallen tree. Aine’s eyes followed mine. Suddenly she let out a shriek that raised every hair on my body, and clutched at my arm so hard I could almost feel the skin bruise. 
	“There she is!”
	Her panic infected me and I jumped back along with her--even though when I looked, there was nothing there but the tree trunk.
	“All right, Aine,” I said quietly, putting an arm around her shoulders and drawing her back slowly into the shadows. “Tell me what you see.”
	“Right there,” Aine whispered, piteously afraid. “Right there, don’t you see her?”
	“What’s she doing?”
	“She’s--I don’t know--talking.”
	“To who?”
	“Someone standing in front of her.”
	“Who is it?”
	She strained after the vision--and because she strained, it disappeared. I saw her come back to the place as it was, and the fear drain out of her with the memory. 
	“I’m sorry, dhiaoc,” she said finally. “It’s gone. I can’t see them any more.”
	“All the better for you,” I said. “And for my nerves too, truth be told. Let’s get back to the path. Poor Mna must be scared out of her wits.”
	She followed me, tripping through the dead leaves and twigs. “It was a man,” she said. “At least that’s what I thought, from the boots. But I couldn’t see the face.”
	“And what about the woman, what did she look like?”
	“All in black. Very red lips--and a silver chain around her neck.”
	“How was she wearing her hair?”
	Aine looked a little puzzled. “It was--pulled back from the forehead, and into a kind of a braid piled up at the back of her head. She had a lot of it.”
	We reached the path. Mna was still on Cinhe’s back, clutching the twins.
	<If you had to pick an animal that she resembled, Aine, which would it be?>
	She was too rattled to wonder about the incongruity of the question. <I...a raven. Or an owl. Some kind of night bird.>
	<Fantastic.> We reached the road.
	<What do you mean?>
	<Well, the woman you saw was probably Lythril. That’s all.>
	I shut the link before I could hear her reaction. “All clear,” I called cheerfully.
	“What was it?” Mna asked, after the frozen look on her face had thawed a bit.
	“Don’t worry.” I led the horse forward. “She wasn’t part of the here and now.”
	We moved on, but this experience pretty much killed conversation. The only sounds aside from Cinhe’s hooves, our feet and the whispering of the forest around us were Aine’s rasping breath and Frih’s sniffling. 
	“So that dance, the Mermaid’s Husband,” I finally said.
	“Yes, dhiaoc?”
	“Is there a story behind that?”
	“Yes.”
	“What is it?”
	She jumped. “Where?”
	“I mean the story. What is it?”
	“Oh.” She wrapped her arms around her shoulders and rubbed them to warm up. “It happened long ago, before Idair’s coming. So they say.”
	“And what happened?”
	Aine sighed. “Well, there was a man living on one of the islands, by himself, a fisherman. He was out in the boats every day, alone with the cries of the seabirds...”
	Once she warmed up she didn’t need coaching. It kept Mna enthralled, and even Frih was tyring with his young mind to pay attention, but more important it occupied Aine’s mind. Having a vision like that opens a door, and sometimes it’s hard to close.	
	Fortunately it was  a long story. When I unlocked the door to let them in Mna was still arguing with Aine about the ending.
	“He shouldn’t have gone back. She wasn’t any good to him.”
	“It was love. There was nothing he could do about it.”
	“He should have just married some woman on the coast and lived till he died. It’d have been better for him and he wouldn’t have had to go to the dark user.”
	I went to put Cinhe back in the stables. Aine’s little vision on the road had spooked me worse than I wanted to admit. That Lythril had been there, at some point, was bad enough. That she’d been there meeting a client or a confederate was worse. Something evil had happened in that wood outside Mablad. And I would have given a lot to know how recent that vision was. If it was as old as Keanrih’s murder, that was one thing. If it was from last week, or last night...we were in big, deep, Kengda-sized trouble.
	I went to my room and undid, while Aine saw Mna and the twins off to bed. I was tired, and not looking forward to filling the tub, but I knew I’d find the task less appealing before dawn the next morning. I went down the hall just in time to hear the panicked whisper coming out of Aine’s doorway.
	“Go away! Why won’t you go away!”
	“Aine?” I pushed the door open.
	She had pushed herself into the farthest corner and was sitting their with her hands over her ears and her eyes shut. I went over and tapped her on the shoulder.
	“Aine.” Her eyes flew open. “Are you all right?”
	A long, pent-up breath burst out of her. “She was back.”
	“She who? The woman from the road?”
	Aine shook her head. “No, dhiaoc. The woman I told you about before.”
	I sat down next to her. “What was she wearing?”
	“She was wearing a hreapa. And--and a flower in her hair. Behind one ear.”
	Blinking didn’t hide the fact that I was tearing up. “That’s all right, Aine. She’s not really here. And even if she were, she wouldn’t hurt you.”
	“Who is she, dhiaoc?”
	“Her used name is Istria,” I said. “We worked together, for a short time.” I took a slow breath. “She slept in this room, once.”
	Aine nodded as if none of this was new to her. “Did she...”
	“Did she what?”
	“Did she die horribly, like Keanrih? Is that why I can see her now?”
	It was a minute before I could answer. 
	“She may have. But if so, it didn’t happen here.”
	Now that she was over her fear embarrassment had set in. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you, dhiaoc,” she said, getting up with a creaky attempt at a laugh. “I’m like a child now, afraid of the dark. I won’t be such a baby next time.”
	“We’re all afraid of the dark,” I said, standing up.
	I paused in the doorway before leaving.
	“Are you all right? I’m sure Mna would let you stay with them if--”
	She put a hand out with an ashamed gesture. “No, no, dhiaoc, I’m fine.”
	“Just go to sleep,” I said. “If you see her again, don’t be frightened. And don’t--”
	“Don’t what, dhiaoc?”
	“Well...don’t tell me about it.”
	I took the bucket down to the kitchen and started pumping. It wasn’t fair. Here all this time she’d been in the memory of this place, and I’d never seen her, and I never would. And here Aine was, nineteen and knowing nothing, with the most important moments of my life hanging in front of her like portraits on a big house wall.
	The water sloshed into the tub with a vicious splash. I had the memories and they were vivid enough. But all the same. It just wasn’t fair.
	Four trips later, I was calm enough to look at it rationally. It was just as well, really, that I didn’t have aftersight. My life was haunted enough. Those years after she went, I did everything but suffer visions. If I had been able to see her, without being able to speak to her or touch her, I might well have lost my mind. 
	I stopped outside Aine’s door. She had left it open a crack, so the light from the globe I’d hung in the hall would fall into her room. Still frightened, despite her brave talk.
	She was asleep at last, though, curled up in her bed facing the wall, her dark head sunk into the pillow and her hands clutching the sheet around her. Well out of it, then, at least for tonight. Safe in her own dreams, out of the dark.

XIV.
Follow The Money

	Aine had been watching me for several minutes. Now Mna had put down the dishtowel and was watching me too. This was because I was watching the twins. Who were watching me, Crann with his dead stare and Frih with a kind of interested bafflement.
	“Something wrong, shriia?” Mna asked.
	I looked back and forth. “Mna, are you sure your boys aren’t doubles?”
	Mna looked a little offended. “As you can see, shriia, they look nothing alike.”
	“No, look.” She came around behind me, peering over my shoulder and trying to look with my eyes. “Their hair’s exactly the same shade and it even waves in the same places. Same height, same brown eyes, and look at the shape of their hands.” I turned Frih’s palm up and compared it to one of Crann’s.
	“Maybe so,” Mna said, “but their faces are totally different.”
	“Yes,” I said slowly. “It’s just...well, it’s odd, that they should look so much alike in other respects, and that they should have that link.”
	“People expect them to be identical because they’re twins,” Mna said. “So they see a resemblance. To me they’re different as wood from stone.”
	Mna got Frih down from his chair. He was starting to resign himself to the food, and was really being very good. Mna hoisted Crann and led them out of the kitchen.
	“You think they’re doubles, dhiaoc?”
	I shook my head. “It seems like they should be...but they aren’t, she’s right, the faces are different.” I shrugged. “Sometimes you’ll see a brother and a sister look alike like that, or two other siblings. Doesn’t have to be because they’re from the same seed.”
	Aine cleared away the rest of the debris from lunch. “Why would it matter?”
	“It wouldn’t, necessarily,” I said. 
	I was wondering because I was frustrated. Frih’s link wasn’t continuous; communication with his brother’s spirit came in spurts, and his young mind had trouble telling the difference between what he saw and what Crann saw. For him it blurred together, and visions of the spirit world were as ordinary as the sight of sunlight on grass, so he didn’t alert us when the link was up. I had gone in there and found some of these flashes from the other side; but they were old, and when I went to those places I found Crann gone. Time was running short; and Aine was now spotting Lythril in the neighboring woods. If I didn’t wrap this up soon, there was no way of knowing what would happen to him--or to me.
	“Dhiaoc?”
	I’d been staring into space for some little time. “Yes?”
	“Do you need me for anything? I was thinking I’d take Crann for a run.”
	“No, no I don’t. Go ahead.” Aine nodded, but she didn’t move.
	“Something’s on your mind,” she finally said, sitting back down.
	I laughed. “Something’s always on my mind, Aine.”
	“I mean--”
	“Yes, you’re right, of course.”
	“You’re worried about him.”
	“The longer he stays gone the weaker that connection gets. If we don’t get him back to his body soon it may break.” I shook my head. “I’m about to do something I haven’t done in five years of practice, Aine.”
	“What’s that?” she asked, alarmed.
	“I’m going to ask the Council for help.”
	She looked at me with those earnest eyes. “But you’re the expert.”
	“I’m an expert. There are others.”
	“Who will you ask?”
	“The logical choice would be Morat or Barant. Morat might be slightly more experienced but all things considered I’m going to try Barant. She’s horrendously busy, but maybe she can spare an afternoon for her old apprentice.”
	“I know I’m only a scoilin,” Aine said slowly. “But I’d be surprised if they could do any better than you have.”
	Such a trusting soul. “Maybe you’re right, Aine, who knows. I just don’t want to be thinking, if the worst happens, that it was my pride that killed him.”
	A heavy silence fell suddenly between us. I could sense Aine’s adjustment--feel her finally understanding, for real, that Crann might never come back. This was the first time, perhaps, that she had genuinely faced the prospect that I might not be all-powerful. 
	“I’m starting in as soon as I can,” I said. “I have some things I want to check up on while I’m down there, and--oh, cold fnaa on a stick.”
	“What is it, dhiaoc?”
	“I just remembered...damn it.” I looked out the window at Mna and the boys. “I do have time. I can’t go into the ether again today and...hell, death and blood.”
	“Has something happened?”
	“Excuse me a minute.” I opened my link to my mother.
	<Mathi?>
	<Theamh! I’m right in the middle of instructing the victuallers, can I-->
	<I’ll make this quick: turns out I will be able to come to that dinner party.>
	<We’ll be very glad to have you.>
	<So when do I need to be there?>
	<The other guests will be arriving at sundown. I’ll have Fada get your room ready; you can change there.>
	This reminded me. <I had been meaning to ask you-->
	<Ask me what?>
	<Would it be all right if I brought my apprentice?>
	There was a very dubious pause. <Why?>
	<I think it might be useful for her. As part of her education. You know, to be exposed to the kind of life our family leads.>
	She sounded pleased. <I’m sure we could include her.> Another pause as something distressing occurred to her. <She does have something appropriate to wear?>
	<I doubt it.> More distress. <Look, forget it. I don’t want you making her feel unwelcome-->
	<No, no.> Pause. <Perhaps she can borrow one of your old dresses.>
	<Maybe.>
	<Then go ahead and bring her. It’ll do her good.>
	<If you’re sure.>
	<I’m sure.>
	<Well all right then,> I finished warily. <See you there.>
	<I’ll look forward to it.>
	I shut the link and took a deep breath.
	“What was that?”
	“That was my mother. I was foolish enough to promise to attend this party she’s having, and now I have to go.” Aine nodded. “This is outside normal parameters, so I want you to understand that you are totally free to say no to what I’m about to ask you.”
	“Which is what, dhiaoc?”
	“Do you want to come with me?”
	Her eyebrows lifted just perceptibly, then lowered as she tried to read me. “Why do you ask, dhiaoc?”
	“One, because I think it might be a good learning experience for you.”
	Aine nodded, seriously. “You’re right, dhiaoc. I’ve never eaten in a big house. I should learn what it’s like, in case I have to do it later.”
	“I guess, but that’s not what I meant.” It was difficult for me to talk about this, but it was one thing I had to offer her as a diaoc and it was my duty to see she got it. “I’ve seen you in the na Poll house and I can see it in your eyes. People...” Aine was puzzled. “Understand I’m only saying this because I’m your diaoc and it’s my job to help you accept the Order’s rules. Wealth...wealth like what my family has generates this kind of mystery around it, especially for people who don’t have it. We have to renounce wealth, and in a way if you’ve never had it it’s easy enough to give up. But in another way...it can become something tantalizing, it can become one of those desires that persists because it can’t be fulfilled.” She nodded, but she was still a little confused. “So I figure, the sooner you see through that mystery, the better. And there’s no better way to start than by taking you to one of my mother’s parties.” She was silent, thinking this over. “If it will make you unhappy, or if you’re offended, you don’t have to come. I just thought...”
	Aine’s brow contracted in a little frown of concern. “Offended? Why?”
	“Because...because it’s such an arrogant thing to...”
	She seemed suddenly to understand my discomfort, which actually made her much more cheerful. “Please, dhiaoc, I’m not offended. I’ll come.” I nodded, hoping this would be the end of the conversation, but she wanted to say something else. 
	“You know my family’s poor. I’ve never said it right out, but I know you know. Jiprani fishers. Poor as the rocks they cling to.” I opened my mouth, but she went on. “You asked me about them when I first came. You listened to me when I answered. You saw them like I see them.” 
	“Aine--”
	“You made me not ashamed of where I come from,” she said. “It will make me very happy if I can do the same for you.”
	It was a moment before I could figure out how to respond to this declaration. “I’ll be happy too, Aine, if you can do it.” I sighed. “But I’ll also be very surprised.”
	She dropped her eyes. I pushed my chair back. 
	“What’s two?”
	“What?” I asked.
	“You said that was reason one. What’s reason two?”
	I laughed. “Reason two is very simple. I sure as hell don’t want to do this alone.”
	We left the kitchen. “I’ll go get my things and we’ll start for the City. You think Mna and the boys will be all right here for dinner? There’s no fuel for the stove.”
	“Can’t you leave a little in there? I think she’d be careful.”
	“I guess.” I slung some fire into the oven. “Show her how to use it. I’ll go pack.”
	I went to my room. Under the bed I never used there was a large wooden box with brass hinges. I flipped the lid back. On the top were the knickknacks, the small things I had wanted with me because they had been my friends in childhood. A cloth doll that was falling apart; some glass animals that my mother had given me; the first book I’d been able to read, given me by my father. The clothes were underneath that. 
	The blue dress with the gold trim was probably my safest bet. It was ten years old, and by now the fashion had come back into favor. I folded that up and rooted for the accessories. Iela had made me a pair of dress slippers when I was first in scoil, which I found near the bottom. In the City they were wearing them with high heels now but that would just have to be as it was. Underneath my flute case I found the wire net and gilded pins that would hold my hair in place.
	The gold wires were dented in on one side and the whole structure was a little warped. I knelt on the floor trying to bend it into shape. Thirteen years since I entered the scoil wearing my hair pinned up in this ornate little dome. I’d cut my hair short like everyone else, but I kept the net anyway. Once I got my orders I let it grow out, and now it was long enough to put up. Of course when I was in hreapa I couldn’t wear the thing; it was jewelry. And I was hardly ever out of hreapa now unless I was asleep.
	I watched the light from the window glint along its filaments. The wheels of fashion had gone around a few turns and now City women were putting their hair up again. I remembered the back of Mielen’s bowed head, the way the pins had slipped and the net hung loosely near the nape of her perspiring neck. And Karinn, turning that confident stare on me, the pearled edge of her net barely visible at the top of her head. And now me, getting ready to put this thing on and go down into that hall looking, as far as I could, as if I belonged there. Karinn, and Mielen, and me. Three women with nothing in common but this fine net of wires linking us in the invisible web of wealth.
	Karinn, and Mielen, and me.
	I set the net and its pins down on the folded dress and opened my link. <Lilea.>
	<Theamh.>
	<Lilea, are you all right?>
	<I’m just tired. I haven’t been getting much sleep lately.>
	<Well, if it’s that notborn thing, I’ve got a question that may help.>
	For the first time she felt interested in the conversation. <For Idair’s sake ask it.>
	<If you think back to all the women whose notborns have refused...under suspicious circumstances...>
	<Yes?>
	<How many of them would you say were wealthy?>
	There was a pause. It was a long shot; I’d only seen the two, and for all I knew Mielen’s refusal was perfectly legitimate. But--
	<Theamh...> She seemed both excited and troubled.
	<What?>
	<I’m thinking back and...of course I can’t remember all of them, but the ones I do recall, since I started noticing...>
	<Yes?>
	<I...Theamh, I think they were all wealthy.>
	 I felt my hackles rising. <Well, I don’t know what this means exactly...>
	She finished for me. <But it’s got to mean something.>
	<Has it continued?>
	<Oh you bet it has.> Her mind was starting to churn as ideas moved around in it. <Damn it, Theamh, every last one that I can recall was wearing pricey jewelry or dressed to kill or...why didn’t I figure it out?>
	<Give yourself some credit for noticing the increase. Clearly no one else has.>
	<Is it some kind of ransom? Something stealing the children and withholding them until they get paid off by the parents? Or a dark user? Using spirits to extort money? Fund-raising, like you said.>
	My mind leapt at the idea but then relinquished it. <First, these are children the mothers don’t want to bear and second, the mothers don’t even know the children have been replaced. And third, why would you bother replacing them?>
	<Oh, you’d have to do that to keep the mothers from miscarrying.>
	<Right. Duh. Well...>
	<But you’re right, you can’t get ransom from someone who doesn’t know her child’s been taken.>
	<So...>
	<So...I don’t know.>
	<I guess this doesn’t help that much.>
	<No...this matters, we just don’t know how.> Her mind was still running. 
	<And another thing,> as it occurred to me.	
	<What?>
	<These would all be women who are obviously wealthy--I mean, that you recognize as rich from what they’re wearing. You don’t means-test or anything...>
	<No.>
	<So something is targeting these women. It’s not just somehow a natural effect of having money, or it would happen sometimes to women who are rich but don’t look it.>
	<But targeting them why?>
	Neither one of us had an answer for that question. <I don’t know. But Lilea...>
	<What?>
	<It’s very likely that whatever is replacing these children...is using your perceptions as a guide for who to target.>
	<What are you saying?>
	<I’m saying the more I think about it the more convinced I am that someone or something is reading your mind. Will you let me take a look around in there?>
	<No.>
	<Why not?>
	<I can’t tell you.>
	<So we’re back to this again.>
	<Look, I think you’re right. I’ll do my own checking and see what I find. But I don’t want you in there. It’s for your own safety.>
	<I find it hard to believe you’ve got anything in there that’s going to do me damage, Lilea.>
	<Maybe so, but it’s my mind.>
	<All right then.>
	<No hard feelings?>
	<I’m not mad, Lilea, I just don’t get it.>
	<Someday when I can do it safely I’ll tell you why, but I can’t right now.>
	<I’ll possess my soul in patience.>
	<You do that.>
	<Idair with you, then.>
	<And with you. Thanks, Theamh.>
	I stuffed everything into my traveling bag and went down to the kitchen, where Mna was remonstrating with Aine.
	“...it’s just like ordinary fire except that you can’t put it out.”
	“Well, that’s my problem with it, Aine.”
	“Dhiaoc,” Aine appealed to me. “Will you tell her it’s perfectly safe?”
	“Please don’t leave it in there,” Mna countered. “I don’t want to be alone in the house with it. I know people use it but I’ve never kept my own house and I have no experience with it. Just take it with you.”
	I reached into the oven and took the fire back. “It is safe, really, when you know how to work with it.” I shouldered my bag. “You sure you’ll be all right on your own? We’ll be back sometime after dark.”
	“We’ll keep the home fires burning,” Mna answered. “I mean...well, never mind.”

	“What are we doing in here, dhiaoc?” Aine asked warily as we went into the Courts.
	“I want to see Ethir. I’m wondering now whether that big box of money has to do with this mess of Lilea’s.”
	We fought our way through the crowd on the first floor and up the stairs to Ethir’s office. Ernth leapt to her feet as soon as we entered.
	“Ethir’s out, but don’t go anywhere--he wants to talk to you. Sit down, I’ll see if I can catch him.”
	Aine followed me, warily, toward the desk, and took the seat when I pulled it out for her. I stood around looking at the walls of his office. He had his certificate up like all the other lawyers, giving the date of his graduation and the passage of his examination. Next to that was a smallish portrait of his parents, and the rest of the wall was completely taken up by a large ornamental copy of the Code of Conduct. It begins impressively enough with lovely florid phrases about swearing to uphold and execute the laws enacted by the Seated Leaders of this country for the good of its people, and then by the end it trails off into a bunch of piddly technical things. In the middle are the rules about lying in court, which are unbelievably convoluted. You cannot, for instance, literally instruct your client to lie. You can, however, discourage him from telling the truth. You are also allowed to suggest and indeed try to prove that events occurred that you know occurred in no such manner, and to seek to show that an opponent’s witness is lying when you know perfectly well that s/he is telling the truth. 
	These rules make sense to Ethir, apparently. He finds ours troublingly vague. We are bound at all times and everywhere to tell the truth so far as we know it. That’s it. Of course in scoil the diaoci elaborate. Hyperbole is not a lie if the intent is not to mislead; if you say you’ve told someone something a hundred times, and actually you only said it 95, it’s all right. Figures of speech are similarly exempt. Idair had to explain all this toward the end of the seventh scroll. “It was not my intent,” she says, “to condemn you to the prison of literalism. If you try to tell the truth, you will. Trust that.” This is the point in the discussion where Ethir usually throws up his hands. “You mean you have to establish intent for every statement you make? How do you people get anything done?” And it usually ends with me making the same point, which he seems congenitally incapable of appreciating: “Idair’s the one who makes the call; and Idair’s not a lawyer.”
	I swung around as Ethir’s voice broke in on me. “Oh she is. Fantastic. Listen, will you send a runner over to the hospital?” He bent over the desk, scribbling on a scrap of paper. “Tell him to ask for Darin mac Donald.” 
	“What is it, Ethir?” He was bearing down on us at several knots and storm clouds were gathering over the masthead.
	“You are not going to believe this,” he said. “I see your apprentice is sitting down; you better pull up a chair.”
	“Don’t be so melodramatic,” I said. “What have you found?”
	Sparks were practically snapping out of his blue eyes. “I went down to the clerk this morning to ask after Shearer’s prosecution, and he tells me...” He had to settle himself. “The presiders,” he resumed, with cold sarcasm, “have denied hearing.”
	To say that my jaw dropped would be an exaggeration. But I bet I looked about as surprised as a person can look.
	“Excuse me?”
	“Can you believe this?”
	“What--how--”
	“The written report says the case is being thrown out on procedural grounds.” He brought his hands down on the desk with a clap that must have hurt. “That is the merest crock of tarbhfnaa and they have to know it. I did the pretrial workup myself. If I know one thing on earth like I know the back of my hand that thing is procedure.”
	“What--you mean they’ve let him off?” Aine asked.
	“Worse,” I said. “They’re not even going to try him.”
	Now it was her turn to look flabbergasted. “Why not?”
	“Because he’s protected from on high by the Dark One himself,” Ethir exploded.
	“Now, now,” I said soothingly. “Remember, we don’t know whether the Dark One is male or female.”
	“Male, female, hermaphrodite or incorporeal mist, you can bet your hreapa the D.O. is mixed up in this somehow,” Ethir fumed.
	“I--this is impossible,” I said. “There’s the vial, there’s Dana’s testimony--”
	“And that big box of money,” Aine said. “What about that?”
	Ethir laughed bitterly. “Ah. The money. There’s kind of a funny story about that.” I waited. “It’s gone missing.”
	I stared flabbergasted.
	“Ten pounds of gold coin doesn’t go missing,” I said.
	“Well, it’s gone somewhere,” he said. “The garda swears she dropped it off at the evidence desk. The clerk swears he entered it into the register. But the box is gone, and there’s no record of it ever having come in.”
	I decided to pull up a chair after all.
	“Can you find out who did this?”
	“The writ denying hearing is signed by a clerk,” he said. “He handles matters like this for five different presiders. And he’s not at home when I’m calling. I’ll tell you what, though--no sane clerk would do something so contrary to established precedent and common sense without getting explicit approval from his presider.”
	“Who is probably out spending that money right now,” I said.
	Ethir nodded. “Evidence tampering and bribery,” he said. “How very convenient.”
	His initial rage had subsided into a kind of cold metallic anger. I was just stunned.
	“So...one of the judges...has been paid off? Is that what’s happened?” Aine asked.
	Darin came through the door, still in his white lab coat. “I got your message,” he said, pulling around a chair. “So how about this, Theamh? Is this possible?”
	“I wouldn’t have thought so,” I answered. “But clearly all is not as it seems in the chambers of our country’s revered and respected presiders.”
	Darin leaned back in his chair. “We had a hell of a staff meeting this morning,” he said. “Very lively. You should have been there, Theamh; you would have enjoyed it. But the really interesting thing to watch was Shearer. He seems as lost in all this as we are.”
	“You don’t believe he’s innocent,” I said.
	“Innocent, no. He prescribed that stuff, knowing it was illegal; and we haven’t turned up anything in his quarters but I’m sure he’s in on that little racket my loyal subordinates have been running.” I felt the anger, even though he was trying not to show it. “But Shearer isn’t doing this on his own. He may be a world-class prick, but a criminal mastermind he isn’t. Other people are behind this.”
	“Who’s his lawyer?” I put in.
	Ethir grinned mordantly. “Who else?”
	“Bric mac Clos strikes again.” Ethir laughed. “How in hell can he afford him?”
	“According to Shearer,” Darin said, looking at us over his joined hands, “he’s not. Bric is taking his case on a stor phoblacht basis.”
	Ethir and I stared at him. Aine got even more nervous.
	“That’s it,” Ethir said simply. “Bric mac Clos is taking a case for the good of the people. I understand it now, it all makes sense. The world is ending, and that’s why everything is going insane. What a relief.”
	“Oh no,” I said, starting to feel a little on edge. “Bric doesn’t work for the pleasure of knowing he’s done good and done well. Someone is paying that man.”
	“I’m sure someone is,” Darin replied, enjoying the effect his little contribution had had on us. “But I don’t think it’s Shearer.”
	This statement of a conclusion we were all separately coming to was received in silence. Bric had been a pawn of Lythril while she was in country, even before her trial. Now, not only was he helping funnel money to her through whatever hole she’d made in the border, but someone on this side was working with Bric to keep this trial out of the courts. Someone with a lot of power and a lot of money.
	Ethir normally doesn’t fidget much, or drum his fingers on the desk, but he was doing it now. Made sense, I suppose. He had faith in the courts like I had faith in shri, and it was a serious shock to him to see them fail this way.
	“So,” he said. “Shearer gets off, the case is dismissed, and boxes of money continue to flow north to the Cretid Nation, ending up in the hands of who knows who.”
	“Oh, I think I know who,” I said.
	 I got a laugh out of him, anyhow. “Let me guess.”
	“I have no evidence, I know. But Lythril’s already come through that hole. And if that money were buying anything concrete--anything worth that much--someone would have noticed it coming in. But you don’t have to ship magic. As long as that hole is open, she can deliver her product without us ever knowing the difference.”
	“But there still has to be someone on this side,” Ethir reminded me. “Not even Lythril can do all this by herself.”
	“You’re not going to like thinking about this,” Darin said, “since you have this faith in your government which is one of the things I find so touching about you people. But if it were me, I’d start with the Seated Leaders.”
	Ethir sighed. “You’re right, I don’t. But it’s not as much of a mental stretch as you might think.”
	“But...why would they want to help Lythril?” Aine asked.
	“What they’d want to do is help themselves,” Ethir said. “They don’t care about the Dark One, they just want a piece of the Cretid market.”
	Aine was still looking perplexed. 
	“Every year some moron gets up in the Seat and suggests that we reevaluate the border restrictions,” Ethir explained. “And every year he gets shouted down. But every year it takes longer.”
	Her eyes flicked to my face in panic. “They wouldn’t really? Open the border?”
	“No, they’ll never open the border. But the business interests are leaning on them to allow commercial trade back and forth.”
	“Why?” from Aine.
	“Good thurking question,” Ethir said frankly. “They’ve been over the border, a lot of them; they know what it’s like. How they can believe our economy wouldn’t get eaten alive in the first month is something I will never understand.”
	“If you boys are going to talk trade policy I’m leaving,” I said.
	“Don’t go,” Ethir said as I stood up. “I’ll stop talking politics if it’ll help.”
	I shook my head. “No, we’ve got to go talk to Barant and then there’s this thurking dinner party at my mother’s--”
	Darin suddenly snapped to attention. “You’re going?”
	I started answering his unasked question, with considerable mortification. “We had this fight, and she asked if I could come, and I wanted to make her feel better, so I said I would if I could, and it turned out I can, so I have to go.”
	“I’m very glad you mentioned it,” he said. “I’d be sorry to have missed this.”
	“Well, thanks for the update, Ethir,” I said, motioning Aine onward. “I’m really sorry about all this. I know it’s going to take you a while to get over it.”
	“Over it?” he said. “Not on your life. This just became my own personal Lythril.”
	“My condolences,” I said.
	“I’ll walk out with you,” Darin said. “I’ve got to get back to the shop.”
	We started toward the staircase. “So you think it’s the Seated Leaders.”
	“That’s my guess,” he said brightly. “Although I have to say that after 30 years I was almost starting to think they might be as good as they look.”
	“You’ve been here for thirty years?” Aine demanded.
	He chuckled. “Yes, I have. You’d think by now I’d be sick of the place.”
	“Why haven’t you?” I asked. 
	Darin shrugged. We had gained the lower hallway. “I don’t know, maybe it’s the way you can actually see the stars down here. Maybe because I’m lazy and don’t want to stay on top of my profession. Maybe because it’s impossible to find a beer in this town.” We pushed through the corridor into the courtyard. Darin looked up at the branches of the tree and the afternoon sunlight filtering through them. “Maybe it’s because you all are so nutty you make me feel sane. Who knows.” He laughed. “I’ll see you tonight, ladies.”
	He was off whistling across the courtyard toward the shriin. I’ve told him before that it wasn’t intended as a shortcut, but he pays no mind.
	“Come on, Aine,” I said. “Let’s see if I remember how to find the Ministry.”
	“He’s a strange man,” Aine said quietly.
	“He’s in a strange country,” I said.
	“Why is he still here?” she said as we entered the Raed. “Really.”
	“You know, he’s never given me a straight answer on that. But I think it’s got more to do with what’s over the border than with what’s down here.”
	Where the Courts are noisy, the Raed is quiet. It’s not any less busy, but people don’t spend as much time running through hallways and yelling at each other. When you do pass someone it’s just a flap of the robe and the rustle of rope soles on a stone floor. She’s on her way somewhere to get something done, and so are you.
	The doors to the Ministry are pine--simple, unvarnished, no carving except for the star sign. I pushed one open and tiptoed in.
	There was an apprentice in the anteroom, busy sending messages. Her eyes had that special preoccupation that comes with linked conversations, for people who aren’t used to it yet. I waited for her to focus on me.
	“Yes, shriia?” she finally said. “What can I do for you?”
	“I’m looking for Barant. Is she around?”
	“She is,” the apprentice answered unwillingly. “But she’s busy.”
	“I’m sure she is, but it’s important. Will you step in and tell her Theamh’s here?”
	She looked dubious, but she went.
	Aine was staring at the doors that led off the anteroom. A lot goes on behind those doors, which is not strictly speaking secret but which isn’t necessarily talked about either.
	The apprentice came out with a look of amazement. “She says she’ll see you.”
	“Thanks.”
	“But she’s only got a few minutes.”
	I nodded. I’m sure she could’ve told me that.
	<I think she read that, dhiaoc.>
	<Good.> 
	Barant’s office is a little bit nicer than most of the others--two windows, plants, and a comfortable writing desk. She managed to keep the place neat despite all the documents that went through it. It’s not as bad as it is in the Courts or with the Seated Leaders--we send reports mentally instead of writing them. There’s one system of linkages for the Council members to use for each other and another set that links them to shriias in the field. It takes a while to get the hang of directing things but once you do it saves time. To make it easier for the regular people like me the Council flags its communications with a seal that only they know the trick of creating; that way we can tell when something’s coming in from them. But even with all the ways we have of cutting down on writing, there still ends up being a lot of it done in the Raed.
	She was standing behind the writing desk, her hands briskly rolling up a scroll she had finished. “Theamh! It’s good to see you down here voluntarily for once.” Barant came around the desk to meet us, passing through the light thrown by the windows. Her hair had been yellow when I was learning with her; it was beginning to go gray now, and was drawn back into a knot at the nape of her neck. In the afternoon sun her face looked as it had then--heavy, a little, with the care she took on but serene, with a concern and a gentleness which were both touching and yet impersonal. As if she were looking out for you not because of you but because that was how things were, because it was who she was to be this way.
	“I have to be at the Seat soon,” she said. “But tell me what’s on your mind. Have a seat.” I looked around for a chair and found one; Aine remained standing. “You too, scoilin,” Barant said, resuming her seat behind the desk. 
	Aine bowed, and sat down cross-legged at my feet.
	<I thought you’d have her broken of that by now,> Barant sent, amused.
	<What can I say, she’s a hard case.> 
	“I’m sorry if I’m bothering you on a busy day,” I began, because I was sure Aine could tell we were talking about her.
	“You’re always welcome here, Theamh,” she said, sadly. “I know you don’t feel that way, but it’s true.”
	“I--I’m sure it is,” I said awkwardly. “I mean, I’m sure I’m welcome here. As opposed to, say, down the hall.”
	Barant’s mouth almost smiled but didn’t. “So. What’s brought you here?”
	I opened my hands. “About a week ago I was asked for in the street on my way through the City,” I said. “By a mother whose child had been taken. I’ve been looking for him ever since. I keep getting close, but the thing that has him always eludes me.”
	“The thing that has him,” Barant repeated, thinking.
	“I don’t know for sure what it is. All I know is it’s mean, it’s green, and it has the ability to alter the ether itself.”
	Barant’s eyes opened just a shade wider. “Really.”
	“At least that’s how it seems to me.”
	“You know what,” Barant said, “this sounds like it’s going to be a long story.”
	“Yes,” I said. “It really sort of is.”
	“I’m really sorry to do this, Theamh, but I have to get to the Seat.”
	I stood up as she did. “Of course, Barant. I know you’re very busy.”
	Aine rose too. Barant seemed to hesitate.
	“Actually, you may as well come along. We can use some support in the gallery.”
	“Who’s we, and what are we supporting?”
	“It’s the opening of the session,” she said, with a look of distaste, “and someone on the Foreign Relations Committee has given permission for an ambassador from over the border to address the Seated Leaders.”
	“What about?”
	“What do they ever want to talk about?” Barant snapped, heading toward the door. “The border, the border, that’s all we hear from them. Why we should open the border. Why we should drop the barriers. Why it’d be in our best interests.”
	“I don’t get it,” I said, following her out the door and past the remonstrating apprentice toward the hallway. “Why do they want that? We made that allowance for tourist traffic and people hardly ever come down, and--”
	“I’m not sure I understand it either,” Barant went on, pushing the door open, “unless they just can’t stand that there’s one place on earth they have to leave alone.”
	“So you’re going over there to put the case against?”
	Barant nodded, pushing open the door to the courtyard. “I’m on the panel that’s been invited to respond to his presentation.”
	We followed her across the courtyard, her speed increasing as she realized the time. “I’ve got to find the other panelists,” Barant said as we blew in through the double doors that led to the Seat. “Find yourselves seats close to the front, it should be interesting.” And she was gone.
	We were in a narrow hallway that led past doors of all colors toward an arch about midway down the length of the building. Through the arch, whose doors had been folded back, I could see the crowd milling about in the Great Hall. 
	“Well, come on,” I said. “Let’s go see our fellow-citizens’ tithe money in action.”

XV.
Another Country Heard From

	As it turned out, we weren’t able to get seats near the front. Because it was the beginning of the session, and because word of this ambassador’s appearance had got out, the hall was packed--with ordinary citizens, repeaters, historians, clerks, and up on the other side of the semicircular wall that divided the hall was the great roiling mass of government--seated leaders from all provinces, with their clerks, readers, and hangers-on. The first time you see it, it’s an awesome prospect--our people, represented in its elected leaders, assembled from far and wide in one place. Daircri jostling Vinha, the City bumping elbows with Amranth, all working together. As you get more used to it you start to see the divisions, the bickering, the battling agendas. But there’s still something about it that gives you a catch in your throat, when you come on it suddenly.
	The foreigner was sitting up on the dais that rose at the far end of the hall, at a table with the Leader of Leaders, the heads of a few of the major committees, two men who looked prosperous and pompous enough to be business leaders, and, when she finally climbed into place, Barant. The Leader of Leaders leaned over and introduced her to the speaker, who brought his hand half-forward, then stopped and bowed.
	He was of middle age, with a firm chin and a strong nose. His mouse-colored hair was cut shorter than is the fashion here, waving across his forehead but sticking close to the sides of his head. He stood out because he was wearing his native costume--a dark jacket whose lapels were cut to reveal a triangle of white shirtfront, and a pair of trousers to match. Around his neck he wore their badge of public office--a strip of soft cloth that he had knotted underneath his Iandar’s-apple where his collar buttoned. 
	“Is that him?” Aine whispered.
	We had found ourselves two seats together at the back of the aisle near the center. “Yes, that’s him. You can tell from the hair. See the way it stays in place even when he moves his head?”
	Aine looked. “How do they do that?”
	I shrugged. “I think the more pertinent question is why.”
	“Theamh,” came a whisper from over my shoulder.
	I turned around in my seat. It was Spindern, a woman I knew who was clerking for a City leader. She’d been in scoil when I was an apprentice but dropped out after a few years. Her ultimate goal was to be a leader, but she was a patient woman.
	“I need help. Can you give me a hand? I’ll get you guys seats up near the banister.”
	“Sure, Spindern, anything I can do, but...”
	“Thank Idair. Come, quick.” Trailing a bemused Aine, I followed her up the aisle to the gate in the banister, in front of which a little table had been moved. Sitting on it was a black metal box with a sort of wheel-rim stacked on top of it. The thing obviously belonged to the ambassador--it had one of those forked tails trailing off it and onto the floor, and there was a much younger beyond-borderer, wearing a similar costume but a much more tense expression, fussing about nearby. 
	“Theamh, this is Cyrel. He’s an assistant something to Mr. Big Shot, and he’s in a bit of a tizzy.”
	Cyrel looked at me with eyes that blent anxiety and derision in an intensely annoying mixture. “It’s the slide projector.”
	Spindern picked up its tail and waggled it at me. “They never learn. What are we supposed to do with this?” She flung it back on the floor. “Maybe if we could rig up some kind of candle, and hold them up in front of it--”
	“The heat from the candle would melt right through them,” he snapped.
	I reached into one of the partitions into which the wheel-rim was broken and pulled out a square of unfamiliar material. Its edges reminded me of the vial, but in the interior was a smaller square of something transparent that seemed to have an image on it.
	I held the square up to the light from the hanging lamps. “You want to project these images onto that white thing you have set up above the table, is that it?”
	“For the love of God,” Cyrel muttered, rolling his eyes. “Yes!” he said, speaking slowly and loudly. “That is what we want to do. Can you help me?”
	“You don’t have to talk like I’m a two-year-old,” I snapped. “I bet I’ve memorized more texts than you’ve ever read, my noose-wearing friend.”
	“You think you can work something out?” Spindren said, hurriedly. “I mean, it doesn’t have to be a big light, I’m thinking, if we can get them to turn down the others...”
	“Probably.” While we bent over the machine, the crowd quieted down and the Leader of Leaders stood up to open the session. His oratory passed over our heads unheeded as we worked on trying to solve our little problem.
	“How does this thing work?” I asked.
	“It doesn’t, unless it’s plugged in,” Cyrel answered sourly.
	“I understand that,” I said. “If it were to be plugged in, how would it work?”
	“But we can’t plug it in,” he repeated.
	“I’m not disputing that proposition,” I said, picking the projector up and examining it.
	“Look, just put that down, that’s a very sensitive piece of equipment!”
	I set it down on the table carefully and took a deep breath.
	“And in this sensitive piece of equipment,” I said slowly, “there is some kind of light source, is there not?”
	“Yes, there’s a bulb, but it won’t light unless we plug it--”
	“Where’s the bulb?”
	He pointed into a square opening within which I saw a round glass object that had been screwed into a cylindrical socket. “This glass thing, this is the bulb.”
	“Yes, but--”
	I reached in and unscrewed it. He would have liked to curse me out at the top of his lungs, but was afraid to disrupt the speaker. I heard most of it anyway.
	I pulled a pale white flame out with one hand. “Is this about the brightness the bulb would give you?”
	Cyrel stared at it.
	“But...won’t that melt the slides?”
	Spindern shook her head. “Put your hand right here.” I took his wrist and held his hand above the flame. “Feel anything?”
	“N...no, not really...”
	“Well, there you go. More light than heat. Is that about the brightness you need?”
	His eyes were still fixed on the little ball of flame hovering above my palm. “Uh...I think it should be a little brighter.”
	Above my hand the white light got gradually more intense. “That about right?”
	“Yes...that’s about right.”
	“All right then.” I stuck my hand into the space and hung the flame in the place where the bulb had been. That was the only really tricky part--it was a small space and I couldn’t really see very well. By the time I finished the Leader of Leaders had turned the dais over to the head of the Foreign Relations Committee, who was introducing the ambassador.
	“Well,” I said to Cyrel. “That should work. Of course you’ll have to change the images manually.”
	“Yes,” he said, still looking a little bit not all there.	
	“When you’re done I’ll take back the fire. I’ll just keep the bulb so I’ll remember.”
	“Don’t worry, I’ll remind you,” Spindern whispered, guiding us to two seats by the banister. “Idair knows I don’t want that gleachinai going back over the border with fire in his box. Thank you so much, Theamh. I’ll see you after the talk.”
	Aine was still looking over at Cyrel, who was fiddling with the wheel-rim that held the images. “Why didn’t you say something to him, dhiaoc?”
	“About what?”
	“About...didn’t you hear him?”
	“Hear him do what?”
	“Call you a stupid--”
	“Oh, that.” I put my hands up behind my head and leaned back. “They can’t help it, Aine, they don’t know how to control their minds. Things just fly out of them. It’s not fair to hold someone responsible for what they don’t know they’re saying.”
	“It’s still very rude,” she said.
	“I know. Shhh, he’s starting.”
	The ambassador had taken the dais, standing in his polished hard leather shoes under the white screen. “Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to be addressing you here in the heart of your country. It is a great honor, and a gesture of faith and hospitality on your part that my people will not soon forget.”
	<Look.> I pointed up to the lamps that hung from the ceiling. <They’re blowing them out. Must be for the projections.>
	Aine looked up. One by one the glass globes winked and grew dark, until there was just enough left to make the ambassador dimly visible on his side of the dais.
	“...greater communication between our two nations,” he was saying. “On this fifteith anniversary of Operation Restore Health, I find it especially appropriate that...”
	<Operation Restore-->
	<I think he’s talking about the Greater Plague.>
	“...work together toward our common goals of peace and prosperity for all the people of this island.”
	He paused here; and, since he seemed to be expecting it, some of the seated leaders obliged him by applauding. The folks in the gallery were less inclined to accomodate him. He cleared his throat and moved on.
	“If we could have the first slide, please.”
	The image appeared on the screen, flickering slightly. “This is a map of the island--the Cretid Nation here, and your country here. And here, along this red line, is the Zone.”
	It was very strange to see our country up there, labeled in those block letters favored by the beyond-borderers, hatched and crossed by the wiggly lines separating the provinces. The mountains in Amst and Daircri were represented as inverted “v”s, and the rivers were drawn with all their tributary branches in blue, but otherwise the only markings were the boundary lines. They hadn’t bothered putting in the lakes, except for the big one to the east separating Dairc from the C.N. In each province there was a star for its largest city, and a bigger one for the City in the middle of the Vicinity. The island was a kind of tilted egg--the C.N. on the slender end, pointing into the northeast corner, and us on the bottom in the southwest.
	“As you can see,” he went on, “geographically, we are no larger than your country; we have no especially vast reserves of natural resources; and certainly I don’t suppose any of you would contend that since the border went up our people have become any more intelligent or industrious than yours.” There was some laughter at this. “And yet, today our citizens enjoy a standard of living far higher than that available even to the most privileged Ideierens. Why should this be?” He waited. “One thing, and one thing alone has made the Cretid Nation the power it is today,” he said. “And that thing is...”
	I heard people all around me finishing the sentence for him. War. The machine. Ruthlessness. Greed.
	“...trade,” he finally concluded.
	He smiled beneveolently on us, pleased with his little rhetorical moment.
	“Trade with who? Well, not with you, obviously.” This time the laughter was a little unfriendly. “After the Treaty of Mypril prevented us from having any meaningful intercourse with the nation of Ideire, we were forced to look farther afield. We have always been an adventurous lot--explorers, sailors, discoverers. With enough determination and ingenuity, we were able to develop technology that made possible voyages we could never have dreamed of five hundred, or even four hundred years ago...”
	The second square dropped into the slot, and another image appeared on the screen. Suddenly the tilted egg was tucked far away in the northwest corner of the rectangle, much smaller than it had been before with only the red line of the border visible. Then a long expanse of blue meant, I suppose, to be the ocean, and a group of other islands, most of them much larger than ours, scattered about.
	“We know, now, that the world is much larger than we thought it was when the border went up. And in a way, we owe this knowledge to the people of Ideire.” 
	Nobody laughed at this, which seemed to perturb him. He should really have considered himself lucky he couldn’t tell what the people behind me were thinking.
	“For the past three hundred years, we’ve been busy. We’ve made contact with other peoples and other cultures, and as you are all aware it has transformed our society into something beyond our wildest dreams.”
	Another image--the same map but with green lines connecting the C.N. to all the other countries.
	“With the riches of all continents available to us, with the expertise of all peoples enriching our lives, we have made the C.N. what it is today--the hub of civilization, the center of that great web of exchange that we call the world.”
	I was looking at some of those other islands. I had, of course, never been to them. We could never sail that far. We don’t even sail to the north any more--the border extends in an invisible line about a hundred miles off the coast.
	Things must be interesting so far away, on strange islands Idair never visited. Or maybe she has--that’s another of the Uafach Freagair. There is that injunction against missionary work in the fourth scroll, and why would Idair have told us not to force her teachings on other peoples if she hadn’t already known there were other peoples?
	“...and coffee from Dubhinis,” the ambassador was saying, underneath a picture of a cup full of some dark brown beverage. “All things we would never have had, if not for trade. We had to travel thousands of miles, lose men, money and time, to get where we are. But because all of the world’s wealth is available to us, it can all become available to you. All you need is a different approach to border control.”
	The cup of brown stuff disappeared and was replaced by a set of criss-cross perpendicular lines across which a rising curve had been drawn in a contrasting color. “This mathematical model describes the benefits your economy would reap during the first two decades of limited free trade across the border.”
	<Here they are at last, Aine.>
	<Here what are?>
	<The numbers. Apparently they love numbers up there.>
	<Why?>
	<As far as I can tell, because they’re obedient.>
	<Beyond-borderers?>
	<No--numbers.>
	The Seated Leaders were pressing forward to get a better look at the chart. Not everyone is the mathematical idiot that I am; and some of the Seated Leaders have gotten very knowledgable about the kinds of number-flinging the people up north seem to be addicted to. To me, what the ambassador was saying made very little sense. I was grasping approximately one thing: that once we allowed trade to progress unhindered--or virtually unhindered--across the border, Ideire would shortly become paradise on earth.
	“...naturally, we would expect there to be controls to prevent the importation into Ideire of certain proscribed materials. But the strangling protectionism and isolationism that has characterized Ideiren foreign and trade policy since the Treaty of Mypril will only, if it continues, prevent Ideire from joining the global community, and from taking its place among the nations of the world.”
	The screen went dark. There was some polite and, I thought, rather bemused applause, and then the lights were relit as he sat down.
	One of the businessmen got up from the table to deliver his response. 
	“Women, men, Leader of Leaders, Seated Leaders of this nation, Councillor Barant, distinguished guests. It is with great joy that I heard, for the first time I can recall, the word ‘trade’ pronounced without fear or scorn...”
	<Save my seat, I’m going to get the fire back.>
	<All right, dhiaoc.>
	I wended my way over to the slide projector. Spindern was conferring with Cyrel over its square black form.
	“...when you’ve already got an apparently inexhaustible energy source,” Cyrel was saying. “It’s just unfathomable that you should go on like this--”
	“Excuse me,” I said. “I’ll need the flame back.”
	Cyrel moved his arm away. I stuck my hand in and brought it back into me.
	“It’s not an energy source,” Spindern whispered viciously. “It’s a sacred mystery and you will never understand it so don’t hurt yourself trying.”
	I left them at it. By the time I resumed my seat, Barant was into her response. Where the ambassador had had a kind of weighted gravity with his pauses and his turned periods, Barant delivered herself with a stillness, a quiet freight of reflection and sincerity. It was, on the one hand, as if she had spent hours at night pondering these questions, and on the other, as if she were speaking straight from the heart with no rehearsal.
	“...spoken to you of trade and its marvels,” she was saying.
	<Did I miss anything?>
	<I...well, of course you missed something, but...>
	<Never mind, I didn’t mean it to be a trick question.>
	“...we think of the Zone as being there to keep things out,” Barant went on. “It keeps out our exiled criminals. It keeps out the poisons that come to us in the air, the water, the soil of the Cretid Nation. It keeps out the weapons with which they do each other such great harm. And now we hear it also keeps out good things, and pleasant things, things we might like to have.”
	She paused, then took it up again with a sigh. “All of this is true. We cannot deny that for those over the border, many things are easier. But we should not forget, also, that the border also keeps things in.” Barant adjusted her hreapa very slightly. “Our culture, our traditions, and our beliefs have been protected for hundreds of years by that border. Protected from those weapons, but also from the machine, from greed, from evil.” I would have thought that the ambassador might rise and take umbrage, but instead he simply furrowed his brow. “We are, so far as we know, the last place on earth with the secret of shri. Can it be because our country--Ideire, as you call it--is the only place that ever had it?” She opened her hands. “That is a question that cannot be answered. But I have always held, since there are other lands, that Idair must have visited them. Not, perhaps, in the guise that we knew her. In other lands, maybe, she told other stories and came in other forms. But surely there were other places, once, where they knew shri.”
	Barant turned from the crowd to the ambassador. “The wealth and knowledge of all peoples from all lands, you say. Why then do you have no magic in your country? Did you not learn shri in Dubhinis, in Hendai, in Plenana? Where are their scrolls, their incantations, their wisdom? Where are their shriias?”
	This was a question that obviously had never occurred to the ambassador. But to speak truth, it hadn’t ever really occurred to me, either.
	“I do not know the answer,” Barant said. “What I conjecture may not be the truth. Where are the shriias of these other lands? My guess is...that they are gone. That in these other lands the machine has displaced all other powers, that the science of gain has become the one true wisdom and destroyed all others. All this because, not knowing the Cretids as we, sadly, have cause to know them, they let the Cretids in.
	“I am not a student of economic policy. But I believe,” she said, her voice rising with emotion, “I believe that if the border is opened--well. Nobody can be sure of speaking the truth about the future. But I believe that if we open the border, it will be the end of shri in this country.” 
	There was a startled gasp from Aine, and hers wasn’t the only one.
	“Not in a week, not in a year, not even in a decade,” Barant said. “Shri would persist, for a hundred, two hundred years, maybe all the way through the next kyelran. But ultimately, it would disappear.” 
	Her gaze raked across the ranks of the Seated Leaders, who were watching her. “It is a choice,” she said. “A choice we made those many hundred years ago. To follow shri, or to follow the machine. We cannot do both.” One of her hands moved out toward them. “The people chose you as our leaders, your word will become our law, and that is as it should be. It is your choice to make again now--shri, or the machine. We are the servants of shri, and that is all we have to do--work for it, speak for it, make the light of truth burn brightly. But whether that light shines forever, or whether this is its last brightness, is in your hands. We cannot know the future, but this is what I believe.”
	She sat down. There was a moment of silence, which would have been longer if the ambassador had not risen immediately.
	“I thank the shriia for her contribution,” he began. “Indeed, I understand and appreciate the concerns she has brought forth. We have no wish to violate any of your customs, obliterate your traditions or prevent you from exercising your religion. None of these things would follow from the introduction of limited free trade. If your religion is as strong as we have every reason to believe it to be, it will embrace diversity, to adapt to the challenges that come with playing on the global scale.”
	“Councillor Barant, do you wish to respond?” asked the Leader of Leaders.
	Barant waved a hand. “I have said what I came to say. This is your house.”
	“In that case,” he said, “I open the dais to questions from the floor.”
	There was an immediate surge in the noise level as leaders turned to clerks and clerks rustled papers. Finally I saw a woman sitting near the front in the Jiprani area stand up. It took her a while, because she was very nearly six feet tall.
	“Esteemed Leader?” she drawled in a slow, low, rough but curiously compelling voice. “If I might have a word?”
	“It’s Paigin!” Aine shouted, speaking aloud in her excitement.
	“Your leader?”
	“No, not mine, I’m too far south, worse luck.”
	“Never heard of her.”
	“You’ll hear now,” Aine shot back, glowing. “Watch her work. Just watch her.”
	She was an impressive figure, especially in her regional costume--a sleeveless shift of water-proofed cowhide over a jersey of blue slashed with black. Her curling hair was pinned back with a hooklike metal clip, which she brushed with one hand as she waited to be recognized.
	“You have the dais,” the Leader said. “Silence for the seated leader.”
	The room quieted down. Paigin scratched her head with one hand.
	“Ambassador, my name is Paigin ni Phisce na Tsraid and I represent Upper Jipran here in this great City,” she said, with an easygoing smile.
	“Pleased to meet you,” said the ambassador.
	“Likewise. As anyone you ask here will tell you, the Jiprani are a simple people.” He nodded. Aine smiled. “We don’t know much about much but the way of the waves, the lives of fish and how to build on soil three inches deep. So much of your presentation went over my poor head.” Laughter from the other leaders. “I wondered if you might just go over a few of the points you made, so I can convey your message to my people.”
	“Certainly,” said the ambassador, with a very polite smile.
	“I’ve no doubt it’s only my own stupidity that prevents me understanding this,” Paigin went on, frowning in perplexity, “but I’m not sure exactly how trade with us is supposed to benefit your country.”
	“Oh--well, of course we will benefit from the creation of another trading partner,” the ambassador said, still wearing his smile.
	“Which will make you richer--is that right?”
	He nodded, rather patronizingly. “That’s right.”
	“We buy your products, and you take our money.”
	“Yes, that is how trade works,” he said, amazed that anyone could be this dense.
	“So long as I understand,” Paigin said. “Now...if we’re spending our money on your products...we’ll have less to spend on our own, won’t we?”
	“Yes, but of course you’ll be exporting your products to us.”
	“Ah! I see,” Paigin said, her eyes lighting as if with sudden comprehension. “And which products are these, that you would be interested in buying off us?”
	The ambassador looked at some of his documents. “Well, of course that will change with time, but there are any number of products or resources that our nation would be consuming--”
	“Consuming,” Paigin repeated as she stepped forward a bit, still concentrating. “That interesting word you use instead of ‘buy.’” Laughter. “Now a resource is different from a product, isn’t it? I’m just trying to get the terms straight, ambassador, these are unfamiliar concepts.”
	“Yes. A resource is something that occurs naturally. Like--well, for instance, your forested land. The timber from those trees is a resource.”
	“But you must buy timber now from other places?” Paigin said, surprised.
	“Well, Ideire’s closer than our other suppliers; it would be easier to transport.”
	“I see. Despite the fact that we have none of what you consider adequately paved roads.”
	“But that could be changed,” the ambassador said. “Roads are cheap to build.”
	I could sense the restlessness around me. It was still at the mental level, but Paigin was working them up. And the poor bastard on stage was still playing along.
	“So you would build us some of these very wide, very flat roads you have. For this, I suppose, we would pay you?”
	“But you see building the roads would employ people in your country. It would create jobs and increase your wealth.”
	“Ah. Thank you, I hadn’t thought of that. Of course to make a road like that would require a lot of labor.” She put her hands behind her back. “So our people build these roads, and then the trees are cut down and sent along--see, there I go again. Here I have the road built and I’ve forgotten we’ve got nothing to feed your traveling machines with. What good is the road without the rider?”
	“But there again, we could supply what you’d need,” the ambassador said. “And again, it would mean more jobs for your economy. This was discussed in the presentation,” he added, beginning to look a little out of sorts.
	“To be sure it was, and I missed it. That’s what we’re like, we Jiprani, abstract concepts are hard for us. The trees make it all make sense. So in order for you to buy this--resource--we’ll need to build roads, for which the materials and the supervision will come from you while we provide the labor.” He nodded, warily. “We’ll need a system of filling stations, which again will be built with our labor and your materials, and which we will keep filled by buying fuel from your country.” She laughed, slowly. “I’m feeling a little foolish here, ambassador, but it seems to me that we end up buying a lot more than we’re selling.” There was a murmur of assent. “Which can’t be good for us...can it?”
	“But all that is a one-time expense,” the ambassador responded. “Once your infrastructure is in place, it will pay for itself.”
	“Yes, I’m sure you’re right. So this infrastructure--this would be roads, and these filling stations...and what else?”
	“A communications network, of course...now that depends to some extent on a power supply. We have put together a separate proposal that addresses the problem of electrification, but that’s further down the road.”
	“Electrification?” Paigin repeated. “Ah. You mean so that we’d have a place to plug in your little black boxes and so forth.”
	“Yes. Now that would not be an immediate project--”
	“I’ve long been curious about this electric power of yours,” Paigin said, adopting a more friendly tone. “I’ll tell you, there are nights out on the water when we all think it might come in handy. How is this power produced?”
	By now the ambassador was starting to realize what was happening. “These things are all too long-term to be discussing right now. Why don’t we--”
	Mistake. He’d tried to avoid the question.
	“Esteemed Leader,” cried a little man who had hopped up on his chair near the left wall. “Weall mac Iss na Shiaw, northern Dairc. May I?”
	“Paigin, do you agree to share the dais?”
	“Certainly, Esteemed Leader. The more voices, the richer the conversation.”
	She turned her beatific smile on a very irritated ambassador as Weall put his question in his high, fussy voice. “Ambassador, if I recall correctly this power is produced at various facilities called ‘plants,’ is it not?” The ambassador nodded. “And one of these ‘plants’ is located along what we call the river Ubh and which you call the Murky River?”
	“Yes,” the ambassador said testily, “but the Murky River plant has not been operational for several years now.”
	“And why not, if I might ask?” Weall returned, blinking up at him.
	“It was determined that given the relative costs it would be more efficient to construct a new plant than to repair Murky River.”
	“Ah. And when you say ‘repair,’ you are of course referring to the damage suffered during the Long Slow Burning of four years hence.”
	The ambassador frowned. The Leader of Leaders leaned over to whisper something to him. 
	“Oh,” he said, understanding. “But your country wouldn’t be using nuclear power, that’s far down the road. Hydroelectricity would be your best route--cheaper and safer.”
	“This hydroelectricity works how?” Paigin demanded.
	“It’s complicated,” the ambassador snapped, “but you harness the power of a river by damming it and then--”
	The Dairc contingent could no longer contain its irritation. “Dam the Ubh?” one of Weall’s colleagues shouted. 
	“Oh sure,” laughed another. “The genius would just LOVE that.”
	“Genius?” the ambassador repeated, puzzled.
	“So either we burn the river or we choke it?” a third leader demanded.
	“Order!” shouted the Leader, banging on the table. “If you want the dais, stand up and ask to be recognized!”
	About twelve people leapt to their feet. The Leader frowned and pointed to a young man in the Naucht section. 
	“Conn mac Emer na Lough, Naucht Point and vicinity. My province has no forests to speak of. We’ve got a lot of grass and a lot of sheep. What are my people going to get out of this?”
	“You say you have a lot of sheep?” the ambassador asked wearily.
	“That’s right, Aiv.”
	“Our country consumes a lot of wool and other fiber products,” he said, glad to finally have something else to talk about. “There’s already quite an interest in your wool in our country, because of the colors.”
	“But if we sell it all to you, what will they be wearing up in Amst and Dairc?”
	“You won’t sell it all to us. You’ll produce more wool as your market expands.”
	“With the same number of sheep?”
	“Of course the average flock size will increase...”
	“How? You can’t feed 60 sheep on pasture that supports 30.”
	“Yes, you can.”
	He laughed outright. “We can?”
	“It would necessitate a revolution in agricultural practice in your country,” the ambassador said. “But with the right modifications--”
	“--you can double the yield of a pasture?”
	“Yes, we can.” 
	Conn smiled. “And you say magic is unknown to you.” 
	The ambassador laughed. “Well, perhaps it isn’t, after all.”
	He couldn’t have known, of course, why silence suddenly fell. What Conn had meant was that while shriias don’t have the power to create something out of nothing, dark users do. 
	“Speaking of shri,” he said, nervously trying to cover the silence, “that’s another resource, one which Ideire is sadly underutilizing.”
	“Really,” drawled Paigin, who was meandering slowly up to the dais from where she stood. “How would you suggest utilizing it?”
	“As a power source, of course,” he said. “It’s serving that purpose already, although nowhere near as efficiently as it could. But there are plenty of commercial uses for it. You could develop a whole line of magic-driven products and services, and sell--”
	EXCUSE ME?
	He stopped, not because he had heard me, but because everyone else with a shred of mindstrength had, and had turned around to stare at me. 
	All right, Theamh, let’s try not to cause an international incident. Just sit quietly and maybe they’ll turn around.
	Barant, with a smile that I would not have expected to see this little outburst bringing to her lips, leaned over to whisper to the Leader.
	“Shriia, under our rules of order your robe gives you the right to address the house. Do you have something you’d like to say?”
	“I--well, I do, but it’s your house--”
	“I move we hear the shriia out,” Paigin said.
	“I second,” Weall answered. “If the savior of Dairc has any thoughts on this matter, I for one want to hear them.”
	There was a low rumble of assent. I stood, nervously.
	“Theamh ni hUlnach na Craoibh, daughter of Idair and servant of all her children,” I said. “In the interest of cross-border amity, I’d like to request that the ambassador restrict his remarks to topics about which he might possibly know something.”
	There was a sudden, sharp wave of laughter. “It’ll be a short talk then, shriia!” someone from the gallery shouted.
	“I apologize for my interruption, but you must understand that it’s very disturbing to me to hear the words ‘magic’ and ‘sell’ in the same sentence.”
	Barant was nodding, and I could feel Aine’s anger. “Idair calls us to serve anyone who needs us, wherever and whenever they need us, without asking for payment and without expecting a reward. Shri is not a resource. It’s not a product. It’s Idair’s gift to her people and she meant it to be free to all in equal measure and if we don’t share that vision then we’re not shriias.”
	<You tell him, dhiaoc.>
	<Me and my big head.>
	“But why not provide it to those north of the border?” asked the ambassador.
	“Were you paying attention to what you just said?” I snapped. “Magic-driven products? You can’t be trusted to handle your own power, the Spirit alone knows what you’d do with ours. Trade with who you want, but while any of us are in life Idair’s fire will not be sold in the marketplace like a load of timber!”
	While the roar of agreement was still breaking over the crowd, the ambassador withdrew a folded square of white fabric and blew his nose into it.
	“And with that attitude it won’t be,” he answered. “If your order is too selfish to use your gifts for the profit of your own people, that won’t be our fault.”
	Weall looked about like he was going to explode. He hopped up on the banister and started in without waiting for recognition. “You speak of selfishness,” he said. “Along those lines, would you care to explain how it was that nobody on your side of the border notified us of your ‘problem,’ or indeed admitted there was one, until a year after Theamh ni hUlnach had cleansed Ubh and Dairc of your poisons?”
	“I have no statement to make regarding that incident.”
	“So,” Paigin said, resuming her conversation placidly in the silence that fell. “Just to get things in order in this scattered Jiprani brain of mine...we begin trading with your nation. From us, you buy trees, wool, water--what you would call raw material. From you, we buy the materials and the expertise we need to construct the infrastructure that will carry the trees away from our now-denuded hills and into your country. From you, we buy the fuel needed to feed the machines that will do this. From you, we buy the building supplies that will enable us to choke off our rivers and flood our farmlands so that we are electrified, at which point we will be able to use things like this black box here--which we will also buy from you. Meanwhile, you and your feiceanni dubh go down to Naucht to teach them to make sixty sheep out of thirty, and the wool goes north to become the sort of thing you’re wearing--which we will also buy from you. And, a few years down the road, Ideire becomes the paradise that the Cretid Nation has long been. Do I have you?”
	“That’s not the way I’d put it--”
	“I know, Aiv, it’s all much more simple and crude than your lovely presentation. But do I have you?”
	He didn’t answer.
	“Well,” Paigin said, with a deferential smile. “I thank the distinguished ambassador for coming to our city to teach us the wisdom of his people. You have certainly given us much to think about. And in return what can I do, but thank you for your time and wish you a safe and swift journey back home, or, to use one of those quaint and pithy expressions much in favor in my province...” Here she spread her hands and bowed her head slightly as if in greeting. “Thurcte bi thu agus do chapall ag teiridh.”
	Even to keep up the joke, most of the listeners couldn’t keep from laughing. The ambassador, who had been smiling at the conciliatory tone in her voice, looked around nervously. The Leader of Leaders stood up looking rather displeased.
	“Thank you, Paigin, for that display of all the diplomacy and tact we’ve come to expect from you,” he said. “This session is adjourned. Reconvene tomorrow morning for consideration of the ambassador’s proposal.”
	The hall erupted into activity. Leaders milled around, crossing the banister to the gallery, running up to the dais to cluster around the panelists or the speakers or the Leader of Leaders. Aine and I made our way to the aisle.
	Spindern was leading Cyrel down it. Cyrel had the black box hugged tight to his chest. He was also babbling something at her that seemed to be irritating her.
	“Theamh,” she called as they reached our row. “Cyrel here wants to know what that last thing Paigin said meant.”
	Aine turned red. I smiled.
	“Well, Cyrel, most shriias would think it inconsistent with the dignity of the profession to translate the first half for you,” I said. “But the second half works out to ‘and the horse you rode in on.’”
	I passed quickly up the aisle, towing Aine behind me. It was too late; Barant was surrounded by a crowd of leaders and was answering their questions. She was patient, and she was working the crowd; this was something she was good at. I knew she thought it was important for the Order; and she was probably right.
	“Let’s go, Aine,” I sighed. “She hasn’t got time, and neither do we, really. I guess...I’ll come back later, tomorrow maybe, and ask Morat.”
	“But it’s important,” Aine insisted. “Why can’t she make the time? This is her job.”
	“Yes,” I said, “but so is that. Come on, let’s go.”
	We made our way out. Several people found it necessary to congratulate me on my speech. I hadn’t intended to make it and I didn’t really feel better for having said it. I was ill thinking about what lay ahead of me and wanted to get back out into the fresh air.
	<Theamh.>
	<Barant?> I looked back at her; she was still talking to someone, not pausing or even blinking.
	<I do want to talk to you about that child.>
	<I know, but you’re busy and I have a commitment...>
	<Come to the Raed after it’s over. I’ll be working late. I always do.>
	<Thank you, Barant.>
	We sped out of the Seat into the courtyard.
	“Isn’t Paigin wonderful?” Aine breathed.
	“She’s quite something,” I said. “She played him like a wide-mouthed bass.”
	“She did, didn’t she?” We passed under the tilu tree in the reddened light of the declining sun. “She grew up in a little village up north near where they grow the melons. And now here she is.” Aine followed as I pushed open the door to the Mathair. “It’s bad to say it, maybe, dhiaoc, but it’s true--she was one reason I came to the scoil.”
	“Why bad?” I answered, towing her through the fortunately empty anteroom. “She’s certainly doing your province proud.”
	“I mean...because she’s politic, and not a shriia.”
	“Nothing wrong with politics when it’s done right,” I answered. “And I would say...name of the Spirit and all the little ones.”
	“What, dhiaoc?”
	Lilea had just emerged from one of the rooms and was standing in the hallway, hands pressed to her eyes.
	“She doesn’t look well,” Aine said tentatively.
	“Get in the habit,” I said. “She doesn’t just look not well. She looks like death in an oaken bucket.”
	Aine nodded. “I’m trying, dhiaoc.”
	“And you are making progress.” I started forward. 
	“It’s been a very educational week,” she said diffidently.
	“For you and me both.”

XVI.
Clearing the Air

	Lilea’s face looked a year older than when I’d last seen it. There were puffy bags under her eyes and her mouth was drawn into a frown of anxiety. The way she pushed her hair out of her face alone was enough to tell me she was exhausted.
	“Theamh. All the way down here? Again?”
	“You’d think I live here,” I said. “Actually, we’re on the way to my family’s house. I’d invite you along, but...”
	“...you like me too much,” Lilea finished. She sighed heavily.
	“How are you doing, Lilea?” I asked. “You said you hadn’t been sleeping?”
	“Not much I haven’t,” she groaned. “It must be these cases keeping me up.”
	“I’m sorry to hear it,” I said. “It must make it hard for you to get work done.”
	“I’m barely functional,” she agreed sadly. “See this?” She pushed up one of her sleeves to show us a large purple bruise. “I’m walking into doors now. Just out of fatigue. And this morning I almost fell down that staircase in the shriin and broke my neck.”
	I started guiding us down the hall. “We’re lucky you didn’t.”
	“I’m lucky I didn’t. It’s been one near-miss after another this past couple of days.”
	I clucked sympathetically. “Are you dreaming about them? The notborns?”
	“Apparently I’m too busy sleepwalking.”
	“You sleepwalk? I didn’t know that.”
	“Neither did I, until I woke up standing last night. I’d gone out onto the balcony. Idair knows what I was planning to do there.”
	There was a door open on the left side to a room that I could see was empty. “Come in here,” I said, dragging her by the arm into it. Aine followed, perplexed.
	“What for?”
	“There’s something I need to take up with you.”
	“I’ve thought and thought about what you said,” she continued, not even paying attention as I closed the door. “About them all being wealthy. I know it’s important, it must be important, and I just can’t...I just can’t...” She noticed that I had put a chair under the door handle so that it couldn’t be opened. “What are you doing, Theamh?”
	I shook the cieradh out of my sleeve. “What do you mean?”
	“I mean why have you just blocked the door,” she said, beginning to look alarmed. “What is this about? What are you doing?”
	I moved up closer to her, clutching the four-colored ball in one hand. “Something I should have done days ago.”
	I raised my hand. <Tabhair, mo siealnai.>
	Aine jumped back with a shriek as four kinds of light--green, yellow, pink, and electric blue--sprang up around the two of us.
	Lilea stared at me, now horrified. “What are you doing?”
	“This may hurt, but you’ll feel much better once I’m done.” 
	At my command the vigils wrapped around us in a cyclone of blended light. I fired a handful of showdust into the air. It settled around Lilea’s head in a green cloud.
	Lilea shrieked. It’s no reflection on her; she works in a line that doesn’t see so much of this kind of thing and anyone would be frightened to suddenly discover a spirit wrapped around her head and neck like some kind of ethereal scarf. Fortunately for her she couldn’t see the tendrils that were snaking from its exterior shell into her skull.
	“Get it off! Get it off!”
	So, no more tarbhfnaa about it being too dangerous for me. Well, that was a step forward, anyway.
	“It’s going to be difficult,” I said. “It’s not exactly wrapping you, but it’s not exactly possessing you either.”
	“I don’t care what it’s doing just get it off my head!”
	<Watch closely, Aine.>
	<I...I’m watching, dhiaoc.>
	Best thing to do would be try to get it to retract first, and then chase it off. <Give me a very short burst on its surface, Phredi.>
	A pink tendril unrolled and flicked across the curve above Lilea’s right ear. Sparks crackled along the path of contract. The green shell twitched.
	<Jayla, you give it a quick jab on the other side.>
	A yellow spurt flew out, shocked the green helmet and retracted. The green surged up in an angry spike after her. As it did so, it began pulling away from her head.
	<Zott, get under there.>
	A thin curtain of blue light rippled out from the cyclone and slipped in between Lilea’s head and the green entity, which now rippled angrily across its length.
	<Zott, any chance you get to cover more surface area you take it. Jayla and Phredi keep working it from opposite sides. But don’t hit it too hard.> I moved around to stand near the part he’d covered. <Cover me, Shaineen, I’m going in.>
	Following the train of Zott’s light into the space he had cleared, I dove into her mindspace. Lilea’s mind was pretty noisy, which you have to expect from a victim in this condition. I couldn’t read much, but that didn’t matter. I wasn’t looking to have a conversation or find out what her favorite color was. I was just looking for the intruder.
	At Jayla’s next lash I felt it quivering. The vibrations traced back to two main portions of her mindspace--my guess was, the professional knowledge and the motor functions, but with her mind in such turmoil everything was displacing itself. I brought my own energy out to meet it.
	<This is not your home.>
	It sent back a very unpleasant shock, but Shaineen absorbed the worst of it. I answered with my own, timed with Jayla’s next attack. It jerked up and out, away from me and after her.
	Shaineen and I rushed into the space it had left; it couldn’t regain its foothold. It wasn’t happy about that, but beyond trying to burn me there was nothing for it to do.
	<Jayla, lay off him. Phredi, give him a lighter touch.>
	At my next burst the thing drew back significantly. There was a very slight shudder as Phredi gave it a gentle tap. And, finally, it decided that Phredi was a less formidable adversary than I was, and fled her mindspace to do battle outside.
	<Wrap up her mindspace good and tight, Shaineen.>
	When Shaineen’s defense was secure around her, I left her head. It was to a strange spectacle that I returned--Aine not sure whether to be more scared of the vigils circling behind her or the thing in front of her, Lilea on her knees in the middle of the floor weeping and moaning, and every now and then a lazy pink tentacle snaking out of the circle, brushing across the surface, and retiring as a green torrent chased up after it.
	It couldn’t reach back to the circle where most of Phredi was--not without leaving Lilea. This it seemed to understand, since it always retracted in mid-chase. But Zott had increased his purchase on Lilea’s skull, and Shaineen had her mindspace wrapped on the inside. He was going to come off, one way or the other.
	I circled Lilea until I got to the part where most of it had now clustered. <All right, Jayla--on my mark, one burst as hard as you can right at the back of her head.>
	I brought the fire up into my hands. <Now.>
	Jayla shot out at it with all the violence of her angry light. It shrank away from her in panic--right into the beam of fire I brought out to it. I retracted the beam, stepping away to increase the pull. It struggled, but it came with me, slipping off her skull, the green helmet contracting as the blue wave spread around her.
	<And one more, Jayla, half-strength.>
	It shuddered, wavered, and came ripping off her skull toward me. Lilea collapsed into a heap on the floor, Zott enfolding her in his blue rain. I readied the capture space.
	<Well done, everyone-->
	A beam of blue lightning forked toward me.
	This time there were no convlusions--just a searing pain up my arm that broke the beam and sent the green thing flying away from me up toward the ceiling. I sent another beam out of my good arm toward it but it missed.
	<Get him! Don’t let him out!>
	Phredi and Jayla, who had the most energy to spare, closed the space above us, sealing three humans and one very angry green thing under a pink and yellow dome. The thing buzzed against the canopy while I got ready to try another capture.
	Before I could send the beam, I heard a scream of pain from Phredi. The pink light in the roof had started to ripple and thicken.
	<Jayla, help it out!>
	Yellow points jabbed out of the canopy into the green glob. It shuddered, convulsed, and then Jayla too was seized by a  throbbing, clotting motion that opened up a space in the canopy.
	<Zott, seal it off!>
	Blue light shot up to the gaps, but the thing had already passed through to the other side.
	The canopy dropped. The green thing flew across the room. Jayla, without my even asking her, wrapped around it like a frog wraps a fly.
	<Good girl, Jayla! Now-->	
	This was a scream I think even Aine and Lilea felt. The long tentacle attached to the green thing was writhing, shrinking and expanding, pulsing like the dark heart of that rapparan. It was doing whatever it was that Crann’s thief had done to the ether and to that rapparan. And whatever it was, it was killing her.
	<Let it go, Jayla.>
	She hung on, disbelieving.
	<It’s hurting you, Jayla! Let it go!>
	Reluctantly, she opened her grip. It flew out a window and disappeared, leaving a trail of still-sparkling showdust trickling down the sill.
	<Jayla, come here, let me see what he did to you.>
	Jayla floated toward me in irregular convulsive movements. Phredi approached too, misting around her as if in commiseration. She curled into a ball in my lap and sat there, still shuddering.
	<Shaineen, Zott, you can leave her now.>
	Green and blue light slid across the floor to pool around me. I stuck my hands into Jayla’s ball. At the center, sure enough, was a clump of tense, thick stuff that wasn’t exactly light but wasn’t exactly matter either.
	Not knowing whether it would help, I began kneading the lump with my hands. It wasn’t as tight as the rapparan’s had been--he hadn’t had the chance to work on her for long. My squeezing it didn’t seem to give Jayla pleasure, but it didn’t cause much pain. And as I worked at it, it became less and less palpable, and Jayla shuddered less often.
	“Lilea? Are you all right?”
	Aine had helped Lilea up into a sitting position, from which she was looking at me with a difficult-to-read expression.
	“I don’t know whether to thank you or hit you,” she said.
	“I’m sorry, I know it’s not a pleasant experience.”
	“Understatement.” She clasped her hands around the back of her head and closed her eyes with a sigh. “It’s a bad habit, Theamh.”
	“A little hypobole never hurt anyone.”
	“But you just told me--” Aine objected.
	Lilea laughed. “That’s one of a diaoc’s prerogatives,” she said. “Correcting in our students the habits we can’t break.”
	“She’s right, Aine,” I said, giving Jayla a final pat. “It is a bad habit. Barant tried to break me of it but she gave up eventually.”
	<You’re all right, Jayla. Rest a while. Phredi, Zott, Shaineen, thank you.>
 	I lifted up the cieradh. <A job well done that will have its reward, my friends. Teibhair seomra.>
	The vigils disappeared. They would be back on their plinths when I got home, standing sentry as they always did. I slid over to where Lilea was sitting.
	“Let me have a look. I promise not to read anything.”
	She lifted up her head, warily. I put my hand around the back of it.
	“All clear,” I said.
	Lilea shook her head suddenly, then drew a long breath and let it out. “You’re right, Theamh. Aside from the splitting headache, I do feel a lot better.”
	“See?”
	“So you think that thing was what...” She looked back at Aine, uncertainly.
	“It’s up to you, of course,” I said, “but I trust Aine completely.”
	Lilea looked at her. “So you think that was what’s been replacing the notborns.”
	“I think it’s a good bet. It was riding you so that it would know which targets to take, and when you linked with the notborn it would link along with you. Then it’d somehow displace the notborn and replace it with...whatever it’s replacing them with.”
	Lilea nodded. “But where did it get the replacements?”
	“I think,” I said, “that your erstwhile companion is of the same breed as the thing that’s trapped that child I’m looking for. It behaves the same way and it has the same power to affect spirituous matter.”
	“Which means...?”
	“There’s a connection,” I said. “What, who knows. But I think we’ve come across two different aspects of a much larger plan. It’s being carried out by these green things, but I don’t think it was masterminded by them.”
	“You think they’re drones? Some kind of guun?”
	I nodded. “Someone’s made these things and has sent them out to get the job done. They can self-defend and they know enough to perform the tasks they’re given. And the one in your head knew enough to try to kill you once you started to be aware of it.”
	“Kill me?” The light went on. “The staircase.”
	“And the balcony, and the fatigue. The classic pattern, which is another thing that makes me think they’re not complex creatures. First step: disrupt the host’s sleep so she’ll slip and bang her head by accident. If that doesn’t work, mess with the motor functions. Sleepwalking is the last resort--if something can’t invade your consciousness, it can still do you a lot of harm when you’re unconscious.”
	“But why didn’t it?” Aine broke in.
	“Didn’t what?”
	“Invade her consciousness? Wouldn’t that be easier?”
	“She’d have noticed when it started and she’d have given it a fight. Besides, if it had overtaken her consciousness someone would have noticed--if not me, Riina or Pridh. I don’t think this thing had the smarts to do a very convincing impersonation of Lilea.”
	“And it didn’t want me,” Lilea said. “It was after the notborns. Why go to all the trouble if it could do its job this way?” She sighed. “Since it did succeed, for so long...”
	“It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known.”
	“Theamh...do you think there are things like this haunting Riina? Or Pel?”
	The room was getting darker as the light waned. “I don’t know. I guess there might be.” I smoothed my hair down with one hand. “Mielen saw Pel, not you--and Mielen fits the pattern.” Lilea nodded, her jaw set. “I know you’re not going to like this, Lilea, but we’ve got to talk to her.”
	“If she’s being invaded, she should know,” she agreed. “Whether or not I like her.”
	“Where is she now?”
	“On call to a home delivery. This is her week for that.”
	“Well, at least she’ll be away from the notborns. When she gets back...”
	“I’ll let you know.”
	I nodded. She shook her head. And then, after a moment, we both started laughing.
	Aine looked at us, shocked. But it was nothing we could help. We were both so tired, and giddy, and so relieved to have the battle over with--and there are some things about a battle that are funny, horrible as it generally is. 
	“You and your pet spirits, you are something else. Especially that yellow thing curled up in your lap like a cat...”
	“Yeah, well, she purrs like a cat and she fights like one.”
	“Pel just better not ask me what it’s like, because I’ll tell her, and then you’ll have to chase her into Kengda before she’ll submit to it.”
	“I did it as carefully as I could...”
	“And you’re sure the cure isn’t worse than the ailment.”
	“At least the notborns will stay put now.”
	“Don’t get me wrong, Theamh,” she said. “I’m glad it’s gone. I just...” She wasn’t laughing now. “Did you read anything in there?”
	“Not to speak of. You mind was a little, shall we say, unsettled.”
	“There!” Aine cried. “You just did it again!”
	“Guilty as charged,” I said. “It’s the truth, though. Your mind was a little unsettled. And also a lot unsettled.” Lilea seemed relieved. “No, whatever secrets you were wanting to guard, they’re still secrets. From me, anyhow.”
	“Oh no.”
	“What?”
	Something had stricken the look of relief off her face and replaced it with one of panic. “I’m going to have to get scoured now.”
	I made a face. “That does suck, Lilea.”
	Even so, her gloom seemed disproportionate. It’s unpleasant, but it’s not excruciating.
	“I’m sorry I can’t return the favor,” I said. She waved a hand. “But there we are, you’re on the Council, I never will be, Idair’s will has been worked. But on the bright side, it will hurt a lot less than what just happened.”
	Lilea nodded, numbly. “I suppose...” She got to her feet, swaying a little at first. Aine and I stood up with her. “Theamh, if you were going to choose someone on the Council to scour you, who would it be? Aside from me, I mean.”
	“Aside from you? That’s a hard call...”
	“Who do you trust the most? Whose integrity do you have the most respect for?”
	She was looking at me with an out-of-place intensity, as if this were a life or death question instead of some bizarre kind of opinion poll.
	“But those are three different questions, Lilea. And I don’t see why--”
	“Answer them all then. Please. It’s important.”
	“Well,” I began, slowly, as Aine watched me like a bird watching a cat. “If I were going to choose someone to scour me, that wasn’t you, it would probably be Barant. She knows enough about me that there would be no unpleasant surprises. And of course she’s good--if there were something left she’d find it, even if it were hidden.”
	“And?” Lilea asked. Aine turned that burning stare on her now.
	“Who do I trust, aside from you? I guess...well, I don’t know. I trust Barant because she was my diaoc, but not the way you trust someone close to you. That kind of trust, I guess, I’d have to pick Slythe. I’m not sure I’d trust her to scour me properly, if I thought there was a problem. She’s more hands-on than head-oriented, you know.”
	Lilea nodded. “So the third question...”
	“Listen, Lilea, if you want to do freagair, get in line behind Aine.”
	“Just answer it. Please. As your payment for frying my poor head just now.”
	I sighed. “Talk about opportunities for trouble, answering a question like that...”
	“Just answer the question, Theamh.”
	“You’ll be surprised to hear it from me,” I said, “but I think it’s Morat.”
	Aine and Lilea shared the surprise. “Really.”
	“Really. It’s part of why she doesn’t like me, but...she’s just so devoted to the truth, and has done so much for shri--it’s her whole life, and she can’t understand why it couldn’t be mine. So we have our history, so she made that one great mistake I’ve never forgiven. She’s driven by one thing and that’s to do what’s right for our people and what’s right by Idair. It’s not her fault that she’s hard on those of us who don’t burn that pure.”
	Lilea’s eyes were watering. “Thank you, Theamh. That’s a big help to me.”
	“I’m curst if I can see why.”
	“You don’t need to know everything to be happy,” Lilea said, more cheerful now.
	“Third scroll, speech to the Lexicans,” Aine murmured.
	“You got the pick of the litter, like you said,” Lilea replied, clapping her on the back. “And now...I must be keeping you from your date with your mother.”
	“Fnaa, death, hell and blood,” I said, removing the chair. “Idair this is going to be a long day, with that thing ahead of us and then meeting with Barant...we’ll be lucky if we get home by midnight.”
	“Theamh?” Lilea said as I opened the door.
	“Yes?”
	“Can I ask you a favor?”
	“Anything.”
	“Please don’t report this until tomorrow. Don’t tell anyone what happened.”
	“Why not?”
	“I--it’s very important to me that I choose the person to scour me. If you report it, they’ll assign me someone. I’ll take care of it tonight myself, I promise, just don’t tell anyone until tomorrow.”
	“All right,” I said, dubiously. “But if anyone asks, you know...”
	“Oh, of course if someone asks,” Lilea said. “But if you can. It will mean a lot.”
	“You’ve bent enough rules for me,” I said. “Tomorrow morning I’ll send in the report. Tonight, find whoever you want and get yourself scoured so you can sleep easy for once, all right?”
	“Yes, Mathi.”
	“Oh, you’re one to talk.” I stopped in the hallway, looking at her. She still looked tired, her face white and drawn with the aftermath. But she looked more like herself. “Next time you find yourself sleepwalking you come to me, understand?”
	“Idair with you, Theamh.”
	“And you too.”
	We went down the hall. Aine was quiet, as I might have thought she would be. When we came out into the street, she took a sudden breath and turned to me.
	“Dhiaoc--”
	I waited. But whatever it was didn’t seem to be coming out after all.
	“Why did she ask you all those questions?”
	I shrugged. “It’s got me beat, Aine. She’s got some thing in her mind she doesn’t want people reading--something she apparently thinks is dangerous. I guess she wants to pick someone to scour her who’ll be able to deal with it.”
	We began walking toward the road that led through the Sixth. The sun was low, behind the buildings already, flooding the skyline with bright yellow light and making the roofs burn. “What do you think it is, dhiaoc?”
	“I have no idea.” The road presented itself before us--broad, cobbled, clean of horsefnaa or other detritus, bordered on both sides by those clean, bright storefronts, now burnished in the light of the sinking sun.
	“I’ve never been down here,” Aine said, so low it was almost a whisper.
	“I try to avoid it, myself.”
	Aine’s hand tightened around my arm with a fear normally reserved for vigils. “Is it really all right, dhiaoc? My coming?”
	“You’ll be as welcome as I am,” I said. “Of course, that’s not saying much.”
	She squared her shoulders and lifted her head. Still young, still scared of so much.
	“Come on,” I said, walking forward. “I know you’re nervous. So am I.”

	By the time we were approaching the house, two or three carriages and their horses had already passed us. The sun had dropped while we were on our way, and the guests had started arriving. I paused, staring up the road at the face of Craoibh Oir, lit up now with so many torches it looked like it was the Burning already.
	On the wide steps under the front door a couple was standing and chatting with my mother, while Frene silently took their coats and handed them off to a shadow inside the hallway. I looked at Aine. She looked at me.
	“I think we’d better try the kitchen entrance,” I said. “Unless you object.”
	“Object?” Aine repeated, staring up at the front door with the white face and round eyes of abject terror. “No, I’d much rather.”
	We plowed through the grass around the house, Aine gawking openly at it as we passed.
	“You’ve seen big houses before,” I said, a little testily.
	“Not like this one.”
	It’s true the City houses are built differently--they say, with an eye to comfort instead of strength; I say, with an eye to display rather than use. Bigger windows, lighter mouldings, stonework that’s decorative rather than intimidating.
	When I knocked, the kitchen door was opened by someone I didn’t recognize. “It’s about time you--oh, I’m sorry, shriia.” She stared at us, rubbing her hands on the skirt of her apron. “This isn’t the main entrance. You want--”
	“Is Iela in?”
	“I’ll have a shout. IELA!” she called. “Iela, there’s a shriia out here wants you!”
	I followed her in. The kitchen had become an inferno--a lair of snares and obstacles, of grates and fires and roasting things and strange people bustling around not really sure where they were going. Aine clung to my arm as we navigated it. 
	“I’m coming, I’m coming.” Iela rounded a corner, a pot of something in her hands. “Theamhin! Well, Herself will be pleased, at least she will be once you’ve cleaned up. Have you been playing with fire again?”
	“This is my apprentice, Aine,” I said. “Aine, this is Iela, head of the staff.”
	“Pleased to know you, child,” Iela said quickly. “Now get up the back stairs, I’ll send Frene to let Herself know you’re here. Fada’s got everything ready in your room.”
	“Thanks, Iela. I’ll just get out of your way now.”
	“That’s a good girl.” With a wink at Aine, she was off. I dragged Aine to the door and up the hidden stairway.
	“Is it always like that down there?” she panted as we hurried up the stone steps.
	“No. Usually it’s just Iela, Frene and the new girl.” I opened the door at the top.
	It swung out into a paneled library. When Aine had finally, tensely emerged, it shut seamlessly, its false panels blending in with the rest of the walls.
	Aine spun around, disoriented. “Where are we, dhiaoc?”
	“We’re in the library,” I said. “This is where my athair does most of his work.” 
	She walked over to the built-in bookshelves. “Are all these real?”
	“Yes, they are. Secular literature, mostly. The other wall has the professional tracts and so forth.”
	Aine turned. “What does he do, your athair?”
	“It’s complicated.” I peered into the hallway. “I think the coast is clear.”
	I strolled out into the hall and up toward my door, repressing the urge to dart furtively. Aine wasn’t repressing it as well as I was; the noise of the guests below was drifting up to the landing just around the bend. I slipped into the doorway.
	Since I’d left, they had changed my room; it was a guest room now, and all the things that had made it safe for me as a child were gone. There was a light yellow comforter on the bed, tucked into the corner under a large oil portrait of sean mathi in her youth. Mathi would never have trusted me with a carpet like this as a child, or with the stained-glass transom over the window that opened out onto the back gardens. Laid out on the dressing-table I’d never liked were the necessary implements--combs, brushes, boxes of face powder and jars of scent and paint and other things I wasn’t going to touch.
	I started unpacking my bag. “Well, here we are, Aine. Go have a look in the closet over there and see if you can find anything that works.”
	She was staring at the divan stretching its satin-covered length under the window. “Shouldn’t we...” Her voice trailed away. <Dhiaoc, why is she crying? Who is she?>
	<Who is who?>
	<The...on the bed, there, the little girl with the red hair.>
	I sighed.
	<Close your eyes and then look again.>
	She closed them. When she opened them again it was with a breath of surprise.
	“I’m seeing things again,” she said, abashed.
	“At least this time it’s not Lythril,” I said, pouring water into the basin. “That would be mighty disturbing.”
	“Who was it?”
	“Me.” I dipped a hand in the basin and began washing the marks off my shoulders. “Have a look in the closet. Try the ones toward the back, I was closer to your size then.”
	Aine pushed the heavy folding doors back and peered at the clothes hanging there, reaching out to touch one of the heavy brocaded sleeves. I started undoing the brooches. 
	“What color should I--” She turned around and saw that I was unrobing. Flustered, she turned back. The hooks slid along the pole as she pawed through my old dresses. 
	“You’re late.”
	I spun around, the fourth brooch in my hand and my hreapa dangling off me like the rind of a peeled apple. “Mathi.”
	Her hair was piled on top of her head in a complicated way I’d never know the trick of. The bracelets on one arm clacked as she brought it up to settle the gauzy scarf across her shoulders. “And you’re a mess. Couldn’t you wash before coming?” She picked up one of my hands to look at it. “What is this, soot? Where did this come from?”
	“I’ve been working,” I said, snatching my hand back.
	“Theamh--”
	<Mathi, do you have to do this in front of my apprentice?>
 	My mother turned her head toward the closet, where Aine had frozen in the hope of escaping detection. “And this must be your apprentice.” 
	Aine emerged guiltily, bowing stiffly toward her.
	“Aine ni hEmer na Ruadh,” she stammered. “At your service.”
	“Pleased to know you, Aine. I’m Ulnach, Theamh’s mother.” Her skirt fluttered about her knees as she crossed the room. “I hope you’re finding everything all right?” 
	“Yes, Aiv,” she said uncertainly.
	“I understand you’re Jiprani,” my mother said, rifling through the dresses. “We’ve taken on a servant from there--her name’s Fada. You’re not related by any chance?”
	“I...not that I know of, Aiv, but...”
	“You need something dark, I think,” she went on, pulling one of my old dresses toward her. “It’s a little late in the season, but since it’s evening I think you can get away with it. What do you think, Theamh?”
	I was just undoing the last brooch. I set them carefully down on the dressing table.
	“Theamh?”
	I lifted the hreapa over my head and began folding it.
	“Theamh, I’m talking to you.”
	“I’ll be done in a minute, mathi.” I stuck the pins into the bundle, muttering things that had nothing to do with the undoing ritual.
	“Well, I think this is the one for you. It’ll be a little short on you, but hems are going up this year.” It flopped onto the bed. “There are some hose in the wardrobe drawer that ought to fit you. Theamh can show you how to use these...”
	I turned around to see her uncapping jars on the dressing table. “They’ll help you accentuate your eyes and that pretty smile I know you must have.”
	Aine’s face begged me to intercede.
	“I’ll take care of her, Mathi,” I said. “You go see to your guests.”
	My mother turned. “I’m not so busy I can’t spend some time with my daughter,” she simpered.
	“All right then, I’ll be more direct,” I said. “You’re making Aine nervous, and you’re making me nervous. I’ll clean up and we’ll get changed and we’ll meet you there.”
	“I’m not making you nervous, am I, Aine?” my mother asked, with a coy smile.
	Aine’s mouth opened like a fish’s.
	“Or am I?” my mother continued, with a light musical little laugh.
	“Y...yes, Aiv, you are.”
	My mother stepped back, flustered. “I’ll...” She moved over to the bed and pulled the sleeves of the wine-colored dress she’d chosen into a slightly different arrangment. “I’ll just run down and see if anyone needs anything. I’ll see you later.” She swept out wearing the ghost of that earlier smile.
	“Aine...”
	“Please don’t be angry, dhiaoc,” she said, backing away. “I--I just--”
	“Aine!” I shouted, pulling her into a hug. “You’re in the habit!”
	I released her. Slowly comprehension dawned on her narrow, earnest face. “I am?”
	“Yes!” 
	She laughed, still a little amazed at what had just happened. “I am, amn’t I?”
	“Yes you are!” I took her hands and shook them. “Congratulations! It’s happened earlier than I thought it would.”
	“I’m in the habit.” She turned around, happier than I’d ever seen her. “I’m making progress.”
	“Of course you are, Aine.” She laughed. “It’s a good feeling, isn’t it?”
	“It--it is, dhiaoc.” She was pacing in little circles in the center of the room, trying to get used to it. “It’s a little scary, but...yes, yes, it’s a good feeling.”
	I tossed her the dress. “Step into the alcove and get this on you.”
	She trotted off through the curtains to the dressing area. I started wrestling myself into the blue dress. It wasn’t as difficult as I’d thought it would be. Since Istria’s departure I’d been dropping about an inch a year. Under the hreapa no one could really tell, but at times like this it was convenient, my pining away. One less thing for mathi to worry about. 
	“Dhiaoc?”
	“Yes?”
	“There’s this sort of...shelf thing...in the front. What do I do with...”	
	“It’s to hold up your chest,” I said.
	I wrapped the sash around my waist and tied it behind me. Then I picked up the brush, sat down at the table and started doing my hair.
	The mirror was a bit of a shock. There I was, staring back at myself, twenty-eight years old. Same face, only a little more worn, with the same frame of yellowish-red hair. Same green eyes with brown flecks, under the red eyebrows that were too bushy. Same spray of freckles across the bridge of my nose. And the same anxious look on it as I lifted its strands up and tried to get the net in just the right place.
	“Dhiaoc? Have I done this right?”
	I turned around. The dress actually fit her fairly well; it had tiebacks on the sides that wrapped it to fit her waist and hips and a neck that dipped low enough but not too low. It was in a dark almost-purple red material with bands of brighter red velvet outlining the neck and wrist, and in a broad false sash at the waist. It looked good on her--better than it ever had on me, certainly, with my bulging hips and too-heavy chest.
	“Let me see the back.” She turned around. The tiebacks trailed awkwardly from a purely utilitarian knot. “All fine except for this. I’ll fix it for you.”
	I started undoing the knot. Aine bent her head down to look at herself.
	“Dhiaoc?”
	“Yes?”
	“So this is normal, how the front looks?”
	“Yes.” I fluffed the bow out as best I could, stepping around to look at her. “You need hose and a pair of slippers. Otherwise, you look fine. It’s a good color for you.”
	I was addressing the top of her head; she was nervously stroking the sash and the folds of the skirt as she stared at the dress. “This...shelf thing...”
	“The bodice.”
	“It doesn’t look right.”
	I smiled. “All aesthetics are relative, Aine. To the other guests, it does look right.”
	She looked in the mirror. “What’s the point?”
	“You mean of the bodice?”
	“Yes.”
	“Well, the reason given is that it provides support,” I said. “I think mainly the point is to push ‘em up where everyone can see ‘em, but you can’t get people to admit that.”
	Aine looked up at me in shock. I wasn’t really sure what I looked like and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I liked the dress as far as the colors and the materials, but I had never really liked what it looked like on me. When I entered the scoil I used to hear the others talk about how hard it had been to say goodbye to their favorite outfits. For me, that was one of the attractions. No one really looks good in a robe.
	“That’s right, Aine,” I said. “You’re in the Sixth, where suddenly showing your bosom is a sign of culture and sophistication instead of proof that you have no shame. What a difference money makes, eh?” I tossed her a pair of black hose and some black slippers to match. “Try these on, I hope they fit.”
	She sat down obediently on the bed and started putting a foot into the stockings. I went back to the mirror and my hair.
	It’s hard to get it right--you pull it back from the top and sides, kind of pile it up in a loose bundle, put the net over it and then shove the pins through it to hold it in place. The rest of your hair dangles down around your neck in what would be tight little ringlets if I ever let anyone curl my hair. It curls itself just fine.
	By the time I was done Aine had pulled up the hose, which seemed to work fairly well, and the slippers. Her hair was chin-length, like all the scoilins’, and too short to do anything with. She looked, otherwise, like any eligible daughter of a big house going out into society. Except for her look of chagrin and unhappiness.
	“Dhiaoc, I can’t do this. Look at me.”
	“I’m looking.”
	“I...” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I can’t.”
	“I’ll get you a scarf.” I pulled one of the drawers open and began rooting through it. I came up with a black lace thing that was opaque enough to give her some peace of mind. “Now if only I knew how to knot these things properly...but I don’t.” 
	I had thrown it over her shoulders and was fiddling with it anyway when I heard a very gentle and very timid knock at the door to the room.
	I opened it. Fada, in a uniform that actually fit her, was in the hallway, curtsying nervously.
	“The lady of the house sent me,” she said softly. “To help you dress.”
	Ah well, it wasn’t her fault. And we were in need of assistance. “Come on in.”
	Aine looked up. “Help has arrived,” I called. “Fada, this is Aine. Aine, this is Fada.”
	Fada dropped another curtsy. “At your service, Aiv.”
	Aine looked pained. “I...I’m not anyone’s Aiv.”
	Fada glanced anxiously in my direction. 
	“Oh for Idair’s sake you don’t have to Aiv her for my benefit,” I said. “Or me. We’re all captives here, one way or the other.” Fada looked frightened. “Don’t you remember me, Fada? We met the other day. I’m Theamh, the puce sheep of the family.”
	Sudden recognition lit her eyes. Her whole body seemed to relax. “I’m sorry, shriia, without the hreapa I didn’t know you.” 
	“Yes, well, without it I hardly know myself,” I said, with a glance in the mirror. “Can you help poor Aine with the scarf?”
	Fada took the scarf off and redraped it. “Iela’s been teaching me,” she said. “I’m awkward still, I’m afraid.”
	“The lady said you were from Jipran?” Aine asked.
	“Yes--near Nocnarea.” 
	“My seanmathi’s people are from there,” Aine said shyly. “The na Ruadhs...”
	Fada finished with the scarf. “You’re joking.” Aine shook her head. “My cousin joined with a na Ruadh not two years ago. Hielna, her name is, Hielna ni Dhunta.”
	“You’re Vealmon’s cousin?” Aine demanded, forgetting to be nervous.
	Fada nodded.
	“You’re a na Annain.” 
	“And you’re a na Ruadh.” They looked at each other, on the point of laughter. “What on earth are you doing here?”
	“I’m the shriia’s apprentice,” Aine said.
	“What, you can’t even use my name in the third person?” I interjected.
	“Oh, how wonderful,” Fada said, lifting her hands. “I had a cousin in the scoil but she never finished. I always thought it would be so exciting, but I have no head for writing. And the spirits scare me.”
	“They scare me too,” blurted Aine. 
	“Ah well,” she said. “These people scare me, but I’m getting used to it.”
	“You’ve lasted this long,” I said. “You must have great strength of character.”
	Fada seemed about to laugh, and then suddenly her mouth snapped shut and her eyes went distant. Aine approached her, concerned.
	“Are you all--”
	“You’ll have to excuse me,” she said, half-curtseying before she remembered to forget. “I’m needed in the ladies’ cloakroom downstairs.”
	“I’m glad to know you, Fada,” Aine said, as she was on her way out the door.
	Fada’s head looked back over her shoulder at us. “I am too.” Her eyes dropped, her head turned, and she flitted away down the hall.
	Aine rounded on me. “Your mother is linked to her?”
	I nodded. 
	“That’s--that’s--isn’t that illegal?”
	“Not if the employee gives voluntary and informed consent prior to employment.”
	“What a nightmare!”
	“See, this is why Fada’s job title is ‘new girl.’ Nobody can put up with this for long.” I swung my legs off the chair and put it back by the dressing table. “Are we ready to go? I don’t want mathi to chase me down.”
	Aine was looking at the vials and boxes on the dressing table. “May I ask you something, dhiaoc?”
	“Of course.”
	“You were in scoil once.”
	“Yes.”
	“So she...she must know we’re not allowed to wear jewelry or put on paint.” Her eyes returned to mine, large and unsettling. 
	“I expect she does.”
	“But she wanted me to wear it.”
	“Mathi doesn’t believe,” I said.
	Aine continued watching my face until I started to feel a little uncomfortable.
	She drew herself up with that fragile determination. “I’m ready.”
	Our slippers made very little noise on the hall carpet, although the patter became audible once we passed onto the landing. The chairs and tables had been set up, but nobody was there; they were still in the hall chatting while the outside help passed among them with glasses of sparkling juice and trays of haons beagi. 
	Aine and I leaned over the banister. It was an impressive sight--elaborately dressed hair, sparkling jewelry, bare shoulders and bosoms swathed in expensive fabric, and the squared shoulders of the men in their frock coats with the thick braid trim that had inexplicably become this spring’s must-have. And the perfectly round rims of crystal glasses, the precise arrangement of the food on the trays, the practiced and graceful gestures of arms and heads, the flash here and there of a flaring skirt. 
	“Well, Aine,” I said, giving her a comradely pat on the back. “An hour ago we were doing battle with a guun, now we’re about to mingle with our country’s richest citizens. On the way home, you can tell me which experience you found more frightening.”
	Aine’s throat constricted as she swallowed. “I just hope I won’t embarrass you, dhiaoc. I don’t know the correct things to do.”
	“You’re going to be a shriia. Right and wrong are your business; correct and incorrect aren’t. That’s what being in the habit is all about. Hold your head up, tell the truth, and take no fnaa from anyone.” I patted her on the shoulder. “I’m proud of you, Aine. And I will be no matter what kind of havoc you wreak down there.”
	She smiled, warily. “Thank you, dhiaoc.”
	“All right then,” I said, starting for the staircase. “It’s showtime.”

XVII. 
Occupational Hazards

	Descending the staircase made me suddenly conscious of everything wrong about how I looked. My dress was still in good shape--but it was old, and surely that was obvious. And blue wasn’t the right color for me; it was just the color I liked best. The gold trim would pick up the accents in my hair, but that was the only thing right about my ensemble. And of course I was carrying it with all the grace and elegance of a Nauchtian buffalo. But there was nothing I could do about it now.
	Frene appeared at my elbow. “Shall I announce you, ladies?” he said, with that deferential little bow that masked so very much.
	“Tease me if you want, but lay off poor Aine, she’s terrified. Look at her.”
	He glanced in her direction without appearing to do so. She was standing next to me at the foot of the stairs, turning her head in slow panic from one guest to another, seeming to have shrunk since we came off the landing.
	“I’ll just tell Herself I took care of it while she was in the powder room,” he whispered. Gratefully, I took Aine’s elbow and piloted her into the hall.
	<Where do they even find these fabrics?>
	<The mysteries of dressmaking remain opaque to me.>
	<What do we do?>
	<Find someone to talk to.>
	<Who?>
	<There’s Athi, I’ll introduce you to him.>
	<I’ll be glad to know him, dhiaoc.> And, so low she probably thought I couldn’t hear it, Aine thought, He’s probably all right. She must have come from somewhere. 
	We started toward a knot of men by the punch bowl. They were all well into their fifth decade, grizzled or bald as Idair had pleased to deal with them, faces lined with the stress of a life spent among money and things. I had a hard time remembering their names; they all sort of looked alike to me. 
	“...oh, yes, of course, we’ll have to,” one of the bald ones was saying as we approached. “One day. We can’t go on like this forever. But think of the dangers.”
	The man he was speaking to rubbed his chin, preparing to answer. He was a little taller than the others, with almost-white hair cut short around his head and just the slightest beginning of a stoop in his shoulders. The flesh on his face and neck had shrunk a little with age, giving his nose and chin sharper outlines, and I knew that for others this meant that air of authority was even more commanding. For me, it reminded me of how fragile he was in some ways, the shyness underneath that authority, the brittle shell of reserve around his anxiety, his kindness and his wish to make happy. 
	“Naturally,” he said, passing a hand over his thinning hair. “We have to expect them to want all the advantage on their side. They’re after their own profit. That’s the only reason they’re doing this. But there’s no reason their profit can’t also be our profit.”
	His eyes left his listener’s face and traveled around the circle. Halfway through they caught sight of me. “Theamh!” he called. Then, with an almost apologetic little aside to his friends, “I’m sorry, Lefray, this is my daughter Theamh home for a visit.” The circle parted a little for us. I went up and gave him a stiff little greeting kiss on the cheek.
	“Glad to see you, Athi,” I said. “This is Aine.”
	“Oh, yes,” he said, bowing toward her. “I’m glad to know you.”
	“So am I,” Aine said tentatively.
	“Theamh says you’re making great progress.”
	Aine glanced down in some confusion. “I...I try very hard, anyhow.”
	“I’m sure you do,” my father said. “Here, Theamh, you know Lefray...”
	“Pleased to see you again,” Lefray said, bowing. “Last time I think it was just after you got your orders. They must be keeping you busy.”
	“Yes, well, it is a very demanding job,” I said. 
	“...and Cullugh...”
	A short, round, compact man with a head shaped like a pratai nodded at me. “I forgot you had one in the family, Flahn. So what do you think of this free trade proposal, Theamh? You must have thoughts.”
	“Oh--please--let’s not talk politics,” I said. 
	“Not talk politics? What else is there?” The rest of the group laughed.
	“There’s trade,” said one of the others.
	“But trade is politics,” Lefray rejoined.
	“Too true it is,” I said.
	“Well, there’s one thing we agree on,” Lefray added.
	“But seriously,” Cullugh insisted. “I’m interested to hear how the clergy will react to this. I know you’re a conservative lot, but--”
	“I think it’s clear what she thinks,” cut in another one.
	I hadn’t noticed him before, he’d been so quiet. But the circle also included one of the business men who’d been on the dais.
	“I don’t have you, Wous,” Cullugh answered.
	“Your daughter turned up at the hearing,” Wous said, looking at my father with a mixture of amusement and truculence.
	“You didn’t tell me you were going, Theamh.”
	“I had to see Barant about something else and she brought me along. I hadn’t meant to participate.”
	“You didn’t have any problem finding your voice,” Wous grumbled.
	“Has it been a good quarter for you, Athi?” I asked, trying to turn the topic.
	“What do you care?” laughed Wous. “Magic and selling have nothing to do with each other, isn’t that right?”
	He said it in that tone I hate--too jovial to take offense at, too pointed to be a joke. What are you supposed to do? Take it seriously and be accused of having no sense of humor? Laugh and give the impression you don’t care about what’s closest to your heart?
	“Yes, it is,” said Aine.
	She was looking straight at him. He was surprised to see her suddenly entering the conversation after her long silence.
	“Yes, let’s hear from the younger generation,” Cullugh said eagerly.
	“Don’t you want the world you grow up in to be a good one?” Wous demanded. “Don’t you want to see your family, your parents and your brothers and sisters, well-cared for and comfortable? Wouldn’t you like to see Ideire get richer?”	
	“Not at your price,” she said.
	“It’s the scoil training does it,” Wous said, more to the others than to us. “They raise them on the idea that wealth is bad, that money is evil, and so of course they’re going to be against trade. They don’t even think before they take a position--Idair didn’t like money, so of course the rest of us aren’t to have it.”
	“That’s not true,” Aine said.
	Wous was beginning to look a little irritated. “What, that Idair didn’t like money?”
	“No,” Aine said. “You said it was the scoil made me give that answer. It’s not.”
	“Come on, Theamh,” my father said, genially. “You can’t really say it would be bad for people to be better-off, can you? I mean, you don’t want people to suffer.”
	“No, I don’t,” I said. “If I thought trade with the Cretid Nation would make everyone in our country happier, in equal measure, I’d be all for it.”	
	“In equal measure,” Wous repeated. “That’s the Council catchphrase.”
	“It’s not just the council,” Aine said. “Didn’t you listen to Paigin?”
	Wous waved a hand dismissively. “So the Jiprani don’t understand the benefits. It’s not the first thing that’s escaped their comprehension.”
	“I come from Jipran,” Aine said, her hands folded in front of her and her eyes locked on his with quiet obstinacy. 
	“So maybe you can tell me then,” Wous said aggressively. “Why should a bunch of people who after all live on the ocean object to a trade policy that would finally create a shipping industry in this country? It’s the one thing that would lift them out of poverty.”
	“If Jipran could sustain a real port city it would already have one,” Aine said. “We haven’t got a decent harbor. We’re not going to forget that just because some beyond-borderer tells us different.”
	“But I think what Wous means,” my father said, “is that to have more of a shipping industry here, in general, would help Jipran. There’d be more jobs for you.”
	“And a bigger market for fish, too,” Wous said. “This is all about volume.”
	“Volume?” Aine repeated, starting to look lost.
	Once he saw her at a disadvantage, Wous became friendly, almost paternal. “You see, our profit comes out of the difference between what we pay the fishers for their catch and what we get for it at the markets. We can only buy and sell so many fish because of the size of the market, so the difference on each individual fish, added together, doesn’t come to much. But if we’re allowed to sell fish to the north, we can quadruple the volume, and that means almost quadrupling the profits. We’d have to charter larger boats, and make more trips, but we wouldn’t have to pay any more for the actual fish.”
	“I see,” Aine said. “So you’re a dealer, is that it? You deal in fish?”
	“And other marine produce,” Wous said. “You must know of na Fir mac Lir?”
	“Yes,” Aine said curtly.
	“I’m Wous mac Lir na Preofat.”
	Aine stared at him. “Are you.”
	<All right, Aine, all I ask is that you don’t actually spit on him.>
	“Ah, I thought so,” he said. “Your people are with one of our competitors. Which is it--Dhiolai na mBan?”
	“No,” Aine said, with that anger I’d only seen once before coming back. 
	“Pisce na hUisce, then.”
	“Don’t let him keep trying all night,” Cullugh broke in. “Which outfit are your people with, Aine?”
	“In a way, with Fir mac Lir,” Aine said, giving Wous a smoldering glare. “My people sell fish to your people.”
	Wous coughed. “So your people are fishers.”
	“It’s the dress,” Aine said. “I can see how that would confuse you. There is, after all, no way my family could afford to buy me something like this.”
	“Naturally with a larger market--” Wous began.
	“--you would pay us the same prices,” Aine answered.
	“But you’d sell more fish,” Lefray added, coming to his colleague’s rescue. “Your people have a profit margin too.”
	“We can’t catch more fish than can be got in a day’s labor, can we?”
	“With modernized methods--” Wous said.
	“Do you think I am a complete moron?” Aine suddenly burst out. “You just stood there and explained to me how your profit depends on my loss!”
	“Nobody thinks you’re a moron, Enya,” my father said, genuinely concerned. “You’re obviously a very bright girl. Until you learn how the laws of trade works it’s hard to understand them, that’s all.” He clapped Wous on the shoulder with one hand. “Don’t press it, Wous. Are your studies going well, Enya? Theamh teaching you properly?”
	Aine was effectively distracted. “Yes, Aiv. She’s been very good to me.”
	“Good, good,” my father nodded. “And you like the work?”
	“Oh yes,” Aine said. “It terrifies me, but I wouldn’t have any other.”
	“Well, that’s good,” he answered, looking over her head. His eyes flickered, then came back to me. “Your mother wants to speak to you, Theamh--by the drinks table.”
	I turned. Indeed she was, deep in conversation with a curly-headed man whose suit looked fresh from the shop and who wore his braid trim thicker than anyone.
	<Oh no. Not another thurking anthropologist.>
	<It means a lot to her, Theamh.>
	I sighed. “If you’ll excuse us.” <Come on, Aine, it’s time to retire victorious.>
	We bowed our way out of the circle.
	<Why doesn’t she just call you when she wants you?> Aine asked.
	<This is one of the perks of being a shriia,> I answered. <Soon as my mindstrength got better than hers I set up a block. I can call her, but she can’t call me.>
	We had now come upon the little group by the corner of the drinks table. My mother laid a hand gently on the braided shoulder of her companion. “Brendan, this is my daughter Theamh, the shriia,” she said, “and her apprentice, Aine. This is Brendan mac Alston. He’s down here from beyond the border.”
	“So I gathered,” I said.
	He looked a little surprised. “May I ask how?”
	I glanced at the braid. “You overdo it.” 
	Brendan laughed. “Yes, I know, the nuances escape us. There’s nothing we can do about that. I wouldn’t, for instance, have known you were a shriia unless your mother had told me. Since you’re not in the habit.”
	“Yes she is,” Aine answered defensively.
	He looked bemused. “But...so is this another uniform for social occasions?”
	“The poor fellow is confused,” I explained to Aine. “He means I’m not in hreapa.”
	“So what is this other ‘habit’ you spoke of?” he asked, feigning nonchalance.
	I hate giving out information to these people. But it was a direct question, and if I refused to answer it I would only convince him that this was a closely guarded secret.
	“The habit of telling the truth,” I said. “It’s a stage every apprentice has to get to before taking orders. Aine just reached it today. I’m very proud of her.”
	“And so that’s why she was over there offending Wous,” my mother said.
	“I’m sorry, Aiv,” Aine began.
	My mother turned a smile on her. “That’s all right, child, I don’t blame you--”
	“Actually,” Aine went on, struck by a thought, “I’m not sorry. I mean, I’m sorry to have caused you grief, since you’re my host, but I’m not sorry I offended Wous.”
	My mother was taken aback; Brendan appeared highly gratified. “So this ritual, is it something the scoil has charge of, or do you perform it yourself?”
	“What?” I asked.
	“When your apprentice reaches this stage. Is it as part of a group, or does the rite involve isolation?”
	“What are you talking about?”
	Brendan backed up. “How does one get ‘in the habit’?”
	“One makes an effort to tell the truth at all times,” I said. “Then, eventually, it’s not an effort, it becomes second nature. And you’re in the habit. End of story.”
	He looked a little disappointed. “So there’s no formal ritual to mark it.”
	“No, there isn’t.”
	“But it must be very important,” he said. “That’s the foundation of your whole order, isn’t it? Telling the truth?”
	“Yes,” I said.
	“It just seems odd,” he persisted. “It being such an important step, that you wouldn’t mark it with something.”
	“Why?” Aine asked.
	Brendan didn’t seem to have an answer to this question. “So how do you feel, now that you’re in the habit?”
	“It’s a great responsibility,” Aine said. “But it’s wonderful. It’s...” She paused, frowning as she looked for the word. “What’s the word, dhiaoc, the one you used that time--”
	“Liberating,” I said.
	“Yes! Liberating.”
	“When you go through your Ordeals,” Brendan pushed, “will that feel the same?”
	Aine’s face paled. “We don’t talk about that.”
	“Why not?”
	Aine looked at me.
	“Aine can’t talk about them because she doesn’t know what’s involved. I can’t talk about them because I’m under orders to preserve the secret.”
	“Even from your apprentice?” Brendan raised an eyebrow.
	“Especially from her,” I said. “We don’t keep secrets for the fun of it. Anything we hide, we hide for a compelling reason.”
	Brendan sighed as his eyes took on a sort of soft, sentimental shine. “I suppose you don’t let outsiders observe these things.”
	“You suppose correctly.”
	“I know...but I’d so love to see it. But there’s no hope, is there?”
	“With Idair all things are possible,” I said. “However, your hope is slim at best.”
	Suddenly his face was transformed. “But I could possibly? See it happen?”
	“Don’t tease him,” my mother said. “You couldn’t, Brendan. Not as you are.”
	“What would I have to do?”
	“Well,” I said, “first you’d have to undergo ransa. Then you’d have to enter the scoil, spend six years--or more, you’re a beyond-borderer and it would probably take closer to twenty--learning the basic skills, then anywhere from two to five years in apprenticeship, and then, when you finally were ready...”
	“But I thought yours was an excusively gynocentric religion,” he said.
	“Well, that’s why you’d have to undergo ransa.”
	“Which would involve what?” he asked. 
	I laughed. “Come on, Aine, there must be some other people we haven’t met.”
	“Which would involve what?” he called after us. But we were already on our way toward the entrance, through which I had just seen Darin walk.
	<You think he’d actually do it?> Aine asked.
	<Not in a million years.>
	<Why is he so interested, anyhow?>
	<It’s his job. They come down here, try to find out whatever they can and then they go back to their homes and write about it.>
	<People pay them to do this?>
	<It surprises me too.> Darin finally spotted me.
	“Theamh!” He strode forward, moving with ease in his native costume. Darin refused to wear our formal dress. “Your men are insane when it comes to evening wear,” he’d told me. So there he was, in his old black-and-white thing, with the black band wrapped around his neck and knotted in a bow underneath his chin.
	“So you came to watch the carnage,” I said. “Aine, I warn you, is now in the habit.”
	“Congratulations! You must be very pleased,” he said to her. She nodded. “So, what do you think of Theamh’s little place here?”
	“It’s not my place any more,” I said.
	“It’s very...different,” Aine said. “From what I’m used to.”
	“I’m sure it is.” Darin swiped a glass from a passing server. “I’m still getting used to it. And I’ve been coming in here, off and on, for thirty years.”
	We moved out into the room, Aine still glancing around trying to take it all in. “So, you’ve turned up, it must be about time to start dinner,” I said. 
	Darin drained his glass and lowered it. “I hope she’s got me seated near you.”
	There was a subtle change in the ambient noise. Above us I could see the musicians getting ready on the platform, and people meandering up the staircases in threes or fours, drifting leisurely toward the tables. “Perfect timing, Darin. You sure you’re not from around here?”
	“Positive.” We began climbing the steps. Aine put a hand out to brush the polished wood of the banister. More wood in this staircase than in my entire house, was what she was probably thinking. Her feet moved slowly and carefully in their slippers, betraying the anxiety that her face was masking. It was something I recognized--the hesitancy, the fear of stepping wrong, the sense that she was not really allowed here. Of course for her it would be different. I had grown up thinking of this as my birthright, until things turned and I became an exile. Aine had always seen this world as closed, off-limits, alien. 
	I wondered if I had done right to bring her. I had assumed wealth would make the argument against itself, but why should Aine react the same way I had? What if she developed a taste for it? What if she got comfortable here? Just because I never had, that was no reason to believe no one else could.  
	Aine hung back by the balcony as I plunged into the seating area, looking for the card with my name on it. It was on a table near the musicians’ area, which was good. Scanning the other placecards I noticed Aine’s name, and Darin’s. I waved them over.
	“You find the place with your name at it and sit there,” I said. Aine, dubious, assumed the chair two places to my left as Darin slid into the one next to hers. She stared at the card, then reached out and lifted it gingerly with her fingers.
	“It makes me nervous,” she said in answer to my questioning stare.
	“I know.” I picked up my own namecard. “Just rip it up, most of the guests do.”
	Aine glanced over at the next table. Athi had just led Wous and his wife to seats near his, and all three of them were busy tearing up their namecards. Relieved, Aine took the end of hers in her teeth and ripped it across with a decisive wrist motion. I laughed and began folding mine, running over the creases with my thumb.
	“Ah, the ceremonial destruction of the placecards,” Darin smirked, twirling his around in his fingers. “Times like this I wish I had a camera.”
	The chair between me and Aine scraped back. “I don’t,” said Brendan, sitting down and pulling up to the table. “Photography changes everything. As soon as you set up the camera people start acting self-conscious and then it’s no good.”
	Mathi’s revenge. I unfolded my card and started tearing it along the creases into triangular shapes. I kept at it until the noise from Brendan’s mind became a nuisance.
	“No,” I finally said.
	“No what?”
	“No, there is no ritual significance to the shapes.”
	He turned to Aine. “You said it made you nervous?”
	“Of course. It’d make anyone nervous.”
	Darin, feeling some compunction about letting his fellow-countryman twist in the wind, leaned in to explain. “Writing someone’s name down is the first step in casting a spell against them. So of course they’re not pleased to see that someone’s done it.”
	“Ah.” Brendan nodded. “You destroy the paper so the writer won’t have power over you.” Aine nodded. “There are analogues among some of the more primitive tribes of eastern Dubhinis--although it’s more images than words, many of them are still at the pictographical stage. But among the--”
	“Brendan, do you mind choosing another topic?” I said. “Darin’s giving Aine a headache.”
	Darin looked at me, then at Aine. “Am I really?”
	Aine nodded. “You should just say it,” she said. “It makes less noise that way.”
	He threw back his head and laughed, a big laugh unlike the sardonic chuckles he was prone to. Brendan fidgeted slightly, tapping the edge of his placecard with one finger. “Of course I meant ‘primitive’ only in the sense that they are still pre-industrial...”
	“I know what sense you meant,” Darin said, his mirth suddenly evaporating.
	Brendan shrank in his chair, and looked around past our faces, trying to drop out of view. I was puzzled as to how Darin had quelled him. All I could tell was that Brendan was painfully uncomfortable and that Darin, angry still, was at least more at ease. It had been a sudden little drama, one I hadn’t understood.
	The chair on the other side of me slipped back. It had been drawn away by the large, knotted hand of a tall man with thinning black hair slicked back over his speckled scalp. His other hand was adjusting the sit of his braided frockcoat with that controlled, but nervous precision I had unfortunately become familiar with. 
	“Theamh ni hUlnach,” he said, with a watery smile. “An unexpected pleasure.”
	“Unexpected, certainly,” I said. 
	He turned, draping one arm along the back of the chair. “And you must be the famous Darin mac Donald. I’m pleased to have the chance to meet you, though I’ve long known you by reputation.”
	“Darin mac Donald, this is Bric mac Clos,” I said. 
	Darin nodded. “Pleased to meet you, Bric. Although, as you say, I’ve long known you by reputation.”
	If Bric detected the insult he showed no sign of it. “And your charming companion?”
	Aine swallowed. 
	“Aine ni hEmer, my apprentice,” I said. “And this is Brendan mac Alston, an anthropologist from over the border. You two should have a lot to talk about. Perhaps you’d like to sit next to each other?”
	Brendan turned those hungry eyes on Bric, who met his stare with perceptible revulsion. “The shriia is having her little joke,” Bric said. “I’m just a lawyer, of no interest to a scholar like yourself.”
	“Oh, don’t sell yourself short, Bric,” I cut in. “Why, just a couple of years ago he defended the most notorious dark user of my generation, and almost got her off.”
	“Really?” Brendan was practically salivating. “That’s a story I’d love to hear.”
	Bric smiled. “If you’d like to come down to my office sometime I’ll be glad to tell it to you,” he said. “The exchange rate varies, but I believe right now my professional services are worth about two hundred Cretinias an hour.”
	Brendan sat back, his enthusiasm considerably dampened. 
	“I’m sorry to disappoint, but I make it a policy never to discuss work in a social context,” Bric went on, surreptitiously sweeping his namecard off the table with one hand and crumpling it up. “One must make these distinctions, or life isn’t worth living. And besides, these good people already know the story.”
	<Mathi.>
	<Everything all right at your table, Theamh?>
	<Mathi, did you have to seat me at Bric’s table?>
	<I thought you’d enjoy talking to Mielen.>
	<What’s Mielen got to do with it?>
	<Bric is seeing Geraine now.>
	<How awful for her.> Mielen hadn’t said anything about this. Then again, she’d had other things on her mind; and “my mother is dating a Minion” must be an awkward thing to say.
	<I want you to be polite to them, Theamh. This is the first relationship she’s had since she and Mor separated and she doesn’t need your sarcasm.>
	By now Geraine had taken her seat, and next to her Felthan was pulling out a chair for Mielen. Mielen smiled bravely and waved at me from across the table. Well, so there we were, the eight of us: Mielen and her husband, her mother and Bric, me and Brendan, Idair help me, and Aine and Darin. What a recipie for disaster.
	“How are you, Mielen?” I called.
	“Much better,” she answered, putting a hand on Felthan’s shoulder. He looked at me and nodded.
	So she’d told him. Geraine took Bric’s hand in hers and leaned forward to address herself to me.
	“It’s such a pleasure to see you again! Ulnach told me you were coming, or I wouldn’t have brought Mielen. She’s not a big fan of formal parties.”
	Or of my mother’s. “Well, neither am I, but here I am.” I made the introductions. The musicians were now assembled on their platform, and the music began as the hired help started serving the first soup course.
	“Edraw couldn’t be here,” Geraine said. “But he sends his regards.”
	“Thank you,” I said, giving my soup bowl a slow quarter-turn. I had seen Edraw a few times since entering the scoil and it had always been awkward. Now he was joined to someone else, and perhaps that would change things, but I still had no particular desire to catch up with him. Mielen, sensing my discomfort, picked up the ball.
	“So this is your apprentice,” she said, turning to Aine. “How do you like living with Theamh? Isn’t she a slob?”
	Aine started, splashing soup onto the tablecloth. “Yes, she is,” she said, reluctantly.
	“Mathi always said I’d picked up her bad habits,” Mielen laughed, turning to Geraine. “But now I have my own house, I’m much different, aren’t I?”
	“Yes, dear.” Geraine patted Bric’s hand. “The two of them were close as two blades of grass when they were younger. Inseparable.”
	“Really,” said Bric. “I wouldn’t have thought it.”
	“Oh yes,” Geraine babbled on. “That’s how she and Edraw met. We thought it would be a brilliant match, but she got the call and broke his heart, poor thing...”
	“Now mathi,” Mielen interrupted. “It was all a long time ago, and Edraw’s happy now, and so’s Theamh, aren’t you, Theamh?”
	I stared into my soup.
	“So Bric,” Darin said suddenly. “If your time is worth that much, poor Shearer must owe you his firstborn child by now.”
	“I’m pleased to say Dr. Shearer no longer requires my services,” Bric said. “It didn’t take long. The charge had no merit.”
	Before Darin could get into it, Brendan had to put his oar in. “Would that really be possible? I mean for someone to owe someone else a child as payment. There are so many references to that in the archives.”
	“Archives?” Geraine inquired politely.
	“We do have some archival material dating from before the partition,” he said. “And this firstborn child thing, it’s everywhere. Culler interprets it as proof that some form of bonded labor existed in Cretinia before the rise of Idairism, but of course there are other theories.”
	The rest of the table was staring at him, except for Bric, who was quietly drinking his soup.
	“We don’t have slavery here, if that’s what you’re asking,” Mielen finally said.
	“No, of course not. But the prevalence of the idiom does suggest that at one point it was considered possible to give someone a child in payment of a debt.”
	“Oh, that,” Geraine said, waving a hand. “He’s talking about dark users, Mielen. That’s a whole different thing--Brendan? is it?--yes, no, that’s not usual any more, even among them. It’s a big liability, isn’t it, Bric?”
	Bric leaned over to her. “Remember, chara, no business at the table,” he said in a cute, high-pitched wuzzle that disturbed me deeply.
	“But this is just common knowledge, chara.”
	“All right, chara, for you,” he smarmed, patting her hand gently. “Since the decision in Grouth v. Queen of the Underhill, any contract awarding the payee rights to a human in return for services rendered or in case of default is classified as a blood bargain and is legally unenforcable. And the drafting of such a contract is now admissible as evidence of allegiance, so yes, demanding someone’s firstborn as payment is inadvisable.”
	Aine was watching Bric with revolted fascination. Mielen was just revolted.
	“It’s also disgusting,” she said.
	Bric drank his soup without appearing to mind. There were a few moments of pointed silence during which I had the feeling that Mielen and Geraine were exchanging views in the privacy of their own skulls.
	“And how are you, Felthan?” I asked.
	“As well as can be expected,” he said, glancing at Mielen. “The forge is doing well, and the children are fine.”
	“That’s good to hear.”
	“Of course there’s the usual problem with labor, but...” As Felthan went on, and I nodded politely, I found myself increasingly distracted by noise from Athi’s table, where the political debate was still in progress. Wous was going strong, and was now being supported by Twil, one of our local magnates.
	“No, of course not. They don’t udnerstand what it would mean to us--or to Ideire, for that matter. We’re already hundreds of years behind the Cretids in everything from weapons to metallurgy, and all the Council wants to do is keep us there.”
	“Exactly,” Wous jabbed, spearing the fruit that had just appeared under his waving fork. “This isn’t just about us, this is what’s going to put Ideire on the map. All this talk about equal measure is a nice little story, but it’s about time this country grew up.”
	“Hear, hear,” Twil echoed.
	“And as far as Barant’s little campaign speech--”
	Twil made a loud noise of disparagement. “The end of shri in this country,” he repeated. “That’ll be shouted from one repeater to the next and the whole country will be up in a panic, just because a shriia said it. She doesn’t know any more than I do what’s going to happen a hundred years from now.”
	“But it sounds like that ambassador is a first-class idiot,” Cullugh objected. “How could he expect to talk about selling shri and not be howled out of the room?”
	“It’s not so farfetched,” Wous countered.
	Twil nodded. “Shri can be bought and sold like anything else. Look at the dark users.”
	Aine turned around in her chair and stared at them in undisguised amazement. 
	“...your friend Ethir,” Felthan was saying. “Could you?”
	“I’m sorry, Felthan--could I what?”
	“Well, you know, Twil, that is why they’re dark,” Athi replied.
	“Ask him to recommend an arbitrator,” Felthan said.
	“Oh! Sure--I can ask him. How much are you willing to spend on the fee?”
	I didn’t hear Felthan’s answer because Twil said, “So what’s so wrong with being a dark user? They’re a damn sight more useful than the bright ones, if you ask me.”
	“...is that unreasonable, you think?”
	“I’m sorry, Felthan,” I said. “I’m afraid I was distracted by the blasphemer at the table behind me.”
	“It’s not a crime to disagree with the Council,” Twil shouted to me.
	“I didn’t say it was,” I answered. “What you said just offends every fibre of my being, that’s all.”
	“If a dark user can get the job done, why should I care? So long as the job gets done.”
	“Like what kind of job?” I demanded, pulling my chair around.
	“Like--well--suppose I want my workers to do double shifts, and a dark user gives me something so they can go without sleep. They get more wages, I get more product. Where’s the harm?”
	“What if they don’t want to work double shifts?” Aine demanded.
	“Then they can work for someone else and I’ll hire ones who do,” Twil shot back. “There’d be plenty willing. A dark user could do that, couldn’t she?”
	“Yes, she could,” I said. “And I’m sure she’d charge you a very reasonable rate for it. She’d probably only have to maim five or six people.”
	Cullugh was now leaning forward. “Really? Why?”
	“To get the ingredients,” I said.
	Lefray’s attention had also been engaged. “What ingredients?”
	“Well, for a standard endurance potion--” I glanced up at my father, and a feeling of guilt stopped me. “It’s not something one should discuss in polite society.”
	“Oh, you can’t just leave it,” Lefray chuckled. “What ingredients?”
	“I’ll say this much and that’s all I’ll say. You can get something from nothing, but you can’t do it without causing a lot of creatures a lot of pain. That’s why we don’t do that kind of magic, ‘useful’ as it might be.”
	“She’s right,” nodded Rean, Cullugh’s wife. “They use blood and organs and--”
	“And how would you know about this?” Twil countered, laughing.
	“I followed the trial,” she said. “What a loathsome business.”
	“It certainly was,” I said. And yet, obviously, she had found it fascinating. So had a lot of people.
	“What trial was this?” Twil demanded.
	“The trial,” Rean answered. “The Lythril trial. Theamh was the one who caught her. They sent her and another apprentice to pose as her apprentices, and then--”
	“I didn’t catch her,” I said. “She was brought in by Dalen and Morat.”
	“Well, you were the star witness, anyway.” She turned to Twil. “Such a sad story about that other apprentice, too, who went back looking for her--what was her name?”
	“Istria,” I said.
	“Poor thing. You must have been sad to lose her.”
	“I don’t like talking about it,” I forced out.
	“Theamh,” Mielen called, “they’re going to take your fruit away.”
	I turned around in time to prevent one of the omnipresent servers from scooping up my untasted second course. “I’m sorry, but I’m not through with this.”
	“Very good, Aiv,” said the server, moving on to collect Bric’s empty plate.
	The fruit was very tasty, and my absorption at least convinced Twil and Brendan to leave me alone. Mielen and Felthan were involved in their own linked discussion, and Geraine and Bric were googling at each other. I suppose seeing this other side to Bric should have made me like him better, but instead it made me vaguely nauseous. 
	<You never talk about it, dhiaoc.>
	I kept eating. <Well, you heard what I said.>
	<We hear stories about that but the shriias won’t answer our questions.>
	<It wasn’t the Council’s finest hour.>
	<It was a good idea, though.>
	<It was a stupid idea. You take two people who have spent the last six years learning to tell the truth and send them off to a mission where they have to lie to survive. Of course it didn’t work. She saw through us the moment we arrived.>
	“So,” I heard Darin say from across the table. “The charge had no merit, eh Bric?”
	“None whatever,” he answered equably.
	“Violating the MRA and the Treaty of Mypril, you don’t think that warrants investigation?”
	<But she let you stay?>
	“I don’t discuss business except in the office,” he answered primly.
	<That’s right.>
	“How convenient for you,” Darin answered.
	“Please, Dr. Donald,” Geraine said. “He’s not bothering you.”
	“Not right now, no.”
	<Even though she knew the Council sent you?>
	“Can’t we talk about something else?” Geraine’s mounting distress was getting to Mielen, and to me also. It wasn’t her fault my mother seated them in enemy territory.
	<Yes.>
	<Why?>
	“All right,” Mielen said. “Here’s a question: how come Ulnach puts out those placecards when she knows it gives us all the creeps?”
	“Because she’s a coldhearted, manipulative, evil witch,” I said.
	It was a minute before I understood why everyone was suddenly staring at me.
	“Oh--no--I was talking about Lythril. I--Aine was asking me something, and I got my lines crossed--”
	Geraine nodded, relieved. Mielen laughed. Poor Aine looked crushed. “I’m sorry, dhiaoc, I didn’t mean to--”
	“Don’t apologize, it’s not your fault. No, what I meant was, Lythril is a coldhearted, manipulative, evil witch. My mother puts out the place cards because a long time ago she was at a party over the border and she saw these and since then in her mind the place cards are synonymous with elegance and sophistication.”
	“But your mother was just talking to me about your traditions,” Brendan said. “She seems very well versed.”
	“She is,” I answered. 
	“But she broke with your tradition, and yet you became an adept.”
	I nodded.
	“See, I find that very interesting. It’s a pattern we often see in cultures in transition--one generation moves forward, and in the next there’s a retrenchment--a step forward and then a step back.”
	I turned around to face him, putting an elbow down perilously close to a plate of venison in duck sauce that had just appeared at my place. “Uh...excuse me...” I waved our serving woman over. “Hi. My used name is Theamh, and this here is Aine. I’m in the Order and she’s in scoil, so we won’t be having any of the--”
	“Oh, of course,” she said, rapidly removing my plate. “I’ll tell the others, shriia.” 
	“Thanks.” She continued serving the others. I returned to Brendan.
	“So I’m a throwback, is that it?”
	Brendan dropped his eyes and drooped back in his chair in such a harried and dejected way that I felt sorry for him. He was a stranger, after all, and it wasn’t nice of me to pick on him this way.
	“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be rude. I just don’t like being condescended to.”
	“Most people don’t,” Darin added.
	Brendan looked at him without affection. “I’m also surprised,” he said, “to see you so friendly with a doctor. I understood that there was a lot of friction there.”
	“Oh, Darin’s all right,” I said. “He knows his place.”
	“Ow,” said Aine.
	“All right, what did I do this time?” I asked.
	Darin looked from Aine to me in panic. “I didn’t say a word!”
	“I offended you somehow. I’m sorry.”
	“It’s all right,” Darin assured me. “I know you don’t mean anything by it.”
	“All I meant,” I explained to Brendan, “was that he does the job he’s good at and doesn’t try to do ours.”
	Geraine nodded. “That’s why I took the children to him,” she said. “Now of course they’re too old, which is a shame. The new doctors are always pushing it.”
	“Tell me about it,” I muttered.
	“Dana’s all right,” Felthan volunteered.
	“Oh, I’m glad to hear you say that,” Darin said. “It’s always hard on the ob-gyns here, but she works very hard.”
	“No, she’s been very good with Mielen,” Felthan answered.
	Felthan!
	Felthan heard her, but then so did I, and so obviously did Geraine. “Have you been to the medicals, Mielen?” she demanded. “You hadn’t told me. Is something wrong?”
	“No,” Mielen sighed. “I’m all right, mathi.”
	“Well then why are you suddenly seeing this new medical?”
	“That’s my business, mathi.”
	“Your business. I’m your mother.”
	“Yes, you are...” Mielen began.
	“This Dana,” Bric said to Darin. “She’s a colleague of yours and Shearer’s.” Darin nodded. “And you said her specialty was...?”
	“She’s an ob-gyn,” he said. “She...well, she takes care of women, especially pregnant women.”
	Geraine turned a very purposeful stare on Mielen.
	“Well, we were going to tell her soon,” Felthan said, making a brave effort to look pleased. “Mielen and I are expecting another baby.”
	“Congratulations!” Brendan shouted, withdrawing abashed as his enthusiasm rang loudly in the silence.
	It wasn’t silence, of course, so much as a furious unspoken exchange between mother and daughter during which Felthan looked on with growing dismay while Bric watched Geraine with something that, if it had appeared on any other human’s face, I would have sworn was concern.
	<What are they saying, dhiaoc?>
	<They’re linked, I can’t hear.>
	<Did they not want another child?>
	<I think we better save that story for freagair, Aine.>
	“Was that not right?” Brendan whispered furtively to me.
	“What?”
	“Was it not right to congratulate her? Is that taboo here?”
	Aine regarded him with pity. I patted his arm consolingly.
	“It’s not your fault, Brendan. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
	“But they’re all just sitting there aghast.”
	“No, no. They’re talking. Look at them.”
	Brendan looked. As he tried to follow their facial signals, Geraine suddenly let fly an exclamation and turned to me.
	“Is this true?” she demanded.
	“Is what true?”
	“She says the procedure didn’t work.”
	“Sometimes it doesn’t,” I said. 
	“Really? I thought it was foolproof.” Geraine looked relieved.
	“Most notborns agree to return, but sometimes they refuse, and--” Mielen’s head suddenly fell forward into her hands.
	“Oh dear,” I said.
	“So you tried to send it back,” Geraine said, staring at Mielen.
	“You don’t understand,” she cried. 
	“I knew it,” Geraine said, striking the tablecloth. “Empty is empty.”
	Felthan took Mielen’s hand in his. “The child is mine, Geraine.”
	“Then you were lying all that time about having been emptied.”
	“No, I--”
	“It just didn’t take,” Mielen insisted, not lifting her head.
	Geraine turned to me. “Have you ever heard of a man fathering a child after he’s been emptied?”
	“I--no, Geraine, but--”
	“But nothing. It’s not possible. It’s literally not possible. Is it?”
	“We are taught that with Idair all things are possible,” I said, unconvincingly.
	“Felthan is not the father of that child, is he? Is he?”
	I looked around, desperately hoping she was asking this question to someone else.
	“I’m asking you, the shriia. Is Felthan the father of that child?”
	There was a very long, very tense silence. The servers who had been heading in our table’s direction faltered, retreated, and moved to the next one.
	“No,” I said, miserably.
	“So.” Geraine turned her glare back to Mielen, or rather the top of Mielen’s bowed head. “You’re carrying someone else’s child. That’s more Felthan’s problem than mine. But don’t lie to me. I’m your mother.”
	Moved by the emotion in Geraine’s voice, Mielen lifted her drained face. “I just didn’t know what to do, mathi.”
	“You trust me, that’s the first thing,” Geraine said, blinking. “You don’t try to handle something like this alone. You’re my daughter and I’ll stand by you no matter what you’ve done or what’s been done to you. At your age you should know that.”
	Mielen burst into tears.
	Geraine leapt from her seat and hurried around the table to Mielen, who stood up as she approached. Geraine threw her arms around her.
	“It’s all right, Mielen,” she said, stroking her hair and looking over the top of her head as Mielen cried into her bodice. “It’s all right, child. Here, let’s go freshen up in the cloakroom.” Mielen nodded and pushed her chair in. “If you’ll excuse us.”
	“Of course,” Darin said, standing. Geraine led Mielen toward the stairs. 
	“I am such an idiot,” I said, to no one in particular.
	Movement behind me attracted my attention. It was my mother, leaning with a hand on Bric’s chair and smiling over his shoulder at Darin and Felthan.
	“And how are we doing over here? Everything all right?”
	“Yes, Ulnach,” Felthan nodded. “It’s a lovely dinner.”
	“Thank you, Felthan. Where’s Mielen? Is she not well?”
	“She and Geraine are using the ladies’ room,” he said. “You know how it is.”
	My mother laughed. “How about you, Brendan? Have they made you feel at home?”
	“Yes, thank you,” he answered. “I can’t thank you enough for seating me at your daughter’s table, it’s been very informative.”
	“Oh, I’m so glad. Aine, are you having fun?”
	Aine glanced slowly around the table.
	“I wouldn’t call it fun, exactly, Aiv,” she said. “But I’m glad to have come.”
	My mother nodded, looking a little suspicious. “And you, Bric? You’re not angry with me for seating you next to your arch-nemesis, are you?” She laughed when she said it, as if this were a thing to laugh at. “It’s just that Geraine did want the chance to talk to her, and she and Mielen are such old friends...”
	“No, of course not, Ulnach,” Bric said, in a voice that was oddly flat and somber. “Your daughter has been very gracious.”
	“Has she?” my mother repeated, with a tinny smile. “That’s good to hear.” My mother patted me on the shoulder. “See you on the dance floor after the sweet course.”
	This time, at least, I wasn’t the only one breathing a sigh of relief when she left.
	“You’re lucky she didn’t ask you if you were enjoying yourself,” Darin said.
	“Oh, she knows better than that.” I turned to Bric. “You lied for me like a gentleman, Bric. What did I do to deserve it?”
	Bric passed a hand over his face wearily. “I’m to understand,” he said slowly, “from what you say, that Mielen tried to send her notborn back, and it refused?”
	“I answered the wrong question,” I said. “I could kick myself.”
	His fingers drummed for a few moments on the table cloth.
	“Excuse me,” he finally said, standing up. “I’m going to look after Geraine.”
	The server appeared with a tray. “Would anyone care for a sweet?”
	Aine really did look like a child in a pastry shop. And truth be told, sugar builts make us all feel like that. It was the one thing that Iela had charge of from start to finish. She did them beautifully, and no two were alike. The hunk of cake forming each base was cut and iced to fit with the spun-sugar creation on the top. A sugar swan floated on a blue icing pond nestled in white cake hill; a sugar horse galloped across a square green meadow. I don’t know how she does them; I used to help ice the bases, but she never let me watch the mysterious process of turning ordinary rongo sugar into these fragile little things. The server smiled as she took the tray around the table. Aine dithered for a long time, but finally ended up with the horse. Darin took the swan; the server conferred with Felthan after his choice, and put down one for each of the three missing people. After that the tray was empty. Aine attempted to attract the server’s attention, but she vanished as soon as the last plate was set down.
	“Don’t you get one, dhiaoc?” Aine asked, greatly concerned.
	Fada suddenly appeared at my elbow with a tray. “There you are,” she said, relieved. “Iela sent me up with this.” 
	With a shy smile, she took the single plate up and set it down in front of me.
	“Oh, dhiaoc!” Aine gasped. “Look, it’s a little sugar Pharc!”
	So it was. All seven points and the central courtyard, with the great tilu tree in the middle, done in such detail that you could actually identify them.
	“Fada,” I said, “tell Iela I love it, and thank her for remembering.”
	Fada nodded, looking slightly puzzled, and left.
	“Remembering what?” Brendan asked.
	“Never mind,” I said. I pushed it over toward Aine. “Here, you take the Scoil, I’ll take the Raed.” We started attacking it from both sides. “Darin, you want a piece of this?”
	“Which one is the Seat?”
	“Right here.” As Darin sank his fork into one of the points, Bric appeared and resumed his seat at the table. Geraine followed with Mielen.
	The women started in on their sugarbuilts. Mielen appeared much relieved, although on Geraine the signs of stress were still visible. Strangely, the one who seemed to have the most trouble putting his party face on was Bric.
	Unlikely as I would have thought it, he had been bothered by Mielen’s announcement. Over the years that had built his fortune Bric had gotten chummy with a lot of very wealthy and very bad people, and he didn’t have much left in the way of a professional conscience. Ethir reckoned that most of his major trials had involved things that were clearly outside the confines of that Code in his office. To have asked for that auralysis against all the dictates of common sense and precedent he must have known Lythril was planning to rig it--which amounted to him being guilty of perjury, although that was never proved. And yet here he was, crushing his little sugar oak tree, moodily staring down at the fragments but never lifting them into his mouth.
	There was only one explanation. He really did care for Geraine, and was sorry to see this kind of trouble come to the family. Even that, though, would not produce this slow, sightless toying with cutlery. His eyes were fixed on one thing, and that was something I’d thought he was constitutionally incapable of contemplating: his own guilt.
	The pregnancy wasn’t his fault. Delth had engineered that all by himself. So what could make this man blame himself for Geraine’s distress?
	Well, he had worked with Lythril before. To all indications, he was working for her now. And he knew, thanks to my catastrophic mistake, that Mielen had tried to return her notborn and that it had refused to go.
	He knew what was happening with those notborns. And he was somehow helping it happen. And it was therefore partly his fault that Mielen had to carry this baby to term; and he knew, unlike Geraine and Mielen, that this wasn’t even her child. Which was why it was going to be a while before that party face reappeared.
	By the time Aine, Darin and I had finished, there were several couples on the floor of the hall below, twirling to the music. And my mother was floating in our direction.
	“Come on,” she said, urging my father to his feet. “We have to set the pace. Darin, I hope you’re not going to let these two ladies stand idle.”
	Darin, susceptible as always to my mother’s smile, turned gallantly to Aine. “Would you like to dance?”
	“I...” Aine looked over the railing. “I’m sorry, Darin, I don’t know how to do this kind of dancing.”
	Darin looked at her sadly. “I see,” he said. “Well, never mind.”
	“No, it’s really true,” Aine insisted, obviously reading the same thing I had. “Ask my diaoc. They don’t do this where I’m from.”
	“It’s quite true,” I confirmed. 
	“It’s not just because I don’t want to be seen with you,” Aine went on, her earnestness startling him a little. “Please don’t think that.”
	Darin glanced at me sardonically. “I thought you said she was in the habit.”
	“She is,” I said.
	Aine was now upset. “I know it must seem very stupid, but in Jipran we don’t have music like this, and we don’t have gowns like this, and we don’t drape ourselves over our partners like they’re doing down there. I really can’t do it, Darin, it’s too strange to me.”
	“How about you, then?” Darin asked, with a deflecting laugh. “You want to show your apprentice how we do things here in the Sixth?”
	“All right,” I said, “but I refuse to assume liability for any injury you may incur.”
	Bric gave out a dry little bark of laughter.
	“You need to spend less time around Ethir,” Darin said, walking around the table. 
	Aine looked moodily after us as we went down the staircase. “You shouldn’t question her veracity, Darin, to someone just in the habit that’s very disturbing.”
	“It’s been thirty years,” he said, leading me out to the open hall floor. “But it’s still hard to remember that I’m not at home, sometimes.”
	I put one arm, rather stiffly, around his waist; he put his around mine. “Do you mind if I lead? It confuses me otherwise.”
	“Suit yourself.”
	Darin’s technique suffered from the fact that he had learned similar but far from identical versions of these dances in the north. “Tell me something, Theamh.”
	“Sure.”
	“You were saying something to Aine, when you introduced me to her yesterday, right before she shook my hand. What was it?”
	“Oh--she just wasn’t sure what you meant. You know we don’t greet that way down here. So I told her how to respond.”
	We swung past my parents. My mother was leading, which was usually for the best. Athi doesn’t have a sense for rhythm. She waved at Darin, who nodded back to her.
	“Having a good time?”
	“Yes ma’am,” Darin answered.
	“Take good care of my baby,” she simpered, and moved away.
	“I thought...see, it’s hard for me to believe people don’t care.”
	“About what?”
	He took a weary breath. “That I’m black.”
	“You mean dark-skinned.”
	His head shook a little in annoyance. “Whatever.”
	“Well, it’s important down here,” I countered. “People will think you mean your aura, and you don’t want that.”
	“Regardless,” Darin snapped. “The point is, when she was hesitating like that, and I saw you talking to her, I thought it was because of that.”
	“But why would she care?”
	“Because people just do.”
	“I know over the border--” I began.
	“Here too, Theamh.”
	“But...I really don’t think Aine--”
	“No, I’m sure she didn’t. And you don’t, and your mother doesn’t, and my patients don’t. But in a place like this...” He looked around. “Well, it’s one of those northern fads. People copy it. I give your mother credit for knowing better.”
	“I suppose,” I said. “You’re a beyond-borderer, that’s what really matters to her.”
	It made him sad to hear me say it. “After thirty years, I’m still a foreigner.” We were in the middle of the floor now, circling under the hanging light tree. “I suppose it would have been the same for anyone.”
	“I’m sorry, Darin,” I said. “But even if you are a foreigner, you’re still one of the best friends I have.”
	“Well,” he smirked. “Since you say it, it must be true.”
	I never liked dancing. I’m not naturally suited to it and I have to think too hard about what I’m doing. And then you’re close enough to your partner to read all sorts of things that very often you’d rather not read, which have to do with your grace or lack thereof or your choice of outfit or hairstyle or various other unflattering things. And then if by chance these things are not unflattering, it’s even worse.
	“You should explain to Aine,” I said, glancing up at the balcony, where she was leaning on the banister watching us. “She doesn’t understand why you reacted that way.”
	He sighed. “I get tired of explaining.”
	“I could see how you might,” I said. 
	We spiraled out toward the edges of the hall.
	“I’ve often wondered why you stayed so long,” I said. “But if everyone there is like Brendan I can understand it.”
	Darin’s laugh turned some nearby heads. “So close, and yet so far,” he said. “You notice that in thirty years I’m the only black medical who’s ever come here.” I nodded. “Ever wonder why?”
	I shrugged. “No, actually, I hadn’t.”
	“It’s because I’m practically the only black medical there is. When I went into med school I was literally the only member of my class that wasn’t white.”
	“You mean they were all...”
	“Like you. Light-skinned, as you put it.”
	“Oh.” My not understanding made him angry, although he was trying to hide it. 
	“Why?” I finally ventured.
	“Now that,” he said, “is a long story. Here’s the short version: the C.N. is run by white people, and they want it to stay that way. The more of us get into professions like medicine, the harder that gets. So they try to keep us out, and they do a pretty good job.”
	“How?”
	“By making sure we stay poor and uneducated, mostly.”
	“But how can they do that?”
	“Look,” he finally snapped, “They do it, all right? Take my word for it.”
	“I’m sorry, Darin,” I said, sad to have made him angry. “I guess I just don’t get it.”
	“Shriias tell the truth,” he muttered.
	The song ended before either of us spoke again. We applauded for the musicians as the couples broke up and started to drift. I felt suddenly detached, stranded alone on this wide empty floor surrounded by people I knew but didn’t know, and next to Darin, gone inside himself with memories I’d never understand. 
	My parents approached us. “So, Dr. Donald,” my father said. “How are things down at the store?”
	Darin smiled, his upset wiped off his face with a suddenness that bothered me. “We’d be doing all right if it weren’t for this one here,” he said, poking me. “Trouble on two feet, that’s what she is.”
	Mathi laughed. “Well, that’s nothing new. What is it this time?”
	“Actually,” Darin said, “it’s quite serious, and we’re all very grateful to her for finding it out. We’ve got a problem with one of our new doctors.”
	“Oh dear. Which one?”
	“Shearer,” he said. “Tell your friends to stay away from him, he’s not safe.”
	My mother looked alarmed. “But he came so highly recommended,” she said. “I heard he was top of his class at--”
	“That’s as may be,” Darin snapped. “I won’t say he’s not intelligent. Whether he’s smart is a different story--and whether he’s a good doctor is a whole other question.”
	“I have to say I’m surprised to hear you say that,” Athi said.
	Athi knew, as I knew, that medicals tended to stick together. There had been problems, before and after the Lesser Plague, and these problems had always been handled secretly. Most of the time nobody outside the orbit of the patient affected heard about it--reparations were made, the medical was packed off over the border and nothing more was said. And Athi knew, as I knew, that if you wanted something to become common knowledge in a matter of days the fastest way to do it was to tell my mother.
	“Ordinarily I wouldn’t,” Darin said. “But he may be with us for a while, despite his actions, so you may as well be warned.”
	“Why, what’s he doing?”
	Another song started. Darin bowed to my mother. “May I have this dance?”
	“My pleasure,” she said, giving him her hand.
	Athi and I looked at each other.
	“Well, Theamh?”
	“Sure,” I said.
	Athi’s hard to read, even from close by. Not because he tries to mask; it just seems to happen of its own accord. Maybe it’s having been with my mother for so long. She was the one who really taught me how to do it, long before I entered the scoil.
	So I didn’t really know what he was thinking, or feeling, until he cleared his throat and said, awkwardly, “Iela told me today was your entrance day.”
	“It is,” I said.
	“Congratulations.” Then, after another pained pause, “You know your mother and I are very proud of you.”
	“I know you are, anyway,” I said.
	“Your mathi too.” I shook my head. “I know you and she have your problems, but she respects what you do.”
	“How can she respect it? She doesn’t even believe in spirits.”
	“What your mother says and what she really thinks aren’t always the same thing,” he answered. “She wouldn’t have gone into the scoil if she didn’t really believe.”
	“But that was why she left,” I said. “Because she didn’t believe.”
	Athi sighed. “Theamh...” He glanced over at mathi and Darin. Darin was leading, but mathi was obviously in charge, moving lightly along as she wormed the story out of him. “I don’t really know why she left the scoil, that was before we met. But...”
	“But what?”
	“She believes now that she left because she didn’t believe. When you were a child, it was because the Order was too authoritarian. Before you were born, it was because she could never be celibate. When I first met her, it was because the work stopped being interesting.” He was looking at me. “It’s thirteen years ago today we took you down to the Pharc and watched them cut your hair short. Your mother cried the whole way home.”
	“I know,” I said dully. 
	“She’s proud of you, Theamh. She really is.”
	“Since you say it,” I answered.
	In my least charitable moods I told myself that my mother went into the scoil just to get her mindstrength good enough to bully the rest of us. It wasn’t a strange thing to do; lots of women drop out after three or four years, for all the reasons Athi had mentioned. But most of them don’t turn the way my mother had.  
	“Is the business going well, Athi?” I said.
	“It’s going as well as it might,” he answered, not convinced. “And then again, it isn’t. We’ve reached the limit, I think--at least as long as the trade barriers stay up.”
	I don’t understand very well what my father does. All I know is that it’s intangible. Money breeds more money, somehow. I thought for a while that it was what Minead did on a grand scale--giving people money to start businesses and then taking some of the profits. He said I was partly right.
	“Ah well,” I said. “I don’t think they’re coming down anytime soon.”
	“Maybe not,” he said. “But then maybe they will.”
	“You want them to open the border?”
	“Not open it. But enough for trade purposes.”
	“But what about what Barant was saying?”
	“Chara...” Annoyance flickered in his face. “Barant was just putting the Council position. Shri won’t disappear, it’ll just adapt.”
	“I don’t know if it can adapt to the Cretids coming down and trampling on us.”
	“They won’t trample on us. It wouldn’t be in their own best interest. And besides, your order is more adaptable than you think. Look at Barant.”
	“What about her?”
	“Grinth never went to the Seat unless it was to dictate,” he said. “Barant negotiates. That’s what I mean. They’ll work out a compromise--even if they have to wait for the old guard to retire.”
	“If you mean Grinth,” I said, “she’s never going to retire. She’s always said she’s going to die in the Raed and I believe her.”
	He laughed. “Well, maybe so. But she’s not immortal, you know.”
	“Excuse me,” said a voice as a hand tapped my father’s shoulder. “May I?”
	It was Twil. “Certainly,” my father said. “You don’t mind, do you, Theamh?”
	<Don’t ask me questions like that, athi.>
	Athi patted Twil on the shoulder and abandoned me to my fate.
	“Shall we?”
	“All right.”
	“I hope you didn’t take too seriously what I said back there,” was his first gambit. “Of course I wouldn’t go to a dark user just to increase productivity.”
	“I’m glad to hear it,” I said.
	“Or if I did,” he went on, “I wouldn’t talk about it at dinner parties.”
	“How prudent.”
	“No, you were right to call me on it,” he said. “But I’m not that...indiscreet.”
	Whatever. I was already tired of listening to him, but the song was still going. “Well, that’s good,” I answered. “Discretion is important.”
	“Yes it is,” he said, nodding profoundly as if I had just spoken an eternal truth. “I’m glad we understand each other.”
	“Good,” I said, trying to manage a friendly smile.
	“But you will admit,” he went on, “that to listen to stuff like that coming from Barant is just a little more than one can stand. When you know and I know she can be bought and sold like any other politician.”
	“Excuse me,” I said, dropping his hand and backing away from him.
	“What is it? Where are you going?”
	I headed for the steps as fast as I could. This was much the best way, I had learned through experience. Even if I managed not to actually vocalize my anger it would be perceptible many feet away and Twil was the kind of man who, once he sensed it, wouldn’t rest until he had baited it out into the open. No, the best thing was just to cut and run, without explanation--which Geraine seemed to have done just a minute ago, because she was crossing the floor in the other direction, and almost crashed into me.
	“Sorry, Theamh.” I turned to follow her irate gaze. It was fastened on Delth, who was chatting with Torainn in a corner. Either they had arrived late, or they had been seated far away; I hadn’t noticed them before, and probably neither had Geraine.
	“Oh dear,” I said. Geraine started forward. “Geraine, are you sure--”
	Too late; she was making a direct line across the floor, cutting between and sometimes through couples as she bore down on Delth, whose remorse, if he had any, was certainly well hidden. He and Torainn watched her advent without apparent emotion.
	Darin appeared at my elbow, attended by Aine. “She seems to be in a hurry. What’s she after?”
	“I shudder to think,” I murmured.
	From where we stood by the foot of the stairs I couldn’t hear her. I did see her stand there, upright as she could be, spitting out whatever she had to say. Torainn’s face hardened from indifference into anger, but Delth’s maintained the same expression of complacent boredom. Around their corner, the dancing couples had stopped moving and were standing with their heads turned in their direction.
	“Well,” I said, “if someone has to be making a scene, at least it’s not me.”
	Delth said something to her that I couldn’t hear. Then Geraine’s hand shot out and grabbed Delth’s right ear. A high-pitched shriek cut across the dance floor.
	“Chuireann mo ari orm!”
	The music stopped instantly. So did the dancing. The servers who were clearing up on the balcony clustered at the edge to look. Aine’s hand whitened on the banister.
	“Name of the Spirit,” I murmured, sitting down rather heavily on the steps. 
	“What?” from Darin.
	“She’s calling scrainnte on him.” Geraine was now dragging Delth into the middle of the floor, the others drawing back from her. “In the middle of my mother’s party.”
	“Chuireann scrainnte ord!”
	“Idair save us all,” I said, hanging my head so I wouldn’t have to watch.
	Aine was kind enough to narrate. “There goes your mother,” she said. “And there goes that Cretid...”
	Brendan. Well, naturally he’d want to be front row center for this.
	“Geraine? What’s the matter?” asked my mother, concern vying with anger.
	“He has forced himself on my child,” Geraine shouted, switching to the vernacular. “I suffer wrong older than the law and I claim a remedy older than justice. By all the spirits, I charge you to do me right.”
	“Where’s Mielen?” I whispered to Aine.
	“I think she and Felthan have gone home.”
	“Don’t make yourself ridiculous, Geraine.” Torainn was joining the fray. “Get up, Delth. She can’t do anything to you.”
	“He has wronged me and wronged my child,” Geraine shouted, pushing Torainn away. “I charge you all to do me right.”
	I couldn’t help looking up. The guests, grouped in a ring demarking the cleared space in which Geraine still held Delth down on his knees in the accused’s position, were starting to confer nervously, some silently and some in whispers. What should we do? How could she?  A terrible thing. Poor Ulnach. Geraine’s country stock, you know--one generation off the dirt. Is someone going to answer her? I mean...well, it’s Ulnach’s house, her or Flahn, I’d think. Scanning for faces I knew, I lighted on Fada’s. It was grim.
	“What’s happening?” Darin asked.
	“Should I go for the town leader?” Aine asked.
	“This is the City. We don’t have a town leader.”
	“There must be someone.”
	“There’s Goin, he’s the head of the Council of Sevenths, but...” I shook my head. “This really isn’t part of his job description.”
	“Geraine, we’re sorry for your trouble,” my mother began, “but I don’t think this is the right time and place--”
	“This is the only time and place,” Geraine cried. “If we have a village, it’s the Sixth. And if the Sixth has a leader, it’s you. And here we all are.”
	“Bric,” my mother called. “Can’t you reason with her?”
	“I’ve tried,” he said.
	If Bric couldn’t talk her out of it she must be very determined. “Delth mac Torainn has outraged my child. In wronging her he wronged all of us. I call down the shame that he deserves and I charge you, as you are my people, to give me my rights!”
	The buzz of thought continued, but under a silence that lay heavily on that wide floor. Geraine, with tears standing in her eyes, was searching the crowd that ringed her. Bric watched from the sidelines, clinging with difficulty to his lawyer’s face. Torainn, arms crossed and jaw fixed, looked with what seemed like contempt down at her kneeling son. My mother stood several feet away, separated from the crowd of onlookers but divorced from the little group, drawn unwillingly into the circle of shame.
	“Will no one answer me?” Geraine cried.
	People looked at each other, at my mother, at the floor, but they didn’t look at Geraine. Bric’s sigh reached us, amplified by the silence. Darin looked at us.
	“It’s not my town,” Aine said, troubled. She wanted to do it, but these weren’t her people and it wasn’t her right. 
	“What about you?” Darin asked.
	“Oh--I’m a shriia, I can’t.”
	“They should print that up on T-shirts,” Darin muttered. “Why not?”
	“It’s long to explain.”
	“Or Bric?”
	“Lives in the Third.”
	“Give me my right!” Geraine shouted, looking straight at my mother. “As you are my people and as we are a village, give me my right!”
	My father appeared from the crowd and stood next to my mother. “Come on, Geraine. You’re seeing a lawyer, take it to the courts. Don’t ruin Ulnach’s party.”
	“Answer me,” Geraine pleaded, turning to him. “My daughter is bearing a child of hatred because of him. If it were your daughter you would do the same. Answer me.”
	“He is answering her,” Darin said. “Isn’t he?”
	“It’s different,” I whispered. “Someone has to agree to hear her.”
	“No one will answer me,” Geraine said, suddenly quiet.
	There was a very long pause.
	“Then we’re not a village,” she spat into the empty space. “And you’re not my people.” She turned a venomous stare on Torainn, then my mother. Her chin quivered as she fought to keep from crying, under the light tree in the silence of speech held back.
	“I should have known,” she finally burst out, and ran out of the hall.
	The ring broke up suddenly, and the burr of conversation seemed to rise from everywhere all at once. At a signal from my mother, the musicians started up again. 
	“Well,” I said, standing up slowly. “I say the party’s over.” I turned to Aine, who was slowly loosening her grip on the banister. “What say we head home?”
	She nodded, still shocked. “I don’t want to stay here any more.”
	“Good rest to you, Darin,” I said.
	“Wait a minute.” He trailed us across the floor. “What happens now?”
	“Nothing,” I said. “Nobody answered her.”
	<You’re not going to like this, Aine, but we have to say goodbye to my mother.>
	Conversations rustled around me as I pushed my way through the thinning crowd. “What could she have expected?” “I thought Ulnach handled it well...well, as well as one can...” “You think it’s true?” “If she had a case, she’d have taken him to court; isn’t Bric a lawyer?” “It’s a shame. It was such a lovely party...” “Covering herself, that’s what it was. Everyone knows Felthan’s empty.” “There’s poor Torainn. It really was too bad of her.”
	I found my mother near the entrance, with my father’s arm around her. She looked badly shaken. Her face seemed to have fallen in, the lines coming through in ways that her paint wasn’t hiding. Not surprisingly, people had started to leave.
	“So glad you could come...yes, I know, thank you, Eldan. Poor Geraine. I must go and see her tomorrow.”
	“If it’s true about Delth, it’s too bad,” Eldan said. “You think it is?”
	My mother shook her head. “It’s so hard to say, about things like this.”
	“So unexpected,” Eldan went on. “My heart just leapt to my throat. I had no idea.”
	“I did speak to her for a little while after dinner,” my mother said. “I knew she was upset, but I never dreamed she’d do this. It’s true her mother was from the country, but...”
	“I know,” Eldan said. Fada appeared, looking even more pale and uncomfortable than usual, to hand them their things. “Good rest to you, Ulnach. It really was a lovely party.” She and her husband swept out the door.
	“Mathi...”
	My mother turned on me. “Are you leaving?” I nodded. “Well, I suppose you’ve done enough damage for one evening.”
	“Mathi...I’m sorry Geraine upset you so much--”
	“Don’t even say it,” my mother said. “You don’t mean it.”
	“I do mean it,” I said, my voice hardening.
	“Fada, go and get my daughter’s things, please.”
	“And Aine’s too,” I called after her as she fled.
	“Thank you for inviting us,” I said after a pause. “It was educational.”
	“Educational,” my mother repeated. “That’s all that matters to you, isn’t it?”
	“No, it isn’t! I--” I broke off. “Please let’s not do this on my way out the door, mathi. If anything I did or said tonight caused you pain, I’m sorry for it.”
	“It’s not your fault, Theamh,” my father said, patting my mother’s shoulder. “Everyone understands that.”
	“You’re a catastrophe,” my mother said, in a matter-of-fact tone that didn’t match the words. “A walking social catastrophe, Theamh.”
	Fada appeared at this moment to hand me my hreapa. “Here you are, shriia.” 
	“Thanks, Fada.”
	“Catch,” she said, tossing Aine’s bundle. Aine caught it with a smile.
	“Fada,” my mother said. “Is that an appropriate way to hand a guest her things?”
	Fada drew herself up to her full height, clasping her hands formally in front of her. “Thank you for all the time you’ve spent improving me, Aiv,” she said quietly. “I’m sure it will be of great service to me in my next job.” My father closed his eyes in anticipation. “I’d like to give my notice now.”
	My mother looked at her wearily.
	“It’s been a long day and everyone’s very tired,” she said. “Why don’t you leave work for the night and we’ll discuss this tomorrow.”
	“No thank you, Aiv,” Fada said. “I won’t change my mind.” 
	“Well then,” my mother said sadly. “I’m sorry to hear it, you were coming along very well. It will be a serious setback for you.”
	“I know, Aiv.” 
	“All right then, Fada,” my mother finally answered. “That will be all for now.”
	Fada nodded and disappeared.
	“I’m sorry about that, mathi,” I said. “I thought she was going to be a keeper.”
	“Just go,” she answered. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? Don’t stand here trying to make me feel better.” She turned to Aine. “I’m sorry you’ve had to see me like this, but I’m very upset right now. I’ve enjoyed meeting you.”
	“I’m glad to have met you,” Aine answered. “It was kind of you to invite me.”
	“Well, I’m glad I could help with your education. It’s good that Theamh realizes you need to see life from other perspectives. She can be very one-sided and unforgiving.”
	Aine stood very still, her eyes still on my mother’s face.
	<Aine, whatever you’re thinking, please don’t-->
	“Your daughter has always been kind to me,” Aine said. “She’s always forgiven me my mistakes and my failures. She’s patient when I have trouble and she makes sure I’m safe even when she’s in danger.” Neither of my parents really knew how to respond to this. Neither, for that matter, did I. “She’s a good diaoc and I’m lucky to have her.” 
	<Aine-->
	“And so are you!”
	There was that anger again, bringing tears into the corners of her green eyes.
	“Thanks, Aine, that’ll be quite enough,” I said, pulling her toward the door. “Good rest to you, Athi.”
	“You too, Theamh,” he called.
	I hustled her through the foyer. <I’m sorry, dhiaoc, I just-->
	<It’s all right, I know you meant well.>
	<I hadn’t meant to say that last part-->
	<Don’t worry about it, it’s a drop in the bucket.>
	Frene was standing by the door, having closed it behind some departing guests. Instead of reopening it he crossed his arms and fixed me with a long, sardonic stare.
	“Well,” he said. “A pretty hash you’ve made of Herself’s party.”
	“It’s not her fault,” Aine retorted.
	“And now Fada’s given her notice.”
	“I’m sorry, Frene, I really thought she was going to stay.”
	He sensed that I was too upset to enjoy this game. “Your young one is right, it wasn’t your fault,” he said. “I’m glad Iela was in the kitchen. She’d have answered all right.”
	“And it would be a shame for her to be sacked after all this time,” I replied.
	“Fada!” he called, as she passed through carrying someone’s hat and cloak. “Say goodbye to Theamhin, I doubt she’ll darken the door before we part company.”
	“And who could blame you,” Fada fumed, released from her restraint since the foyer was temporarily empty. “I’ve never seen such a shameful performance. What, in her own house, at her own gathering, not to answer!”
	“I know,” I said. “It’s chilling, really.”
	“That’s exactly the word,” Fada said.
	“I’m sorry you’re leaving, Fada. I was looking forward to having you around. Idair with you.” She bowed. “Frene, are you going to open the door, or what?”
	Frene opened it with exaggerated deference. “Safe home, Aiv.”
	“Yeah, whatever.”
	Aine bowed to Fada. “I hope you’ll find another situation soon,” she said. “Remember you have a friend here.”
	“I’ll remember. Thank you, Aine.”
	We slipped out the door and it closed behind us. I took a deep breath.
	“That’s over with,” I said, stumping down the steps. “Aine, what are you doing?”
	She was back up near the door. “I’m shaking its dust from my feet.”
	“Come down here out of that,” I called. “There’s no dust, anyway, my mother cleans ruthlessly.”
	She clambered down the steps. “Can we go home now?”
	“Yes,” I said. “I told Barant I’d pop by the Raed and see if she’s still around--I do want to talk to her about Crann’s case.”
	Aine fell into step, pulling to one side as carriages and horses rumbled by.
	“I’d almost forgotten,” she said.
	We tramped on for a while, Aine still smoking with her outrage.
	“Why wouldn’t anyone answer that poor woman?” she finally shouted, stopping in her path to turn on me.
	“They were embarrassed.”
	“That’s the whole point!” 
	“I know.”
	“Didn’t anyone care?”
	“I suppose some people did. But not enough.”
	“You don’t let someone hang like that,” Aine went on. “If someone is raw enough to call scrainnte, if someone’s been hurt like that, you don’t just look away! Decent people don’t do that!”
	“I know,” I said. “Someone should have answered her.”
	“Your mother should have answered her,” Aine countered. “It was her house.”
	“I know.”
	Aine stopped at the edge of the cobbled street, framed in the dull glare of a milliner’s window. “These are your people?” she demanded. “This is where you come from?”
	“Yes,” I said.
	“Your father trades with na Fir mac Lir and your mother won’t answer a townswoman,” she said. “Your people are blaspheming, exploiting, self-gratifying cowards with no sense of compassion or community.”
	“Well, you didn’t catch them at their best.”
	“That’s what you brought me there to learn.”
	“I wouldn’t have put it that way, but...”
	“This is what wealth does to people.”
	“In my experience, yes.”
	She stood in thought for a moment.
	“Dhiaoc?”
	“Yes, Aine?”
	“Were you a foster-child?”
	I smiled, not without sadness. “No, Aine. I have Athi’s coloring and Mathi’s face. I’m theirs all right.”
	“Idair’s ways are mysterious,” she said.
	“So they are.” I walked up to her and patted her shoulder. “You came through it well, Aine, and you learned fast.”
	She smiled. “I’m making progress.”
	We started back toward the gate. “And so am I.”
	“What do you mean?”
	“The part about my people being blaspheming, self-gratifying and so forth, that I knew,” I said. “But I did learn one important thing. Bric knows what’s going on with those notborns. Which means Lythril does too.”

XVIII.
Here, Kitty Kitty 
		
	The Pharc at night is a lonely place. Unless there’s a rite going on in the shriin, which that night there wasn’t, it’s dark and from the outside it appears more or less deserted. In the Mathair you can see light from the rooms where deliveries are happening, or where the apprentices on floor duty are sitting up. And there’s always someone in the Courts working late. But the Raed was dark, even with the light I was lifting to guide us by. 
	“I can never remember my way around in here,” I muttered, peering at the doors I passed. “You’d think after all this time--”
	“It’s this way, isn’t it?”
	Aine was right; she was usually right about things like this. The anteroom, when we pushed the door open, was dark, but there was a little sliver of light bleeding from under the closed door to Barant’s office. Working late, as she had said.
	She opened the door before I knocked. “Theamh. I’m glad you came by.” She led us in. “Coming from one of your mother’s parties?”
	The dress. “Yes. It broke up a little earlier than it might have.”
	Barant nodded. “How are you two getting along these days?”
	“Poorly.”
	She sighed. “I always wished there was something I could do,” she said sadly. “I learned pretty early that anything I did made it worse.”
	“You were good to try,” I said.
	Barant’s face glowed yellow as she leaned into the light. “You look tired,” she said in that comforting voice. “And worried. Did something happen at the party?”
	“Oh, plenty happened at the party,” I said. “But that’s not it. It’s this child. I just--I’ve done everything I can think of, I’ve been going over it and over it and I can’t come up with any plan I haven’t tried but I’m just not able to catch him.”
	Barant put her elbows on the desk and settled down to listen. “Why don’t you tell me what you’ve done and we’ll take it from there.”	 
	I told the story, going through the steps I had taken. Barant heard it all, interrupting now and then with a question. It felt strange, in a way, because it felt normal--during the first year of my practice she had come out to see me often and we had had conversations like this, me describing the course I was following and her nodding, letting me know that I was on the right track, that I really had the wisdom and the power that I had put on with my hreapa, that I was making it on my own. But then there had been the trouble, and Istria’s mission, and more trouble, and while I was digging my hole deeper she was rising in the Council, until she ended up on the head of the committee in charge of disciplining me. When she was watching me from the opposite side of that dark-red room in the Raed she was a different woman--distant, severe, overtaken so completely by her duty to the Order that I could discern no affection or sympathy for me. After enough visits to that room, she stopped coming to see me, and I didn’t seek her out.
	So here we were, and it was as if all of that had never happened--except that she was sitting in one of the Raed’s most coveted offices and I had my own scoilin crouched at my feet, watching our conversation with eager eyes. Aine must be replaying it too, and she must have questions, but she would never dare break in with them. You don’t interrupt, when you’re a scoilin. Not if a Council member’s talking.
	“...so I don’t know,” I said, opening my hands. “Is there something I’m not seeing? Something that would make it all make sense and tell me where this thing will drag him? Or at least help me not get stuck in an ethereal bottleneck next time I chase him down?”
	Barant sat for a while, her eyes on the desk. At least it was reassuring to see that she was baffled too--that it wasn’t just that I’d been missing some very obvious thing.
	“I don’t know what to tell you, Theamh,” she finally said. “It seems to me that you’ve done everything that it makes sense to do.”
	“So you have no advice for me.”
	“I do,” she answered, “but you’re not going to like it.”
	“Tell me anyway.”
	Barant looked up at me with grief already written in the lines of her face. “I think you’ll have to give him up, Theamh.”
	There was a shocked gasp from Aine. I knew she wouldn’t want me to look at her so I didn’t. “Give him up!”
	“It’s been a week already,” she began. “For a taken child that’s a long time. He’s probably already forgotten where he comes from--”
	“He hasn’t, Barant. Every time I’ve seen him he’s fought to get home. It’s not as if he’s an infant, he’s been named and he’s got speech.”
	“Maybe so, but...” She shook her head. “It doesn’t sound like this is a simple case. You may eventually find out what this thing is and who’s employing it, but I doubt if that will happen before the connection breaks.” Her brow wrinkled. “I must say, even more disturbing than the taking is this phenomenon you talk about with the ether. It sounds as if this thing, or these things, could be a serious threat to the universe, if they chose.”
	“I know,” I said. “That’s just one of many things that worries me.”
	“And you have no idea what it’s after.”
	“Well--I have some idea.”
	“What is it, then?”
	To explain how Bric and Lythril fit in I would have to get into the connection between the notborns and the green thing, which would mean disclosing Lilea’s cleasning, and I had promised her not to do that.
	“I can’t tell you yet, dhiaoc.”
	Boy, it had been a while since I’d called her that. “Why not?”
	“If you ask me tomorrow, I can tell you, but I promised I wouldn’t until then.”
	Barant looked doubtful, as well she might. “Who did you make this promise to?”
	“If I told you who it was it would be almost the same as breaking the promise.”
	“She made you promise not to tell me your theory?”
	“No. But I can’t tell you my theory without breaking my promise.”
	Barant leaned back with a sudden laugh.
	“There you have it, Aine,” she said. “The famous ni hUlnach nerve. She comes to my office to ask me for help and then sits there polite and deferential as you please while she tells me she’s promised some unknown person to deliberately withhold information.”
	I looked down at my feet.
	“Only until tomorrow,” I said. “It just seemed important to her.”
	“Why?”
	“Please don’t badger me about it, dhiaoc. If I’d thought it would bring danger or harm to anyone I wouldn’t have made the promise.”
	Barant sighed. “It’s the same problem, Theamh,” she said. “You put your trust in individuals, instead of the Order or Idair. That’s what gets you into these scrapes.”
	I lifted my head wearily. “I can only be who I am.”
	She nodded. “And there’s nothing wrong with that, Theamh. I didn’t mean to make you feel worse.” She leaned back in toward me. “But I stand behind what I said to you. I think the only thing you can do, that you haven’t already done, is to let him go.”
	Aine’s eyes were on me as I looked back at Barant. It was still hard for me to stand up to her, to believe that I might know better. 
	“I can’t let him go,” I said. “Not yet. I think there’s still hope.”
	“Well,” Barant said flatly. “We all know how you are about letting things go.”
	I stood up, my chair sliding back across the floor. “Idair with you, Aiv. Aine, it’s time to go.”
	“Theamh,” Barant called, standing up as we made for the door. “Don’t leave angry. I’m sorry. It’s late and I’m tired and it’s made me mean. I shouldn’t have said it.”
	I turned back. Barant came out from behind the desk, standing in front of the light, her face dark within the bright halo of her hair. 
	“That was pretty much uncalled for.”
	“Yes, it was. I’m sorry.” She sighed. “It’s been a long day.”
	“You did a great job in the Seat,” I said. “I think you really made an impression.”
	“You did too. For once that mouth of yours helped the Order instead of hurting it.” She sighed. “There is one thing I can suggest, since you seem determined.”
	“What’s that?”
	“If you’re right, and if this thing was sent to get him by someone else,” she said, “she’ll know by now that she’s lost him. She’ll be looking for him, and if she finds out the twins are linked, she’ll come after the other one.”
	I nodded. “I’ll keep an eye on him.”
	“You do that.”
	I bowed at her. “Thank you, Barant. Idair with you.”
	I was glad to get out of the Pharc. Aine sat down and started undoing her bundle.
	“You’re not going to change here.”
	“I want my shoes.” She pulled her ropesoles out of the folds of the robe. “These things are useless for walking.”
	“Good idea.” I changed mine too.
	“So what is your theory?” Aine asked.
	“Well,” I said, standing up, “it isn’t very developed. All I know is the thing holding Crann is kin to the thing that was on Lilea, and since that thing is handling the notborns, and Bric knows about the notborns, and Bric works for Lythril, I’m assuming that Lythril is also behind the taking of Crann.”
	“How much does that help?”
	“Not much, right now.”
	We passed up the dark and more or less quiet street toward the gate. The hanging globes kept a narrow strip lit down the middle, but at the edges near the buildings it was still a shadowy and uncertain place. It was a festive thing, when I was a child, to come down to the Pharc and watch them hanging the lights at sunset; I was never up early enough to watch them taking them back at dawn. I had assumed that one day I would be helping hang the lights, but that was before I really knew what shri was or what I wanted. 
	“Aiv,” rasped a voice on our right. “Something for tomorrow’s breakfast. Please.”
	He looked old, perhaps older than he was; weather ages you fast and so does poverty. “Even the measure, just a little.”
	“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m a shriia, I don’t carry money.”
	The man laughed hollowly. “Ah, I’ve heard that one before, Aiv.”
	“It’s true,” Aine said.
	“Well, then what about you, little lady? Just to tide me till the refectory opens.”
	“I haven’t got anything,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
	His eyes traveled over her dress, then back to mine. Of course he didn’t believe us. 
	“What shame you haven’t got,” he snapped at me, “to lie about a serious thing like that. Just to get out of giving a little away.”
	He turned away with a muttered curse. 
	“But it’s true,” Aine persisted.
	“Get out with you,” the man snarled, waving a hand. “No one wants you here. Or your excuses neither.”
	I put a hand nervously up to my head. When I did I felt the pins.
	“Wait a minute, friend.”
	He stopped. I pulled the pins out of the net and took it down. “I don’t know,” I said, holding it out to him. “Is this any use? Could you sell it?”
	The man looked at the net in my hand, scratching the back of his head and contracting his brow.
	“No,” he finally said. “No one’d touch it, they’d be sure it was stolen.” I nodded. “If I were a woman, a dealer might believe I’d come down in the world, but...”
	“Ah well.” I withdrew my hand. “I’m sorry, it’s all I have with me.”
	“It’s all right,” he said, nodding and waving me on. “It’s all right, shriia. Good rest to you. It’s all right.”
	I made the sign over him. “Come on, Aine.”
	She looked back at him as he walked into the shadow. “Is he going to be all right?”
	I shrugged. “It’s not a cold night, and there is the shelter down by the refectory.”
	“You know,” she said, “that’s one thing about being poor. Strangers don’t ask you for money.”
	“I suppose not.”
	We kept walking. 
	“What do you think that green thing wants with all those notborns?”
	I sighed. “If I knew that, Aine...”
	“And why does it want Crann? He’s not a notborn.”
	“No he’s not,” I said.
	I stopped in the middle of the street and uttered an oath.
	“Dhiaoc?”
	“He’s not a notborn now,” I repeated, stamping my feet on the cobbles, “but he used to be.”
	“So did we all,” Aine said. “What does that matter?”
	I started walking, faster this time. “If what these green things do is mainly abduct and replace notborns, maybe Crann was on the list when he was a notborn and then somehow he didn’t get taken. And now whatever it is is back for him.”
	“Or maybe when Crann was a notborn this...scheme...wasn’t happening yet.”
	“Like enough. And now for some reason they want him.”
	“Why?”
	“They know that, we don’t.”
	Aine was now settling into a purposeful stride and this cogitation business was starting to excite her. “But they haven’t replaced him, dhiaoc.”
	“Well, they wouldn’t have to, now that he’s born. Lilea thinks the only reason they’re replacing these ones is that otherwise the woman would miscarry.”
	“But if that were all they could just take the notborns on their way out and let the miscarriage happen like with a normal return. Nobody would know the difference.”
	“No, you’re right. The replacement must have some other purpose.”
	We were in the woods already. “What are they replacing the notborns with?”
	“We really don’t know. Other children, it seems like--they read as human, but they’re older than notborns.”
	“Maybe they want to use Crann as one of the replacements,” Aine suggested.
	“Yes!” I shouted, startling a passing bat. “They’ve taken him to put into one of the notborns’ places. And then...” Aine’s elation seemed to leak out about the same time as mine. “What would the point be of shuffling a child’s spirit from one body to another?”
	“No point, I suppose.” Our pace slowed somewhat as we started getting discouraged. “There’s another thing, dhiaoc.”
	“What?”
	“Lilea said this always happened to wealthy women. Mna’s not wealthy. At all.”
	“True.” We trudged on. “I was thinking of her, you know, when that man--”
	Aine nodded. “She must have spent a lot of nights like that,” Aine said. “Wherever she came from, and then to come to a strange city...”
	“Uh oh,” I said.
	“What?”
	“We’re looking at this all wrong,” I burst out. “We don’t know anything about Mna, we don’t know where she comes from or why she left. Sure, she’s poor now.” Aine was looking at me, beginning to see it too. “Who’s to say she always was?”
	“You think she--”
	“You remember,” I cried, as hundred things exploded in my brain, “I asked her if she’d ever been in a big house and she said yes but never through the front door.”
	“Yes,” Aine said, her eyes practically glowing. “Yes, I remember.”
	“And after she heard Taric’s story, she said to me that they had something in common. I had no idea what she meant at the time, but--”
	“You mean she was in love with Keanrih too?”
	“No, how could she have been. I mean she is--she was--someone’s mistress.”
	“And he died,” Aine added. 
	I nodded. “Well, maybe. Or maybe...no, maybe...”
	“Maybe he turned her off!” she finished, flush with the exhilaration of insight. “Yes! She got pregnant and then he cut her off. It happens all the time. The family puts up with the mistress as long as she knows her place but as soon as she produces a child who might inherit--”
	“You’re right,” I said. “You’re even righter than you know, Aine.”
	“I am?”
	“Yes, you are.”
	“How?”
	“Because now it all fits,” I said. “She was this man’s mistress. But this wasn’t a casual mercenary relationship. She loved him, and he hurt her badly. Everything in her mind that’s connected with the father of those twins is painful. She’s not the kind of woman to invest passion in someone who doesn’t return it. He must have loved her too.”
	“I don’t see what--”
	“So they love each other, but he’s promised to a landed woman,” I went on. “Or maybe even married to one, who knows. And she gets pregnant. If the family finds out, they’ll force him to repudiate her. He can’t face that. So what’s his solution?”
	“Have them returned,” Aine said softly.
	“Exactly. So down to the nearest mathair she goes. She has to travel--probably to Naucht Point, or Arelia, or one of other big cities down south. So the shriia doesn’t know her. She’s wearing the clothes and jewelry he’s given her, so she looks like a target. And so her children won’t go back--or she thinks they won’t.”
	Aine nodded. “So then he turns her off.”
	“While she’s pregnant with his twins.”
	“And she can’t go back to her family, or doesn’t want to, because of the shame.”
	“So there she is,” I said. “On the road alone with two infant boys.”
	Aine agreed. “What a cowardly sniveling bastard to do that to her.”
	“Spoken like a shriia, Aine.”
	We walked on.
	“If this is true, dhiaoc...” Aine began.
	“Then Crann isn’t the child she conceived,” I said. “That’s what pulls this all together. Something wants him. Well, why does it want him? We’ve never had an answer for that. But if Crann was supposed to be carrying out a mission, and to do that he had to be born to a wealthy woman, and if the person behind all this suddenly discovered that Mna was not, in fact, a wealthy woman...”
	“...then whoever it was would come take him back,” Aine finished.
	“And there we are,” I said. “Now we have a motive.”
	“You know,” Aine said, her voice hushed now in the silence of the forest. “I think you’re right.”
	“We’re right,” I said. “This is your theory too now.”
	She nodded, pleased but a little in awe of the responsibility. And of the trees around us holding the thick darkness in a canopy above and beyond the reach of my light globe. Anything can move in the forest at night. Living, dead, or in between. Spirits, animals, dark users. With the forces of darkness suddenly drawn up ahead of us, all bending their powers onto the head of that poor little boy without a spirit, that fact was impressing both of us more than it sometimes does.
	“But why not Frih?” Aine suddenly said. “If he was replaced too?”
	That was a thought. “Maybe he had better protections.”
	“Surely they were done by the same shriia.”
	“Maybe it can only take one at a time,” I suggested, rather lamely. “It was coming back for Frih, but by then he was under my protection and it couldn’t?”
	Aine shrugged. “I suppose.”
	“Oh wait,” I said, holding up a hand.
	“You have another idea.”
	“Oh, wait. Oh, dear. Oh Idair’s hair and eyebrows.”
	“What is it?”
	“They’re twins,” I said. “This thing works by attaching itself to the shriia and then following her link to the notborn. If the shriia thought there was only one notborn, the thing wouldn’t look for a second.” A moth fluttering around the globe fell to the ground suddenly with singed wings. Aine shied away as it dropped. “And it’s possible, especially if Mna went in early, that the shriia only dealt with the first one she met because she didn’t realize there were two.” 
	“Does that happen often?”
	“Not to someone experienced, like Lilea. It might happen, though, to someone who was just out of scoil, someone who was inexperienced and young and wasn’t used to the idea that she might sometimes be mistaken. Someone like, for instance, Pel.”
	“Pel?”
	“Yes,” I said, my words coming faster as the memories popped up, “yes, someone like Pel, who got her orders five years ago and who wanted to start in the Pharc but who as a compromise between the ones who wanted to ordain her and the ones who didn’t was sent to go learn something first by doing a three-year provincial stint...in Naucht Point.”
	“Oh my goodness,” Aine exclaimed.
	“We have to talk to Pel,” I said. “And we have to talk to Mna.” I sped up. “In fact...I’ve never tried to activate this long-distance, but let’s see what happens.”
	<Mna.>
	<Shriia? You’re home already?>
	<No, no, I’m in your head. This is the link.>
	<Oh.>
	<How are you all doing? You and the boys survive dinner on your own?>
	<Very well, shriia. We had no trouble finding a cold supper.>
	<That’s good.>
	<And it was thoughtful of you to leave the light in the living area.>
	<Yes, I’m lucky that occurred to me. Is that where you all are now?>
	<Yes. I’ve got Crann here with me and Frih’s over by the fireplace playing with the cat.>
	The hairs rose on my arms and along the back of my neck.
	<What cat?>
	<The gray-and-white one, with the big yellow eyes.>
	<How long has it been there?>
	<It came in just a minute ago. It went right up to Frih. It seems very friendly.>
	<Uh huh. Mna...can you do something for me?>
	<Anything, shriia.>
	<Would you just go on over there as casually as you can and pick up the cat?>
	There was a pause. <I have her now, shriia. Actually...I think it’s a he.>
	<Yes, fine. Now if you would just take the cat out to the hallway and open the music room door...don’t let Frih follow you.>
	<All right, shriia, but--whoops, there it goes.>
	<Where is it going?>
	<It’s running down the hallway back toward the living area.>
	<Can you get it?>
	<I don’t think so, shriia, it’s pretty fast.>
	<All right, leave it be. Get the boys together, the way you normally would, and then go up to your room and close the door. Do it slowly and act natural, but make sure the cat is on the other side.>
	<If you say so, shriia, but-->
	<Do it. It’s important.> I broke into a run. <We’ll be there as soon as we can.>
	Aine started running after me. “What’s the matter, dhiaoc?”
	“There’s a strange cat in the house.”
	“Oh fnaa!” Aine shouted.
	“Some shriia I am,” I panted, charging as fast as I could back to my clearing. “Barant specifically warns me to look after Frih and do I do that? No, I spend all this time mucking around with my stupid theories--”
	“But it’s important, dhiaoc, we figured out so much--”
	“How many times am I going to say this, Aine? The point isn’t to solve the puzzle, the point is to save the client.”
	I decided to save my breath for running. It was still a little ways, but the path shrunk up considerably once we were really moving. I was plenty winded when I reached the gate, but at least I wasn’t about to collapse.
	“You think she sent it?”
	“I’d be very surprised if she didn’t,” I answered, closing the shield and running to the door.
	The house was quiet, and it was dark. Mna and the twins were nowhere to be seen. I assumed this meant Mna had taken my advice. We set down our bundles by the door and I took the light back. Aine and I tiptoed forward, trying to be as silent as possible. 
	<Where do you think it would go?>
	<It’d stay away from the lab, that’s for sure.>
	<Kitchen?>
	<Most likely. That’s where the mice are.>
	<You have mice?>
	<I don’t know it for a fact, but I must. I am, after all, a slob.>
	<I’m sorry about that, dhiaoc...>
	We stopped in the hallway outside the kitchen. <Go get him.>
	<What, me?>
	<Lythril knows me, she knows if I see a strange cat I’m going to assume it’s hers. But you she doesn’t know. It might assume you’re just petting it and cozy up to you.>
	<But...>
	<If you can pick him up without her suspecting, that’ll make this a lot easier. If he scratches at you or if he runs away when you grab for him then we’ll do it the hard way.>
	Aine gulped. <All right, dhiaoc.> She slipped into the dark kitchen.
	“Ooooh, look at the kitty,” she called. “Are those your big yellow eyes I see? Are those your eyes? Yeeeeeees. Yes, they are. They are theyaretheyare.”
	<That’s good, Aine, if you can make her nauseous maybe it’ll distract her.>
	“Who’s a pretty kitty?” she went on, not vouchsafing me a reply. “Are you a pretty kitty? Yes you are. Yes you are. You like having your tummy rubbed? Oh, you like that, don’t you.”
	<For Idair’s sake, Aine-->	
	“Come on,” she wheedled. “Come on, kitty. Upsie-daisy!” At this moment, I assumed, she made the grab. 
	There was a yowl, a screech from Aine, and the sound of a nine-pound clawed animal hitting my kitchen floorboards.
	<Look out!>
	The cat flew out into the hall as soundlessly as a moth would. It brushed against my leg and then melted into one of the shadows.
	<Good try, Aine. Come out and close the kitchen door.>
	While she secured the kitchen I hung a light globe in the hallway. <We’re going to have to go room to room now.>
	<Had we better start with the upstairs?>
	<We better had. Cats like steps.>
	I pulled out another globe and brought it with us to the second floor. <This would have to happen when I’m not in hreapa. We’ll work from the far end back to the stairs.>
	We started back to the storeroom. <Or...>
	<Or what?>
	<We could just go to where Frih is and wait. Since that’s who he wants.>
	<I don’t want to use him as bait. He’s already been in enough danger.>
	We were in the storeroom now. I sent the fire in the globe licking around the walls and floor, lighting the corners and crannies. He wasn’t there. I took the fire back and closed the room. 
	My room was next. I sent the flame across the ceiling. In the pale yellow light it looked even more lonely, unloved and depressing--the closet without my hreapa in it, the tub of cold water I hadn’t bothered to empty, the crumpled shifts, the blanket wadded up next to the window, the basket shoved into one corner.
	<Looks like he’s not here either, dhiaoc.>
	<Wait.> I moved toward the basket. <We should remember, this is Lythril we’re dealing with.>
	<Lythril likes baskets?>
	<Listen.>
	From inside the basket came the sound of ripping parchment.
	I rushed forward, but before I reached the basket the lid flipped up and the cat exploded out of it. It galloped across the room, bristling and wailing, with Aine after it. 
	I drew the fire back and ran out, shutting the door behind me. Aine was clattering down the steps after it. I ducked in to draw Aine’s door shut on my way down.
	<Where are you, Aine?>
	<It’s gone into the music room.>
	<All right, try to flush it into the living area.>
	I bumbled down the steps, knocking into the railing and generally making as much noise as any two people ought. Just as I was reaching the bottom the cat came shooting past, right through the space where I had been planning to put my foot. I stepped wide, turned my ankle, and fell ingloriously in a heap.
	<Dhiaoc, are you all right?>
	<Just tell me where that damn cat has got to.>
	<I think it’s in the living area. I’ve shut the music room door.>
	<All right. Well, we’ll grab it there.>
	<Can’t we just shoo it out the front door?>
	<If that thing gets loose in the grounds we’ll never find it. We have to get it outside the shield.>
	I limped into the living area and set the fire running along the rafters. Aine and I stood underneath it looking for the cat.
	<It’s funny,> I said after a few minutes. <A lot of objects cast shadows that are cat-shaped.>
	Aine laughed, nervously. She, like me, had been twitching every few seconds as she noticed something that looked like the cat but wasn’t. <Could we lure it with food?>
	<This is the problem with a meatless lifestyle. There’s nothing in here a cat would want.>
	<How about-->
	<Wait. Under the chair.> Two bright, flat discs reflecting the fire.
	<I see him.>
	<Don’t move.> I started undoing my dress.
	<Dhiaoc, what are you doing?>
	<We’re going to have to wrap it in something.>
	I slipped it over my head. <So how do we do this, dhiaoc?>
	<I’m open to suggestion.> I took a step forward, and was greeted by a hiss. <Well, direct confrontation has proved ineffective. If only we had a toy mouse or something...>
	<Here.> She undid the bow at the back of her dress and ripped one of the tiebacks off. <I’ll decoy it out onto the floor and then you drop on him.>
	<Go ahead.>
	Aine knotted the end of the sash and crouched down to toss the knotted end under the chair. “Heeeeeeeeeeeere, kitty kitty. C’mere. Oooh! Lookit this! See this?”
	The cat, which I could see more clearly as I crouched at the ready, was in a state of severe agitation. He crouched close to the ground, his chin on his gray and white paws, head flicking back and forth as his eyes followed the motion of the fabric. His whole body was trembling, but it also at the same time seemed to be frozen. It was an epic struggle--a dark user’s inexorable will against a cat’s irresistible urge to attack long dangly objects. 
	“What is it? Is it a snake? Is it a mousie? Is it a big old beetle on a string? What is it? See? It’s taunting you! You better go get it!”
	His eyes locked onto the end of the string as it skittered back and forth on the floor. His hips shifted and his tail flicked as his rear end waggled into attack position. Lythril was about to lose this one.
	“Come get it!” Aine shouted, snapping the knot out into the open.
	The cat pounced on the knot. I pounced on the cat.
	The dress, once I had him wrapped in it, blunted the bite of his teeth, and the claws couldn’t quite rip all the way through, but there was enough thrashing and hissing and throwing around of pointy body parts to make wrestling him to the door an epic struggle in itself. I had a grip on the bundle of spitting, tearing cloth when we got out of the house, but a paw got loose while I was locking the door and from that point on it was touch and go. Clutching the thing as close to me as I could, I ran through the gardens out to the gate. As I was struggling to get the shield open a set of claws raked through my forearm and the cat fell to the ground as I jerked back.
	“Fnaa!” I closed up the gate and tried to grab him again, but he had leapt out of the bundle and appeared to have gone under the carrot leaves. 
	<Is he out, dhiaoc?>
	<No, the damn thing has escaped. It’s in the garden somewhere.>
	We started hunting among the plants. But now that he was in the open we were no match for him. We could hear rustling, but he was always outside the reach of our light, and he could move to a new spot faster than we could get to the old one. After half an hour of running futilely back and forth we stopped to take stock.
	<This isn’t going to work.>
	<Should we wait until morning? At least he’s out of the house.>
	<Maybe you feel differently, Aine, but I don’t want to try to go to sleep knowing Lythril’s agent is prowling around inside the shield.>
	<But this is hopeless. We can’t even find him, never mind chase him off the property. We need night vision, or something.>
	<We need a dog.>
	<A dog would help.>
	<Well, I haven’t got one, so there we are.>
	<No, but I bet Taric keeps them.>
	<Did you see one while you were up there?>
	<I don’t think so, but he does keep sheep...>
	<Hang on, I’ll ask Mna.> I closed my link with her. <Mna?>
	<Shriia, what’s going on?>
	<Well, Aine and I are trying to drive this cat off the grounds and it’s giving us some trouble. Do you remember if Taric keeps a dog?>
	<Yes, he does. Shriia, this seems like a lot of trouble about a stray cat.>
	<I don’t think it’s just a stray cat.>
	<What is it then?>
	<I think it’s also one of Lythril’s minions.>
	<And it was after my boy?>
	<That’s what I think. Is Frih all right?>
	<He’s fine, shriia, but he’s a little scared.>
	Well, weren’t we all. <Keep an eye on him and if anything unusual happens call me, I’m right down here in the gardens.> I linked up with Aine. <Get Cinhe and go down to Taric’s farm. She knows the way. Tell him what’s happened and ask him if he’ll come back here with a dog.>
	<Shouldn’t you go? I can watch here.>
	<Aine, if I left you alone here with Demon Kitty the Order would expel me for scoilin abuse. You go, I’ll stay.>
	Aine ran off to the stables and returned with Cinhe and the empty lantern. “Take her to Felim, Cinhe,” I said, patting her neck after Aine swung aboard. I put some flame in the lantern and handed it to her. “Safe journey.”
	I opened the gate and closed it immediately after she went through. Then I went back to the gardens.
	“All right, Lythril,” I called out. “It’s just you, me and the cat.”
	It must be getting close to midnight. The sky above my head was about as dark as it could get, without even much starlight to help me. The moon was approaching full, but it was behind a cloud. Enough of a breeze ran through the shield to ruffle the leaves and send up from the vines and stalks of the garden a subdued, presaging whisper that did nothing to calm my nerves. My hreapa was inside the locked house, my party dress was lying in ribbons at the exit to the shield, and there I stood in a linen shift and canvas rope-soled boots while Lythril’s scout roamed my grounds.
	Reasoning that as long as I couldn’t see it, there was no point in letting it see me, I drew the fire back into my hands and went quietly to sit among the squash plants and wait.
	What was on my mind more than the danger we were all in was the question of how the cat had come through the shield in the first place. The shield, of course, allows some things to pass through--water, air, and small animals. Otherwise, the garden would die and we would get very sick. But in addition to camouflaging the house so that from outside this place looks just like another stand of trees, the shield is supposed to block any being whose sentience exceeds a certain level, and cats are way above that threshold. It might have snuck through during one of my entrances or exits; but distracted as I am I’d have noticed a cat following us in. It could have tunnelled under, but a cat is not really a burrowing animal. Unless Lythril had somehow suborned a local badger, the most likely hypothesis was that something was very wrong with the shield. Which was a shame, since although it would be an exaggeration to say that I put the thing up expressly to prevent Lythril from doing exactly this, it was also true that if this sort of thing was going to happen there was not much point in having a shield at all.
	If Lythril had sent a cat instead of her specter, this meant at least that the shield was still blocking humans, which was something. Probably Lythril had planned to use the cat to link with Frih, which would mean that the next time he got a flash from his twin in the ether she would beat us there and take him. Mediated through the cat’s mind, her powers were weaker than otherwise, but with Lythril’s power behind him that cat was still one dangerous animal. And a very effective spy.
	The doors were locked and the windows were closed. But I was far from sure that there wasn’t a hole somewhere about that a cat couldn’t squeeze back through. It was probably looking for just such a hole right now.
	“So,” I said to the dark and the cold, hoping to distract the cat from its mission, “you’re back to hassling me again. I have to say, I wouldn’t have thought I occupied so prominent a place on your enemies list. Aren’t there more powerful people you could be working to undermine?”
	Nothing but wind in the leaves and the sound of the night insects at their work. “Congratulations, anyway, on exceeding even my expectations. Barant said exile would keep you out of our hair for at least five years. I figured it would take you three years to set up there, build up your clientele, wangle some opening in the border and come shrieking back here to raise hell. But you’ve done it in two and a half. You’re right, we did underestimate you.”
	I thought I saw one of the broad leaves of the squash plants twitch, but the light was so low I could be imagining almost anything. It was just possible, I reminded myself, that I was delivering this soliloquy to a perfectly ordinary cat that had wandered in through a tear in the shield and was now terrified out of its poor feline skull. Remembering that was the only thing that kept me from throwing up. To be this close to your worst enemy wearing nothing but a shift and your shoes is a very unsettling thing.
	“We went through all that knowing it wouldn’t actually stop you,” I said. “Nothing but death is going to stop you. We were just hoping we could disrupt your timetable.” I laughed. “And we have. You’d just started to put this in motion before we kicked your gleacha over the border. You replaced Crann, and who knows who else, and then suddenly you were too busy paying off witnesses and rigging auratests to carry out whatever mission he was in charge of.” I wrapped my arms around me, covering the naked spots where the marks should have been. “But whatever he was supposed to do for you, he’s obviously forgotten it, or he’d be doing it now. So why don’t you just find yourself another champion and let the boy come home? He’s useless to you.”
	Cats don’t laugh, but I’m sure this one was trying.
	“Of course that would mean letting me win, and you wouldn’t want that.” I laughed. “You’d rather drink one of your own poisons than do anything that would give the impression one of the whelps from the scoil had beaten you. Well, I’m not the girl I was when we showed up on your doorstep that evil afternoon. And I suppose partly I have you to thank for that.”
	I had the feeling that the cat was watching me, although I had no way of knowing for sure. Lythril does like an argument, and even if she wasn’t going to participate in this one she was probably doing a running commentary in her own mind.
	“You gave me a great gift, after all,” I said to the waving leaves around me. “If it hadn’t been for that month you spent playing with us like a cat tortures mice, I might never have realized I loved her.” I picked a leaf off the plant next to me and began shredding it. “And my life would probably have been easier, but it wouldn’t have been...well. You wouldn’t understand that. I doubt you love anyone.”
	I could have skipped that fight with the council, for instance, and a few of the disciplinary hearings after her disappearance. And I could have done without the nights of lying awake on that bed I never used any more wishing my besotted imagination would just leave me alone. But I still, given the chance, would not have given up that knowledge, in spite of the pain it was still causing me. If you asked why, I’d be hard put to explain it, but it was a truth I had never doubted. It was better to know how I loved her, to know she returned it, even knowing we could never be together. Just because it was.
	“The smart thing to do,” I went on, “would have been to kill us on the spot and send our bodies back to the Council. But you saw a better opportunity. Well, gift-wrapped as we practically were, you still lost both of us. I suppose that’s why you’re still hounding me.” I laughed bitterly. “And still hounding Istria, wherever she is. Which is where, anyway? You must have some hideaway over the border where you keep your captives. Dalen and Morat never found that bastard you thurk with, after all, or the rest of your minions. Is that why it didn’t take long? Did they have the house all ready and waiting for you with the cauldron hot and the bed made up?” 
	I’d have given Aine some speeder, but riding a speeding horse is not something you want to try for the first time at night during an emergency. “And they took Istria with them, I suppose--as a hostage, maybe, insurance against me or the Council. Since both I and the Council wanted her back in the worst way.”
	It wasn’t very plausible. But it was the only explanation I’d come up with. And it was true that there was plenty of evidence, as Morat and Dalen told it, to show that most of Lythril’s entourage had hightailed it for the border not long before they arrived. Lythril was too proud to flee; she’d built her fortress and she was going to defend it. But it’s unlikely that any of her minions fled without her knowledge or consent. Probably she sent them off to prepare for the worst up in the north--saving face while hedging her bets. It would make sense. The only part that was a stretch was their agreeing to take a fairly powerful hostage along for the ride. She would have been a serious inconvenience. But maybe by then Lythril had subdued her, forced her into some kind of stupor or paralysis that made her just another piece of luggage. A two-year captivity in Lythril’s castle could break anyone’s strength.
	“I suppose you wondered why you didn’t hear from me those two years,” I said. “It’s not that I’ve forgotten you. If it hadn’t been for the Council I’d have tracked you down and dragged you in a long time before Morat and Dalen got to you.” Istria probably wondered that too, but I didn’t like to think about that. When I did, I hoped she knew, somehow, that I still loved her as I always had but that there were limits on what even love could do. “But don’t worry. You’ll hear from me someday.” I flung the shreds of leaf into the air around me. “I’ll find her, I’ll break her out and--well, I can’t kill you, of course, but I’ll do as much damage as I can on my way out of your hellhole.”
	 There was another long silence. 
	“They all think she’s dead,” I said. “You must have banked on that. But, as you so shrewdly observed, I am not Council material. I’m headstrong. I’m impractical. I don’t ride on an even keel. I make attachments where I shouldn’t. Like her.” I wrapped my arms around my drawn-up knees. “I haven’t done the smart thing. I haven’t gotten over her. So you better watch yourself.”
	I felt pretty lame sitting there in the dirt in my shift with my shoulders prickling in the wind making empty threats to a domestic shorthair.
	“I can’t kill you,” I repeated, in a more subdued tone. “But you will die, someday, Lythril. No matter how long you put it off.” I leaned my head back to look up at the moon, which had finally reappeared and was filtering down through the tree limbs. “You wear fifty years like twenty, but even at that rate it’ll catch up to you.” Rubbing the back of my neck with one hand eased the tension slightly, but I was still sore and feeling stiff. “I probably won’t be there to see it. At this rate I’ll be lucky if I last another thirty years.” Rolling my head from side to side I tried to loosen up the muscles. “But when I die, at least I won’t go with the screeching, hysterical terror that’s going to herald your entry into the unknown, and that’s some comfort.”
	I stood up to get a better look at the garden in the moonlight. I still couldn’t see him. The plants and their trellises lay still under the cover of the trees, the stable and henhouse were quiet in the moonlight, bright-edged but dark hearted, outlined in silver. And the house, its windows throwing back a faint shining reflection. No sign of trouble, no sign of danger. Even though somewhere it was slinking in and out of the shadow.
	“I’ll die before you will,” I said. “But Istria loves me, and Idair loves me, and I’ve known good friends and I’ve made life better for a few people.” I started walking between the plants, brushing the leaves with my feet. “That maybe doesn’t add up to happiness, but it’s still closer than you’ll get.”
	<Dhiaoc.>
	<Are you back?>
	<We’re outside the gate. Hurry, this dog...>
	I went to the gate and opened it. Aine trotted through on a rather nervous Cinhe, followed by Taric on the stallion and leading a large, shaggy dog behind him. I closed the gate. Taric dismounted and whistled the dog to him.
	“I’m glad I can be some use, shriia,” he began, scratching the dog’s head and neck while it tumbled around him. “And so’s Mada. My few sheep are so docile--he’s wasted on them.”
	So Taric had named his dog Dog. That was in character.
	“You have anything this cat has slept on or been at?”
	I picked up the shredded dress. “There’s this. Of course, my scent is on it too.”
	“That is unfortunate,” Taric said, looking at it.
	“I could maybe explain it to him,” I said, looking at the dog a little warily.
	Taric laughed. “You’re not a dog person, are you, shriia. Still, Mada.” The dog stopped leaping around by his feet. “Sit, Mada.” It sat, wagging its tail and looking up at him with its panting mouth. “He won’t stir till I say so, shriia. Talk away.”
	I sat down in front of him. I understand dog better than I speak it, and even my comprehension is limited because I never learned the different dialects. But when I gave him the standard greeting he responded pleasantly enough.
	After a minute, I was satisfied that I had given him to understand that of the scents he distinguished, he should chase the one that smelled least like a human. Mada appeared to grasp the concept without undue strain. He was evidently brighter than he looked.
	Taric gave him the dress, which he took in his mouth and slobbered over. Ah well. It would be a long time before I was going to be invited to another dinner party anyway.
	“You have it? All right then, boy. Go get him!”
	The dog was off, circling in its furry, ear-flapping lope around the grounds hoping to catch the trail. Near the gate he got very excited, put his nose to the ground and began whuffling toward the house in a broken line through the gardens. That must be the path it had taken on the way in. He lifted his nose, sniffed around the door, and then went racing around the house once or twice, finally disappearing behind it.
	“What’s back there, shriia?” Taric asked. 
	“Just the meadow,” I said, “with one tree, and I suppose some field mice--”
	There was a long, undulating bay of excitement and then a violent rustle as the dog flashed around the house and back toward the shield, obviously in pursuit of the cat. 
	“Well done, Mada! Bring him to me!” There was a pause. “Mada? What ails you, boy?”
	The dog had stopped in his tracks and was barking its head off. I started moving toward it, aiming for the spot a few feet ahead of him at which he was staring. Mada pawed the ground with his front feet, yapping at the top of his lungs. Looking down through the long grass, I could make out the tip of the cat’s tail waving above the blades.
	The dog’s hind legs shuddered, then collapsed on the ground. Mada pawed even harder with his front feet, emitting a piteous whine.
	I darted forward to where the cat was hiding and reached down to grab it by the scruff of the neck. It was twisting and spitting in the air when I lifted it up, but I got a grip on the skin above its tail with the other hand and began hauling it toward the gate. Its feet were slashing about, and sometimes slashing me, but I had its head turned away from me and that was what mattered.
	<All right, Aine, pick up that sad, drool-covered rag and come around behind me.>
	<Wouldn’t it be more effective just to-->
	<Do not get in this cat’s direct line of sight.>
	 Aine stooped to gather the dress, then circled around until she was standing behind me. <What should I do with it?>
	<Make a hood and drop it over the cat’s head.>
	Aine ripped off one of the sleeves and knotted the end. The cat was twisting like seven serpents on a hayfork but she got the thing over its head. I figured it would stay put for about half a minute.
	I ran out to the gate and opened it. With my free hand I flung the cat as far as I could into the distance. It landed on its feet with a yowl.
	“You tell that bitch from me,” I shouted, as it started pulling at the hood with its front paws, “that she better work up a new bag of tricks, because this one’s getting old.”
	I had the gate closed before it could get the hood off. Of course, it had gotten in once, and there was no guarantee that it wouldn’t get in again. But at least we could get into the house and secure it before it could work its way back through the shield.
	Taric was in the field with Mada, who was looking up at him and whining. His back legs were still lying useless on the ground. 
	I unlocked the door. “Aine, go up to the guest room and check on Mna and Frih. Look for the signs and call me if you see any.” She nodded and ducked through the doorway. I locked up and went back to the horses.
	“Bring Mada to the stables,” I said. “You’ll have to carry him.”
	I led Cinhe and the stallion toward the stable. There wasn’t really room for two of them in there, but they could manage for the night. I got them as settled as I could and spread some clean straw on the floor outside the box for Mada.
	Taric followed with the dog’s limp form. Mada was looking up at him with that canine trust that so tears at your heart, especially when you know how misplaced it can be.
	“Set him down here,” I said.
	“What’s the matter with him?” Taric asked mournfully, kneeling by the dog’s head.
	I hung some light above us. “She’s put the olaidh on him.” I ran my hands over the dog’s fur. “It’s a kind of an ethereal parasite.” My hands were now resting on his haunches. “If you put your hand here, you’ll feel it.”
	Taric put one of his square, rough hands next to mine on the brown fur covering the dog’s hip. “He’s cold,” he said, alarmed.
	“It’s the olaidh. They’ve gone to his legs and they’re sucking up the warmth.” I brought my hands up to the dog’s shoulders.
	“Can you put him right?” Taric asked, his voice quavering. “Is he going to die?”
	“I hope not,” I said. “I beat this thing once, maybe I can do it again.”
	I put one hand on the dog’s head. <Here, Mada. Here, boy.>
	The dog’s mind was alert, although the tingling in his hind legs frightened him.
	<I know it’s scary. And something even scarier is about to happen to you. But I need you to be brave for me. Can you do that, boy?>
	The tail thumped against the straw-covered floor, feebly but with conviction.
	<Close your eyes now. When you feel the fire, you just stay put and don’t try to get away. It may be painful but it won’t harm you.>
	He seemed to understand.
	“Close your eyes, Taric,” I said, bringing my hands wearily to my shoulders.
	It took a long time. The marks weren’t there, I was tired, and I was out of hreapa. The energy I needed ran hither and yon, diffuse and recalcitrant, until I dragged it up to my shoulders, where it seethed around my upper body in a grumbling, uncooperative mass until with a final impatient effort I broke it out into my hands. The rope crackled around me, white as ever but without the intensity it usually had. It would probably be enough, though. Lythril might have been linked through his mind, but he was still only a cat.
	“All right, Taric, it’s safe to look now.”
	Taric opened his eyes, flinching away from the sight of the fire. I put my flaming hands on the dog’s shoulders and began wrapping the fire in a thin, almost transparent layer around his body, protecting the head and shoulders first. Then I ran it slowly down to where the olaidh had rooted itself in the flesh of Mada’s haunches.
	Mada’s stomach shuddered as the fire went under his skin. It was painful for him, I was sure, but I had to get it settled right into his body if I was going to root the thing out. I knew well enough what it felt like to have another being’s fire in you. But Mada stood it bravely, trusting that I meant him no harm.
	At length I was satisfied that I had made the fire part of the fiber and sinew of his hind end, and that the rest of him was protected from above from any reinfestation. I brought my hands above his haunches, kneeling over him in anticipation.
	<Mada, this will hurt, but try to stay still.>
	“Mo linn agam!”
	The fire erupted crackling out of his fur, flying off in sparks and brief jets of white flame. The wrap I had left on his front half slid down to cover him, and not a moment too soon. As my fire found my hands and began sinking back into me, I could see the sickly, roiling blue-green ooze settling down over the thin white shield, crawling on top of it, trying to get through it back to its home.
	Taric’s face lost its usual color. I trapped the olaidh under another layer of fire. This at least meant Taric didn’t have to keep looking at them. Then I began the slow and tedious process of peeling them off.
	Both layers of fire curled back from Mada’s head as I rolled the stuff back toward his tail like a snake’s shed skin, or more accurately like some kind of extremely nasty jelly roll--two layers of white fire with a blue-green rancid filling. As his ordinary brown eyes and dark fur appeared, Taric looked progressively relieved. Finally I had the whole mess hovering between my hands in a crumpled ball.
	“Well,” I said, “let’s see if he gets up.”
	His tail thumped, his eyes blinked and he rolled himself onto his stomach. Then, creakily, he pushed himself up to his feet and walked shakily over to Taric.
	“That’s a good boy,” Taric said, rubbing Mada’s shaggy head. “What a good, brave boy you are, Mada.”
	Mada licked his hand and curled up by his knees. Taric looked down so I wouldn’t see him starting to tear up.
	I had my hands full anyway. I had now pulled the outer layer into a spherical shell and was drawing all of the fire into it, leaving the olaidh wriggling on and under itself in the center. I took as much of the fire back as I could, until there was a thin, membranous skin through which I could see the nauseating undulations of the mass of olaidh.
	“What...what happens now, shriia?” Taric asked, paling again as he looked at the ball in my hands.
	“I wait for them to die,” I said. “You can go back to the house if you want. You’ll stay here tonight, of course.”
	“Shriia, I couldn’t--”
	“Don’t even try it. I have no idea what time it is but it can’t be early. Mada’s not well enough to run after you all the way back, anyhow.”
	“True enough,” he said.
	“Of course it’s true.”
	He seemed to understand I was joking, although his way of participating was to look back down at Mada, who lay on his back with his paws in the air. Taric rubbed his stomach.
	“How long will it take them to die, shriia?”
	I shrugged. “Half an hour, maybe.”
	“I’ll stay, then.”
	“Thank you, Taric.” I looked up at him. “It’s good of you. I’ve spent enough time alone with evil tonight.”
	He looked at me with a very hard-to-read face. What happened at Keanrih’s trial had been the hot news of the province for weeks; surely the story had reached him, remote as his farm was. And maybe he was thinking about that as he waited the time out with me, with Mada, and the bluish things that were crawling more slowly.
	“It’s none of my business and not my trade, shriia,” he said, “but...how can a spirit die?”
	“Well, they don’t ‘die’ exactly, that’s just an analogy. They just sort of...decay.”
	“Why?”
	“I haven’t totally figured it out,” I said, “but it seems they live on something they extract from the flesh of living beings. Without that nourishment they stop holding together, and eventually they revert back to...to whatever the spirits are made out of.”
	“And then what?”
	“I release the stuff and it returns to the ether. I don’t know what happens to it afterwards, but I’m sure it winds up being part of something else.”
	“But why did he fall like that?”
	“Well,” I said, wiping my sweating forehead with the back of one forearm, “when the olaidh drink up whatever it is they drink up, the muscles lose their strength. Given time, they waste away altogether.”
	Mada was asleep now, his head resting blissfully on Taric’s knees. “So if you hadn’t cast them...they’d have killed him.”
	“Oh, no,” I said. “If I hadn’t been able to cast them, you’d have killed him yourself. You wouldn’t want him to go through that. It’s...a slow, painful, nasty death.”
	Taric scratched around Mada’s ears. “Then I’m lucky you knew how to cure him.”
	I nodded. The blue forms were starting to lose their definition, merging into one large globule that was still agitating like a simmering pot. “You see, they’re decaying.”
	“How did that cat do this to him?”
	“Lythril transferred them from her mind to its mind, and then he put them on Mada. They’re perfectly harmless as long as they’re in your mindspace; they go into a sort of hibernation and they stop draining you. It’s only once they get a taste of flesh that they get dangerous.” I took a closer look at the ball. It would be a few minutes yet. “That’s how she uses them--they nest in her mindspace and wait for her call. Then she projects them on to the victim’s body, and it’s suppertime.”
	“So Lythril was linked to the cat?”
	“That’s the great thing about cats--their minds are almost as complex as humans’, in some ways. And then much simpler in others. So they make very effective servants.”
	Taric shifted uncomfortably. “I’ll take good care around them in future, shriia.”
	“Oh, I hope this hasn’t soured you on cats,” I protested, with an earnestness he seemed to find funny. “It’s not their fault. Depending on who it works for, the same cat can be evil on four feet one day and an agent of mercy the next. It’s the mind behind it.”
	He nodded, but he looked unconvinced. “Do dark users overtake dogs like that, shriia?”
	I laughed. “No, not that I know of. Some users keep them, but they’re interested in their teeth, not their minds.”
	“Good,” Taric said, giving Mada a ruffle with his hand.
	The blue had settled down now, sloshing only when I moved the sphere. For safety I waited another few minutes. Then I withdrew the last of the fire. The blue spread into the air in vaporous trails until it had thinned to invisibility.
	“That does it,” I said. Taric stood up, first sliding Mada’s head gently down into the straw. “He’ll be safe here for tonight. Come on in and we’ll get you set up.”
	I closed the door behind us and followed the light into the living area, where Mna, Frih, Crann and Aine were holding a very tense vigil. Mna, in her shift, was huddling under a blanket with Frih in her lap clinging to her and Crann propped up against them; Aine was at the other end of the couch, still in my old wine-colored dress, wrapped into as tight a ball as the laws of space and movement would permit.
	“Let me have a look, will you,” I said, putting a hand on Frih’s head.
	Mna leaned back to give me room. I went through his mind, then again, for good measure. Then finally stepped back.
	“All clear,” I called cheerfully.
	Mna and Aine heaved a simultaneous sigh of relief. Aine loosened her grip on her own knees a bit; Mna bent down to plant a relieved kiss on the top of Frih’s head. Taric stood behind me in the doorway, too shy to walk in and take a seat.
	“Thank you, shriia,” Mna said. “I’d just have let him play with it. I had no idea--”
	“Don’t like cats,” Frih whined.
	“Thank Taric,” I said. “Without him and Mada we’d still have it pestering us. Taric, why don’t you have a seat. He’ll be stopping with us tonight; I hope you don’t mind.”
	Mna shook her head. “Of course not, shriia. I’m very grateful for all you’ve done for us,” she said, addressing him directly with a frankness that brought the color back to his face. “And I’m glad to have the chance to say it.”
	Taric mumbled something about only doing what anyone would.
	“Is the dog all right?” Aine asked.
	“Yes, the dog’s fine, he’s sleeping out in the stable.”
	“What happened to him?”
	“Lythril and her feline friend put the olaidh on him.”
	“The olaidh?” Mna and Aine asked together. 
	The two girls looked at each other.
	“Can it be?” Mna said, with her spirit coming back. “Something Aine actually doesn’t know?”
	“Taric can explain it to you,” I said. “I think a little hot soup would do us all some good. Any takers?”
	Mna and Aine nodded gratefully. “I’ll be back.”
	I went into the kitchen, followed by Mna’s voice. “So tell us, Taric.”
	“Well,” his voice replied, gruff in answer to her teasing tone, “the olaidh is...it’s a kind of ringworm from hell.”
	Close enough. I hung a light globe near the ceiling and started for the pantry. That was when I saw it.
	My shriek of anger brought Aine speeding to the doorway, followed by Mna and Taric. Their eyes were drawn immediately to what I was looking at. There, on my kitchen floorboards, lay the mangled body of what had at one time been a field mouse. Its death had been a protracted business, and involved more bloodletting than is usual. In fact, it had left a trail of gore smeared on the floor, curving in loops that looked too careful to be random.
	In the silence that had fallen I stepped around to look at it from the other side. No, it wasn’t random. The strokes were crude, and there were breaks and gaps, but my mind, trained to read anything no matter what the cost, pieced the letters together. I, S, T, R, I, A, and after a space, an almost-completed M. Aine must have interrupted him before he could finish.
	“What does it mean, shriia?” Mna asked, timidly.
	“It’s Lythril’s little thurk-you to me,” I snapped, too angry to even be anxious. “That triple-dyed, poison-veined blood-eating bitch!”
	I squatted near the mouse’s corpse, holding my head in my hands and staring down at it with what I imagine was a pretty deranged expression. “This is a disaster. I’m going to have to redo the whole house.”
	Aine advanced tentatively into the room. “Now?”
	“I can’t do it until I’m in hreapa and I can’t do that until sunrise tomorrow.” I closed my eyes and dropped my head forward as the full horror of the situation occurred to me. “We’re going to have to spend the night here with no protections, a shield that doesn’t work, and one of Lythril’s minions abroad in the dark. Thurk, thurk, thurk.”
	“What do you mean, no protections?”
	“I mean that the house isn’t ether-closed any more. If a spirit or a specter or any other kind of incorporeal thing can get through the shield, it can get through these walls. Used to be,” I went on, sitting down rather abjectly on the floor, “that the only place open to the ether was the laboratory, and the vigils were guarding that. Now, the whole place is wide open.”
	“So she’ll come for him,” Mna said, clutching Frih closer.
	“Not necess--” I began.
	“What are you talking about, of course she will, that’s what that cat was after! And now she’ll come and she’ll take him and--”
	“But she’s already failed once and--”
	“I’ve lost Crann and now I’m going to lose Frih!”
	“And Lythril is after you,” Aine said, getting carried along on Mna’s terror, “and what if the lurers are still mad at you for--”
	“Lurers?” Taric broke in, alarmed. “You’ve been tangling with lurers?”
	“What if they come back and they try to kill you?” Aine demanded. 
	I got to my feet, brushing my disordered hair away from my face with an arm scored with paralell sets of bloody red scratches. Frih was wailing, Aine was starting to cry, Mna was still terrified and now Taric was looking green.
	“What if they come after all of us?” Mna said, provoking fresh wails of dismay from both Aine and Taric.
	“All right all right LET’S NOT PANIC!!” I shouted, bringing my hands down on the table.
	They stopped talking. I took a deep breath.
	“If the shield were open to humans I doubt Lythril would have used the cat. Since she did, we can assume that she can’t get in here after us. So she’s not coming after Frih.” 
	“But what about those green things?” Mna demanded.
	Well, at least Aine had taken the opportunity of briefing her. “They, I’m afraid, are a different story. But he’s named, he’s had the protections done and the vigils are looking out for him. If something comes for him, it won’t get him without a fight.”
	Mna nodded.
	“What about the lurers?” Taric demanded.
	“I have no reason to think they’re carrying a grudge. It’s true I invaded their space but I saved one of their spiky little behinds.” I smiled. “And anyway, if it does turn out to be payback time, they’ll come looking for me, not you.”
	“But dhiaoc,” Aine protested.
	“The vigils will keep a look out for me. And I’ll keep a lookout for Frih. We’ll all just sit tight and wait for the sun to rise and then I’ll start putting things right. Right now, the only thing you can do is try to sleep through the rest of this horrible night.”
	“Aren’t you going to sleep?” Mna asked.
	“Oh, I very much doubt that would be possible.”
	“Well,” she said, still hesitant. “Good rest to you then, shriia.”
	She left. “Here, Taric,” I said. “Come up with me and we’ll get you installed.”
	He and Aine followed me up the steps to my room. I unbundled my hreapa and hung it on its peg, then pulled the pallet off the bed I never used.
	Taric lifted it over one shoulder, with a nonchalance that made me feel jealous as well as old and out of shape. “I’d put you up here, but I’ll need it to myself tomorrow morning for haons linn. If we can get this down the steps into the living area...”
	“Of course, shriia.” We started the procession.
	<You better go to sleep too, Aine.>
	<What, now?>
	<Try, anyhow.>
	<How can I sleep knowing she’s out there?>
	<I don’t know. But give it a try. You may as well start learning the nerve.>
	Unwillingly, she withdrew into her room. I was afraid to leave a light in the hall now that the fireproofing had been broken. I’d have to bring Slythe out tomorrow to help me seal the place. Taric’s boots sounded heavy and strange on the stairs behind me.
	I cleared a space in the living area and got him settled. “Good rest to you, Taric. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
	“Thank you, shriia,” he said. “For all you’ve done.”
	“Thank you,” I responded. “You put Mada in danger for us. You didn’t have to help. It was a generous thing and I won’t soon forget it.”
	He was uncomfortable with my saying it. “I’m only repaying a good turn, shriia.” A smile thought about coming to his face, but then didn’t. “Bearla’s due to foal soon. She’s completely recovered--healthy as a horse.”
	He saw nothing amusing about his use of that idiom, and I tried not to show I did.
	“I’m glad to hear it.” Taric was still watching me through that fringe of yellow hair, as if there was something else he wanted to say. “Good rest to you.”
	“You too, shriia.”
	I kept myself busy for as long as I could--filling the tub, cleaning up the dinner dishes, looking at the wreckage of the dress to see if there was anything to be done, deciding that without serious help it wouldn’t even make an acceptable dishclout. I knew intellectually that this was not my mother’s fault, but when I sat down at the kitchen table to stare at the tiny, dead creature that had polluted my house and exposed all in it to the depredations of the demon world, one thought was uppermost in my mind: Next time I go there, I’m going in hreapa, and mathi can just suck it up.
	I, S, T, R, I, A and that half-written M. M could begin a lot of words, but I had the feeling I knew what would have followed. A, R, B, H, another space and then the E. Maybe the mouse wouldn’t have had enough blood to finish the phrase, but she’d have trusted me to fill in the blank. Istria marbh e.
	A boast, a lie, a blow struck in anger. It didn’t mean anything. If anything, Lythril telling me she was dead was all I needed to believe until my dying day that she wasn’t. If she was as smart she thought she was, she’d have known that.
	Then again, maybe she was as smart as she thought she was. Maybe she was smarter. Smarter than the Council, smarter than the border. Smarter, it would certainly seem, than me.

XIX.
Ask And I Answer

	It was dark, as it always was in that house. I was heading up one of the dank, flagstone-paved corridors that snaked around underground, carrying a pail full of something viscous, multicolored, and putrid. The pail was too big for me to manage easily and it kept banging against my legs, the liquid sloshing dangerously close to the edges. There was a room at the end of the corridor where the pail had to go but the corridor was very long and seemed to just get longer as I kept walking.
	“Theamh!”
	I turned around. It had come from one of the captives behind the barred grates that marked off their cells. I was afraid to set the pail down, so I dragged it back down the corridor.
	The way back led me past the row of cells where she kept the captives--pits dug out in the earth, damp and weeping with the moisture of the sod, blocked off from the corridor by barred grates. Some were empty; some still held the skeletal remains of their last occupants, webbed with the mummifying scraps of their decayed flesh. The only one with a living tenant appeared to be the cell from which my name had been called.
	The grate had fallen away somehow and instead the doorway offered a clear path into a room filled with benches and with a dais at one end. I walked through, the pail swinging dangerously about me. The ceiling was high, and the light didn’t go all the way up; when I turned my head to look up the room was lost in darkness. 
	“Theamh!”
	I swung around, banging the pail against a bench and causing the liquid to spill over the side onto the floor. Sidestepping the spreading puddle, I came face to face with the person who had called me. He was tall, with a ravaged face, sandy brown hair, thin nervous hands and a gray shirt that drained any color from his face.
	“Keanrih!” I put down the pail. “What’s the matter?”
	He opened his mouth to speak, but something stopped him. His hands flew to his throat and his knees buckled as he began choking. I ran to pound on his back. I hit him a few times, hard, until a clot of blue-green filth flew out of his open mouth to land on the floor. It turned into a mass of white, writhing worms. I ran over and began stamping on them. 
	“Theamh, what are you doing?” 
	“I’m killing the worms, mathi,” I said, looking guiltily up at her as she stood above me in her party dress. 
	“Well, don’t, it’s disgusting.” I left the worms and crossed the room to her. “Here, hold this, and see if you can avoid dropping it.”
	She handed me the baby. I held it as carefully as I could, but something was very wrong with it. It wasn’t holding one shape. Its features were dissolving, melting like wax, and its limbs and body were shrinking. It got smaller and smaller, and its features got more indistinct, until finally I was holding what looked like a curled-up eel of some kind with a bulbous, featureless head and tiny ineffectual flippers.
	“Theamh!”
	I spun around. The corridor was twisting now, and sliding away from me down its dark contractile length was Istria, her white face pleading with me to help her.
	“Theamh, hurry! Help me!”
	“I’m hurrying, Istri, I--” The eel baby wriggled out of my arm and fell to the floor with a splop. I kept running, finally closing on her, reaching one hand out to the thin white wrist stretching toward me. 
	“Come on, Theamh, you’re almost there--”
	My foot came down funny and I slipped and fell. I tried to stand up but my legs buckled and I came down again in the spilled puddle by the pail. Lilea took me by the arm and hauled me up.
	“Thanks, Lilea.” My legs seemed to be all right now. “Did you see--”
	“Where’s the baby?” Lilea asked.
	“I dropped it.”
	Lilea’s face darkened with anger. “What were you thinking? Go get the baby!”
	She looked back, and I saw the eel baby pushing itself very slowly out the doorway on its flippers. I ran to grab it, but as soon as I got it off the ground it started changing shape, growing, fighting my grasp until finally I was wrestling with what seemed like a full-grown human. I pushed it away, striking out blindly at it in the sudden darkness.
	“Theamh! Theamh, it’s all right, it’s me!”
	Istria’s hands caught my wrists and kept my arms from flailing at her. Her face resolved itself into visibility, traced in the faint light coming through the small window above the bed. Tears sprang to my eyes.
	“I can’t do it, Istri, I can’t stand--this--any more--”
	“I know, Theamh, I know it’s horrible,” she said.
	“She’s doing it on purpose, showing us just enough to scare the fnaa out of us but not enough to get her on--”
	“I know, I know--”
	“We’re going to die here, in this evil place, she’s going to torture us as long as she can and then kill us when she’s bored--”
	“She won’t, she won’t--”
	“Why not?”
	“I won’t let her!”
	Her arms flew around my shoulders and she pulled me to her with a ferocity that startled my heart into a rapid, loud beat that pulsed in my ears as I clung to her, knowing everything was wrong and everything was right at the same time.
	I lifted my head, my arms still wrapped around her shoulders, my face close enough to hers to read the tear tracks on them.
	“We’ll take care of each other,” I said, crying. “Till we can go home.” Istria nodded, snuffling, her own face starting to crumble into the wreck that I knew mine was.
	“I look at her and I see my death riding on her shoulders. She’s just dangerous.”
	“But you’re dangerous too, Istri, sometimes. And I think even I could be dangerous, if she hurt you.”
	Istria’s fingers slipped through my hair. It was a very short distance now, from my mouth to hers. We crossed it in no time at all. 
	I heard her in my head. <We can’t. We can’t.>
	<We shouldn’t, but we can.>
	Her other hand slid around to the small of my back, pulling me closer. Mine traveled from her hair down her bare neck, shaking still although for different reasons. In the hollow of her jaw I felt something out of place, something warm and wet.
	“Istri?”
	When I drew back I was looking at Keanrih, and shrieking. He backed away from me, raising hands covered with blood--the same blood pouring out of the gash on his throat.
	“Keanrih!” I grabbed at him to keep him from falling. My hand went right through him. I kept trying to get a hold of his clothes or his hair or anything else, but solid as his body looked my hands couldn’t touch it.
	“You’re not making very much progress, Theamh.”
	“Well, you could give me a hand, Barant,” I snapped.
	“Make him smaller.”
	“What?”
	Barant pushed down on his head until he shrank to a height of about two feet. “When you pack them down, they’re easier to handle.” She picked him up. “See?”
	I took him from her. But as soon as I held him he flopped limp in my arms, eyes closed, throat still bleeding. 
	“Barant?”
	She was gone. The room was now suddenly lit from above with a red, cold light that glowed sluggishly along veins in the black domed ceiling. Hesitating by the iron doors in the outer wall, I watched as Lythril swept in her black robe and silver chain across the polished basalt dais to where the fire burnt red under the open kettle.
	“Well?” Lythril’s hair was drawn back into a knot of black braid, circled by another silver chain, leaving her forehead high and severe above the narrow nose and the very red lips. “Where is it?” 
	The thurking pail. I walked slowly forward while Istria, crouched next to the kettle, watched in silent misery.
	“I gave you a simple assignment, Theamh. Even someone as squeamish as you should have had no trouble with it. Now have you got it or haven’t you?”
	“I had it but it’s gone now,” I said. 
	Lythril walked forward, her iron-capped heels clicking on the stone, and stepped down to look at me with that blood-chilling smile.
	“That’s all right, Theamh,” she said, turning her head slowly and gracefully back to look at Istria. “I’ll just get it somewhere else.”
	A knife flashed out of the scabbard that hung from the belt of her robe.
	“NO!” 
	It took only an instant for the viper to shoot through the split skin of her civility. But it was long enough for me to grab Istria and pull her back so that the knife barely grazed her abdomen. And then we were running, down a passageway that led nowhere and never stopped, and Lythril was shrieking fanged and winged after us through the stinking foul air, and I put my foot down and my leg crumpled useless underneath me.
	The maggots writhed in a white mass up my calves and over my shins. I screamed and kicked but they wouldn’t come off.
	“Oh no, no, Theamh, you’ve got to get up--”
	Lythril’s hand came down on her shoulder, claws shooting out of it and into her flesh. Her head flew back as she screamed, as I screamed, as I threw myself forward with my half-dead body at the talons that were ripping her--
	“Dhiaoc! DHIAOC!”
	It wasn’t Lythril, or Istria. It was Aine, and she had me by the shoulder in a really uncomfortable grip. 
	“Oh, dhiaoc, wake up, wake up--”
	“All right! I’m up!”
	Aine released me and fell back against the table, striking her hip on it and plumping abruptly from there to the floor. “Name of the spirit.”
	I looked around. It was the kitchen, all right, and I must have fallen asleep on my arm, because it was red and marked where my face had pressed into it. There was a candle burning on the table that Aine must have brought down. She was in her shift and shivering.
	“Thanks,” I said, hoarsely. “It must have been a pretty loud scream if it woke you. I suppose I woke everyone else too.” I buried my head in my folded arms.
	“Taric’s upstairs with Mna and the twins and all three of them are terrified. They thought it was a lurer come for you.”
	I laughed. “So they sent you to investigate. How brave of them.”
	“Dhiaoc,” Aine said, standing up and bending over me. “What happened?”
	“I had a bad dream.”
	“What about?”
	“Bad things.”
	“I’ve never heard anyone scream like that.”
	“I’m sorry.” I lifted my head. “I better go tell the troops it’s all right.”
	I dragged my leaden form up the stairs and pushed open the door to the guest room. Mna, Taric and the boys were huddled in the extreme far corner, the lurching light of Aine’s candle exaggerating their staring eyes and clenched hands.
	“I’m all right, nothing happened, I just had a bad dream,” I said. “There’s nothing in the house. You’re safe.”
	Taric was the first to let panic give way to embarrassment. “We...we thought...I’m sorry, shriia, I should have woken you.”
	“It’s all right,” I said. “It wasn’t very kind of you to let Aine go investigate all by herself, but then she does need the experience.”
	Mna patted him on the back. “Never mind, Taric. She scared the fnaa out of me, too.”
	Frih, realizing destruction was no longer imminent, began bawling.
	“There, there,” said Mna, stroking him. “It’s all right. It was just a bad dream.”
	“Well, goodnight, everyone,” I said. “Let’s hope we can make it to dawn without further incident. Taric, why don’t you stay up here with them, you can protect each other.” That was the generous way to put it. Mna, used to spirits by now, was recovering a lot faster than he was. Aine left the candle for them on the table, thoughtful as usual. “And be careful with that candle, the house isn’t fire-closed any more.”
	We withdrew, shutting the door behind us. Aine turned slowly away from the knob, looking up at me with large, determined eyes.
	“Well, good rest to you, Aine.” I turned away to go back downstairs.
	“Dhiaoc!” she called.
	I turned around. “Yes?”
	She stood in the hall, afraid but resolute. “I want to do freagair.”
	I couldn’t believe it. “Now?”
	“Now.”
	“Aine, it’s Idair knows what time of night. Can’t it wait for--”
	“It’s my right to have my questions answered at any time I choose and I choose now.”
	“Can you not see that I am a complete gibbering wreck?” I said, rather louder than I had wanted to.
	“Yes I can,” Aine said. “I still want to do it.”
	“In the name of the spirit, why?”
	“Because!” 
	We both had our voices raised, and I didn’t want to fight where Mna could hear us. “All right, Aine, but if this is revenge for my taking you to that party I think this is a very inequitable remedy.”
	She followed me as I stomped into the music room, lit a candle and slumped into one of the chairs. “In Idair’s name and in the name of the spirit we will never know. Mac na mhada.”
	“Bi I go deo,” she said, not batting an eyelash. 
	“Ceard a bhuil tu ag iarradh?”
	“Ta me ag iarradh shri.”
	“Ask and I answer, pissed-offedly as that may be.”
	Aine was paying no attention to my marginalia. She leaned forward and put her questions with an aggressive rapidity that was new to me.
	“Who is Lythril?”
	“She’s a dark user who was convicted and exiled two years ago after one of the longest and most well-publicized dark magic trials in shriic history. Aine, you better not have dragged me down here on a night like this to ask me fnaa you already know.”
	“That’s an answer anyone could give. I want your answer.”
	“What the hell does that mean?”
	“Who is she to you?”
	“She’s an evil bitch who’s done me a great deal of harm,” I spat.
	“What kind of harm?”
	“What does it matter?”
	“What kind of harm?”
	“Aine, what has this got to do with--”
	“She’s a dark user, I have a right to know about her. What did she do to you?”
	It surprised me how intensely I did not want to answer that question. So intensely that I actually sat there, arms wrapped around my drawn-up knees, clenching my jaw shut.
	“What did she do to you?”
	“Where do you want me to start?” I exploded.
	“Start at the beginning.”
	“She--” I shook my head. “It’s too long. It’s too complicated.”
	Aine changed tack. “Why do you sleep on the floor?”
	“Aine, I told you before--”
	“Why do you sleep on the floor?” I bent my head, hoping she would go away. “Who’s Istria?”
	“She’s a shriia I worked with when I was an apprentice and for a short time afterward until the Council decided to transfer her to--”
	“That’s her job description. Who is she to you?”
	“She...she was...” Aine waited, impatiently.
	“Why do you sleep on the floor?”
	I lifted my face but the tears didn’t soften her.
	“You’re doing it for her, aren’t you? Because she’s still in captivity?”
	I nodded, miserably.
	“She hasn’t got a bed so you won’t use one either.” I raked my hands through my hair. “How long have you been doing that?”
	“Since Dalen came back without her.”
	“How long is that?”
	“Three years, ten months, two weeks and four days.”
	“Who’s Istria?”
	“I told you who she--”
	“Who is she to you?”
	“Everything!” I blurted out.
	Aine looked a little stunned. “I don’t understand. Explain.”
	“What’s to understand? She’s my heart, she’s my happiness, she’s where I live. She’s ten million other things I could never find words for.” Aine was still looking unsatisfied. “She’s the woman I love. There. Was that what you wanted to hear?”
	“I suppose it is,” she said, a little rattled by her own success.
	“Well you’ve heard it. Are we done?”
	“What did Lythril do to you?”
	“Are we back to that again?”
	“What did she do to you?”
	“She ruined my life!” I shouted back.
	“Be more specific,” Aine answered, nervous but holding her ground.
	“Aine, you little fn--”
	“I have a right to an answer and you’re bound to give it to me!”
	“All right!” I now had my legs crossed on the chair seat and was leaning over the table with my fists balled up and pressed into the pit of my stomach. “Here’s your answer, and if you never have a sound night’s rest afterwards, don’t come crying to me!”
	There was an interval during which Aine looked on in pain and distress while I continued crying and pressing my fists into my gut to try to keep it from emptying itself. As soon as I had my voice under something approaching control I started again.
	“When we got to her den...” Aine’s face relaxed as I began the story, but I didn’t. “No. I have to back up. Morat was the one who sent us out there, whose idea this was...and in some ways it’s her fault, what happened. Because...” I opened my fists and began kneading at the knot in my stomach. “Because she didn’t tell us the real reason she chose us. Not everything has to be said; and I’m sure she had compelling reasons for leaving things untold. But it really wasn’t fair.”
	Aine was leaning back now, watching me with less trepidation. Once something becomes a story, it’s less threatening, less raw; it was easier for her to stay outside of it. You get drawn back in eventually, but in a much different way.
	“One of the reasons--I told the others the other day, one reason was that she knew Istria and I would be absolutely loyal to each other. That was true. And Morat knew why, damn it. Not that she’d have told us.”
	“What do you mean, knew why?”
	“Istria was her apprentice,” I said. “She and Barant worked together; so did Istria and I. Morat saw us together. She’s not stupid. We didn’t even know it then, but she knew we were in love. And she knew it would be obvious to anyone else who looked.”
	“Like Barant?”
	I shrugged. “If Barant knew she never said anything. No, what really mattered--and this is the other reason, the reason no one else knew, and indeed I have no proof--” I shook my head. “But it has to have been a factor.”
	“A factor in what?”
	“If this crazy plan was going to work, there had to be some explanation for why we left the scoil to serve the Dark One,” I said. “And they couldn’t fabricate one for us--if Lythril sent agents to check on our career at the scoil the very most they could do was refuse to answer inquiries. Morat knew we were in love, without our knowing it ourselves. And so would Lythril. She’d pick that up in a second. So it would serve as the explanation, do you see? It would explain why we left the scoil--and it would explain why despite our professing to be dark users in training we were obviously still revolted by the whole business. We’d broken with the Order because we were lovers so we could never be shriias, but we were still scoili at heart.”
	“But...if you didn’t know...”
	“Lythril would assume we were trying to hide it,” I said. “Even if she asked directly--and she wouldn’t be so crude--and we denied it, she would think we were lying.” I sighed. “It was a deft stroke on Morat’s part, really. How else could she convince anyone as savvy as Lythril to accept us as potential minions? Two wet-behind-the-ears bright-eyed scoili radiating a naivete so palpable...but our being lovers was a perfect explanation.”
	“But you weren’t,” Aine pressed. “Were you?”
	“No,” I said. “Not when she brought us into her den.”
	“But...later?” Aine asked, apprehensively.
	“I’m getting to that,” I said.
	She didn’t look as shocked as I had expected. She must have guessed a lot, conjectured the rest, already confronted the possibilities. But she’d never be able to imagine this story in all its details. Who knew what that open, earnest face would look like when I was finished.
	But I was going to finish, because I had never told anyone the whole story, not even Lilea. And bad as my stomach felt, there was also something driving me to tell the story, as if now that I had started talking there was no way to put this back in. It had been four years since I lost the company of the only other person who knew this story, four years since I had been able to just throw myself into her arms and cry about what had been done to us, to her, to me.
	“It took us a while to get in contact with her, of course,” I said. “I won’t go into that. The important thing is that she managed to get us into her fortress without our having any idea where it was. You think the shield is disorienting--Lythril had protections like you wouldn’t believe. And of course the whole place was blocked, so we had no contact with the Council. So there we were, inside the fortress, wondering if we would ever be able to get out. And she started interrogating us, and we answered as well as we could, knowing that if she didn’t believe us she’d kill us rather than risk our carrying even our limited knowledge back to the Council.”
	I leaned back, running my hands down the back of my tightening neck. “Well, that’s what we thought, anyway.”
	I had no sense of what time it was, but it was silent in the house now when I wasn’t talking; Frih must have cried himself to sleep and Aine’s breath hardly made any noise at all. I hoped nothing was listening to me.
	“She acted suspicious at first and then she seemed to become convinced, gradually, that we were sincere.” I tried not to remember that first interview, in that parlor that was only more sinister because it could be an ordinary big house parlor, with just a little more excess and a little more cruelty. Leaning back on those leather cushions, one knee crossed over the other, one hand behind her head toying with her black hair and the other picking absently at the fringe of the divan cover, she was at once relaxed and intense, casual and businesslike, ironic and serious, pleasant and terrifying. Her show of reasonableness and courtesy was not fooling us for an instant--but then it wasn’t supposed to; it was there not to mask but to accentuate the ruthlessness just underneath. “I remember thinking Istria was a lot more convincing than I was, although she told me later she thought I was the one Lythril believed. We had some grievances against the scoil--I’m sure you do too--and we worked those, and made up the rest. And then finally she leaned forward, with those bright blue eyes, and made us the offer.”
	“What do you mean?”
	“She said, ‘All right, children, I’m taking you on. I shouldn’t, but I’m short-handed with a lot of work right now and if you turn out to be Council spies I can always kill you later.’ We’d expected that so we just nodded. She laughed when she saw it didn’t bother us. ‘You think you’re so brave, sitting there with not an idea in either of your heads of what death is or what pain can be. You’ll work for me and you’ll make yourself useful. Your apprenticeship starts now. It will end when I see fit to end it. You will be confined to the grounds until either I present you to the Dark One as new users or I kill you and send your bodies back to the Pharc. The minute I begin to entertain doubts about either your sincerity or your utility I will dispose of you. Do you understand your conditions?’”
	“And what did you say?”
	I shook my head. “I couldn’t help it,” I groaned. “It’s stronger than I am. Istria nodded and said ‘Yes.’ And then I said, ‘And, you know, if we don’t, you can always just kill us.’”
	Aine gasped.
	“She just looked at me, and I started to get a sense for exactly how precarious my position was. ‘You’re very funny,’ she said, not laughing. ‘I’m sure that razor wit has made you very popular with Morat.’ 
	“ ‘Actually, it hasn’t,’ I said. ‘And I’m starting to get kind of a sick feeling that the Dark One doesn’t have much of a sense of humor either.’
	“She could smell my fear, which I think mollified her. ‘On the contrary,’ she said. ‘The Dark One has a very highly developed sense of irony, and appreciates a good joke when made along those lines. I, however, am a different story.’ I just nodded. ‘You’ve just volunteered for pantry duty. Follow me.’”
	I leaned back, sighing. “That was the beginning.”
	“What...what’s pantry duty?” Aine asked, quietly terrified.	
	“As I was trying to explain to that blockhead Twil,” I said, “dark magic requires a lot of fairly nasty ingredients. Different preparations call for different things, but there are some standards that Lythril kept in what she called her pantry. One of my duties was to make sure these things were in stock. Which meant that when her supply of, say, human blood got low, it was my job to replenish it.”
	“Replenish it how?”
	Aine’s disgusted expression suggested she was already imagining possible answers. “Well, by taking it out of someone.”
	“Out of who?”
	“Myself, if I couldn’t find anyone else,” I said. “But I only had to do that once. For blood, or for semen or things like that, I could go to one of the clients she entertained, or one of her minions, or her lovers. Of course I had to do it without their knowledge.”
	“Dhiaoc, how do you draw someone’s blood without their knowing?”
	“It’s easy,” I sighed. “You go in while they’re asleep and block the pain while you take the blood. It’s the same thing Lilea does during a difficult delivery--you just put up a barrier around that part of the mind and whatever you’re doing to that part of the body doesn’t register until you take the barrier down. So you block off the arm, poke a hole where the vein is...”
	She was becoming visibly paler. “Didn’t they notice? When they woke up?”
	“By then it was too late. They never brought it up with her--they were terrified of her, even her lovers. Especially her lovers, really.”
	“But what about...about...”
	“Semen?” I said, not without a certain gritting of the teeth.
	She nodded.
	“That, at least, I could get voluntarily. You know how men are. I’d just talk to her most recent lover and feed him some tarbhfnaa about how Lythril was so impressed with his performance she wanted a sample of his vital fluid for aphrodisiacs, and he’d be off into the privy with the jug and a fnaa-eating grin.” 
	I was right; Aine was shocked. “Weren’t you...didn’t it make you...”
	“Ill? Oh yes. My biggest immediate problem was trying not to faint when I drew blood. The semen-collection thing I found unspeakably disgusting, and then when she started sending me out for afterbirth--” Aine gaped. “That she had to pay for.”
	“But...but we burn the afterbirth, don’t we, I thought that was what--”
	“No, you’re right. She had to treat with the mothers in advance. Of course it meant the children couldn’t have the protections done, but if you’re desperate enough to sell your body to the Dark One you’re generally not thinking very far ahead.”
	“So they’d just give birth alone and then--carry the stuff--”
	“Oh, no no no. Risk of contamination. Lythril wanted it fresh from the--”
	“Dhiaoc, that’s disgusting!”
	“Yes it is!”
	There was a horrified silence.
	“So how did she get it?” Aine finally asked.
	I licked my dry lips. “When her time came, the mother would be brought to this little house at the edge of the grounds and give birth there. I’d collect the stuff, do the preservations on it and bring it back to the pantry.”
	There was a lengthy pause that Aine seemed to find very unsettling.
	“You delivered those women?” she asked.
	I sighed. “She wouldn’t trust me that far. While I was there she had one primary lover, who had been up north for a while and done some medical training. He was the one who delivered them. He’d let her know when it was time and I’d go running out to fetch what she wanted fetched.”
	“Why couldn’t he just--”
	“It can’t be handled by a man,” I said mechanically. “That’s what she told me. For all I know she made me do it just because she knew it would make me sick.”
	 I pressed my hands back into my stomach. “You can’t imagine what it was like walking into that wretched little hut. The stink, the fnaa and the piss and the screams of the woman and if the baby weren’t coming out fast enough for his taste he’d be in there with those iron tongs on its head trying to drag the thing out, and not caring what he tore open--” A squeal of revulsion and horror from Aine persuaded me to cut this part of the account short. “And so there I was, with my bucket, waiting for the afterbirth, too late to help the mother, and if she was cut or bleeding or if her baby was dead all that mattered was that I put the coins into her pale sweating hand and make sure I got the afterbirth...”
	“What happened to the women?”
	“If they were well, they’d leave with their babies as soon as they could walk.”
	“The same day?”
	“If they could. The weak ones would stay over but if they could avoid it they didn’t. It wasn’t a pleasant place.”
	“What if they weren’t well enough?”
	“They stayed until either they got better or they died. Mostly...while I was there, there were maybe eight women who came to her. Four left more or less whole. Four stayed behind sick...and three of them died. Badly.”
	Aine seemed to have reached her limit; her face was frozen in a permanent expression of white-cheeked terror. But she kept asking questions.
	“With nothing done to save them?” she whispered, in mixed horror and pity.
	I swallowed the lump that had risen in my throat. “He tried to save them all right,” I said. “He fancied himself a medical, after all. But--” This part I could never think about without seeing his smug, handsome face in front of me and wanting to put my fist right through it. “You know me, you know what I think of the medicals. Well, I have to say they are shining examples of compassion and probity compared to this monstrosity. A year’s worth of medical training was rattling around in his addled head combining with an inner conviction of his own divine right to interfere with the lives of others and together these two things did not add up to skill as a healer.”
	“So...”
	“So they died. And when they did, their bodies went into the cold room...” 
	The nausea was coming back strong now; I had to stop and fight it before I could open my mouth again without risking a messy accident.
	“...and it was Istria’s job to harvest them,” I finally said. “You see, I dealt with the living...and she handled the dead.”
	There was a long pause, which Aine didn’t break. Under her horrified stare I resumed the story, looking down at the table.
	“That was only a small part of our job,” I said. “It was perhaps the most revolting, but it wasn’t really the most important, or the most disturbing. We helped her with the more mundane preparations--poisons, strength or endurance potions, aphrodisiacs, mindstrength boosters--and the low-level mind forcing. Some of the potions, especially the poisons, were too toxic to handle so we used the dead. But some we made ourselves, in that old encrusted kettle, doing our best not to gag into the soup...I never worked out which made me more sick, projecting into a corpse or getting to breathe the fumes in person. The longer we stayed the more we started doing, to free her up for her research.”
	“Research?” Aine croaked.
	“Lythril cooked up potions and played with peoples’ minds for her clients, to pay the bills. But that wasn’t where her real interests lay. What she really wanted was to beat death.”
	“Beat it how?”
	“By prolonging life,” I said. “She’d had some very big successes. Istria and I knew she was fifty years old if she was a day, but she looked twenty-five, and it was all her own ingenuity. The youth potions we weren’t allowed to touch, but I have a feeling that’s where the afterbirth was going, because we never used it in anything we made.” I laughed. “The youth potions could have been big moneymakers, as you can imagine. But they could only be made in small quantities because the ingredients were so...expensive, in more ways than one.”
	“What do you mean?”
	“I mean --I could never prove this, but--. See, with all the fluids and body parts and nasty things we were gathering for her there was one thing she never let us see her do and that was kill anyone. What I was harvesting could be taken from people without doing them major bodily harm. What Istria was harvesting came from people who had died from some other cause--childbirth, disease, whatever--and whose bodies had the misfortune to fall into Lythril’s possession. But there were things in those jars that hadn’t come out of dead bodies. They’d come out of living ones--while they were still living.”
	“Like what things?”
	“Well, like...hearts.”
	“Hearts?”
	“Still beating.”
	Aine recoiled with a curse, making the sign of protection.
	“When I first started there she had three, and by the time I left she was down to two. She was very sparing about using them. I’d be back there in the shelves and notice one of the hearts had a piece gone but it was still pumping away...”
	“How--how--how did she keep them alive?”
	“That I don’t know.” 
	“But...so she was just constantly killing people?”
	“Not constantly. That was why she only sold the youth potions to very select clients. Clients like Krenham.” Aine nodded. “Murder is expensive. It’s dangerous, and it attracts attention, so you can only do it very infrequently.”
	“So that’s what she did to you,” Aine said, after a moment.
	I laughed, out loud and for rather a long time. Aine looked on in concern.
	“Oh no,” I said. “That’s just the background.”
	“Dhiaoc...”
	“So there we were,” I said, cutting off her protest. “Living under that roof, in those conditions. Which you’d think would be enough. But no. She’s subtle. She knew who we were and why we were there; that’s why we never saw the really bad stuff. And we thought she might suspect, but we assumed that as long as we were still alive she was still giving us the benefit of the doubt. We were so pitifully young, Aine. I was twenty-one, and Istria was only nineteen. How could we possibly be expected to think around her?”
	“I’m nineteen, dhiaoc,” Aine said, seriously.
	“I know you are,” I answered, finding it easy this time not to smile at her new confidence. “And I don’t mean to say you’re a child, Aine. You’re ready for shri. But you are not ready to go out and live in the lap of the Dark One cut off from any kind of advice or counsel. And we weren’t ready either.” I took a difficult breath. “We thought that as long as we stayed alive and kept our eyes open, we were doing all right. Bad as things got, we’d say, ‘Well, she hasn’t killed us yet,’ and that would sustain us.” Aine nodded earnestly. “It didn’t occur to us that she might have seen through us and still be keeping us alive. Because after all, why should she kill us...when she could turn us?”
	“Turn you!” Aine exclaimed.
	“She was just that one shade more perceptive than Morat expected her to be,” I said bitterly. “She saw, all right, but she knew we hadn’t seen it yet. Everyone has a weak spot--well, we arrived with ours brightly labeled. All she had to do was bring it out. Because once we realized--once we became lovers--how could we go back?”
	“But...” Aine was still having some trouble talking about love and me in the same conversation. “Idair doesn’t ask for virginity, dhiaoc, you could have--”
	“Oh, it’s so clear this has never happened to you,” I said, with a low ironic laugh. “Once you cross that line there’s no going back. How on earth would we go back to the scoil, take the robe, swear to be celibate till the end of our days, remembering what had happened? No, we could hold off, we could keep from crossing the line--for a while, anyhow. But I know that once I knew what it was like--” I shook my head, not quite believing that I was having this discussion. “There’d be no way I could give it up.”
	“Why not?”
	I hung my head over my bent knees.
	“I can’t explain this to you, Aine,” I finally said. “Not till you feel it yourself. Not till you know that when you look at someone you love...how hard it is, not to touch her.”
	“But everything about shri is hard,” Aine burst out. “Eating that horrible food at the Pharc is hard. Trying to memorize dead languages is hard. Trembling in fear of Morat and Grinth and everyone else is hard. Learning to be around things from another world that care no more for your life than the life of a spider is hard but I do it anyway, for Idair, and I don’t see why--”
	“This is a different kind of hard!” I cut in. “All right, maybe I am weak, maybe I am flawed, maybe I’m not strong enough for this job but if so then that’s just how it is, Aine. You’re the one who dragged me in here and spent the last half hour pulling this out of me. Well, now you know who your diaoc is. If you don’t like it, well, you don’t have to. But it’s the truth. I’m not invincible, I’m not pure, I’m not wise, I’m not who you think I am. I’m not Idair. I’m just Theamh.” The tears came. “Maybe that’s not enough for you, maybe it’s not enough for Idair, I know it’s not enough for my mother. But it was enough for Istria.”
	“Dhiaoc, I didn’t mean it,” Aine said, now crying herself. “You’re right, I don’t understand, I’ve never felt that way about anyone. I don’t think I ever could.”
	“I used to think I couldn’t either, Aine. Life is funny.”
	“It doesn’t seem funny now,” she said, snuffling.
	“To me neither.”
	“But you came back,” Aine insisted. “You took your orders. So...so...”
	“Lythril worked us like you worked that cat,” I said. “Not that we realized. But everything about the way she treated us...” I was quiet, remembering. “All day long she made us as miserable as possible, and she kept us apart when she could. But then we slept in the same room down in the basement. During the day, when we were together, it was mostly because she was abusing one of us in the presence of the other. I noticed that when she punished me for something Istria was usually around, and vice versa. I thought she was making us examples to each other but...now I understand, it was to drive it closer to the surface. We’d stick up for each other, and even though that meant we’d be punished worse it made us feel better...”
	“Punished...how?”
	“Oh, there’s all kinds of ways,” I said. “Most of which never leave a mark. Without undertaking a major battle she couldn’t get all the way into our heads; but she could get to where the pain comes from. She could put us in agony just by looking at us, after a while. And then there were the other disciplinary-type punishments. If one of us got on her nerves particularly badly, for instance, it would be our turn to shift the olaidh.”
	“Shift?”
	“She raised them, in one of the pens, on live animals,” I said. “They’d infest one, suck it dry over a long period, and then have to be transferred to another when the first host died. So one of us would wait for the animal to go, and then right at the point of death catch the olaidh on their way out and transfer them to a fresh host. We hated that chore worse than anything--they’re disgusting creatures, and it’s heartbreaking to see what they do to their hosts. They die in a lot of pain, but too weak to complain about it, withered and paralytic...”
	“Like Mada would have.”
	I nodded. “We lived that way for a month and a half. It seemed like it was a hundred years. Every day was a nightmare from beginning to end and the only moments of comfort we had were the ones spent together in the middle of the night in what we thought was secrecy, doing what we could to give each other the strength to continue the mission...” I put my feet back on the floor and leaned heavily on my elbows. “It was inevitable. Even if we hadn’t been in love already this would have done it. All those nights spent sitting together, holding onto each other, trying to cry quietly so no one would hear us...”
	I took a deep breath and looked up at Aine, who wanted to look away but didn’t. “The last week we were there Lythril had a particularly heavy workload. She was at a delicate stage with the death research and to keep up she decided we were going to have to work longer hours. So she made us take this endurance potion...” Mathi’s dinner was fighting its way back up my throat. “We’d made them, so we knew what was in it. I threw mine up in a pail in the pantry; Istria was able to make it to the privy and do it discreetly. So there wasn’t much of an effect, but we were still supposed to be working through the night.” Aine’s eyes were still on mine, although now I was the one who felt like looking away. “I finished somewhere close to dawn and when I finally staggered back into our room I swear I was dreaming on my feet already. It was dark...I felt something touch my shoulder and I was sure it was a death bat or some other foul thing and I struck out at it.”
	Nothing to it but to go on, now I’d started. “It was Istria; she’d finished up earlier. She had to hold onto me to calm me down. It was a while before I could really see where I was. And when I realized it was her face looking at me...I just snapped. I started sobbing, crying that I couldn’t take it any more...”
	The memory brought it back, and I was crying again. “And she couldn’t either, but she tried to be brave for me, swearing she was going to keep me safe when we both knew she couldn’t, and me promising to protect her when I couldn’t even protect myself...we were holding each other, like we had before, and looking at each other in the dark and...”
	“And...?” Aine prompted, already apprehensive about the answer.
	“The line disappeared,” I said. “We still don’t know who kissed who, but there we were, the two of us, clinging together like any courting couple. I...” I sat back. “I’m not going to describe it, Aine, I can’t, it’s just not in me. I guess all you need to know is that at that moment...we knew that this was what we had wanted from the beginning, and we accepted it, and took comfort in it. Both of us.”
	“And...did you...were you...”
	“We didn’t go as far as all that,” I said, sardonically. “We were young, neither of us had ever been with anyone, and we were both exhausted. We fell asleep in each other’s arms, before anything had happened that would qualify as, for instance, a loss violation.”
	Aine nodded. “So you weren’t lovers.”
	“Technically, no.” I sat back. “I’ve never been entirely sure how much that mattered.”
	“And...and what happened?”
	“We fell asleep together,” I said. “I woke up alone.”
	The embarassment on Aine’s face turned to fear.
	“You can imagine my horror. For all I knew Lythril had found us and hauled her off to inflict some terrible punishment on her. And then there were all the consequences coming to bother me...the guilt, the sense of failure. But I still had to find her. She wasn’t in her room. I ran up to the workroom--and there she was, getting chewed out by Lythril for having botched the last thing she’d been working on--hadn’t let the stuff thicken enough before decanting it, or something. I was so relieved that I lost my head and yelled at Lythril to just leave her alone...” I tapped the fingers of one hand on the table. “And she wiped it off damn quick but before she started punishing me there was this smirk of satisfaction on her face.
	“That was when I knew, that it had been her plan all along. I was in agony all morning waiting for a chance to tell Istria, and then when I caught up with her in the pantry she just burst into tears and started apologizing for having failed me...”
	“Because she’d let you kiss her,” Aine said.
	“Oh no,” I answered. “Not even that. That I could have talked her out of. But she told me...she told me that Lythril had sent her a dream, the night before, a dream that was a test, and that she had failed it.”
	“What dream?”
	“She wouldn’t tell me,” I said. “But I knew. She thought...she’d convinced herself, somehow, that the whole thing was a dream, something Lythril sent to tempt her with.”
	Aine sat silent, digesting this.
	“What did you say?” she finally asked.
	“What could I say? She kept talking about how weak she’d been and how Lythril had picked on her because she was weak and how I’d never have let her get me, I wouldn’t have yielded...and how ashamed she was, and how she’d promised to be strong and now she’d failed, and could I forgive her for it...” I sighed. “I started thinking maybe it was a dream, a dream sent to both of us, and hadn’t happened at all. I’d been having hallucinations that night anyway, and our minds weren’t our own; she could just have planted it the way she planted other nightmares. So I said of course I could forgive her, that she was stronger than she thought she was, that it was just a dream and a dream couldn’t hurt us...I was scared witless too, Aine, and humiliated. Here she was, thinking it had to be a dream because I was too strong and too pure to ever do such a thing, and so whatever she’d been grappling with last night it couldn’t have been me...”
	The chair was very hard, and my muscles very sore. It had taken a long time to tell this story, and it would take a while longer yet.
	“So that was how we dealt with it,” I said. “It was a dream. We put it away. And we went about our business like a pair of animated corpses, terrified of ourselves, terrified of Lythril, terrified of everything else in that horrible place. She didn’t let up; we were still supposed to be working around the clock, and it got so bad that finally we did force ourselves to keep down that potion...and it was at around four o clock that morning, with my mind racing on its borrowed energy, that I gave up and told her we had to leave.”
	that dream you wouldn’t tell me
	a dream can’t hurt us
	I know what was in it
	how can you know
	because it wasn’t a dream
	you’re right we have to leave
	now
	right now
	“She didn’t agree until I told her that I knew it wasn’t a dream, and then she saw right away the position we were in. So we ran.”
	“But how did you get out?”
	“We’d been watching the ins and outs of the place, and I knew where the gate was. I didn’t have the passwords, of course, but together with the mindstrength of desperation we managed to wedge it open just enough to slip through. Naturally, this set off all kinds of alarms in Lythril’s head.”
	oh no no Theamh you’ve got to get up
	“We didn’t know where to go to find a village or some other people, it was such desolate mountain country. It was the middle of the night, and we couldn’t see the stars, so there was nothing for it but to just pick a direction and try to keep going. Well, it wasn’t long before we felt her coming after us. We were running along this riverbed tucked into the cleft between two hillsides and I looked back and there she was, her eyes blazing...we fired ourselves ahead and we lost her, but as soon as she disappeared I felt my legs go cold underneath me and I fell. I couldn’t get back up. And I knew why not.”
	“Why not?”
	“She’d put the olaidh on me.”
	“Oh, dhiaoc...”
	“Istria knew it too,” I said. “She tried to get me back up but she knew it was hopeless. I begged her to just go and leave me behind--I knew what kind of death was ahead of me, I didn’t think anything could save me, and I wanted her to go and at least save herself. But she wouldn’t. She pulled me up and tried to drag me along with her. There was a hollow in the rock at one side of the ravine and she dragged me in there to hide...of course it wasn’t much of a hiding place. Lythril found us, huddled in the back of the cave, trapped like rats. And you better believe she was gloating.”
	I shook my head. “All that scheming she’d done and she must have greatly feared that no one would ever appreciate it. So we got the full treatment--how naiive we were, how easily we’d played into her hands, how stupid we were to think we could escape her, and how disappointed she was at having to kill us after all, after all the trouble she’d taken, ungrateful wenches that we were.
	“She didn’t even bother making us an offer--she could see on our faces that we’d decided we’d really much rather die than go back. So she just assured us that she would make the death last, and that once we were gone she’d make good use of our corpses. And she started toward us, and...” I broke off.
	“And?” Aine demanded, urgently.
	“Now this part I can’t tell you, Aine.”
	She let out a screech of anguish.
	“Dhiaoc! That’s not fair!”
	“I can’t.”
	“Why not?”
	“Because.”
	“Because why?”
	“Because you’re not a shriia yet.”
	“That’s ridiculous! You told me the whole story, and now you’re leaving out the best part?”
	“If I tell you what happened next, you may never get your fire, Aine.”
	She sat, pondering this.
	“Why not?”
	“When you have your fire, I’ll tell you.”
	“So pick it up from the non-secret part, then,” she finally said, much disappointed.
	“I guess that would be when we finally knew we’d shaken her for good,” I said. “Which was about a day later. We blundered, because Idair was kind to us and for no other reason, into a little village and found the local shriia. She put us up for the night and contacted the Pharc the next morning. Morat flashed forward and picked us up. It turned out we had been somewhere in Amst--a few days’ ride from where Istria’s family was. We went back to the Raed and made our report...”
	“And they went back after her?”
	“Yes. But they couldn’t find her.”
	Aine looked surprised. “Why not? Surely they just had to go back to where you were and—“
	“You’d think,” I said. “As soon as she could, Dalen got out there and went after Lythril. But she wasn’t where she’d been. Somehow she’d moved. Dalen couldn’t find her; nobody could find her. Finding someone is so simple, you know, you wouldn’t think it could be impossible, but it was. Dalen came back months later, empty-handed and very angry and disappointed.”
	“But...so...what did you do?”
	“We went on as before,” I said. “Got our orders together at the next Burning, and went into practice. I had Mablad, Felim and Keara, she had Vinha, Streel and Peheot.” Aine was looking surprised. “I took over her practice when she left, and since I was able to manage they never replaced her. That’s why there’s so much damn traveling--this area is really twice as big as a practice should be.”
	“That’s a relief,” Aine said frankly.
	“She had a house not too far from here, which the Council unbuilt as soon as they decided not to replace her,” I said. “I saved the few things she had that mattered, and kept them in that basket in my room.”
	“Where the cat was hiding.”
	I nodded. 
	“How long was it before she left?”
	“The second spring after we started practicing.”
	“Why then?”
	She knew she’d hit something hard, but she wasn’t going to back down.
	“She left to bring back Lythril,” I said, painfully, “but that wasn’t the only reason.”
	Aine waited.
	“And what were the other ones?” she finally prompted.
	“Understand, we were finally free,” I said. “Out of that hellhole, but still carrying the wounds. We...saw a lot of each other.” Aine looked at me skeptically. “Oh, why should I even try--it was the most indiscreet affair you could imagine. We managed to keep ourselves in check until we got our orders but once we were out on our own things got dangerous. We never kissed again. But we did every bloody thing else. Ate together, when we could, spent all our free time together, collaborated on projects, called each other as soon as we got up and before we went to bed...we fell asleep linked one night and we had the same dream, and after that we started sleeping linked on purpose--crazy fnaa like that, that left us open to any kind of interference from any evil thing. We were happy, but we were also going out of our minds with frustration, and we were less and less careful about how we acted around each other...Then she stayed over one night--and the Council found out because she was on call and nobody answered her waterglobe.”
	“Oh dear,” Aine said.
	“The fnaa was in the fire,” I replied. “She was hauled into that dark-red room in the Raed, and they asked her where she’d been, and she told them. And then it was my turn. We were interrogated for a long time, separately and together, we were auralyzed and touch-tested and finally satisfied them that at least we hadn’t committed a loss violation and we were still true. So they let us keep working...but that whole month was a nightmare. They’d call us in to harangue us, we’d harangue them back; they’d forbid us to associate, we’d associate anyway; they’d warn us of the danger we were running, we’d say that if they were going to worry about our being in danger they should have started a little earlier...and then finally the Council made the decision.”
	“To separate you.”
	“They posted her to Amst. Well, she didn’t want to practice in Amst, for a lot of reasons. But there was nothing she could do...except go on a mission. And that’s what she did.”
	I had no idea what time it was. All I knew was that I had been sitting in that chair for far too long, that I was too exhausted to even feel sleepy, and that it was cold down there in the early morning darkness. 
	“So she never came back.”
	“Never. She lost contact with the Council, and with me, two and a half months after she left. Her last message was from northern Amst, in the mountains. So that’s where they went to look for her, after she disappeared.”
	“They? You didn’t go?”
	“I couldn’t. Morat ordered me to Dairc, to the river Ubh. It was the time of the long slow burning.”
	“Oh.” She paused. “And you think she was with Lythril.”
	“Oh, I know she was with Lythril. I have no evidence but I just know, in my gut, that she made it out there. But she wasn’t there when they took Lythril.”
	“Where is she, then?”
	“Well,” I said, “the Council thinks she’s with Idair. I think she was taken over the border when her confederates fled. When they raided her half the people who should have been there weren’t--her lover, for instance, and the associates we knew she was working with. We never found them, so we don’t know where they are. But I think they went up north, and took Istria with them. And I think that’s where she still is.”
	Aine didn’t ask the questions I knew she was thinking. Why would they take her? Why keep her so long? Instead she said, “I’m sorry, dhiaoc.”
	I leaned back in my chair, one arm over the back. Aine and I looked at each other for a long time. She didn’t look as different as I had thought she would. Disturbed, a little scared still, and thoughtful, but not repulsed.
	“So now you know, Aine,” I said. “What Lythril did to me. The whole horrible story, except for that part I couldn’t tell you. Now in return for answering all of these very inconvenient questions I want you to answer one of mine.”
	She nodded, seriously. “Anything, dhiaoc.”
	“Why in Idair’s name did you put me through this?”
	“How often do you have nightmares?” she asked. 
	“You shouldn’t answer with a question, Aine.”
	“It’s irritating, isn’t it?” she said.
	“All right, you’ve made your point. I have them...I don’t know, once a week or so. Usually they’re not this bad.”
	“Wrong,” Aine said. “You have them almost every night.”
	“Aine, I think I know how often I dream.”
	“No, you don’t. I’m only down the hall, dhiaoc, I hear you. And almost every night you go back there, whether you remember it or not.” This was a surprise to me. “I heard the stories, I knew when I got here that there were great sad things in your past. I still wasn’t prepared.” She scratched at the back of her neck with one nervous hand. “I had to know how bad it was. And if...if this was going to happen to me too.”
	“There’s no reason it should happen to you, Aine. I am, as they say down at the Pharc, a special case.”
	She nodded. “Because of the way the Council treated you. They’ve never tried that with anyone since.”
	“And now you know why.”
	“So...that was one reason. But...”
	“So what’s the other reason?”
	It was a moment before she was able to come out with this.
	“You miss her so much,” she finally blurted. “And you won’t talk about her, I don’t know whether it’s to avoid corrupting me or what. You’re cruel to yourself, dhiaoc, trying to handle it all alone. You woke yourself up with a scream that would startle hell and you were just going to go right back to sitting up in the dark all by yourself. You need to talk to someone, and I knew you’d never do it unless I made you.”
	I blinked at her.
	“You were right about that, anyhow,” I said.
	She smirked. “I’m making progress.”
	I twisted in the chair to try to stretch my cramped back. “Feels like it’s almost dawn,” I said. “I’m going to have to go heat up the tub.” She nodded. “You may as well come watch; I’ve been avoiding dragging you up at this hour, but here we are, and you need to learn it.”
	“I’d like to.”
	“Are we done with the freagair?”
	“I have one more question,” she said, with a smile.
	“Big surprise. All right, out with it.”
	“Why couldn’t you answer Geraine?”
	“Oh--they’ll explain that to you before you get your orders. When you become a shriia, you’re a citizen of the whole world--your people are everywhere, like we say. So you have to give up your local loyalties. Essentially it means we can’t get involved in community matters like scrainnte.” She nodded. “It’s just as well, really. I’d have answered, and then my mother wouldn’t ever have spoken to me again.”
	“Would that have been such a loss?” Aine asked.
	I stood up. “That’s all for today.” I yawned. “Come on, I’ll show you how haons linn works.” We started out of the room. “And then we can go purge the house and rewrap it, and then we can tackle Mna.”
	“I’d forgotten all about that,” Aine said.
	“Yes, well, so had I,” I answered. “My mind can only hold so much.”
	We climbed to the second level. I peeked into Mna’s room; she, Taric and the twins were sleeping in a big pile in the corner where, I suppose, they felt safe. 
	My room looked as desolate as ever; even when I threw the fire around the tub the light didn’t really seem to warm it. Aine looked over at the basket.
	“So she went in there,” she said. “Why?”
	“Mean spirit,” I snapped. “That’s where all of Istria’s things are, and she knows they’re precious to me.”
	“She’s not very smart, in some ways,” Aine said, looking away as I shrugged off my shift and climbed into the tub. “Wasting time on spite like that.”
	“Oh no. She does everything for a reason.” I got into the water, which was still cold.
	“But you just said...”
	“I know.” I scrubbed as quickly as I could. “I wasn’t thinking. You’re right, of course. There must have been a reason.” I got out, dried off and put the shift back on. “One more thing to think about. My nakedness is covered now,” I said. She was still embarrassable. I took my hreapa off its peg and went to the window where the gray was just beginning to lighten.
	“All right then,” I said, with a smile. “Time to make the daylight.”

XX.
The Purification

	“So that’s all there is to it,” I said, tumbling down the stairs, glad to be back in my hreapa even if that poor dead mouse was still stiffening in the kitchen. “You’ll have to get yourself on the cycle, you know, so you wake up early, but that doesn’t take very long.” In the living area the light was coming through the windows in long, filtered streams, early dawn and leaf shadow playing over the evidence of last night’s cathunt. “Boy, the place looks different in the daylight, doesn’t it?”
	She took a deep breath and released it. “It does, dhiaoc.”
	“Thank Idair for the sun,” I said. “Let’s go get the victim.”
	I took the dustpan and broom down and into the kitchen. The mouse lay in one of the slanting sunbeams, dust motes cartwheeling above his cold stiff nose and its motionless whiskers. Aine whisked the body into the pan and we carried it into the garden.
	I slid the body gently onto the grass. “Run in and check on Mada, will you?” I asked. “Make sure he’s all right. I think he should be, but...”
	While she went, I prepared the body. Of course the mouse didn’t have a departure garment, or any worldly possessions, so it was fairly simple; I rolled him onto his back with his little paws in the air and said the words.
	“Mada’s fine; he’s making friends with Cinhe,” she said. 
	“Good. You want to send him home, Aine?”
	She looked at me with reproach.
	“I’m totally serious. We have to do right by him, he was killed in our house.”
	With a keen sense of the absurdity of the situation, she knelt by the mouse’s head.
	“Little mouse,” she began, while I sang, “we didn’t know you at all, but I’m sure you were a friend to us, eating up what we left behind and going about your business. You never chewed through important parchments and you brought no unhappiness into our home. You were a good little mouse.”
	Aine looked up at me, fresh out of inspiration. I nodded for her to give the word.
	“Your death came sudden to you, and for that we are sorry,” she said. “I hope that in that other place where we cannot go yet you will have all the tasty things to nibble that you never got at this house. So farewell, little mouse. Idair with you.”
	I shot out a very small bit of flame, which enveloped the mouse’s corpse.
	“Slan abhaile, musin beag,” I began.
	<All together, Aine.>
	Aine crossed her arms in refusal.
	<Come on, Aine, I know it seems silly but it’s one of Idair’s creatures.>
	She sang it with me, not without some reluctance and eye-rolling. The mouse’s corpse burned quickly, crumbling to blackened bone and then finally into ash. I took the fire back and the ashes began wisping away in the breeze wafting through the shield.
	“Thanks, Aine,” I said. “You remember what I said about losing one’s dignity.”
	“Now what?”
	“I’m going to burn out the blood. Why don’t you take care of brushing Cinhe while I’m at it, and then I’ll show you how to do the protections.”
	She went toward the stables. I went into the kitchen and squatted by the letters.
	It was a delicate operation--to burn the blood, but nothing else. I had undone the I, with a lot of sweat and effort, and was moving on to the S when Taric’s form blocked the light from the doorway.
	“Come in,” I called, dragging the flame along the curve. “Help yourself to what’s in the cupboards, just don’t try to talk to me.”
	Taric tried to move quietly, but with limited success. I had the hang of it now, though. Once the S was done I could spare enough concentration to make a few calls.
	<Idair’s greeting to you, shriia. You have reached the Council. How may I direct your call?>
	<Who is this, Ofilant?>
	<Y...yes...>
	<This is Theamh, we met in the Shriin a few days back-->
	<Oh, yes, Aiv, I remember. How do you do?>
	<I’m actually not doing too well. I’m not going to make it out to Vinha today and I need someone to cover for me. Who do I talk to?>
	<Morat is handling that now.>
	Ah, how lovely. A sympathetic ear. <Well, can you put me through to Morat?>
	<I’ll try. Uh...if the link breaks...>
	<I’ll call back. Don’t worry, it takes everyone a while to get the hang of it.>
	It did take a minute, but eventually I felt the link take. <Yes?>
	<Morat, it’s Theamh. I’m sorry to bother you...>
	<That’s all right, Theamh. Are you all right? Has anything happened?>
	The concern for my welfare was somewhat out of character, but I took it in stride. <Yes, any number of things have happened. In fact, I’m going to be all day dealing with the consequences, so there’s no way I can do siulin to Vinha. Can you put someone else on it? Just for today.>
	<You’re not traveling, are you?>
	<Of course I’m not traveling, I’m under restriction.>
	<Then why do you need a substitute?>
	<Because Lythril sent a cat to my house last night and it killed a mouse in my kitchen and-->
	<Idair’s hair and eyebrows. Are you sure it was Lythril?>
	<I’m pretty sure. She wrote Istria’s name on my floor in mouse blood.>
	<Name of the spirit. Have you burned it out?>
	<I’m doing that now.>
	<You’ve got to get your house closed again as soon as possible, Theamh. This is very dangerous.>
	<Yes, I know, Morat, that’s why I need the substitute.>
	<I’ll take care of it right away. It’s a slow season for Harani, maybe she’s available...she could do with the exercise, anyhow.>
	Poor Harani. Rainmaking is seasonal work, so everyone picks on them during the off times. <If she would, I’d be very grateful.>
	<Don’t you worry, we’ll find someone.> 
	The alacrity with which she took up my cause startled me. <Thanks, Morat.>
	<Are you all right? Do you need someone to go out there? You shouldn’t be alone with her after you.>
	<I’m fine now, Morat.>
	<Really?>
	<Idair’s teeth, Morat, you’re jumpier than I am. Is something wrong down there?>
	<Lilea filed her report this morning. We’re all a little on edge.>
	<Oh. She told you about the green thing, then.>
	<Yes, she did. We’ve suspended Returns until this is cleared up. I’d be very interested to have a chat with you about this--green thing.>
	<I’ll file my report as soon as I have time. You can get the gist of it from Barant, if you want; she knows most of what I know.>
	<You went to her, did you?>
	<Well, she’s my diaoc, Morat. I know you have more experience, but-->
	<I’ll ask her about it. Meanwhile you make sure you take care of yourself. You don’t want to spend the night exposed like that.>
	No, I didn’t. <Thanks, Morat. With luck I’ll be down at the Pharc this afternoon; if you want I can tell you what I know then.>
	<I would appreciate that.> There was an awkward pause. <Was it just the name, or-->
	<“Istria” and then half of an “m.”>
	<M for “marbh,” you think.>
	<That’s what I think.>
	Another silence.
	<Well, good luck, Theamh. If I can do anything let me know.>
	<Thank you, Morat. Idair with you.>
	Well. That was odd. But at least the blood was gone. And Mna had now infiltrated the kitchen with the twins, and was showing Taric around the cupboards.
	“...Frih hates them, but they’re really not bad,” Mna was saying, scooping another helping of canned carrots onto a plate. “I’ve kind of gotten to like them. But you don’t want to mess with this, you’re a growing boy. There’s this vegetable terrine here that’s very good, but a little heavy on the stomach...”
	Taric was looking at it quizzically. “You made this, shriia?”
	“Oh no--Iela made that.” He looked none the wiser. “Iela is my mother’s housekeeper.”
	Mna and Taric exchanged glances. I left them to gossip in private.
	I had intended to get started on the protections right away, but the chair in the living area looked so comfortable that I had to sit down. I composed and filed the report, then put in a call.
	<Slythe.>
	<Theamh?>
	<How are you?>
	<I’m not too bad this morning--how are you?>
	<I’m exhausted. Listen, Slythe, a cat killed a mouse in my house last night-->
	<Oh, Theamh! Are you all right?>
	<Aside from being tired and scratched up, I’m all right. I was wondering if you could come help me out. The place needs to be fire-closed again, and I think there’s something really wrong with the shield. I’d be grateful if you could take a look at it.>
	<It’s just I’m really busy, Theamh-->
	<I know you’re busy, Slythe, you’re always busy. But I really need the help. I’ve never been good at practical magic. If you could find the time somehow-->
	<I--I just can’t see where it would go, I’ve got a meeting with the public light committee in an hour and then-->
	<Slythe, in five years I’ve never asked you for a favor. I’m asking now. I need your help. Lythril has figured out a way to get a cat through my shield and unless I can find the hole and plug it everyone in this house is in danger. Please?>
	There was a long, troubled pause. <Theamh, I understand, and I wish I could, but I just can’t. If you knew what my schedule looked like-->
	<Fine. You’re too busy. Never mind. I shouldn’t have asked.>
	<Don’t be like that, Theamh, I really-->
	<If you were attacked by a kraikk on a day I was really busy, I would still go out and cleanse you. But, you know, you’re on the Council now, and...>
	<Theamh, that’s not fair!>
	I hadn’t meant to upset her this much. <I’m sorry, Slythe. You’re right.>
	<You know I would never want anything to happen to you!>
	It’s hard to tell over a link, but I had a strong suspicion that she was crying.
	<Of course not, Slythe, I never said you-->
	<I would go out and help you fix it if I could, but I just can’t!>
	<Listen, if you can’t, you can’t. I’m sorry. I should learn to take no for an answer.>
	<It’s not that I don’t want to help, I just--> Her mind was really getting noisy. <I just can’t, Theamh, that’s all. But you’ll be all right.>
	<I hope so, anyway.>
	<You will. Won’t you?>
	<Not if I can’t fix whatever’s wrong with the shield I won’t...>
	<I’m sure it’s nothing serious.>
	<What do you mean, nothing serious? If it’s letting cats through I may as well just shut it down altogether for all the good it-->
	<Know what I bet it is?> she suddenly cut in.
	<No. What?>
	<I bet there’s a weakness around the gate. That’s where things usually start to go soft. Check there and see if it feels mushy or porous.>
	<You don’t think it’s just some kind of overall deterioration?>
	<I can’t be sure without seeing it, but I bet it’s just a local problem near the entrance. Look there first.>
	<All right, Slythe. Thanks.>
	<I’m sorry I can’t come out, Theamh...it’s just...difficult.>
	<I know, you have a lot to do down there. Thanks for the tip.>
	She didn’t sign off. In fact, there was a long space while I waited for her to say something, even goodbye.
	<Was it just an ordinary cat, you think?>
	<Oh no. It was an agent of Lythril’s. I’m sure of that.>
	<Did it try to hurt you?>
	<Not aside from scratching the hell out of me. But it did put the olaidh on this poor dog-->
	<But you’re all right.>
	<Everyone keeps asking me that. Yes, Slythe, I’m all right.>
	<I just...it’s just unsettling, to know she came that close to you.>
	<Don’t I know it.>
	<I’m glad you’re safe, anyhow.> Another pause. <Idair with you, Theamh.>
	<With you too.>
	I heaved myself out of the chair and went up to the storeroom, climbing the stairs slowly. I wasn’t sure when I would next have the chance to sleep, but I wanted it to be after I was done with the protections.
	<Theamh.>
	<Barant?>
	<I hear you had some excitement out your way last night.>
	<You spent all that time trying to break me of understatements, and now look at you.>
	<Idair doesn’t ask for perfection, Theamh.>
	<Just as well.>
	<Are you all right?>
	<Yes, yes, I’m all right. You were right--the cat went right after Frih. We got to him before he could do any damage, though. The child’s clean.>
	<That’s a relief. But you weren’t hurt?>
	I was starting to wonder if I were trapped in some kind of repeating loop. <My arms are scratched and I’m exhausted, but otherwise I’m fine. She put the olaidh on poor Mada, but-->
	<Mada?>
	<The dog we brought in to chase him off. Mada’s all right, I cured him.>
	<So you think it was Lythril.>
	<Oh, I know it was Lythril.>
	<You’re sure?>
	<Who else would write Istria’s name on my floor in mouse blood?>
	<You have a point.>
	<Anyway, what I couldn’t tell you before was...well, you must have read Lilea’s report.>
	<Yes, I have. Theamh...>
	<What?>
	<Didn’t it strike you as...well...odd that she should have laid you under that promise?>
	<Yes, it was kind of odd, but being scoured is a real pain, Barant, you know that. I’d have wanted to pick my scourer too.>
	<I suppose.>
	<All right, what are you thinking, Barant? You may as well tell me.>
	<I just think it’s odd that she should be so insistent about it, that’s all.>
	<What are you suggesting?>
	There was no immediate answer.
	<Now look. You are not going to start with that again. How many times are you all going to test her before you believe the results?>
	<I didn’t say that, Theamh, I just think-->
	<You just are never going to trust her again. It’s not fair, Barant. It could have been any one of us that happened to.>
	<You see, Theamh, this is what I was talking about last night. You think, because you’re so much on the surface, that everyone else is too. You trust anyone who asks you to without thinking about the consequences.>
	<Look, if you expect me to look at her askance for the rest of her life just because Lythril played a nasty trick on her I--well, it just won’t happen, that’s all. I know what Lythril’s capable of. I’ve never doubted Lilea and if you do, you’re playing into Lythril’s hands. That’s why she did that in the first place--to get us on edge and suspicious.>
	<I’m sure you’re right, Theamh. But there’s a difference between paranoia and healthy circumspection, which you don’t seem to make.>
	<Barant, did you have a motive for this call besides attacking one of the only friends I have left?>
	<I just wanted to see how you were, Theamh.>
	That’s the thing about Barant--she can make you feel like a mean little fnaa without saying a word of reproach.
	<Thanks for checking, Barant. I’m all right. I need to rewrap the house, but...>
	<Of course. I’ll send Slythe out to help you.>
	I’m sure she could detect the startled pause. <Thanks, Barant, that’d be a big help.>
	<Something wrong?>
	<No, it’s just...>
	<Just what?>
	<Well, I already called her and she said she was too busy.>
	<That’s very interesting.>
	<Maybe you should ask someone else.>
	<Nonsense. She certainly is busy, but she’s got to learn how to delegate and now is as good a time as any. I’ll have a talk with her.>
	<Thanks, Barant.>
	<Take care of yourself, Theamh. Idair with you.>
	<With you too.>
	I sat down at my desk in the storeroom. I looked up at the chaos in the cubbyholes, hoping that staring at the configuration of square openings and jumbled objects would remind me where I had put the evergreens. It had been five years since I’d done this and I hadn’t ever really expected to have to do it again. I’d be lucky if I still had the necessary equipment, and it would be a miracle if I could find it in under an hour.
	<Theamh.>
	<Harani! I was wondering how long it would take the news to get to you.>
	<Am I the first?>
	<Barant beat you to it.>
	<Damn. Well, luck does sometimes defeat talent. So are you all right?>
	<For the fourth time today, yes, I’m all right except for the scratches and the not having slept and the emotional trauma.>
	<I heard she left you a calling card.>
	<Listen, if you already know the story...>
	<But who is this dog you keep talking about?>
	<His name is Mada and he belongs to a client I did a favor for a little while back. We borrowed him to chase off the cat.>
	<Client, huh? Someone who lives near you, I suppose...>
	<Yes, he does, but...>
	<You must have gotten pretty chummy with him to feel comfortable rousting him out of bed in the middle of the night-->
	<Who says it was the middle of the night?>
	<You didn’t get out of the Raed till just before midnight, Theamh, it’s not very likely that-->
	<How--no. I’m not even going to ask.>
	<What were you doing in there, anyway?>
	<I was asking Barant about a problem I’ve got. Listen, are you going to cover Vinha for me, or what?>
	<I’m on my way out there as we speak. It would have to be Vinha, wouldn’t it?>
	<Idair will have her little joke.>
	<Yeah, well, you’d think losing my sight would be enough to satisfy her. But no, on top of that I’m to be afflicted with the Vinhalese.>
	<Now, Harani, they’re not so bad...>
	<If people want City life they should live in the City. That’s what I think. And not trek their pretensions and obnoxiousnesses out to the country where they’re not wanted.>
	<Comfort yourself, Harani. You don’t have to go out there twice a month.>
	<That is a great comfort. Listen, Theamh, you take care of yourself. This mouse thing, this is no joke. She’s after you, and she’s not going to give up.>
	<I know. I’m all right, though, really.>
	<I’m glad to hear it. Just...watch your back, Theamh. Idair with you.>
	<With you too...>
	I started clearing out the cubbies. If it was in here at all it would be at the back, shoved up against the wall behind other more frequently-used items. I had my arm all the way into one of the more disused partitions when the link opened again.
	<Theamh.>
	<Slythe?>
	<It turns out I can come after all...Barant rescheduled the training session I was supposed to be running.>
	<Oh good. So when can you get out here?>
	<I’m leaving now.>
	<Thanks a lot, Slythe, I really appreciate it. You’re a good friend.>
	There was really no reason why she should have paused for so long.
	<Slythe, are you all right?>
	<Yes, yes, I’m fine. I’ll be out there soon.>
	<If it’s really going to be a huge problem for you-->
	<No, Theamh, it won’t. I’ll see you soon. Idair with you.>
	This day was just getting stranger and stranger. But that was all right, because my hunch had paid off. At the very back of the cubbyhole was a crushed-up length of pine branch that did not seem to appreciate my dragging it forward past ten other implements into the open air. It emerged crumpled, bent, and sad, its needles hanging by threads and their shiny green luster the vaguest of memories.
	I shook it a couple times, which straightened it out somewhat. I dug out my bottle of uisce slainte and decanted some into a vial, into which I stuck the end of the branch.
	<Theamh.>
	<Lilea! Well, you’re the last to check in but I’m still glad to hear from you.>
	<What do you mean?>
	<Don’t you read these reports we spend all that time filing?>
	<I haven’t had time.>
	I summarized last night’s events and waited for the inevitable question.
	<Are you all right?>
	<Yes, aside fromt he scratches and the exhaustion and whatnot, I’m all right.>
	<Thank Idair. Theamh, that’s really much too close.>
	<I know it.>
	<How did the cat get in in the first place?>
	<That I don’t know. Slythe’s coming out to check the shield with me.>
	<You need to fix that and quick.>
	<A flair for the obvious like no one else’s, that’s what you have...>
	<Well, this is the first night I’ve slept in a week, so don’t pester me.>
	<Feeling better now?>
	<Much. Listen, I’ve heard from Riina--Pel’s done with the delivery and she should be back by midafternoon, if you want to talk to her then.>
	<Great. I do need to talk to her--and to you, too. I’ve got a few ideas.>
	<Well, Returns are suspended until further notice, so I’ll have nothing but time.>
	<All right, then, I’ll see you there.>
	<Theamh...thank you for waiting.>
	<No problem. Did the scouring go well?>
	<It was fine. Not a whole lot of fun, but not too painful either.>
	<Good. See you this afternoon.>
	<Take care of yourself, Theamh. Idair with you.>
	The branch had revived; its needles were brighter and the stem was beginning to glisten again with sap. I checked the level in the uisce bottle. It would get me through the protections, but I’d need to spell a new batch soon unless I wanted to get caught without. 
	<Come on into the kitchen, Aine, we’ll start this up.>
	With the new branch still drinking from its vial in one hand and the uisce bottle in the other, I hobbled down the steps into the hall. I could hear Mna and Taric talking as I approached the kitchen.
	“...wears it pretty well,” Mna was saying. “She’s never leaned on it, even when I’ve given her cause.”
	“Still,” his voice answered. “It’s there.”
	“Oh, of course. But, you know...we’re well out of it. Hearing that child talk about it...”
	When Taric answered, it was with amusement. “Isn’t Aine older than you?”
	“You’re a child till you have one, that’s what I say,” Mna replied. “Anyway, it reminded me of what I don’t miss.”
	“I never had the chance to miss it,” he answered. “Never got further than the back kitchen.”
	“Believe me, it’s better that way.”
	“I’m not sure about that, now.”
	Aine appeared in her robe. “So where do we start?”
	“We work from the inside out,” I said. “Kitchen first.”
	“Be sure,” Mna was saying as we walked in. “Big houses breed vipers. You’re safer outside.”
	“You finding everything all right?” I asked.
	Mna jumped guiltily. “I--yes, we’re--”
	“Thank you for the hospitality, shriia,” Taric said carefully. “Mada and I will be off. I’m late as it is.”
	“Thank you so much for coming out here to help, Taric,” I said. “You saved all of us from a lot of danger. I wish--” I glanced around my kitchen. “I wish there was something I could give you, in return.”
	“It’s nothing anyone wouldn’t do,” Taric said, standing and taking his hat up. “And it’s never unlucky to have helped a shriia.”
	“Since you say it,” I said. “I’ll walk you out.”
	Aine took the bottle and branch from me. I guided Taric through the house to the stables, where we encountered Mada and a somewhat pensive stallion. I glanced at Cinhe, but she seemed unperturbed. If he was in love, he hadn’t made a declaration.
	Taric led the horse and dog out to the edge of the field and closed his eyes without even being asked. I led them through the gate and shut it behind us.
	“Well,” I said, as he got ready to embark. “I finally convinced you to stay, for once. I hope you won’t be a stranger, Taric.” He nodded and swung up onto his horse. “And if Mada shows any aftereffects, just call me.”
	He sat there in his saddle, looking a little at sea.
	“Was there something you wanted to ask me, Taric?”
	“I...” He thought about it, but seemed to decide against it. “No, shriia.”
	“Are you sure?”
	Sometimes, when you’re a shriia, you see it happen--truth draws truth like a magnet draws iron, and your honesty brings it out in those around you.
	“I wanted to ask...” He swung suddenly off his horse and strode up to me, dropping his voice. “Since you said, that you wanted to give me something. Since I’ve done you this good turn. I wanted to ask...”
	“I’ll answer any question I can answer, Taric.”
	“How long...” He seemed to quail. “You knew him--Keanrih mac Minead.”
	“Yes.”
	“How long...how long before his death...”
	“Was he seized?”
	Taric nodded gratefully.
	“It’s been a long time,” I said sadly. “But let me see...Keanrih died two years, seven months, and a week before this day. I cleansed him three years, three months, two weeks and a day before this day, so that makes it what, eight months before his death. And based on what I learned later…I think he was seized the morning after the Turning, which would put it—“
	As soon as I said “Turning,” Taric’s face altered. I’d said something that, on the one hand, was intensely painful to him, but which, on the other hand, somehow relieved him greatly.
“That would make it...three years, four months from this day, that he was seized,” he said.
	“More or less.”
	 “Thank you, shriia.”
	He started toward his horse, quickly so I wouldn’t have time to read him.
	“Those eight months,” I called out. “After I cast it.”
	“Yes, shriia?”
	Taric’s face, as it turned back to me, looked like a broken eggshell, scooped out and hollow and filled up with nothing but loss.
	“He was miserable,” I said. “Lonely and scared, the way no one could make him better. He kept everyone he cared about away from him--his mother, his brothers, me. If he--” Taric looked at me. “If he never tried--to see you--” Taric’s face was coloring again. “I’m sorry, Taric. It’s not my business. I won’t speak of it any more.”
	I dropped my eyes, so I didn’t see his reaction. But he had stopped walking.
	“He sent me…drawings,” Taric said, finally. “One of them had words on it.”
“I remember,” I said.
Maybe he felt the hurt that went with it, my anger at having been kept out of it. Because he kept talking, against all my expectations.
“And then…all those months later, I got a letter.” 
	I looked up. If there were tears, the fringe of hair hid them. But the hair couldn’t hide the turn of his mouth, the jerk at one corner where he fought against the break.
	“But you’re not a reader,” I said, gently.
	“No,” he answered, suddenly husky.
	I could tell looking at him that he knew what I knew—that if Keanrih had written to him, knowing Taric couldn’t read, it must have been in order to force him to finally come to me. And he hadn’t. 
	I shouldn’t have asked him why. But part of me was still angry, and forced the question out.
	“Why didn’t you bring it to me?”
	Everything I was reading drained out of him and suddenly he was nothing but a stone mask. 
	“I waited for siulin,” he said. “You didn’t come. It was that other, the blind one.”
	Harani. Who, then as now, had often been pulled in to cover my practice when I was called away on emergencies. Such as the sudden discovery, up in a locked room, of the bleeding and dead body of one of my people.
	He must have heard the news from her. There was nothing I could think of that would be quite so horrible as learning that your lover was dead from a woman who, despite all of her good qualities, couldn’t tell a story like that without smacking her lips over it just a little.
	“I’m sorry,” I said.
	His voice was hoarse and he kept it short. “Not your fault.”
	“If you wish it,” I began. “If--if you want me to--I’ll give you my word as a shriia that only you and I will ever know what it says. Only if you wish it.”
	“Some time,” he answered, after a pause. “Some time, later.”
	“Whenever,” I said. 
	“And I’ll ask no promise from you, shriia,” he answered with sudden fire. “He’s gone where his family can’t hurt him, and I...trust you. To speak, or not, as you see fit.”
	It was something I recognized. The desire for secrecy, and the desire to speak, at war. And by leaving me unbound, he could put the question in someone else’s hands.
	“I’ll be here,” I said. “Idair go with you. You’ve done us good and we thank you.”
	“And I thank you,” he said.
	He swung himself onto the horse and galloped away with the dog at his heels.
	I went back through the gate, being careful to shut it behind me. The gardens looked innocent as always, leafy and cheerful in the morning sunlight. I hoped they weren’t concealing anything that wished me harm.
	In the kitchen, Aine and Mna were clearing up.
	“...all right now,” Aine’s voice said, almost drowned by the sound of scrubbing on plates. “She just has these nightmares. You must have noticed.”
	“I have,” Mna answered. “What’s in them, do you know?”
	I waited a minute to hear what she would do.
	“I do know,” she said. “But I won’t say.”
	“Fair enough,” Mna replied.
	I made noise entering the kitchen. The branch in its vial was still on the table near the bottle of uisce. I took it out. It was good as new now--scented with that piny smell, and sticky with sap.
	“If you’ll take the twins outside for a bit, Mna, we can get started,” I said. As she led Frih out, Crann in one arm, I called, “And don’t let him play with any more cats!”
	“I won’t, shriia.”
	“Now,” I said, holding up the bottle. “This stuff I spelled right after I got my orders. I’ll teach you the words after you’ve started your hreapa.”
	“When will--”
	“Don’t play with me, Aine, I didn’t get much sleep.” I doused the branch in the water. “Protection, in a way, is a kind of reverse shield. The shield stops living things, above a certain level. Protection stops anything that isn’t living. Idair gheofe slan I gcro, nil ach an leofe tar anseo.” 
	As I said it, I shook the branch toward the seven points. The water sailed off the needle ends through the air, droplets twinkling as they went with the faint, playful iridescence that uisce slainte has. Where they landed, on the floor, walls and ceiling, the boards or whitewash sparkled briefly before returning to their usual state. I took up the branch and bottle and carried it into the hallway.
	“That’s it?” Aine asked. “That’s how you do protections?”
	“This is just the first stage,” I said. “Don’t ask for a refund until you’ve seen the whole show.”
	“I wish you wouldn’t call it that,” Aine said.
	“Idair gheofe slan I gcro, nil ach an leofe tar anseo. Of course it’s more than that, Aine, but there is a theatrical element to all this and Idair took pleasure in it. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” We now moved into the living room, where I repeated the chant. “I don’t know, maybe other people don’t feel the same way. But I think the razzle-dazzle aspect of shri is something to celebrate.” I flicked the branch around the room with a little more panache than was necessary. “When charlatans copy us, that’s what they copy, sure. But that doesn’t mean that when we do it it’s any less genuine.” We had now moved into the music room. “Idair gheofe slan I gcro, nil ach an leofe tar anseo...”
	“It’s not much of an incantation,” Aine said, disappointed.
	“It was made up in a hurry,” I answered, shaking the drops off the branch. “And it’s early. The early spells are the crudest.” I repeated it on the stairway. “What is it, the rhyming that bothers you?”
	Aine nodded. “Why do the old ones rhyme?”
	We started climbing the stairs. “Because it made them easier to remember,” I said. “This ability to hold volumes in your head wasn’t something we developed overnight.”
	Inside Aine’s room I dipped the branch again. Hers was neat, of course--neater than mine ever was, with the covers pulled up, the floor clear and her few possessions tucked out of sight. But still hers, in the very precision of the neatness, the way my red-purple dress was folded on the seat of the one chair, with the detached tieback draped across it like a stole.
	“Couldn’t...couldn’t we come up, now, with a better one?”
	“Maybe,” I said, shaking the drops. “But it works, so we keep it.”
	I went into the guest room. Mna had made an effort at tidying, but hadn’t had the strength for a full-scale clean; dirty linens were peeking out of the hamper and the blankets had been heaped on top of the bed. “Someday you’ll write a few of your own, Aine, and you’ll realize the folly of searching for perfection. Once you’ve got one that works, you stick with it.”
	“How do you know if it works?”
	“Results, partly,” I said, repeating the aspersions. “But you know when you’ve hit it. It’s about truth, really,” I went on, becoming expansive as we progressed down the hall. “You think about what you want to accomplish, and you try to tell the truth of that thing. When you’re close enough, the spell works. Like with the nilachaon.”
	We were in the storeroom now. “I know,” Aine said. “It seems...well, it seems so inevitable, but nobody could write it except you.”
	“That’s how shri is,” I said, tossing the branch. “After you’re done with it, you think, ‘what took me so long?’ But until you’ve spent the four months or whatever it takes working on it, it’s never that obvious.”
	I crossed the hall into my bedroom. “But the nilachaon is...is beautiful,” Aine said, a little shy about praising it to me but not letting that stop her. “This is just...a rhyme.”
	“Beauty is a plus, but it’s not necessary,” I said, sending the water through the air. “Not everyone’s truth is beautiful.”
	“That’s not what the poets say.”
	I laughed. “Did I tell you about the time I went out to that conference at Vinha?” I asked, crossing over to the basket. “A couple years ago, just after the Lythril trial.”
	“No, dhiaoc.”
	I flipped the lid up and began sorting through. “They were having this huge talk and the question was, ‘What is poetry?’ Writers from every province, every genre and tradition, all assembled in the hall, and then me there as a shriia and, truth be told, a celebrity, because that’s what I was then. So they’re up there... ‘Poetry is the heart of the mind.’ ‘Poetry is a bird with a golden throat.’ ‘Poetry is the smile of a cruel woman.’ On and on and on, debating their definitions with no intention of ever resolving the issue, and finally the moderator turns to me and says, ‘So what do you think, shriia?’”
	“And what did you say?”
	“I said, ‘Poetry is shri that doesn’t work.’”
	Aine smirked. “And what did they say?”
	“Well, they laughed,” I said, “but you could tell they didn’t mean it.”
	Everything seemed to be all right. The letters, the ones I had written for her, were still tied up neatly in the packets I’d found there. And the other letters, that she’d written but never sent, stacked much more haphazardly on the top. Those were undamaged except for the wear and tear I had inflicted on them, thumbing through them over and over. I had them memorized now, but I still looked at them sometimes, just to remind myself that there was proof, that she had been here, that it was all real.
	What was perforated and shredded in the way that only a cat can do it was a scroll that had been lying at the bottom for years--not even an incantation or spell, just notes she had been taking towards some project. I hadn’t looked at it in a long time; it was dear to me as a record of her mind, but the notes weren’t substantial enough to turn into anything. She had a strong penchant for cryptics, codes and shorthands only she, or she and I, understood. 
	“What is it, dhiaoc?”
	I stared at it. “Near as I can tell, it’s the records of a study she was making of the ether. She’s like you, Aine--she wanted to know the impossible.” I rolled it back up. “Curiosity never dies, you know. She bothered her brain about the Great Paradox, a lot.”
	“Well, it’s hard to get around,” Aine said, a little defensively. “How can spirits be not alive, when it’s our spirits that give us life?”
	“Idair may know, I don’t,” I said, replacing the scroll. “Something happens when a spirit meets a body, Aine, that’s as far as I’ve ever gotten. Life isn’t body, and it isn’t spirit, it’s the weirdness that happens when the two come together. That was enough for me. Istria wanted to know...what a spirit was.”
	“But we can never know that.”
	“Never say never. There’s a lot we know that we never thought was possible.”
	“So that’s what Lythril was after?”
	“It makes sense,” I said slowly. “Those green things have the ability to change the ether, and to alter the constitution of a spirit. Lythril must know something about this. And probably she wants to know more.”
	“How did she know where to look?”
	I let the lid fall.
	“Istria has been gone a long time,” I said. “And Lythril has probably been probing her all that time. If that’s what she was working on, Lythril would know that.”
	“If that’s true,” Aine said, “Lythril must know a lot about you...mustn’t she?”
	“Yes,” I nodded. We started down the stairs.
	“They say,” I added, as we emerged into the gardens, “that this is one of the reasons Idair warned us against love--because it leaves us vulnerable.”
	“Where does she say that, dhiaoc?”
	“Nowhere,” I answered, with a bit of a bite. “It’s one of those things they infer.”
	“You don’t think it’s true?”
	I squinted into the sunlight. “Every net has holes,” I said. “Every shield has weaknesses. No craft is perfect. We’re all vulnerable, for all we try to protect ourselves. I do think--well, I know--that love makes you vulnerable. But there are plenty of other things that do the same, and are much less pleasant.”
	“Theamh!”
	I spun around, startled to hear my name called out loud by someone other than Mna or Aine. I was relieved to spot Slythe in the distance, coming toward us through the gardens. I waved and walked out to meet her.
	<How’d she get in?> Aine asked, following me.
	<Through the gate. She helped me set it up, so she knows how it works.>
	Slythe’s hreapa is a lot better-looking than mine; it stays closer to her form, flaring around the legs but coming in at the waist. Not everyone flaps around looking like a ship under full sail the way I do. And the sleeves actually fit, close to the arm. The brooches spiral around her waist in a very pretty pattern which somehow holds it all together. I doubt I could even get into the thing, let alone make it. But that was Slythe--things like this came easy to her, where to me they were mysteries I could never fathom. That’s why she had had to make the brooches that were holding my sad excuse for a hreapa together, and why she’d had to help me set up the shield and camouflage the markers. 
	“All ready to go,” Slythe greeted me, holding up the pot and brush. “You want to proof the place first, or fix the shield?”
	“Let’s fix the shield, I won’t be easy in my mind otherwise,” I said. “What’s this ‘weakness around the gate’ business you were talking about?”
	Slythe strode toward the edge of the grounds, Aine and me in tow. “See, the thing is only five years old,” she said, swishing through the grass at a clip that made it hard to believe she was walking. “I wouldn’t expect it to have degraded to the point where you could slip a cat through. But the gate is a weakness--if you want to punch a hole, that’s where you’d do it.”
	We pulled up at the edge of the clearing. “I’ll show you. Here, scoilin--”
	“Her name’s Aine,” I said.
	“Aine, then. Walk into the trees, if you don’t mind.”
	“I won’t get there,” Aine said.
	“I know. Just try it.”
	Aine set off toward the trees that stood up at the edge of the clearing. As she reached them she brought a hand out to protect herself, which hit the shield before she did. She stopped in her tracks, one hand resting on the invisible air.
	“Push on it,” Slythe called. “See if it gives at all.”
	Aine pushed, first with one and then with both hands. There didn’t appear to be any movement. At Slythe’s direction she walked to different spots and repeated the test, but never seemed to be making a dent. 
	“See,” Slythe said, beckoning her back, “if it were soft enough to let a cat through it wouldn’t stand up to you like that. There must be a hole, and I bet it’s near the gate.”
	“How do we find it?” I asked.
	Slythe handed me a tin full of showdust. “It’s been modified for shielding. Send it up and around, and it’ll outline your hole.”
	I fired the dust in a spurt directly above our heads. It hit the dome, spreading out in thin sparkling streams along it toward the weft pegs in the ground. Mna’s head tilted back as she watched it cascading along the invisible arch that separated the blue sky from our air, twinkling toward the grass.
	“See, where you have the gate,” Slythe pointed.
	The gate, as I knew, was a four-by-six rectangular opening that appeared when I called for it and disappeared when I closed it. The showdust outlined the seam that sutured it closed, which was normal. It also outlined a round, eight-inch hole near the base on the lefthand side, which was not.
	“Oh look,” I said, without mirth. “A cat door.”
	Slythe nodded. “She got a wedge in somehow and opened this up. Here, come watch, you’ll be able to fix it yourself next time.”
	We followed her to the hole, which was beginning to fade as the showdust dissipated. Aine watched with what I thought was uncharitable satisfaction as Slythe attempted to show me how to grab the strands and tie them back down to the peg. I just can’t do it. I can get a purchase on them, but more than one at a time I can’t seem to handle; they slip from my grasp and get lost in the invisibility.
	“You’re absolutely hopeless, Theamh,” Slythe observed, after ten minutes of sweating struggle had produced nothing but a slightly larger hole.
	“Shriias tell the truth,” I said.
	“Here, let a professional handle it.”
	She swept me aside and began working. For Slythe, there was none of this fumbling around or losing the thread; her hands were as smart and as acute as my eyes. I could see the strands better by following the motion of her hands than I could when I was trying to work them myself. Aine looked on with intense concentration, storing the motions and patterns away for the time when she would want to repeat them later. Aine, I was betting, would be good at this. Much better than I was ever going to get.
	“That should do it,” she finally said, standing up a little creakily but without any apparent exhaustion. “Give it another try with the showdust.”
	This time all that showed up was the outline of the gate. “Sound as a bell,” Slythe pronounced, with that hesitant little smile. She took pride in a job well done, no matter what it was--undoing waste, making ink, fixing a shield, hanging lights, any of the things she was called on to do as head of  Practical Magic. “You see how simple it is.”
	“For you? Yes.”
	“You could learn it if you really tried,” she said, picking up the pot and brush and walking toward the house. “You just think you can’t, so you don’t.”
	“I’m telling you, it’s not the same for me,” I protested.
	“Since you say it,” Slythe answered. “Now this is going to take a while. I hope you’ve got something to occupy yourself with.”
	“Oh, don’t you worry about that,” I said grimly. “Time does not weigh heavily on our hands out here, at least not this past week.”
	Slythe waved and disappeared into the house. “I’ll let you know when I’m done.”
	Mna, who was sitting under the tree with the boys, called over. “All right now, shriia?”
	“All right,” I said. 
	<Should we ask her, dhiaoc?>
	<We’ll have to sometime.>
	We headed toward them. Mna looked up, apparently no longer rattled by last night’s events. Frih was sitting against her, glad to be inside the protective circle of her arms. “So, no more feline visitors,” she laughed.
	I sat down in the grass opposite her, crossing my legs and wearing what I hoped was a casual smile. “How are you, little man?”
	“I’m very well,” he answered gravely.
	“What are you seeing now?”
	“I see...you.”
	“And what else?”
	There was a pause.
	“Grass.”
	Well, the link wasn’t working, so there was no point in fishing. “You said they were almost two, Mna?”
	“Almost. Their birth day will be in a few weeks.”
	Which meant that if she had gone to have them returned, it would have been about two and a half years ago, give or take a month or two. And that would have made it right about the time that Dalen and Morat came back with Lythril. She’d have been in custody shortly after that and in no position to correct any mistakes. It supported our theory, but the only way to proof was through a conversation none of us wanted to have.
	“Mna...”
	She looked up at me, unsuspecting, with that freckled insouciance she had started to recover. “Yes, shriia?”
	“Yesterday, as I think Aine told you, we came across some useful information,” I said, trailing my fingers nervously through the grass. “We think now we might understand more about who took Crann and why, and that eventually this will help us find him.”
	Mna’s excitement was checked by her sense of our discomfort. “That’s good news, shriia...isn’t it?”
	“It is. But we’re not sure if this theory we’ve developed is right. It hinges on...a number of assumptions we had to make about your life before you came to the City.” 
	There it was--the change in her face, the portcullis coming down. She drew farther back against the tree, tightening her hold on Frih.
	“You don’t have to tell us more than we need to know,” I said, “but it would be a great help to us if you could...confirm or deny the guesses we’ve made.”
	“I can just imagine what they are,” Mna spat.
	“Mna, it’s not like that--” Aine began.
	“The whole time I’ve been here I’ve seen you two thinking about it, I know you’re talking about me.”
	“When have we ever--” Aine remonstrated.
	“A woman turns up with two sons and no father of course people want to know. Of course they make guesses. Of course it’s my duty to explain.”
	“I never asked you to explain anything--” I put in.
	“Explain why my children don’t have a father,” she went on, not listening. “Explain why I don’t have a home, explain why I didn’t give them up, explain why I should receive from the guardians, explain why I’m on the road after dark, explain why my boys are hungry, explain why one of them’s sick, explain why I joined before joining in--”
	“Mna, please don’t--”
	“I’m not explaining!” she shouted. “You’ve made up your mind and there’s nothing to be done about it. I know how it is. You’ll believe your story. Mine doesn’t matter. It’s only mine. It doesn’t become real just because I say I know, I was there.”
	“Who do you think we are?” Aine suddenly demanded.
	Mna turned to look at her. “What?”
	“We’re not the guardians. I don’t care if you’re able-bodied or if your family has land or why you didn’t wait to be joined. She doesn’t either. You know that.”
	“I came here to this unfeeling place so I could stop telling that story,” Mna returned, still furious. “You took me in without my history and that’s how you’ll keep me. If that’s not acceptable then I’ll leave. It’s your house.”
	“I don’t want you to leave, Mna, I’m only trying to be sure of what happened--”
	“I’m not some public whore you found on the street,” Mna went on, raising her voice. “I’m my own woman, I’ve made my own way and I don’t owe you anything!”
	“You’re right!” I answered, my own voice rising against my will. “You don’t owe me a thing. I didn’t take you in and look for your boy because I expect to be repaid. I did it because you were in trouble and it’s my job to help people in trouble. I’ve lost a month of my life looking for him already and I have never asked you for a thing in return except to help me do my job. And that’s all I’m asking you to do now.”
	Mna had suddenly gone quiet and was staring at me with a stricken look.
	“Look, Mna, how about this. I need to know five things. I’ll ask you five questions. For the sake of your boy, will you give me five straight answers?”
	“All right,” she said, after a long stare.
	“I may as well start with the hard one,” I said. “Mna...before the boys were born...did you ask to have them returned?”
	Mna pulled Frih closer and stared at me without speaking.
	Aine leaned forward shyly. “Nobody would ever say now that you don’t want them,” she said softly. “Nobody could say you don’t love them. That’s not why she’s asking.”
	“Why do you want to know?” Mna burst out. “Why does it matter?”
	“Because we think...this thing that has Crann has relatives that have been interfering with returns down at the Mathair and both of them have been tied to Lythril, and--”
	“She wants to know because it will help us understand what’s happening to him,” Aine cut in. “It’ll help us find him.”
	Mna looked from me to her and back to me again.
	“His being taken is not your fault,” I said. “Whether your  answer is yes or no.”
	“You say that,” she said warningly, after a moment.
	“I’m a shriia. I don’t say what I don’t mean.”
	I waited. Aine waited.
	“Yes,” Mna finally said, looking down and lowering her voice.
	Aine patted her shoulder. Mna kept looking down at the top of Frih’s head, but she didn’t brush the hand away.
	“How far along were you when you went?”
	“I’m not sure,” she said. “It was two weeks after I missed my first blood.”
	So anywhere between six and say three weeks. Either way, they’d have been very unformed--unformed enough to deceive someone young like Pel.
	“Where did you go to have it done?”
	“To the mathair,” she said, beginning to tear up. “Down to Naucht Point.”
	“It’s all right,” Aine said, getting upset too. “You were so young.”
	“There’s no shame in it,” I said. “Mothering is a job no one should be forced into.”
	I could see that my disquisition wasn’t making Mna feel any better so I didn’t keep going. “I’m almost finished. I have two more questions.” Mna was still staring down at Frih and blinking hard. “What were you wearing?”
	That brought her eyes up. “Why on the green earth should that matter?”
	“It just does,” I said. “Do you remember?”
	Mna dropped her eyes again. One hand traveled over her skirt and sadly rubbed the worn fabric between thumb and finger.
	“I was wearing this dress,” she said, in a dead voice.
	I looked at it with new interest. I hadn’t paid much attention to it before except to notice that it was old, fading in some parts and torn in others, with a ragged hem and intractable stains that the washing Aine had given it hadn’t shifted. But I could see, now, that it had held up so long because it was good fabric. And that it had, at one time, been beaded. And that the last traces of what must at one point have been complicated embroidery were working their way out of the stitching around the bodice.
	“One last question,” I said.
	Mna looked up. It was clear that she had been far away.
	“Who was the shriia you saw?”
	“Some bitch named Pel,” she said bitterly.
	“Thank you, Mna,” I said. “I know it was hard, and I really appreciate it.”
	She didn’t answer, so I got up to leave. Aine sat where she was, timidly stroking Mna’s hair.
	“Shriia,” Mna suddenly called as I turned.
	“Yes?”
	“What did you mean, you’ve lost a month of your life?”
	“Did I actually say that?” I asked, startled.
	“Yes, you did.”
	Me and my mouth. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have.”
	“Well, you did.”
	“Please forget it,” I said.
	“Not on your life,” Mna answered, that teasing humor coming back. “I want to know what you meant.”
	“I just meant...” Well, there was no way around it, now. “To project--to go into the ether--you come partially out of your body. It’s rough on the connection. Play around with the connection long enough, and it breaks. They estimate that every time you go into the ether, it’s a few days off your life. If something really bad happens to you there--like what happened with the lurers--that knocks off even more. That’s all.”
	“That’s all?” Mna demanded, forgetting her anger.
	“Look, it’s part of the job,” I said, wishing desperately that this hadn’t come up. “I understood that when I picked this specialty, and I explained it to Aine the day she got here. We accept the risks when we take the hreapa. It’s nothing to worry about.”
	“If you say so,” Mna said, unconvinced.
	“Since I do,” I answered. “Thank you for answering, Mna, it was a great help.”
	“So is it what you thought?” she asked.
	“Before I can say for sure, there are a couple other people I want to talk to,” I said. “We’re going in to town this afternoon, and hopefully by the time we come back we’ll have answers for you.”
	Mna nodded. “I’ll be glad to have them, shriia.”
	“So will we all.”
	“Hey down there!” called Slythe, sticking her head out my bedroom window. “Your house is closed now. At least it should be.”
	“You haven’t tested it?”
	“What, and deprive you of the pleasure?” she called back.
	Slythe withdrew her head. “Come in, Aine, you can handle the bucket,” I said, heading toward the house.
	The three of us gathered in the kitchen, which was the most expendable room and the closest to a water source. Aine filled the bucket from the pump and stood apprehensively by as I shot a burst of heat fire toward the floor.
	It crackled along the boards to the base of the wall, ran dizzily around it in search of something to fasten to, and eventually gave up and climbed the stream back to my hand, where it faded from sight.
	“Looks safe to me,” I said. “Thanks a lot, Slythe, that’s a load off my mind.”
	“No problem,” she answered. “I’m happy to do it. If I woke one morning to the news that you were burnt to a crisp I’d be very sad.”
	I laughed, which seemed to bother her for some reason. 
	“I mean it, Theamh.”
	“I’m sure you do,” I said.
	Back in the gardens, Slythe squinted into the sunlight above the roof. “It’s a good house, Theamh,” she said. “For someone who’s a mess with tools you’re not a bad architect.”
	“It wouldn’t exist without you,” I said. “If I’d had to do all the building we’d be living in a mud hut with a leaky thatch roof.”
	“You did more than you take credit for,” Slythe said with a diffident shrug. “No, it’s a good house. I hope you get a lot more years in it.”
	“Me too,” I said. “Now the shield’s back up, I feel a little more confident about that. You’ve really done me a good turn. I know it was hard for you to get out here--”
	“Don’t,” she said, embarrassed. “I should have said yes right away. It was shameful of me to dither like that when you were in such danger.” She looked down at the leaves of the garden. “I forget what it’s like. Nobody evil has me on their hit list.”
	“A perk of the position,” I said. “Though you know, if they don’t, it’s their own stupidity. You’re much more important to the Order than I am.”
	“Oh, don’t say that,” Slythe said.
	“You are. If something happened to you we’d all be up the creek. Me, I’m just a loner working a few hard cases. I’m not at the center of the web, like you and Barant and Morat.”
	Slythe seemed, in her own quiet way, painfully uncomfortable with this conversation, so I switched tacks. “You going to stay for the rest of the show?”
	“Oh of course,” she said, brightening. “I was hoping you’d ask.”
	“Come on over, Mna,” I called. “Bring Frih, he’ll get a kick out of it.”
	“What are you doing, shriia?” Mna asked, towing the children over. 
	“I’m going to finish protecting the house,” I answered. “Stand back behind me.”
	Stepping toward the house, I raised the bottle of uisce slainte once to each of the seven points. Then, mentally giving the little prayer to Idair, I chugged about half of it.
	“Is that good for her?” Mna whispered to Aine.
	“Shhhh,” Slythe said. “This takes a lot of concentration.”
	I hurried the water through my blood until it was concentrated in my hands, which tingled with the energy. Then, raising one hand, I fired a stream over the house that hung in the air after I let go the end, arched over the roof like a flaming rainbow.
	I walked as quick as I could around the house, sending up another arch every few feet. The fire sizzled through the air and hung bright in the sun, the arcs merging in the center to form a bright yellow disc that sent rings of fire pulsing down the length of the legs, so that at the end of my circuit it resembled nothing so much as a domed, fiery spiderweb, enclosing my house in its strands.
	“Oooooh, pretty!” Mna said to Frih. He laughed and clapped his hands.
	“Fire,” he said.
	“Yes, Frih. That’s fire.”
	“Good fire.”
	“Yes, that’s good fire.” Mna looked at Aine for confirmation.
	“Oh yes,” she said hastily. “That’s good fire.”
	I backed up to a few feet in front of the onlookers. I raised my hands, smiling to myself as I pictured their reaction.
	“Mo linn agam!”
	In a split second the fire shot from the sky back into me. The shock of re-entry made me a little dizzy, but I could still see the spectral gossamer outline where the droplets of the water hung for a few moments suspended in the air, shining faintly.
	There was a collective intake of breath from the three behind me. The suspension broke and the water fell, suddenly, onto the house, splashing onto the roof and trickling down the walls in iridescent streams. Fading rainbows glanced down the glass windows into pools at the base of the foundation, then quietly flickered out. 
	“Idair gheofe slan I gcro, nil ach an leofe tar anseo,” I said, turning to the watchers.
	Mna burst into applause. Aine looked scandalized. Slythe, however, was clapping along with her.
	“Isn’t she something?” Slythe observed to Aine. “Nobody works the fire better than your diaoc.”
	“It is beautiful,” Aine admitted.
	“Well,” I said, “even you, Aine, have got to admit that is one neat trick.”
	“Yes,” she said, grudgingly.
	“Do it again!” Frih shouted.
	“I don’t think so, little man,” I said. “Slythe, you’ll stay and have lunch?”
	She looked up at the sun. “Sorry, Theamh, I can’t. I’ve got plenty left to do back at the Pharc.”
	“Oh well then,” I said. “When duty calls, I won’t get in the way. But thank you,” I added. “Really. You’ve  probably saved my life.”
	Slythe shook her head, gray eyes bent down on some invisible thing in the grass. “It was the least I could do,” she said, troubled for some reason.
	“Still--”
	Her head snapped up to look suddenly into my eyes. “Take care of yourself,” she said, seriously and slowly. “Shield or no shield, every net has holes. So...just watch your back, all right?”
	“Of course,” I answered. 
	Slythe nodded. “Idair with all of you.”
	She passed swiftly out through the door, which closed seamlessly behind her.
	“What did she mean, watch your back?” Aine asked.
	“I don’t know exactly,” I said. “I guess because that’s where Lythril will stab me, when the time comes.”
	“But she can’t get in now,” Mna said, asking more than stating.
	“She certainly shouldn’t,” I answered, swinging Frih into my arms. “Cat or no cat, we’re free of her for a little while at least. So let’s eat.”

	After lunch and a nap I felt ready to face the trip into town. Mna was leery of being alone in the house, so I left Aine with her and took Cinhe. Aine was disappointed at not being in on the denouement, but I figured my conversation with Pel would be difficult enough without having her along.
	The Mathair was quiet; aside from Returns and prenatal care not much happens there, and now that they’d called off Returns there was very little traffic. In the central counseling room Ife was running a womblink session with some undelivered mothers.
	“...helps you vizualize it, even if it’s not technically useful,” Ife was saying, placing her hand on her own undistended abdomen. “We look into the subject’s eyes, but of course you can’t do that. Anyhow,  if you put your hand where your notborn is, and try to clear your mind...”
	I tiptoed past the group of pregnant women, all concentrating hard, most with their eyes closed. Pel was nowhere to be seen. The hallway, when I entered it, was empty. I started going through the consulting rooms.
	It took me a few tries, but I finally opened the door on a room that wasn’t empty. In fact, Pel was sitting on the consulting bench, her head in her hands, feet planted wide on the floor and dark hair hanging into her lap as she hunched over.
	“Pel...?”
	She lifted a face that was red-eyed, tearstained, and twisted from sobbing. 
	“What?”
	The smart thing to do would have been back up and out of the room, but instead my response was involuntary and too quick to censor. “Idair’s teeth, Pel, what’s wrong?”
	“My father,” she said.
	“What’s the matter? Is he sick?”
	“He’s dead!” she shouted, tears coming to the reddened corners of her eyes.
	“Oh goodness,” I said, chagrined. “I...truly, Pel I’m--I’m sorry to hear it.”
	“Well, I wish I were!” she cried.
	Wherupon she started sobbing again.
	I was completely at a loss. On the one hand, Pel didn’t like me, I didn’t like her, and I was not the person who should be consoling her, nor was I someone with whom she had probably ever envisioned discussing the intricacies of what must have been a complicated relationship. On the other, I seemed to be the only one around, and to walk away from her struck me as an act of great cowardice.
	So I stood there, looking stupid, until she said bitterly, “I’m sure you’re very shocked.” Pel walked away from me.
	“About your not being sorry?” She waited. “That I understand. If my mother were to drop dead suddenly, I might feel much the same way.”
	She turned to face me, surprised. Then she crossed her arms and gulped something down. “But she’s your mother.”
	“Yes, she is,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t have mixed emotions when the time comes.”
	With a snuffle, Pel seemed to stifle a sob. “How can you say that about your own mother?”
	“Because it’s true,” I said. “How we are has never been simple; I don’t expect death will change that.”
	“How can I not miss him?” she demanded, angry with herself, with the situation, and probably with me. “How can I not mourn?”
	“You are mourning,” I answered. “Your own way. Or you wouldn’t be crying.”
	“I didn’t cry at his departure,” she said. “I said it was because it hadn’t hit me yet. I thought it was true.”
	“Maybe it was,” I said.
	“I don’t want him back,” she burst out.
	“That doesn’t mean you don’t miss him.”
	“What are you talking about?”
	It was hard to believe I was having this conversation. “Maybe it doesn’t make sense to you. But my mother has been such a huge part of my life that if she were gone...I would miss her, even though we’ve been fighting for years, even though if you asked me how I feel about her I couldn’t give you a definite answer. And so it’s probably that way for you...some.”
	She stared at me for a moment, while I shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot.
	“Why are you still talking to me?” she demanded.
	“I--because it seemed like...because I thought maybe...look, you don’t like me, I don’t like you, but that doesn’t mean I should walk away when I see you in trouble.” Pel laughed, short and sharp. “Especially when it’s trouble so close to mine.”
	We looked at each other for what seemed like a long time.
	“Look...” I finally said. “There’s a place I know a couple blocks into the Third that serves free soup this day of the week. Of course they prefer if you buy something to go with it, but they’re too embarrassed to make a fuss.” She was looking at me as if I were crazy. “Do you want to...go there, and maybe talk about it?”
	It took her a long time to make up her mind, standing there framed in the bright afternoon sunlight slanting in through the square window onto her dark, proud head.
	“All right,” she said.
	
	As a marketing ploy, free soup is not a good idea in a town with a large population of professional indigents. But I think the owners consoled themselves with the idea that the shriias brought good luck to the place, and the servers didn’t seem to mind the lack of a tip as long as we were generous about dispensing advice.
	Healon the seater was a sensitive boy, and stuck us in a little-frequented corner in the back. It was a dark sort of place, in dark wood that hadn’t been painted very recently, with small windows through which the light reached us only in a very filtered state.
	Pel toyed with her soup without drinking it. “You never knew him,” she said, now much calmer.
	“I saw him when you got your orders, but I don’t remember talking to him.”
	“I grew up thinking he was the entire world,” she went on, strangely matter-of-fact. “Sometimes I still think that.”
	“He was your only parent?”
	She shook her head. “My mother’s still alive, but she left when I was four years old. I blamed her, of course, because he did.” Pel stirred her spoon in the soup and watched the ripples. “Should have known better.”
	“You were only a child.”
	“He wanted a boy, I’ve known that as long as I can remember,” she went on. “When I was six I went to the shriia in my town and asked to undergo ransa. She told me I’d have to wait until I was eighteen. I can still remember the taste of ash in my mouth. I was so bitterly disappointed.”
	“Why did he want a boy so much?”
	“Who knows,” she answered. “No--I do, actually. I’ve thought about it for a long time.” She looked up at me, laying the spoon to one side of the bowl. “He wanted to be a shriia, did you ever hear about that?”
	“There are the stories still around, about the challenge. I never heard the details.”
	“He lost. Anyone with sense would have known he would. Men and shri.” She made a noise of contempt. “The day Idair lets that happen I’m leaving the Order.”
	“And he didn’t want ransa.”
	“No, of course not. He didn’t want to be a woman. He hates women. Hated. He made my mother so miserable she ran off leaving her child behind. And anyway,” she went on, her voice rising, “he’d have made a rotten shriia. He never gave a damn about Idair or the Chronicles or the Spirit, he just wanted the power. He couldn’t have it because he wasn’t a woman and that drove him out of his mind.” Pel’s chin was now starting to quiver. “And he was, really, out of his mind. I mean insane.”
	“How, insane?”
	“Just--just--I don’t know. It’s insane, isn’t it, to expect an eight year old to study texts ten hours a day?”
	“He did that to you?”
	“It was all he let me do. By then I didn’t even resist--I went to the library and I sat there on my own poring over those things. I knew--I guess I knew that until I could undergo ransa this was the only thing that would make him love me.” Her face darkened. “That might make him love me.”
	“Pel...” I couldn’t think of an end for the sentence.
	“He couldn’t be a shriia, so I’d have to. I knew from as soon as I could read that was what I was meant for. I went into scoil--well, you know how I went in.”
	She was a prodigy when she came, sixteen and already having memorized the scrolls, learned ten languages and Idair knew what all else. And nervous, and nearsighted, and shy of other people. 
	“It must have been a bitter life,” I ventured.
	“That’s the word,” she said. “Not that I thought of it that way...” She sighed, running a hand over her head. “You know what’s crazy? Two weeks ago I would never have said any of this--not to you, certainly, but not even to myself. It’s like--now he’s been gone a while, I’m finally starting to see how things worked. How--how--”
	“How unhappy you’ve been,” I said, gently.
	She looked at me with suddenly wet eyes and compressed lips, nodding.
	“I know. It was like that with me, when I left home.”
	“But your mother seems like such a nice woman,” Pel said.
	“To other people. It makes me feel insane. I used to think I was evil for not believing she was perfect.”
	Pel nodded. “And now I look back on it--Theamh, I’m--” She balked, but something in my face gave her the courage. “I’m not even sure I really want to do this.”
	“You mean shri.”
	She nodded. “I--it’s terrible. All this time, I’ve been lying to Idair.”
	“It’s not a lie if you believe it’s true.”
	“And I did--I do--I don’t--I don’t even know what I think,” she wailed.
	“How can you know?” I said, alarmed at the fresh outburst but trying not to show it. “Since you were so small it was never a question, what you wanted.”
	“I mean--I’m used to--I was so sure,” she cried, “so sure about everything, but now--now that he’s not there--to tell me--” Pel blew her nose into her napkin. “Nothing’s the same!”
	“You see, you do miss him.”
	“I do but--I don’t!” 
	I nodded. 
	“You understand?”
	“Oh yes.”
	“He was always old, even when I was young he was just old, old, old and mean--” Pel threw her spoon onto the table. “And he made me like him, old and mean and crazy--”
	“You’re not crazy,” I said.
	“I am, I’m just like him, that’s why they didn’t want me in the order--”
	“Pel, they wanted you, they just wanted you later--”
	“No, they knew I was just him in disguise, they knew if they took me they were taking him, with his bitterness and his hatred and his apocalypse and his He-Dair--”
	“Wait a minute. He-Dair?” She nodded. “Is that what it sounds like?”
	Pel interrupted her weeping long enough for a short laugh. “Exactly what it sounds like. See, he’s crazy! Spirit, Dark One, make them men if you want, but we know Idair was a woman, why he had to say she wasn’t--”
	“And he wanted to be a shriia?”
	“He thinks--he thought--the whole Chronicles were corrupt and that Idair was really a man,” she said, wanting to laugh but crying too hard. “Crazy, greedy bastard that he was--and me just realizing now how glad I am to get to hell away from him and his ‘real Chronicles’ and his ‘matriarchal plot’ and his ‘purification’ and his--”
	“Hold it,” I shouted.
	Pel looked at me, surprised and beginning to be wary of me again.	
	“That last thing you said,” I said. “About the purification? What does that mean?”
	She shook her head. “He had this idea that shri was corrupted in its infancy when they started lying about Idair being a woman. That one day they’d discover the truth and start replacing shriias with men. The Purification. That’s what he called that.” Pel grabbed the spoon and started drumming on the table. “I knew that was never going to happen.”
	“Pel...” I said, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible, “Your father...when, exactly, did his story here end?”
	“It was...I got back from the departure the day your friend came in. I must have been upset even then, to be such a bitch to the both of you. I’m sorry about that.”
	“And so his spirit left us...”
	“Three days before that.”
	I did the math in my head as quickly as I could.
	“Pel.”
	“What?”
	“We have to talk to Lilea.”
	“I don’t speak to her,” she said, her jaw locking.
	“Pel, listen to me--”
	“I should have know I was a fool to talk to you--”
	“This is not about that!” I shouted. “She doesn’t have to know a thing about how you feel about your father, neither does another living soul. But you need to come with me right now and talk to Lilea and I don’t care how much you hate each other.”
	“Why should I?”
	“You say your father was crazy,” I said. “Was he crazy enough to want to be immortal?”
	Pel drew back into her chair, startled.
	“How did you know about that?”
	“You come with me and I’ll tell you.”
	I stood. Pel gave me an angry, challenging stare, and then stood up opposite me.
	“You better not be about to tell me he’s still alive somewhere,” she said, on edge.
	“Not yet.”

	Lilea was waiting for me in the delivery room. Of course, I hadn’t told her I would be bringing Pel, so when she saw us she sprang to her feet with an uncharacterstically pungent oath.
	“Theamh, what have I done to deserve this?”
	“I’m leaving,” Pel spat, reaching for the door.
	I slammed the door and pushed Pel into the room toward Lilea, who drew away. “Listen up, both of you. I know the wounds are deep and bitter and I’m sorry about that. But thurk it all, if either of you had gotten over it we wouldn’t have been scrambling around in the dark this long. But before we get into that, there’s one thing I have to do.”
	Lilea got up and went to the door. Pel stared at me.
	“How have you been sleeping lately, Pel?” I asked, shaking the sleeve of my robe.
	“Sleeping?” she demanded, incredulous. “Like a cat on hot coals. My father’s dead, in case you’ve forgotten--”
	“Tabhair, mo sielnai.”
	I needn’t go into what happened next. Same drill, different victim. This time I knew better than to let Jayla or the others go after the thing--it flew unimpeded into the corner and left its smear of showdust in a round print on the wall. I sent the vigils home with promises of delicacies to come, and went to see how Pel was doing.
	“How’s your head?”
	Pel looked up with bloodshot eyes and applied an unflattering epithet to me and my family.
	“That’s kind of what I figured.” I sat down cross-legged on the floor next to her. “It does hurt like a bitch. Lilea can tell you.”
	“What was that thing?” Pel finally asked, grudgingly.
	“We’re not entirely sure. We know it’s closely related to whatever was riding Lilea’s head for the past month or so. Lilea...you may as well tell the story.”
	Lilea glared at me.
	“Bad blood or no, you’re still her diaoc. So talk to you thurking apprentice.”
	Silence.
	“Did you know,” I ventured, “that Pel’s father passed from our world a little over a week ago?”
	Pel looked at Lilea.
	“Oh,” Lilea said, sadness suddenly flooding her voice. “I hadn’t heard--I--” Pel’s eyes began to tear. “I’m sorry. It must be very hard on you, his being gone.”
	The tears beaded up, but didn’t fall.
	“I know what he was to you,” she said. “I know he’s still haunting you, bitter twisted shade that he must be.”
	Pel blinked.
	“I never wanted you to leave the Order,” Lilea burst out, as her own eyes teared. “I didn’t ask for that. I wanted you to wait, to spend a few years learning...learning what you wanted. That’s all I asked for.”
	“You thought I wasn’t good enough,” Pel cried.
	“I thought you were young,” Lilea insisted. “Of course you were good enough. You were good enough a month after I got you. That’s just--it’s not all that matters, Pel, can you understand that now?”
	“Yes,” Pel shouted, miserably.
	“Oh--Pel--don’t--” Lilea slid over to where Pel crouched on the floor. “If it’s what you want, if you find that out after this is all over, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be a good shriia, and do good and do well and leave a good story behind you. You’ve got it in you, you do. I always said that. It just wasn’t close enough to the surface, then.”
	“It’s never going to be!”
	“Don’t say never,” Lilea said, putting an arm around her and pulling her in. “You’re so hard on everyone, and so hard on yourself...it doesn’t have to be like that, just because he was hard on you.”
	Pel reached an arm around to cling onto Lilea and began sobbing like a baby.
	I withdrew from the scene as quickly as possible. Not even Pel could hold out against Lilea, when she put her mind to it. She really was something.
	After a quick turn up and down the corridor, I came back to find the tearful reunion over and the two of them deep in conversation which, while I’m sure it was very fulfilling to them, had nothing to do with the present situation and therefore made me somewhat restive. 
	“...the prenatal work you did in Naucht Point was really excellent,” Lilea was saying, when I finally lost my patience.
	“Speaking of which,” I said, “Are you going to tell her about that green thing?”
	“Oh, we’ve covered that,” Lilea said. 
	“Well, has she told you about the Purification?”
	Pel and Lilea looked at each other. “No,” Lilea said warily.
	“It might interest you to know,” I said, “that Pel’s father was very concerned that something he called the Purification happen...and that he died before he could carry it out. Died, as near as I can put it, the day you heard that notborn telling you it couldn’t go home because it had to see the Purification through.”
	“No,” Pel said, standing up. “Oh no. You don’t think...?”
	“I do think,” I said.
	“Idair and Cailte,” Lilea whispered.
	“We’ve known, these past few days, that notborns were being replaced,” I said. “I think we now know what with.”
	“You mean my father...is...”
	“Is going to be reborn about seven and a half months from now, to a very unlucky woman.”
	“That twisted old bastard,” Pel choked out. “I’ll never be free of him.”
	“Who’s doing this?” Lilea breathed.
	“I can’t be sure. But if I had money, I’d put it on Lythril.” Lilea nodded. “That money is going for something, and I see no reason why it shouldn’t be this. This is exactly her kind of thing. Because this is about living forever, it’s about the moment of death, it’s a delicate, intricate, multi-step operation requiring a legion of ethereal minions and some help from their human friends and a hole over the border big enough and stable enough to allow for a traffic in souls that evidence would suggest is becoming increasingly brisk.”
	“What is she...doing...with the notborns?” Lilea asked, her voice still low in shock.
	“Idair only knows,” I said.
	“We’ve got to tell the Council,” Pel interjected. “We’ve got to stop him.”
	“We’ve got to stop her,” I said. “This goes way beyond your poor crazy father. I’m sure he thought he was getting a sweet deal, but believe me, with that unholy bitch there is no such thing as a free lunch.”
	“What should we do?” Pel finally asked. 
	“I know what I’m going to do,” I said. “I’m going to petition for a cross-border travel clearance. Can I count on the two of you for the hearing?”
	Pel nodded. Lilea, after hesitating, bent her head decisively.
	“It’s time people knew,” she said. “And to give you the clearance, they’ll have to convene the whole Council.”
	“Whatever happens, this thing won’t go back under the rug,” I agreed. “And while I’m at it, you might as well talk to Riina, and contact some of the provincial shriias who work in Comings and Goings. We don’t know how widespread this is.” They both nodded. “I’ve got to get home, I’m not easy leaving Aine alone there after all that’s happened. Idair with you both.”
	I headed for the Raed in a very unsettled state of mind. Things were falling into place so fast I could hardly keep up. Pel came from a wealthy family out in Kengda; her father must have paid Lythril well. Since Pel was his only child and could never inherit, he’d have had no reason to save the money. And since Lythril had made sure the things were targeting wealthy women, he would be born to a mother who could afford to support him in the style to which he was accustomed. Unless, of course, her circumstances should suddenly change. As Mna’s obviously had.
	I had forgotten to ask Pel if she remembered seeing Mna. She might well have forgotten, anyhow; Pel must have done a lot of returns, and pissed off a lot of mothers.
	“How can I serve you, shriia?” said the self-important little scoilin in the anteroom.
	“I’m petitioning for a cross-border travel clearance,” I said. “I’d like to request a hearing.”
	She consulted the appointment ledger. “That kind of procedure requires a lot of planning,” she mused. “But it looks like there’s a free space...thirteen days from now, at around midafternoon. Will that work?”
	“Oh, no. I need to do this right away.”
	Those blue eyes blinked at me from above the collar of the robe. “But shriia, simply finding a date convenient for the entire Council to convene will take days all by itself. Never mind coordinating the schedules and clearing the room--”
	“You don’t understand. This is an emergency.”
	“I’m sure it is, shriia, but the scheduling demands are such that--”
	“What’s your used name, scoilin?” I cut in.
	“Doryth,” she answered.
	“Doryth,” I continued, planting my hands on her desk and staring into her vapid eyes, “this is not a trivial matter. This is about evil poisoning the very wellspring of our existence. This is about minions tampering with the processes of birth and death. This is about a conspiracy that reaches into every branch of government that we have and which is contravening everything Idair ever told us about this life or the next. This is about nothing less than the continued existence of human life in our country as we have come to know it. Now when I get up there and tell the Council why I want this clearance, their first question is not going to be, ‘why are you bothering us with trifles?’ It’s going to be, ‘Why didn’t you tell us this a week ago?’ And when they ask me that, you do not want the answer to be, ‘Because Doryth decided that saving the earth and all of us on it from the machinations of the Dark One wasn’t something your schedules could accomodate.’”
	Doryth’s face was now the color of putty.
	“Are you...are you joking, shriia?”
	“I am to some extent using understatement for rhetorical effect,” I said, “but otherwise I am completely serious.”
	“What’s happening?” she asked, beginning to get panicked.
	“Well, the sooner you schedule the hearing, the sooner you’ll find out,” I said with a smile.
	Doryth flipped back through the ledger.
	“Would tomorrow, two hours before sundown...would that be soon enough?”
	“That would be lovely,” I said.
	“I’ll put you down for then, shriia.”
	“Thank you,” I said. “My name is Theamh ni hUlnach.”
	Doryth made a mental note. “I’ll notify you if there’s any change.”
	“Idair keep you, Doryth,” I said, making my way out the door.
	I found Cinhe by the steps, staring moodily into the distance. She doesn’t like the City, though she’s good as gold when I ask her to wait for me. I swung onto her back.
	“Home, Cinhe.”
	She started off at a leisurely trot through the streets, in no particular hurry and leery of the late afternoon traffic. All those people, rushing from place to place, going about their business, selling their wares or buying others or running messages from one corner to the next. Having no idea what was happening all around them. Utterly innocent of the change that was polluting the world.
	So that was who Crann was--the returned spirit of some departed adult, a rich man who’d bought himself another lifetime. Idair laughed at the rich when she came here--the laugh of her high anger, the laugh that cut their smug self-assurance from under them. “You dragons, sitting on your heaps of gold,” she says--it’s in the second scroll-- “piling up the suffering of others to protect yourselves from your share of pain. Trembling lest your body incur the slightest hurt. When you learn, on the last day, how little that safety is worth, will you finally regret the pain and hunger and blood with which you bought it? Because the price, you have paid, forever. But the prize--that dies with your body.”
	Well, not any more. They’d beat the system. They knew their wealth couldn’t follow them to the other place--so they made up their minds never to leave this one. They would return, again and again, always to women of the wealthy class, always to families of privilege, always growing up safe and warm and well-fed and ready to rule the world.
	And this was just the first stage, when they had to force themselves on unwilling victims. How long would it be before they were hiring women, with full knowledge and complicity--who knows, even marrying again toward the end, conceiving children, and being reborn as their own sons or daughters? Keeping the wealth in the family, building on it generation after generation, amassing and amassing and amassing? And how long after that before there was a whole new ruling class, made up exclusively of these returners, these 500-year-old toddlers, who reached precocity early, traded on the market at six years old, became tycoons of industry by the time they were twelve, died filthy rich at ninety and came back to start the whole cycle again? How long before they decided wealth was not enough, before they bought the Seat, the Presiders, the whole Pharc?
	All right, Theamh. You’re getting just a little ahead of yourself.
	They wouldn’t be born with a full consciousness of what had gone before. They’d forget. But if Crann was any guide, they’d start with advantages. They’d learn faster. They’d be leaders even as children. They’d be smarter, earlier; their acquired skills would take less time to relearn every time they came back. And if the cycle went around often enough...maybe, at last, they would remember it all, from the cradle upwards.
	The law of inheritance meant they could pass their wealth from life to life. But while fathers could return as their own sons, mothers couldn’t. If a woman wanted to be reborn it would have to be to a different family. Or skip a generation perhaps and come back as a granddaughter...
	It was all too sick. Being reborn as your own daughter’s daughter--controlling her from both ends of her life. Or being reborn as your own son, or grandson. But the logic of wealth is implacable and I knew that was where it would lead. Once you accept gain as your first principle nothing will stand in your way, not scruple, not faith, not compassion, and certainly not the queasiness with which I contemplated this bizarre form of incest. 
	Gain, gain, and nothing but gain--it gets you nowhere, but there is the illusion of progress, because the world changes around you, because things get bigger and shinier and more elaborate. Idair learned the logic of wealth but she never accepted it. In the first scroll, she tried to end poverty by making gold, carpeting the hills with it, throwing huge blocks of it into the paths of farmers and street children. And then she saw her generosity defeated as gold became worthless and people were selling twenty-pound blocks for one fish. So she took most of it away, and hid the rest--in stream beds, in caves, under the waves of the ocean. “Scrabble for it,” she said. “Hoard it. Coin it. Make it scarce. You who love it can do its bidding. The rest of us will get on without it. There must be something in the world stronger than greed.”
	It’s the bitterest speech she gives, except for her final curse on the Dark Leader. It was the curb on her power she resented most, because she saw that it made us unhappy. But whatever she did, the logic of gain returned, mutating, driven to earth in one form and cropping up in another, beaten down there and then returning somewhere else. And the bitterness stayed with her until the end. The crowned king of the Cretids, expelling her from his kingdom, offers her one last chance to kneel and profess her loyalty. She refuses, and he asks, “You give your love to everyone else; why not to me?” And across a thousand years I can still hear the despair in her anger: “You are hoarding everything else, Aiv; surely you will allow me to hoard my love. Since after all it is a thing of no value.”
	And now they were hoarding life. The logic of gain, creeping inexorably toward its final victory, a thousand years after she left us. Well, Idair fought the battle to the end, even believing she would never win. And so would I.
	Cinhe was cantering through the trees now, more at ease in the forest. Everything fit. Pel had given me the last piece. Lythril was collecting the spirits at the moment of death--that, probably, would explain Krenham; he must have been one of her first experiments. She’d had to take him early because otherwise Lilea would have watched him out and interfered. And she had to be in him at the moment of death to catch the spirit as it left. Then she transferred it to one of her green guuns, and at the next opportunity it planted it in the notborn of a rich woman. Meanwhile, Lythril was probably keeping the notborns for some purpose of her own. She’s not the kind to waste an opportunity. And whatever her plan was, this altering of the ether probably had something to do with them.
	Everything fit. Except for one thing. Crann still wanted to come home.
	If this was the right story, he shouldn’t fight to return. He should let the green thing take him back to Lythril or to wherever it was bound and allow himself to be put into some other notborn. He shouldn’t want to come back to Mna and a life of exposure and want. Unless, somehow, that bond between mother and son had made him forget. 
	But that bond was weakening as he stayed in the ether, and his old personality should be coming back as his new body became a more distant memory. So why was he still straining toward her? Why was he wrestling his captor into planes it didn’t want to go to? Why did he want to go home? Unless...he hadn’t wanted to be reborn in the first place.
	Most of these returners must be willing--because they’d have to fight the shriia for the right to stay. But Pel was so quick to accept a refusal; maybe Crann hadn’t put up much of a fight. Maybe this hadn’t been his idea. Maybe he was different from the others--someone who had been caught up in the plot by mistake, someone who hadn’t wanted to come back, who had been taken, somehow, without his consent and put into Crann, two years and say seven, eight months ago...
	“Teir abhaile, Cinhe!” I shouted, jabbing my heels into her sides. “Home, as fast as you can!”
	Cinhe’s legs pounded as we sped faster through the trees. I lay flat against her neck and hung on as best I could. If I was right, we suddenly had a much better chance of finding Crann. But if I was right...his being taken was only the first of his problems.

XXI.
Aftershock

 	I saw the silhouette in the fading, indirect light of the forest evening as I rode up to the house. Taric had taken care to dismount several hundred yards away from the shield, mindful probably of my warning to him. The stallion was pulling up the few struggling blades of vegetation he could reach and munching them. Taric hadn’t changed before coming--his overall was spattered with the things a farm spatters you with, and his hands were raw from the field. A dirty forearm had left its print across his brow. There were other tracks, dried now, through the dust on his cheeks.
	“I wouldn’t bother you so soon, shriia,” he said, before I could dismount. “But you said any time.”
	His voice was level and his face composed. But everything else told me he’d left suddenly and in great agitation. The trip over, and the wait, must have calmed him down, but not enough to make him turn back in shame.
	“Yes, well, Taric, I’m afraid I don’t have time right--” I stopped, even as he was beginning his resigned nod. “No. No, that is exactly what I have time to do, is read that letter. Come with me.”
	He handed me the letter as I walked Cinhe forward. “Tell me something--since you don’t read, how do you know it’s from him?”
	“It has our device,” he said, after a pause.
	I turned it over. On the back was a red waxen seal. Peering closely, I could make out the embossed design. Two hands, joined together with a thorned stem coiled around each wrist, meeting above the interlocking fingers to become the stalk of a single rose.
	We stabled the horses. Taric stood for a while with his hand on the stallion’s mane, not seeing what was before him.
	“If you wouldn’t mind,” he said, “I’d like to read it here.”
	“All right,” I said, a little surprised.
	“It’s just--” I pulled up a bale of hay, hanging a light above me to read by. “He--we--” Taric suddenly shook his head. “Never mind. This is just the right place.”
	“Have a seat then.” 
	I opened the letter. Taric sat down in some loose straw on the floor. His face looking up at me was reddened in the light of the reading flame, which somehow made it look younger--less worn, less set in stone.
	“It’s a long one,” he remarked, as I unfolded the pages.
	“It is that.” It was something of a shock to me to see his handwriting--those slanting letters and the flourishes at the ends of the words--after all this time. Writing is like that. You can feel the breath of the ghost.
	“Here we go,” I said. “ ‘Mo fhearr...’” I glanced up at Taric, who didn’t seem to understand my sadness. “ ‘Mo fhearr chara...’”
	There was an abrupt, sharp noise that was probably a sniff, although when I glanced up he was scratching his nose absently as if it had been a sneeze.
	“‘I write this from the room in the tower I’ve so often described to you, often enough that perhaps you can imagine it. It seems strange to be writing you a letter; it was the last way I would ever have thought of trying to talk to you. But my link to you is broken, and to see you in person would put you in danger. I am gambling on your being willing to go to Theamh. I know she’s a shriia. But even though I’ve never asked her, I believe that she would think as I do, and not as you do. She wouldn’t say what you’re so afraid of hearing. And she wouldn’t think it either.”
	Even to me, it didn’t sound entirely like him; because he was writing, he had become formal. But I could hear through that to the Keanrih I remembered; and I was hoping Taric could too.
	“Although, as I sit here, I am sure of very little. Maybe we are affronting Idair. If she had wanted to punish me for that, she couldn’t have chosen a more apt way. But I can’t, and won’t, believe that her heart is home to that kind of cruelty, whatever her daughters say.’”
	I looked up at Taric, but he was far away--too far to care what I said. I went on.
	“ ‘I said my link to you is broken; I broke it. I did it when I knew for sure that I was losing the battle. I didn’t want that thing to find you. That’s why you’ve had no word from me all these months. Theamh keeps telling me I’m clean. I don’t feel clean.
	“ ‘It’s an agony to me not to know what you’re thinking. I hope, I hope, that someone told you the story, so at least you know why I broke contact. It didn’t want me to see you, and if it had, I would have fought it every step there, because it would only have meant you harm.
	“ ‘But your farm is so lonely, and you shun company so much, I’m afraid you never did hear the story. I sent you the drawings but I don’t know if you could understand enough, through them, about what happened. I worry that you’ve been thinking all this time that I abandoned you. Until Weroda, that was the worst part--knowing how you would interpret this silence. That you would assume I had broken faith. That I was after all who you thought I was, that first day out by the stables--another Big House bastard with the eye of a raptor and the morals of a tomcat. Well, I’m not who I wanted to be. But at least I’m more than that.
	“ ‘So if you never heard the story, here it is: early in the morning of that day I was supposed to call you and never did, I lifted my head to look out the window, and instead of the sun I saw orange. One instant in which everything around me was orange, and then it went back to normal. But when I wanted to get up and close the window, I couldn’t. Something else kept me on that bench.
	“ ‘I want you to know I fought it. I tried to chase it out but I didn’t know how. By the time it had stood me up and walked me over to the window I knew I was beaten. So I broke the link, a moment before I lost the power to do it, or to do anything but huddle in some unsued corner of my mindspace and watch what the thing was doing to me.
	“ ‘I still felt sensation through my body, but the sensations weren’t mine. I don’t know how to explain. It was--I would look at whatever woman the thing had fixed on, and feel the desire in my body, but it wasn’t my desire. It belonged to the thing. I would feel the pleasure it got from the women it took, but it wasn’t my pleasure. Even the taste of the food I ate was stolen from me--nothing was mine, except the pain of loss.
	“ ‘Eventually despair set in and I gave up fighting. Some things could still get to me, among them the delight my father took in seeing the change. And I couldn’t stop thinking of you, of what you must think, of how hurt you were and how irreparable the harm was. And I would pray to Idair to just kill me and end it.
	“ ‘So, you know how you say things can always get worse, well, this thing proved you right. It wasn’t enough that it had to rape someone. It had to choose Weroda. Sixteen years old, away from her family for the first time, terrified of my father and not too comfortable around me. Mathi always did a little extra to make her feel at home, but you know what that house is like--or you don’t know, I guess, but you’ve surely heard enough about it from me. What with Athi’s evil temper, Bilhad’s sullenness, Trebor’s womanizing and Tilhu’s vanity, Mathi can’t make up for everything. She was homesick, and lonely. So I suppose the thing thought she would be an easy target.’”
	I brought the page closer to my face. “I can’t make this out, Taric,” I said. “It looks as if he wrote it, scored it out, and rewrote it several times. The paper’s so worn it’s illegible. From...from what I can tell...” I moved next to Taric to show him the ragged paper. “It looks like this is the account of the rape. It--you see these gouges, here, where the nib stuck in the paper, and all these blank spots where the ink didn’t take, and now here these spots where it’s puckered and the ink is washed out?”
	Taric nodded. “Is that from the crossing out?”
	“The blank spots are--he tore the paper up so much the pen wouldn’t mark it any more. But the gouges and the water damage...”
	He looked at the splash marks. “Tearstains.”
	“Right. And the pen gouged because he was pushing too hard.” I handed the page to Taric. He held it up, inspecting the place where the damage began. Hard as it was, it helped him to hold it and look at it. This was something he could read. The distress, the anger, the anguish and the crying fear of being misread that had made him write and rewrite the same painful passage as his pen ran dry and his eyes teared so badly he could no longer see what he was doing. 
	“Shall I go on?” I finally asked.
	“Please,” Taric said, still looking at the paper.
	I picked up from the beginning of the next page, where the ink was still faint but the paper was more faithful to it. “ ‘...enjoying it. That was my body, my arms holding her down, my zazb breaking her open, my hand over her mouth and my mouth laughing. And my feet carrying my body away from that musty storeroom as if nothing had happened.
	“ ‘Can you understand that once this happened, nothing could be the same? If my body could do this, if my body could enjoy it--if my body is this kind of traitor, the vassal of whatever vicious whim happens to visit it--how can I, knowing I took pleasure in violating her, trust any pleasure now? How can I believe my desires, when they lied to me so foully and for so long? How can this body be mine? How can it give me to you? How can I ever touch you with these hands? Nothing belongs to me, after this. Nothing. Not even my own name.”
	I stopped reading for a moment. 
	“Shriia?” Taric said.
	A lot of things were moving around in my mind. Including that image that had scared the fnaa out of Aine, of Lythril sitting on that dead tree in the moonlight speaking to a man who was wrapped in a cloak. 
	Taric didn’t care about the fact that I had been wondering, ever since then, why she had been so imprudent as to go out to meet a client in person. Nor did Taric care that I now thought I might know the answer. He wanted to hear the rest of the letter, and the Spirit knew he had a right to it. I started reading again.
	“ ‘To the point, Keanrih. I hear you; and you’re right. So the rest of the story, so you know: Weroda told my mother; my mother told the gardai; and at long last it occurred to someone that I might be possessed. I will never understand why it took so long. My father, of course, I wouldn’t expect him to notice. But why didn’t Mathi think of it? It’s not as if the change was subtle. But there it is. They brought me to court, and they asked Theamh to examine me.
	“ ‘The one pleasure I’ve known during this past dreadful time was the fear I sensed from the thing when it saw her coming. They must know who she is in the spirit world. Even before she entered my mind I knew it was over--much as the suspense was agony.
	“ ‘I can’t tell you the indescribable relief I felt seeing it outside of me, shooting around the room with those colored flaming pets of hers snapping at its heels. But by the time it was gone, the elation was over. It was gone, but I was still there, trapped in that treacherous shell, a prisoner still, or, if you’ll indulge me with one of those literary metaphors you make such charming fun of, the captain of a mutinous ship.
	“ ‘Please understand, that’s why I haven’t seen you, that’s why I can’t see you. Not never--I won’t say never--I couldn’t live with that--but not for a while, not now. I’m a danger, Taric, that’s all I am. This body is not mine. It belongs to that thing and that thing wants nothing but pain. I know that if I see you I’ll forget, I’ll believe it’s over and I’m safe, and then as soon as I drop my guard it will be back. It will use me to hurt you.
	“ ‘I won’t let it. Whatever I have to do, if it means staying away, if it means dying, I won’t let it touch you. I know how badly my silence must have hurt you already. Believe me, the only thing that’s kept me away from you this long is the conviction that I can only bring you more pain by coming to you. I can’t believe it happened, sometimes--sometimes sitting here I think everything is all right, and all I have to do is slip out at night and you’ll be there as you always are and the nightmare will be over. But with my hand on the door I think back to Weroda and I freeze where I stand. I can’t come to you until I know--know beyond certainty--that I am my own man. 
	“ ‘In the tales they are always writing love letters; well, to me it seems a cold pursuit, when what I want to say could be said so much better in your presence, with words or without them. And knowing that you have to see this through someone else’s eyes, I can’t say everything I would say. Much of it would cause poor Theamh to faint dead away, and she’s trying so hard to help me, I won’t put her through the embarrassment of speaking out loud the cries of my imprisoned heart and starved body. You know me. You know how I miss you. You know that whatever else that thing could kill it couldn’t kill my love for you. You know--I hope you know, now, even if you didn’t before--that I have not, that I never will, break faith. You are my man, and I will never have another. 
	“ ‘But I know it has been a long time, and it will be a while longer. I don’t ask you to keep from other men. All I ask is that you believe I still love you, and that when—if—the aftershock is ever over, and I can come to you again without danger to you, that you know I am coming, as you always know, and will find it in your heart to meet me there.
	“ ‘I hope Bearla and Hiinh are well, and that Mada is making progress with the sheep. I suppose he must be full-grown now. I comfort myself thinking of him with you, hoping he has big friendly paws and a furry head with floppy ears and that he sleeps with you and keeps you warm. You never let me give you anything, but I knew if I brought him to you you wouldn’t turn him away, softhearted matheen that you are. 
	“ ‘Stay you, Taric, with your pride and your jealousy and your sweet hidden core. Don’t let this change you. That would be a loss too bitter to sustain. This, I can almost bear, as long as I know you’re still there, hanging grimly on to that bastard of a farm, stumbling through the future. I have to end this sometime; the sun is already down. So Idair be with you, since I can’t. Always yours, here or anywhere, do fhearr chara.’”
	I sat for a while looking down at the page in my hand. Taric was silent, his jaw clenched and his hands in fists on his knees.
	“He...at the end, there’s a drawing.” I handed it to him quickly. He looked down, then folded the paper up and stuffed it into his coverall, embarrassed.
	“Taric, do--do you want to be alone now?”
	He nodded.
	“Come inside when you’re ready,” I said.
	Taric nodded. I decided to head for the doorway before the storm broke.
	It hit him just as I was stepping out--the hiccuping, shuddering cry of someone used to pain but not used to crying. I hurried away. I already knew more about Taric than he wanted me to know. Not to mention any number of things about Keanrih. Many of which were disturbing in ways neither one of them would have imagined they could be.
	When I walked into the kitchen, Aine and Mna looked up from the game of hopstones they had been playing on the table. Frih was also on the table, crawling around and making it impossible for them to keep score. Crann sat slouched in Aine’s lap. Any domestic scene, almost. One baby awake, one sleeping, and two young women looking up at me with the calm confidence of those who still believe that power means protection.
	My distracted look seemed to stop the usual greeting. They looked back at me in perturbed silence while I put a hand to my head. I could hardly figure out where to start.
	“Aine,” I finally said, “you remember when we discovered about your aftersight?”
	There was a little twinge of horror in the answer. “Yes, dhiaoc.”
	“You mentioned the sun through the window,” I said. She nodded. “Window open or closed?”
	“Wide open, dhiaoc,” she said.
	They were both a little afraid of whatever was showing on my face.
	“You said something about seeing the knife on the floor?” I went on.
	She swallowed. “Yes--it--it had fallen out of his hand. The hand was...dangling over it.”
	“Now, think carefully...his bed, remember, was along that right-hand wall as you come in. Which way was he lying on it? Head toward the door, or toward the window?”
	She thought. “Away from the door, dhiaoc.”
	“And he was face up?”
	“Oh yes, dhiaoc.”
	“Mna,” I said, “I know Crann was too young to have done much, but when you watched him at play, did he ever seem to you to be favoring one hand over the other?”
	Mna smiled, as she often did when I betrayed my ignorance of maternal matters. “Oh, there’s no doubt about that, shriia, he was born to be left-handed.”
	“And...I know you might not exactly have marked the date as an anniversary, but could you tell me...exactly how long ago you saw Pel down in Naucht Point?”
	Her eyes looked into the invisible distant past as she reckoned it up.
	“Two years...seven months...and a week before this day.”
	There are these moments, in shri, when you actually feel the ground shifting as you stand poised on the edge of someone’s destiny. Because we tell the truth, but a lot of our truths are things that change lives forever. And you know that once you drop truth into the middle of the room it will explode and there will be no way to reassemble the broken ball of your client’s life. So your heartbeat is loud in your ears as you make the decision, knowing you’re gambling with someone’s life, someone who trusted you, someone this truth may either save or destroy. It was agony hanging there on the knife-edge of my doubt, wondering if it was my anger that was making this call and not my judgment.
	“All right,” I finally shouted, bringing a hand down on the table with a clap. “Pack up some candles, Aine, we’re going to Mablad.”
	“What the--” Mna began.
	“You too, Mna. Sorry about your fear of horses, but the speeder won’t stretch to cover Taric too.”
	“Taric’s here?”
	“In the stables. Head out there once you’ve got the twins wrapped up for the trip. I’m going to go give the vigils the last of my mother’s bounty. They’ve earned it.”
	Aine followed me down the hall to the laboratory. “What’s going on, dhiaoc?”
	“What isn’t going on,” I muttered, pushing open the door to the vigileacha. “They’re dead people.”
	“Who are?”
	“The replacement notborns. They’re dead people. People are paying Lythril to possess them right before death, take their departing souls and stick them into notborns so they can have new lives here.” I started distributing the food while Aine began piling candles onto a cloth, having taken the news in with less blanching than I’d have expected.
	“How do you know?”
	“I don’t have time for that. Do we need anything else? No, we don’t.”
	“But why are we going to Mablad at this hour? It’s not their day.”
	“You’ve got the best mind in Jipran, Aine. Use it.”
	I swept out of the lab. A moment later she was trailing after me, the bundle clutched in her arms.
	“Was Keanrih mac Minead right-handed?” she asked.
	“No,” I called back to her.
	I locked up. Taric had emerged from the stables, somewhat more composed. It was wasted effort, considering what was about to happen.
	“Help me with the horses,” I said. “We’re going to Mablad. You’re coming too.”
	“Why me?” he demanded.
	“Intimidation value,” I said.
	“What?”
	“Oh, never mind, I’ll get them.” I dashed into the stable and interrupted Cinhe’s conversation with Hiinh. When I led them outside, Mna, Taric and the twins were grouped together in a little knot of resistance.
	“Shriia, what is going on?” Mna demanded.
	“I will explain when we get there, just--”
	“You’ll explain it now,” Mna challenged. “I’m tired of this. It’s my child. You’ve known for days what’s been going on with those green things and you haven’t told me. I’m not ignorant. I’m not a moron. I deserve to know what’s happening to my boy!”
	“You will know, Mna, as soon as I’m sure I’m right!”
	Mna still looked formidable. “When will that be?”
	“If I’m lucky, very soon after we get to Mablad.”
	“Can’t you just tell me your theory?”
	I shook my head violently. “No. This is one of those geniuses that doesn’t go back into the water. I’m not bringing this idea into the open air until I know for sure it’s true.” Mna crossed her arms. “Trust me. Please. If I’m right, you’ll be the first to know. If I’m wrong, you’ll be better off not having known.”
	“I am so sick of this fnaa,” Mna muttered, following Taric toward the stallion.
	Taric helped her onto the stallion, then swung up behind her. I handed Crann to her. Aine and I loaded ourselves and Frih onto Cinhe and headed toward Mablad.
	
	The servant who answered was surprised on any number of counts. Surprised anyone was there at all after nightfall, surprised it was me, and surprised that I appeared to have brought my entire family.
	“Hello, Rince,” I said. “Is anyone still up who can see to the horses?”
	“Yes, shriia, but...the lady of the house has retired.”
	“That’s all right, Rince, because I’m here to talk to Nocc.”
	“He’s not at home,” Rince said, his tone changing dramatically.
	“Perhaps you don’t understand. This is not a social call.”
	“But really, shriia, Nocc is from home on business...”
	“I’m here as a shriia on business of the highest importance to the Council and to everyone on the green earth. Are you going to show us in, or are you going to stand there and tell me lies?”
	“Come this way,” he said, with a sigh.
	Rince ushered us into the library with a look of chagrin. Taric was not a pretty sight, and presentable as she was Mna was not up to Rince’s standards of polite company. The only thing snootier than a big house family is a big house steward.
	“This library connects to the study, doesn’t it?” I asked.
	“Yes...”
	“Behind the bookcase. Wonderful. Now, Rince, what I want you to do is to tell your master that a woman is here to see him. If he asks you what for, say her name is Mna and she wants to talk to him about her son.”
	“Her son?”
	“Show him into the study next door and don’t tell him the rest of us are in here.”
	“But shriia--”
	“Look, Rince,” I said, trying to keep my voice down although I was losing patience quickly. “If you want to be a minion of the Dark One that’s your choice, but if you would like a chance to help right prevail, then why don’t you go do as I say. And that way,” I added, beginning to think my appeal to his better nature was probably wasted, “you can avoid being brought to court as an accessory once this all gets to trial which I fervently hope it does.”
	He tottered slightly on his feet. “Y-yes, shriia.”
	“Don’t let Minead know what you’re doing, and remember, only tell him about Mna.”
	He nodded and left, mystified. I led Mna through the passageway behind the bookcase into the study.
	“Mna, if we’re going to get your boy back I need you to do something for me.”
	“All right, shriia.”
	I handed Frih to her. “I want you to pretend this is Crann,” I said. “You know the difference but I’m damn sure he doesn’t. And I want you to pretend he’s been recovered.”
	“What for?”
	“When he comes in,” I said, “tell him your boy’s been brought home, and that you know who he is. Then wait, like you’re expecting something. Whatever he says, play along. When we’ve heard enough, I’ll come in and then everything will either come out, or it won’t.”
	“I see,” Mna said, looking less sullen. “It’s a trick, and you can’t do it yourself.”
	“That’s right. Now it’s very important that you look like you know what’s going on, even though you don’t. Can you do that?” She nodded. “Good woman. Good luck.”
	I snuck back to the library, where I put out the lamp Rince had lit and tucked Aine, Taric and Crann into a corner out of sight of the doorway. I crouched near them, listening.
	<Is this necessary, dhiaoc?>
	<We could prove it some other way, I suppose, but if this works it will be much easier to explain to the Finders.>
	Rince was taking his time, if he was obeying my commands at all. Aine was still thinking.
	<Why did you ask about the window, dhiaoc?>
	<You said it was open.>
	<It was.>
	<Well, when I got there—and I was the first person Minead called after she found him—it was closed.>
	<You think…you think the window was open because she-->
	<Shhh.> She was on the right track. But at that moment I heard the door creak open and Nocc advance into the room with his slow, careful tread. 
When he spoke it was a surprise; I hadn’t heard his voice, except far off in the distance, since Keanrih died, and I’d forgotten he had one.
	“I was told you want to see me.”
	“I do,” Mna answered, loading it with more insinuation than I would have thought possible.
	“Do you mind telling me what a woman of your class is doing in my house at this hour?”
	“Not at all,” Mna replied. “When I was here last, Minead was very kind, very concerned about my child. I thought she would like to know what’s happened...but then on second thought, I decided that perhaps you’d like to hear the good news first.”
	<Boy, she’s good,> Aine remarked.
	<She should keep this in mind as a career possibility.>
	“And what is it,” Nocc resumed after a nervous cough, “that you wish me to convey to my wife?”
	“Whether you convey it or not is up to you,” Mna said airily, her feet brushing lightly over the carpet as she moved. “I’m here, at this hour, in secret, simply to let you know that my boy has, at long last, been brought home...” There was a pause, presumably to give Nocc time to start sweating. “...and that I know who he is.”
	I was starting to wonder whether Mna had figured out who he was. She was very convincing. 
	<Do you think he’ll bite?>
	<I hope so.>
	“How much do you want?” Nocc demanded, in an urgent whisper.
	“How much is it worth to you?” Mna returned.
	“I’ll give you two hundred pieces,” he said. 
	Mna laughed contemptuously. “And what do you expect that to buy you?”
	“It would cost you more than that to keep him,” Nocc urged. “I mean to really keep him, as opposed to dragging him about on the public roads.”
	Well, that was a piece of it. Not enough, but a hint for Mna to go on.
	“So that’s it,” she said, with a derisive laugh. “Because I’m poor, you think I’m cheap. I may not have your house and your clothes and your servants, but I know more than you do about the value of life.”
	“Three hundred, then.”
	She snorted. “Never mind.” Her feet moved toward the door to the hallway. “I was going to toy with you a few minutes longer, just to see how high you would go. But it’s too disgusting. He’s not for sale, Aiv.”
	“He’s not yours to sell,” Nocc cried, before she could reach the door.
	“He’s the child of my body,” Mna replied, agitation beginning to show through.
	“But of my spirit!” Nocc shouted.
	<Do we have enough?>
	<Almost. I want to see how deep he’ll dig this hole.>
	“Don’t you see, it’s better for both of you.” Nocc was wheedling now. Mna was silent. “You don’t want to raise a boy who’s used to all this. He won’t survive that kind of life. He’ll hate it and he’ll resent you for it. Let him stay where he was meant to be.”
	Mna was still silent. Nocc evidently interpreted this as obstinacy. “I know it’s a sacrifice for you. That’s why I’m willing to pay. I’m not as wealthy as I once was. Three hundred is a lot to me. But still, to have him safe home, and to compensate you for your trouble, I’d--I’d--be willing to go to four, even.”
	Now Mna’s voice replied, colder and harder with a disgust that told me she knew the story now. “I would think your own son would be worth more to you.”
	“He is, but consider your position,” Nocc replied. “I’m making you a fair offer. I could simply take what I want. I did before.”
	“He’s under the shriia’s protection now,” Mna answered.
	“That’s not much use, when you consider the odds. After all, I know his name.”
	<The hole’s deep enough,> I sent off, heading for the doorway.
	“No you don’t,” Mna said, anxiety lowering her voice. “Nobody knows that but me and his naming shriia.”
	“Oh, that name, certainly,” Nocc said airily. “But not the other.”
	“You mean the one Minead gave him,” I said.	
.	Nocc spun around. In the light of the study lamp he looked even older than I had remembered, with fallen cheeks, gray stubble and a robe wrapped hastily around his gaunt frame. He gaped at me for a moment, then closed his mouth on silence.
	“Thank you, Mna,” I said. “You were very convincing. Hard as it would be to believe that a mother would sell her child, although Nocc was certainly eager to buy it.”
	“I--to take it off her hands--give it a good home--”
	“Oh, please!” I shouted, sick to my stomach. “You ought to be ashamed to lie to a shriia. And to lie that badly!”
	“I only wanted--”
	“You only wanted your son back.”
	He looked at me, and then took the gamble.
	“It’s natural,” he said. “I’m his father, he should be with me. What’s wrong with that? Since what’s done is done.”
	“The gardai mhuintir have done some stupid things,” I said, “but I imagine even they wouldn’t return a child to the custody of the man who murdered him!”
	Nocc staggered against the study desk, putting a shaking hand down to steady himself. “That was not my fault! He died by his own hand!”
	“No, he died by his right hand,” I shot back. “Under an open window.”
	“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
	“You know exactly what I’m talking about. He’s not right-handed, but Lythril is. She’s the one who cut his throat--after overtaking him. Using the name you gave her!”
“I never—“ he began.
“Stop talking till you can do something other than lie!” I shouted.
They were all staring at me. Even Nocc, who couldn’t come up with a response.
“It was smart to close the window before I got there,” I said. “Because I would have known that never in a million years would Keanrih have ever opened that window. He was sure that was how the kraikk got to him the first time. She made him open it—right before she made him kill himself. To give her specter and his a swifter escape route. Did she tell you to close it afterwards, Nocc? Or did you think of that all by yourself?” 
	Nocc had been cringing away from me, but now he squared himself to face me. “You saw what happened to him! You know what his life was! Why should anyone prolong that?”
	“You thwarted old bastard,” I shouted, forgetting any concerns about professional dignity I might still have been honoring. “How could his life have been anything else after what you did?”
	“It wasn’t my fault that thing took him!”
	“Tarbhfnaa!” Behind me I could hear Aine and Taric slipping quietly into the room. “You knew he would never marry that woman and you had a damn good idea of why. You wanted me to fix him. I wouldn’t do it. But she would. She promised you she’d put him right. And all she needed was a fee and the boy’s name. Isn’t that right?”
	“You can’t prove--”
	“Can’t prove what? That she came out to meet you in the woods one dark night and told you that if you gave her his name she could make him the son you wanted?”
	His face crumpled, and so did he, falling in a heap into the nearest chair. 
	“You’re right, I can’t prove that. And I can’t prove, either, that you paid her to put that kraikk into him. But you know and I know it’s true.”
	“She said she would put him right! She didn’t say anything about any--spirit.”
	“How did you expect her to do it? What did you think she needed his name for?”
	“I didn’t know she would do it that way!”
	“No wonder he never recovered! How could anyone be so stupid?”
	“If he just hadn’t taken it so hard--”
	“Even if he were as callous as you appear to be, the mere fact that his name was known to a dark user was enough to keep him in aftershock. If I’d known--”
	“Aftershock,” Taric said, stepping forward into the light. “Tell me what that is.”
	Nocc stared at him, only now seeming to register his presence.
	“Nocc, meet Taric,” I said. 
	I saw the look of fear and hatred in his eyes. He knew who Taric was.
	Nocc looked back to bluster at me. “How dare you bring that creature into my--”
	“Aftershock,” I broke in, “happens sometimes after a cleansing. The spirit feels uneasy in the body--the connection doesn’t spring back right away, and the sense of being cut off and trapped persists. With most victims it takes a while to talk them back into their bodies. But usually it works, because they realize they’re safe, that the connection is still intact.” Aine nodded; Taric furrowed his brow. “I knew it was lasting longer than it should. I thought it was because of the rape. I didn’t know,” I spat out, rounding on Nocc, “that it was because the bitch in black had the keys to his spirit!”
	“Why should that matter?” Nocc persisted.
	“Your name is what brings you home,” I said, a note of pleading creeping into my voice. “Your name is what connects you, it’s what binds one spirit to one body to make one being. It’s what keeps the secret of who you are. If someone else knows that secret, someone who wishes you harm, you’re not safe--and you’re never going to feel safe.”
	“But he didn’t know,” Taric said.
	“He may or may not have known it, but he certainly felt it. That was enough.” I turned back on Nocc. “Enough to drive him into that room upstairs behind that locked door. But not enough to drive him to suicide.”
	“You murdered your own child,” Mna said, walking toward him with Frih by the hand. “You delivered him over to her, and then you murdered him.”
	“I gave him a new life,” Nocc insisted.
	“Credit where it’s due,” I said. “The point was to have Keanrih reborn. But, you know, you can’t make soup without stock, and you can’t have rebirth without death.”
	“I don’t understand, shriia,” Taric said. “How has he been reborn?”
	I sat down on the desk and started laughing.
	Aine and Mna looked at me in concern. They knew I didn’t think this was funny, and that my laughing was the result of either sleep deprivation or finally having gone around the bend.
	“You know what, Taric, that’s a really long story we don’t have time for right now.” Taric was looking a little angry. “All right, short version: Lythril is running a lucrative business in reincarnation. She’s figured out how to take the spirit of someone who should be dead and introduce it into the body of a notborn child. The baby is then born with the should-be-departed spirit in him. It’s like with possession, only not.”
	This, Taric appeared to understand. “He was right about you, then.”
	Nocc at length realized that Taric was speaking to him. “I beg your pardon?” 
	“He always said you’d rather see him dead,” Taric answered, the calm in his voice sounding more ominous to me than anything else could have. “I would tell him that couldn’t be true. But he was right.”
	“I didn’t want him dead!” Nocc insisted.
	“No, you wanted worse!” I shouted.
	The others looked at me, a little startled by my sudden return to histrionic mode.
	“You decided what he was going to be and you weren’t going to be deterred. And it didn’t matter what happened to him, or who else you hurt. Let’s just forget about the fact that I’ve been kicking myself for two and a half years thinking he committed suicide because I couldn’t do my thurking job when all along it was you who delivered him up to that bitch to be murdered!” He was trying to look as if to be accused of this was a shock to him, but he couldn’t figure out how to do it. “What about Mna’s baby, that’s gone to we have no idea where? What about Mna’s life, that this pregnancy broke into little pieces? What about Crann, sitting here rotting while his spirit rattles around the ether in the belly of that guun? What about Taric losing his husband--don’t you start with me!” I shouted as Nocc opened his mouth. “You decided you were going to break up a marriage, violate your child’s being, take a kraikk into your family, sell your boy’s safety and surety to a woman who by anyone’s estimate cannot be trusted, and take him from his body before he was ready to go--who gave you the right? Did you think for one fraction of a second that maybe Keanrih had rights to his own soul? Did you even stop to think about what this would do to Minead?”
	“Of course not,” said a voice from the corridor.
	Standing in the doorway, an extinguished candle still in her hand, was Minead. She was in her shift, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, her face drained with fatigue.
	“Minead,” I said, breaking the stunned silence. “How long have you been there?”
	“Long enough,” she answered.
	Nobody said a word. Not even Nocc, who watched her approach with dread.
	“Iaridh mo aonsacht!” she shouted, bringing her hand across his jaw with a stinging crack.
	Nocc fingered his jaw, water filming his weakened eyes. Minead turned to me.
	“The legal details we will settle later on, but I claim your services now.”
	“Minead,” Nocc said, his voice wavering, “please--can’t we--don’t do this now, in the heat of things.”
	“Hot or cold, I will not be joined to you for another minute,” she said. “Dissolve us. Please. I’m not a young woman any more. I can only stand so much.”
	“But Minead--”
	“Iaridh mo aonsacht,” she repeated, turning to me.
	I looked at Nocc, crushed in his chair with the print of her hand on his face. I knew that this had been the only thing to do, but it suddenly all seemed so ugly and futile.
	“Give it to her, shriia,” Mna said, her voice dry and hard.
	I rubbed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Stand up, Nocc mac Deira na Poll.”
	Nocc rose to his feet. Minead stretched out her hand, not looking at him. He refused to take it. Mna stepped around behind him and lifted his hand into Minead’s. There was no repsonse, but no resistance. He allowed it to rest limply in Minead’s grip, averting his face.
	I put my hands over theirs.
	“Where the spirit has joined, let the body follow,” I said. “Where the root has taken, let the vine grow and the flowers bloom.” Taric and Mna looked on in silence, away in their own memories. “Nothing and no one is lost forever. But when the root is dead the vine cannot live.” I took their joined hands in mine. “Minead ni Fhilla na Poll, do you believe that the root is dead?”
	“I do,” she answered.
	“Nocc mac Deira na Poll, you hear her answer. Is yours different?”
	Nocc looked back at her, blinking rapidly as the tears fell. Her head was still turned away from him. And I would never have believed that anything could have made me feel pity for him, but I did.
	“No,” he finally said.
	I moved their hands apart, holding them out before me. “In the world as Idair would have it, all plants bear fruit and love lasts forever,” I said. “But we live in this world, where no one can say why one vine flowers and another dies. You are no longer joined. Go your ways, and may Idair grant you peace.”
	I released their hands. Nocc turned toward her, broken. “Minead...I meant it for the best.”
	Minead finally looked at him, with withering disgust.
	“Get out of here,” she said. “Choose where you’ll lie and I’ll choose somewhere else. Tomorrow we will talk about who keeps what. Tonight, leave me alone.”
	Nocc stood up, looking ten years older than he had when he walked in.
	“I meant it for the best,” he repeated, feebly.
	Nobody answered.
	After one despondent glance, Nocc dragged himself out the door.
	So there we were. Mna, Minead, Aine, Taric and me. An unlikely assortment, brought together by one woman’s evil, one man’s folly and one child’s peril. Or was it two children.
	“You have some good reason, I’m sure,” Minead said bitterly, “for forcing this knowledge on me?”
	“Crann’s time is running out,” I said. “Mna and I haven’t been able to recover him. But if he really is--was--Keanrih...” I glanced back at Taric. “Mna’s cry has been almost enough, but not quite. I figure with two mothers and a lover looking for him...maybe the pull will finally be strong enough to break him free.”
	Minead and Mna looked at each other. 
	“I can’t even start to suggest how we should think of this,” I said. “All I know is that if we can’t get him home, Mna will lose her son and Frih will lose his brother.”
	It was Aine who finally broke the silence.
	“I never knew Keanrih,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry for it; he must have been something, to have awakened such love in so many good people.” She walked forward into the light, carrying Crann in her arms. “I do know Crann. I can’t say what Keanrih is now or what he wants. But Crann’s real. He’s not a spirit or a notborn and he’s not Keanrih, not any more. He’s alive. He has a right to continue that way.”
	Taric spoke next, his eyes on the child.
	“Whatever happens, Keanrih is lost to us,” he said. He turned to Minead. “The cord is broken. He can never be who we knew. But he can--he has--become someone else.” His Iandar’s-apple bobbed as he turned to Mna. “My husband that was is dead. But I will help you find your son.”
	“Thank you,” Mna said. 
	“Can we count on you, Minead?” I asked. “For the child?”
	Minead nodded.
	I let out a tense breath. “Then let’s get started.”
	“Where should we set up, dhiaoc?”
	“You’re not going to like this, Aine,” I said, “but the logical place is that room in the turret. The place will have a pull on him too.”
	“Then let’s go,” Minead sighed. “After this, nothing can hurt me.”
	“Never say never,” Mna answered.
	We began the climb up the stairs.

XXII.
Contact

	Aine wasn’t the only one who found the venue disturbing. The room was dark, with faint moonlight outlining the furniture just enough to make it ominous. None of us spoke after we entered. Instead, we drifted around, avoiding each other’s eyes—Taric to the window, Minead to the bed, Mna to the doorway, Aine to the opposite wall. Frih sat down in a corner, unperturbed. I was disappointed to see that; it suggested that the link wasn’t open. Otherwise he’d be reacting to the room as he had that first time.
	I pulled a chair into the middle of the room and sat on it, elbows on my knees and head bowed.
	“All right,” I said, lifting my head wearily. “I know this is the strangest, hardest thing that’s ever happened to any of you. But we have to all pull him together. So please, if you find it too strange to be doing this for the man you knew, then do it for the child you don’t. And the child no one ever really will know, if he isn’t brought back.”
	Taric turned away from the window. Minead still sat on the bed, looking down at the floorboards.
	“I’ll need to establish links with the two of you,” I said. “Aine, will you set up the candles while I do that?”
	“Yes, dhiaoc.” She laid the bundle on the floor and began unwrapping it.
	“Any volunteers?” I asked, with a short laugh.
	Taric nodded. “I’m ready, shriia.” He knelt in front of me, the ends of his hair dusted with the light from the window. He lifted his face, resigned but not relaxed.
	“You don’t have to kneel,” I said. “And actually, I’d prefer you didn’t.”
	He slid into a sitting position. I leaned over and fixed on his eyes.
	“It helps if you trust me,” I said.
	“I’m trying,” he answered.
	Mna had been difficult, but Taric was next to impossible. He and Keanrih must have been some kind of close because this mindspace was protected by fire that would have singed most people pretty badly. And of course there was that reference in the letter, which explained some of the past week. His reluctance to spend time with me or in my house, his extreme taciturnity, his consistency in directing his generosity toward Mna and the twins rather than me. Anger, maybe; fear, perhaps; shame, I suppose. Either way, it made linking difficult. I had to change the song.

	if there are no memories
	but the memories of pain
	pressing on your wounded mind
	take a breath and give me these

	neither lover, friend nor kin
	still I dare to make the claim
	you would never think to think
	I might stand where you have been
	
	here where your silences are
	mine are just as tight and fierce
	listen if you don’t believe
	press the wound, unseam the scar

	happy, laughing, bright-eyed, fair,
	lost to you, and lost to me,
	find the pain that answers yours--
	where you find it, meet me there.
	
I brought up that memory of Istria on the horse--turning away from me, looking toward the north and the mountains we’d come from all those months ago. And the despair flooding through me at the sight of her leaving, knowing I couldn’t say the words that would make her stay, knowing she wouldn’t let me.
	<Taric, can you hear me?>
	He was surprised to be able to answer. <Yes, shriia.>
	<All right, now for Minead.>
	I knew Minead better, but she was in such turmoil that just isolating the signal I needed was difficult. The sense of guilt clouding her mind puzzled me until I remembered that Nocc could only have learned Keanrih’s real name from Minead. It’s quite usual for mothers to share the child’s name with the father, but their relationship had been so stormy I had assumed she’d kept it to herself. But then Nocc’s tears at the dissolution started me thinking that I might have understood much less about their relationship than I thought. Conflicted, definitely; studded with long silences and abrupt conflagrations, I knew; and poisoned by that bitter divide over Keanrih. But there it was tonight, evidence that this had been something more than a money marriage. Had been, though. 
	I brought Mna and Aine in. Linking to four people simultaneously is an experience. You hear everything they say to each other and with a pair like Mna and Aine who are used to chatting it can get pretty noisy. I paused to rally the troops.
	<All right. I’m going into the ether and I will be carrying your voices with me. So I want all three of you to call for him. Names will confuse him, so use a nickname or a term of endearment or anything you’re used to calling him. The important thing is to cry from the heart. Take what time you need to get to the place where you miss him and when you’re ready, raise the cry.>
	Mna was used to it so hers went up first--the same cry I’d heard that day that seemed like a hundred years ago, more despondent but no less intense. Minead’s came a few moments later. Less raw, but the same anger, the same refusal to be consoled. 
	I expected that Taric would take longer, and I was right. It went against everything in his nature to parade his pain in front of four women he knew only slightly. But it broke forth eventually--ragged, hoarse, as if he had been crying it for years. I wove them into one pulsing cord and sailed with it off into the ether.
	It certainly was a lot more powerful--the ether sent back sympathetic vibrations almost as soon as I entered it. I had no idea where to start. I would bet he wasn’t with the kraikk, but that left 97 other options.
	Unless...
	Lythril was looking for him, and depending on how close she could come he might have realized that. And if she were looking for him, she’d reason the same way I did, knowing his history. And if Crann was as smart as he seemed to be getting, maybe he was trying to hide from her. Now that he had no body, the kraikk wouldn’t bother him, and Lythril would never think to look there.
	It was worth a shot. I’d have preferred not to, since I hate the bastards, but now it had occurred to me it would be shirking not to take a look.
	The kraikk live in a mutable, fogged plane where the ether breaks up into cloudy puffs that drift between the inhabitants. Unlike most other spirits, kraikk in their home environment don’t move at all. They sit, lumpen and sullen, vaguely pyramidical mounds of dull orange light, glowing balefully through the mist like fading coals.
	It’s deceptive, their stasis and their apparent solidity. You’d never know they were sentient; they look like rocks dotting a hill, or peaks poking out of one of the Naucht swamps. But in them, the energy that sends rappari scooting along their racecourse and spins lurers in their angry orbits is all turned inward, roiling within those squat glowing forms. Once one of them gets inside a body that moves, all those fantasies of action, impact, violence, motion, suddenly become possibilities. And none of them care that acting them out hurts--that the sensations they crave are milked from our suffering flesh. 
	Navigating is difficult--in the unstable parts you can’t move fast because the space itself becomes impassable. All you can do is drift with the ether until it becomes space again instead of this strange broken stream. I picked my way through it, hoping this would mean that the green thing was at a disadvantage. Maybe its defenses wouldn’t work as well here.
	The cry was definitely making itself felt. If he was there, he would hear it.
	It was a few moments, but I saw it at the edge of my vision field--a round green blip, so small it almost disappeared. I headed toward it in as straight a line as I could draw.
	<I see green. Raise the volume.>
	As the cry became stronger, the green spot jerked toward me in short, interrupted movements. He was pushing it, but it was a struggle. And no wonder. He had already spent a long time fighting.
	I didn’t want to raise hopes; we’d been so close so often. So I didn’t say anything as the green blot got larger, as I began to see through the glow that dark human form.
	The figure, when I got close enough to distinguish its features, was already thrashing, trying to fight through the envelope. I had decided that the biggest problem was that the attempt to capture inevitably attracted attention, from the green thing as well as from the surrounding spirits. If I could get him out into the ether before the thing noticed, it might help matters. So maybe the way to go was not with the fire, but with the mind.
	Bending all my concentration on the thing in front of me, I opened up a narrow hole in it--just wide enough to carry a thought. Enough to let me reach the boy inside--whoever, whatever he was now--and link with him.
	<Child.>
	<Mathi?>
	<Your mathi is with me. Can you hear her?>
	There was a troubled pause. <I can hear...them.>
	<Who else can you hear?>
	<I hear...him.>
	<My name is Theamh. I’ve come to take you home.>
	<Want to go home.>
	<Yes, that’s right. I’m going to show you how. Will you do as I ask you?>
	<Will it get me home?>
	<I hope so.>
	<Then yes.>
	<Look at the green right ahead of you. Are you looking?>
	<Yes.>
	<Imagine a hole opening up, right where you’re looking.>
	By himself, the child could have done this for hours and not made progress. But with me linked to him, he could draw on my mindstrength. And as he concentrated, I felt the narrow passage open up, and the link run freer through it, until it was wide enough for him to really feel the presence of the others.	
	<Mathi!>
	<Crann!> came Mna’s answer--right along with Minead’s cry of recognition. 
	<Keanrih!>
	Sensing the child’s confusion, I sent out a short, peremptory message. <PULL TOGETHER. Don’t use names.>
	<Child,> Mna answered.
	<Son,> Minead followed.
	<Mo fhearr chara.>
	That was Keanrih. The spirit leapt suddenly into a state of intense agitation--a painful, frantic longing unlike his response to the others. <Think of that hole, child. Keep making it bigger.>
	Puffs of broken ether drifted behind me. If this didn’t work soon I would be carried away on one of them, and then either the link would break or the green thing would notice me. The hole opened, slowly, while the mourners cried with renewed vigor.
	<You see the hole, child.>
	<Yes.>
	<Come through it, slowly. We’re on the other side.>
	It took a while. But through the tiniest of pinholes a thin stream of something both brighter and darker than the spirit’s greenness began to flow. His spirit, snaking itself out through that hole, losing its shape for the escape.
	<That’s it. Toward me.>
	<Theamh?>
	<That’s right. Come to us.>
	<Theamh, what’s happening? Where are you?>
	It was a shock, even though I should have predicted it. To get through the hole he had to alter his shape and with the strange logic of the spirit world, that meant a weakening of the connection to his body. Which meant that he was getting closer, now, to his existence before that body. Which meant, suddenly, that he was remembering me.
	<I’m outside the sphere.>
	<Taric?>
	<Anseo, chara.>
	<Taric--I’m--I’ve been--trying...I...>
	The confusion was overtaking him. They could sense that too. <It’s all right, chara. We’re taking you home.>
	<Home to where?>
	<Just--just come through, we’ll talk about that later.>
	The spirit started reforming on the other side, solidifying into that child’s shape as the rest of it crept slowly through the hole. <I...Theamh?>
	<Yes?>
	<Who are you?>
	<I’m your friend.>
	<Who is he?>
	<Someone who loves you.>
	<Why...why are there two?>
	<Two of what?>
	<Two mathis.>
	<Because you’re special.>
	I couldn’t believe it. It was working. He was dragging the last of his spirit out and returning to his shape--head, limbs, body, floating in the ether like an oversized notborn in the world’s largest womb. And incredibly, the green thing was none the wiser. Lythril must not have wasted an ounce more intelligence on them than she thought necessary.
	<Call him over, we’re almost there.>
	The cry broke out again, stronger than ever. And the child started moving toward us, slowly and with a lot of halting but with unmistakeable will. I started toward him, fighting the urge to just send out the beam and grab him. Once the fire went out of me the thing would know, and it would break the beam before I could get to him. I had to wait.
	<Tar?>
	I felt Taric’s mind churning. <Chara.>
	<Tar...>
	He had no idea how to finish that thought. I couldn’t blame him. Shaped again like this, he was now Crann...and Keanrih was Crann, but Crann wasn’t Keanrih.
	<Come on...come on...>
	There he was, in front of me, across a space that now had a faint reddish tinge.
	<Oh NO.>
	<What is it, dhiaoc?>
	<Fnaa.> I wouldn’t make it. I’d have to throw the fire. <Aine, take them down, I’m shutting the link.>
	All three of them shouted in protest. <Dhiaoc, I don’t think they-->
	<Aine just-->
	<But-->
	<All right, never mind!> The red was becoming intenser and more localized. <Here goes, and Idair save us all.>
	I threw the fire, sending it through what was now a red cloud between me and the spirit child. It shot through to reach him, enveloping him in yellow.
	<You’ve got him!> Aine felt it take.
	<We’re not home yet.>
	I took the beam in as fast as I could, hoping he would reach me before that red fog became something much more definite and much more sinister. Or before the green thing--
	Too late. The ether shook as I hung onto the beam, dragging the child through space that was now breaking up and bursting out in a whole patchwork of puffs and clouds and streams. Instead of being at a disadvantage, the green thing was in its element--the already-mutable nature of the region meant that every convulsion broke up the fabric of the plane so that navigating became slow and dangerous. Which meant that before I could bring him all the way in, that red fog contracted itself and turned into Lythril.
	A bright red beam flew out of her across mine, meshing with it at right angles with an angry sizzle. My hold on him weakened. I fired another at him to tighten my grip. Before it could reach him, the ether gave another nauseous heave and the beam itself broke up, dissolving along with the space it was crossing into a shower of isolated sparks. He was floating loose.
	<Keep it up, folks, get him back here.> I began picking my way around the disruptions. The cry was now much more intense, and harder to ignore. Space was breaking up faster than I could go through it, and Lythril was snapping at my heels.
	From far away I saw the green thing approaching. It occurred to me, finally, that it was no longer attached to the entity I was trying to save, and that as a guun, it was exempt from any of the prohibitions I was under.
	I shot out a bolt calculated to hit hard and do big damage. And it did. The green globe suddenly collapsed like an empty orange peel, curling up around the burnt part and spinning in lopsided circles, leaking a train of green spark.
	The convulsions stopped. The ether was still erupting, but at least where it wasn’t breaking up it now stayed put. I sent out another beam for the child. 
	Lythril fired one at the same time; it intercepted mine and it never reached him. I drew it back hastily. Firing and counterfiring could go on forever without my getting any closer to him. I left off trapping him and just started chasing.
	The same strategy must have occurred to Lythril. She began converging on his spot at the same time, coming close enough finally to send out some thought I could hear.
	You went through all that just to become a babysitter.
	Replying would waste energy I didn’t have. I put on more speed, but she was obviously used to this plane; she seemed to be negotiating it faster than I could. I would have to slow her down somehow.
	<Aine, take them down.>
	<But we’re so close.>
	<It’s too dangerous. Take them down.>
	<We’ll be all right,> from Mna.
	<I’m about to get into open battle with Lythril. I want you all out of here. You too, Aine.>
	<Dhiaoc-->
	<Aine, would you just do what I tell you!>
	I’d broadcast it loud enough for Lythril to hear. Yes, follow orders, Aine. You’re good at that.
	<Ignore her. Please, Aine, for the good of the clients.>
	<All right, dhiaoc.>
	I shut the link. And as soon as they were gone, I opened fire.
	It did slow her down; she had to turn and retaliate. But it also slowed me down. And it hurt both of us. But the battle was even. I gave as much as I got.
	You led me right to him.
	Oh, like you haven’t been looking.
	I expected better from you, Theamh. It’s disappointing.
	You know what? I don’t give a rat’s fnaa.
	And no sense of style or dignity, either.
	Thurcte bi thu, Lythril.
	Neither of us was making headway and we knew it. Lythril started putting more thought into her repartee.
	It’s so nice to have this time to chat. We never got the chance at the trial.
	Yeah, well, we were both busy.
	You were quite the actress.
	Couldn’t hold a candle to your performance.
	Oh, don’t sell yourself short. I could hear them all weeping. Especially during the part about Istria. I almost wept myself.
	I didn’t answer. I was getting tired of this but I knew she must be too. If I held out longer, even just for half a moment, it might be all the difference I needed.
	Aren’t you even going to ask me?
	You mean when you’re going to surrender?
	Don’t you want to know? What happened to Istria?
	Leave me alone, you bitch.
	Don’t you want to know?
	It was a tactic, that was all--to distract me from the battle. And from the fact that, while we were fighting, the child had managed to crawl to the edge of the plane and was disappearing through it.
	I shot out after it, but Lythril overtook me, scooping him up as she shot through the edge.
	I gave chase. I got through the edge into the wronds’ plane and zipped through it with relative ease, gaining steadily. She ducked out of that into the sowlths, but passed out of it quickly into the rappari’s ribbon. 
	I was off after her, passing rappari right and left as I followed her trail. The distance between us had stabilized now; she wasn’t far from me, but I couldn’t seem to close the gap. I wished now that they were still with me to call him, but it was too late. I raised the cry myself.
	He seemed to hear it; the dark form that was him began struggling backward against her, but he couldn’t break loose. If I could get there and help--
	<You again.>
	It was the yellow rapparan I’d met all that time ago, the one with the sick friend. <Yes, me again.>
	The rapparan pulled up alongside, waving his tail in the ether stream. <Chasing her?>
	<That’s what I’m doing.>
	<Want a ride?>
	<How fast are you?>
	<Faster than you.Grab hold.>
	I held onto its tail and it shot forward. Lythril saw me gaining on her and grabbed one of her own, which did move her faster but which also loosened her hold on the child.
	The first beam I fired missed when her rapparan swerved out of its path. I thought it better to wait until I got closer for a second try.
	You’re going to a lot of trouble over him.
	It’s my job, I answered.
	You must think a lot of him.
	She wanted to know how much I knew. Well, maybe it would  be good to tell her.
	His mothers certainly do.
	It was a gamble, but it paid off. I could feel the anxiety radiating from her. It’s harder to hide things in the ether. Her mount shot spastically forward, burning its energy in a last effort to outrun me. But it wouldn’t work. I was close enough now to throw.
	I knew even before I saw it that the beam had taken hold. By the time I realized that my fire was wrapping him, I had already started drawing him back. Lythril tugged against the pull, letting go of her mount to get a better grip on him.
	I turned my attention to the rapparan. <You have any friends in the vicinity?>
	<Of course.>
	<If they could distract her, I sure would appreciate it.>
	I don’t know how he sent the word out, but within seconds the plane was suddenly swarming with rappari of all colors and all descriptions, shooting around me at breakneck speed. Around me, but into her. She rocked in the ether as burst after burst of speeding light slammed into her and then careened past along the plane. She ignored the bombardment for as long as she could, until one particularly voluminous train of mauve barreled into her. She spun off to one side, flailing in an attempt to hold her position. Her grip weakened. And with a final tug, I broke the child free.
	<I will work out a way to reward you,> I sent to the rapparan as he sped forward.
	<You have killed that thing, that was among the kraikk.>
	News travels fast in the ether, evidently. <Yes.>
	<Kill the others. That will reward me. And all of us.>
	<I’ll do my best.>
	Lythril had sorted things out and was coming after me. I let go of the rapparan and sailed out of the plane, dragging the child with me.
	I wasn’t sure exactly where I was and I didn’t care. Instead of taking my bearings, I hauled up on the beam, finally bringing the child’s spirit within reach of my specter. With a final jerk I brought him in close, grappling him to me as tight as I could.
	<Theamh?>
	<You’re safe now, child. For the moment, anyhow.>
	<Theamh, what’s happening? Where am I?>
	He was starting to revert back to his old self again. But I didn’t have time to savor the strangeness, because Lythril had appeared among the bright yellow balls of spiky light spinning at the edge of the plane. And I now realized where we were.
	<Fnaa.>
	I knew the way out, but it was difficult to navigate without hitting the lurers. Lythril at least was slowed down too, and knew enough not to try a firefight here; she was in as much danger from these unpleasant creatures as I was and had no interest in attracting their attention.
	<Theamh...am I dead?>
	<Not exactly.>
	<Then what’s happening? Where are we?>
	<In the ether, amongst the medhbhurgh.>
	<Fnaa!>
	<Exactly.>
	Lythril was catching up. I shot in a hairpin turn around the nearest lurer and made an attempt at evasive maneuvers.
	<Hey.>
	It came from a lurer bobbing in the path ahead of me. And it sounded familiar.
	<Do I know you?>
	<You were here just a minute ago. Chasing that thing that tried to strangle us.>
	Time is indeed funny in the ether. <Ah yes. Well, he’s taken care of at least.>
	<Where is he?>
	<His burnt remnants are scattering amongst the kraikk as we speak.>
	It glowed brighter with pleasure. <Who is this other stranger?>
	<The one who commanded him.>
	There was an ominous pause. <Really.>
	The lurer spun suddenly toward her. I shot forward without pausing to look back.
	Reaching the doorway into the sowlths’ plane, I was able to turn for a moment to see what had happened. I caught sight of Lythril fighting her way through a crowd of spiky yellow spheres, her specter fraying at the edges as they tore through it.
	I made the most of the time my unlikely friends had bought me. I zipped from plane to plane, not sure how far behind me she was and trying not to care.
	<Theamh?>
	<What is it, friend?>
	<This red thing chasing us...I’ve seen it before.>
	<Her, my friend. That’s Lythril’s specter.>
	Hatred radiated from his spirit into mine. <No wonder.>
	<No wonder what?>
	<No wonder you always called her ‘that bitch.’>
	<Why, what did she do to you?>
	<Finished the job that orange thing started.>
	Confirmation. Something to remember at the hearing. Crann, if indeed I could get Crann back into his body, wouldn’t have any conscious memory of any of this. Probably.
	<Theamh.>
	I was one plane away from home. And, unfortunately, within Lythril’s range.
	<I am dead. She cut my throat. I remember.>
	<It’s not that simple.>
	<Why won’t you use my name?>
	<Well, what name do you use?>
	That stymied him. Which was fortunate, because it meant he stopped talking in time for me to turn and devote my full attention to Lythril.
	The first blast from her hit, but not full on; I spun out of place but it didn’t take as much out of me as she’d meant to. I fired back. And it hit.
	Even recoiling away from me, hunched over her wound, she wouldn’t give up.
	Imprudent of you to leave your body unattended all this time.
	Go ahead, I sent back. The vigils are expecting you.
	Before I could fire, she had ducked out of the plane and disappeared. I knew where she was heading.
	My return to my body was swift, but disorienting. There seemed to be nothing before my eyes but a hurricane of flying colors, ripping past me and completely obscuring my field of vision. I thought I could also hear screaming, but not mine. When I had taken a few seconds to get my bearings, I realized it was Mna. And Minead. And, come to think of it, Taric. But not Aine. She was learning fast.
	I stood up from the chair, still unable to see anything through this multicolored fog. Then I realized. It was the vigils, protecting me. She was outside trying to burn her way in. Which would explain the screaming.
	I crossed my arms, touching the marks. <All right, friends. You know what to do.>
	Tired as I was it took a while. But finally I felt the power in my shoulders, ready to burst. I sent the signal to the vigils. They withdrew, and for a split second I had a vision of Mna, Taric, and Minead huddled in a corner, on the other side of a seething red fog.
	“Close your eyes!” Aine shouted.
	The light burst out of me. I heard another scream, this time not something made by a human throat. A scream of anger and frustration--and of pain.
	I grabbed the amulet with one hand and started shooting light out at her with the other. The fog contracted, pulling itself into a tight, dense mass, somersaulting out of the range of my flame. 
	“Somebody open a window!” I shouted, holding out the amulet.
	Aine leapt from where she had been crouched by the twins and opened the casement. The same window that kraikk had come through to seize him. The same window Lythril had come through to overtake him and kill him.
	Don’t you want to know what happened to her?
	“Go back to the body Idair gave you!”
	The red light roiled, black bubbling up from its center. She wasn’t giving up.
	I think it would surprise you.
	“You’re leaving,” I said, firing another bolt at her. “The way you came in.”
	I’ll tell you, if you let me have him.
	I had her over by the window. It was uncharacteristic of her to make me that offer--she knew there was no chance of my accepting. But she couldn’t stand to admit defeat.
	“Get out, you bitch.”
	You think you’re winning. She was bracing herself in the window now, trying to fight the force pushing her through it. Because I let you have this one. 
	I raised the amulet and started reciting faster.
	Battles mean nothing. The war is mine.
	I finished the spell. She flew backwards through the window as if kicked by a boot.
	I slammed the window shut and bolted it. Outside, a trail of red light spun through the air, dissipating slowly into the darkness.
	The cold glass of the window met my hands as I collapsed against it, panting.
	“Dhiaoc?”
	It was a minute before I could do anything at all. Then, slowly, I pushed myself away from the wall and turned to face them. 
	The chair I had been sitting on lay on its back on the floor. Aine stood behind it, one hand rubbing the other nervously. Mna had gone to the corner where the twins huddled, Frih in terror and Crann in his catatonia. She and Taric were both white as death. Minead sat near them, looking older and more frail than she ever had before.
	The others didn’t know what to make of my expression. But Aine did.
	“You’ve got him,” she said.
	“I’ve got him.”
	Aine’s hands flew into the air, clapping in front of her as she gave a little hop of excitement. “You’ve got him!”
	I started laughing. Aine was now actually jumping up and down. “You’ve got him, you’ve got him!”
	“Yes!” I punched the air. “I beat her, Aine! I took him right out of her arms. YEEEEEE HAAAAAAA!!!”
	Mna was now on her feet too, a little startled by my howl of triumph but starting to be infected by the excitement. “You mean...”
	“Yes!” I said, taking her by the shoulders. “He’s out of the ether and in my head. All we have to do is put him back into his body.”
	Now that I was back home, I couldn’t hear the child’s spirit; the capture space was sealed off from the rest of my mind. I wondered what he was making of all this. Taric was watching Mna, with a kind of saddened satisfaction. Minead sat where she was, impassive.
	Mna’s hands flew to mine as if she were trying to anchor me to her. “And can...you can put him back?”
	“If I can’t, may I be disrobed for incompetence,” I said. “Bring the boy over, Aine. He’s going home.”
	Aine sprang into action. Her enthusiasm seemed to light fires in the others; Taric suddenly emerged from the corner to watch, and even Minead hauled herself to her feet and into the middle of the room as I plunked myself down on the floor across from Crann. His dead-fish eyes still looked out at nothing from under that dark fringe of hair, which seemed to have grown even in the week I’d known him. I put a hand on his head.
	First the check to see that he was still clean. He was. Empty as he’d been that first day, that dull animal throb echoing in the hollow mindspace. Aine’s link was there, but otherwise it was exactly as I’d left it last. The vigils had seen to that.
	The connection was easy to establish. What was hard was ignoring the stares of Taric, Mna and Minead as they bent all the weight of their anxiety on my head and on the boy’s. In the cleared circle marked by their standing, waiting forms, the boy and I stared at each other. Things were about to change, whatever else happened.
	I opened up a doorway from the capture space. I felt him move through it and find the connection. Shock waves came back to me from the impact of recognition--the shock of discovering his body, the shock of familarity. But also the shock of disorientation.
	<Theamh...>
	<Here you are, friend. Home.>
	<I live there?>
	<Yes.>
	<Did...> Half of him wanted to press forward, half was hanging back. <I didn’t always live there?>
	<No, you didn’t.>
	<Theamh?>
	<Yes, friend?>
	<Will I forget him?>
	I glanced over at Taric. An intense stab of loss and regret reached my mind.
	<Do you think so?>
	<I don’t see...how I could. But...>
	His body was already pulling on him. It was more conflict than I’d ever felt in a human mind--the painful longing to be home, the equally painful longing for what he knew he was about to lose.
	<And mathi? Will I forget her?>
	Minead’s face looked as impassive as before. But there were tears dropping quietly off her lashes and onto her cheeks.
	<I don’t know. I’ve never seen someone through this before.>
	<But tell me...tell me what you think, Theamh.>
	<I think...> I looked around at the ring of drawn, anxious faces. <I think the memory, the love, will always be with you. Somehow. But in a different shape. I don’t know if it’s true, but that’s what I think.>
	<And you’ll always be my friend?>
	<That much you can count on.>
	The connection vibrated as he took closer hold on it. He was ready.
	<Safe home, friend.>
	Scared, but still drawn by that irresistible pull of flesh on spirit, he inched along the connection. And I couldn’t see it myself yet, but I knew the others were watching his light envelop my head, then travel slowly down to one shoulder. I started singing him home.
	
	come away from air and darkness
	come away from void and night
	from that life you aren’t yet meant for
	formless, vagrant, floating light

	come take up the flesh you left here
	come to hear and touch and see
	trade their knowledge for our wonder
	power for the chance to be

	once again among us mortals
	bound in matter, charged with freight,
	pushed up hard against our limits,
	struggling with this mortal weight,

	one of Idair’s human children,
	hand and head and burning heart--
	come and finish your own story,
	come and make your second start.

The light had traveled down my arm now. It was a good color--lavender shot with dark blue, the kind of deep, collected, compassionate hue I would have expected Keanrih to have. Except that he wasn’t Keanrih any more. Or if he was, he shortly wouldn’t be.
	Blue and lavender poured slowly from my hand onto Crann’s head. Streams of light played through his hair, across his face, under his chin, and into his eyes. I could feel the others holding their breath as it pulsed quietly once, twice, three times. I knew it was in time with the rhythm of his heart; I don’t know what the others thought. And then it sank into him, flickering out as the light disappeared behind the opacity of flesh and bone.
	His eyes closed, on their own. But that could just have been a blink. 
	Then opened.
	He was staring at me, but not with the same glazed eyes. He saw me. And I wasn’t what he wanted to be looking at. The dark head drew back on its neck, his eyebrows furrowing.
	A cry shuddered from Mna’s throat. Crann’s head flew around to face her, bringing his shoulders with it as he put his hands on the floor and got unsteadily to his feet. 
	“Mathi!”
	He toddled toward her, but his legs, still unused to taking direction from him, buckled under him and he plumped to the floor. Mna was lifting him into her arms before he could remember to cry.
	“Shhh, shhh, it’s all right. It’s all right, chara. Mathi’s here. It’s all right.”
	He wrapped his arms around her, hiding his face in her hair.
	“Mathi,” he said, and started bawling.
	As the high-pitched screams of a frightened toddler rent the air, I got up from my seat on the floor and righted the chair, into which I then dropped. I was so tired I almost didn’t notice Crann’s crying. Almost.
	“I’m here, chara. I’m here. I won’t go away any more.”
	“Don’t like being lost,” he cried, twisting his fists into her hair.
	“You’ll never be lost any more,” she said, kissing his head as she stroked the back of his shoulders with one shaking hand. “You’re home with mathi. It’s all over.”
	Frih, who had snapped to attention the minute Crann’s voice rang out, had now reached Mna and was tugging at her skirt. She sat down and pulled him into the embrace, crying onto his head as well as Crann’s as she rocked back and forth.
	“My boys,” she said, an arm wrapped around each of them. “Here together.”
	They sat that way for a long time, all three of them crying. Aine watched from outside, her hands floating in the air as if she would like to do something but didn’t know what. Her whole face was suffused with excitement and something else I hadn’t seen much of in her time with me. Happiness. Uncomplicated, undiluted by her anxiety or her self-doubt. The simple joy that comes with witnessing, for once, a happy ending.
	Minead sat on the bed, looking on but from further away. And something in her seemed to be melting. The tears were coming faster, and her face was changing with them, showing finally the grief she felt.
	<I’m sorry. I know how this must hurt you.>
	<It reminds me,> she answered. <Now he’s back...he looks so much like him. And still looks different.>
	I looked to see how Taric was taking it. He wasn’t. In fact, he was nowhere to be seen.
	With Aine’s eyes on me, I got out of the chair and poked my head out the door. I could hear his boots clomping down the steps.
	<Dhiaoc?>
	<Keep an eye on things here.>
	The footsteps got farther and farther away, although I could still follow the sound. Through dark corridors and back toward the study.
	As I approached it I could hear shouting, his voice and Nocc’s. And then the sound of a body hitting a wall very hard.
	“Taric!”
	I ran down and pushed the door back with a clang. Nocc was crumpled against one of the walls, flinching away from Taric, who pulled a length of rope from--it looked like--thin air above him, and flung it at him with all the force of his robust frame.
	“Live!” he shouted, as the rope hit Nocc’s shrinking body like a striking serpent. “Live, you bastard, and take your full measure!”
	Nocc shuddered even after the rope fell harmless and dead on the floor. Even after Taric stood back upright, hands hanging by his side, breath rasping. I looked at the ceiling.
	It would, in any case, have been an unsuccessful hanging. The hook from which the lantern usually hung had never been designed for that kind of weight. He had probably been intending to attach the rope to the leg of the desk, which was pushed under the hook, throw it over the hook and around his neck and then jump off the desk. But even if Taric hadn’t interrupted him, it wouldn’t have done much aside from make a mess of the study.
	“There was no reason,” Taric went on, unwilling to speak but unable to stay silent. “NO REASON!”
	I went over to the desk and began rummaging on it.
	“What are you doing?” Nocc demanded, querulously.
	“Looking for a suicide note,” I said. “But I suppose it would be out of character.”
	“The reasons you know,” he quavered. “You’ve robbed me of my child, my wife-”
	“Shriia, don’t let him keep talking!” Taric shouted.
	It did indeed look as if, should Nocc say another word, he would suffer a far more violent death than he had intended.
	“Come away out of here,” I said. “He’s poisoned enough of your life.” I bent down to pick up the rope. “You’ve got enough to answer for, Nocc. Don’t compound it. And there’s a moratorium on returns until we find Lythril, so if you go...you’re gone. No matter what kind of a deal you’ve struck with her.”
	I stepped out into the hallway. Taric stood where he was, glaring at Nocc.
	“Come away,” I said. “There’s no point.”
	He reluctantly turned and followed me out.
	“You knew where to go,” I remarked, as we trudged back to the tower.
	“I...just went there.”
	“You saw it ahead of time.” He kept walking, looking ahead. “Didn’t you.”
	He shrugged.
	“It’s a very rare ability,” I went on. “If you want to develop it--”
	“No point,” Taric answered. “It’s no use.”

	“Minead,” I said as we entered that room again, “I don’t know if you still care, but we found your ex-husband down in the study trying to hang himself. He’s all right, but you might want to tell one of the servants to keep an eye on him, just in case.”
	Crann had quieted down now, and curled up with Frih in Mna’s lap. Minead got up, with a heavy sigh. “I may as well. The last thing this house needs is another death.”
	At the sound of her voice, Crann lifted his head. His hands still clung to Mna’s skirt, but his eyes followed her as she moved across the room toward him.
	She bent over, sadly, and kissed the top of his head once.
	“That’s right, little man,” she said, stroking his hair. “Hold tight to your mathi.”
	Her steps out of the room and down the stairs were heavy and slow. Crann watched her go, one thumb migrating into his mouth. Taric stood just inside the doorway, shifting his weight uncomfortably from one heavy boot to the other.
	Crann’s dark eyes fastened onto him. His head lifted a little bit off Mna’s knee, thumb still in his mouth. Mna looked up at Taric’s pained face.
	“Thank you,” she said. “For everything. Without your help...”
	The words trailed into silence. Taric’s head shook, slowly, in bewilderment.
	“He’s yours now,” he said, thickly. “You’ll--” He blinked, hard, and took a ragged breath. “I know you’ll be good to him.”
	“Oh, Taric,” Mna cried. “I wish he could have come back to you. I wish--”
	The emotion flooding into Taric seemed to be panicking him. He backed away into one of the doorposts. “It’s--don’t--it couldn’t be--”
	“I wish it were all different,” Mna said, still crying. “I wish he’d never been taken from you. I wish he could be both, for both of us.”
	Taric tried to speak, couldn’t, and fled from the doorway.
	“Should we follow him?” Aine asked.
	“I don’t think so.”
	Mna seemed to realize, for the first time, that I was still there. Her hands flew suddenly to her throat as she looked up with sudden embarrassment and anxiety.
	“Shriia!” she said. “Here I--you’ve brought him back and--and I never even--”
	“Mna, it’s all--”
	“I--how can I start? How do I thank you? What can I ever do to repay you?”
	“Listen, please, don’t start with the professions of undying gratitude,” I said hurriedly, putting a hand out to stop her. “I’ve never been able to accept those gracefully, I just stand there like an idiot while people embarrass themselves and me. Just tell me I’ve given what you need, and that you’re satisfied with the job I’ve done. That’s all I want.”
	No amount of emotion could stop Mna from smirking at my awkwardness. “You have given what I need, shriia. And I am...satisfied, with the job you’ve done.”
	“Thank you,” I said.
	“And if you think I’m leaving it at that, you’re out of your mind,” she went on, the smirk broadening. “You brought my son back. You shortened your life so I could have him home with me. And I’ve been a real bitch to you, at times. Don’t try to deny it. Tell me something I can do for you.”
	“You can come with me to the Council tomorrow and tell them your story,” I said. “It will help convince them to give me the clearance.”
	“Done,” she answered. “Tell me something else.”
	“Please, Mna, don’t push it,” I answered. “You’ve already given me one of the greatest gifts imaginable.”
	“What do you mean?”
	“For four years I’ve been waiting for the chance to beat the fnaa out of Lythril,” I said. “Tonight, I did it.”
	Aine was giving me that look again, hands clasped in front of her and eyes shining. “You did,” she said. “You fixed her wagon all right.” Mna laughed. “Well, she did.”
	“And that,” I said, patting Mna on the shoulder, “is worth a thousand expressions of gratitude. Come on, we’d better be getting home.”
	Aine went automatically to pick Crann up, and brought herself up short as she saw he was standing on his own power, reaching up for Mna’s hand.
	“Wanna go,” he said. 
	“Wanna go home,” Frih echoed.
	“Let’s go then,” Mna said, moving toward the door with a twin on either side.
	“Bye bye room,” Crann said, looking over his shoulder and waving. “Bye bye.”
	Aine looked at me.
	“He’s home all right,” I said. “But he’s not out of the woods yet.”	

	The night porter shut the door behind us and we stood on the doorstep. We hadn’t found Minead; she was dealing with Nocc, and in any case probably didn’t want anything more to do with us. I’d call her tomorrow, now that I had the link, and ask her to come to the hearing. For now, we needed to find Taric and get everyone back home.
	“Well,” I said. “I’ll go find out what they’ve done with the horses. You wait here.”
	The stable boy let me in without comment. Cinhe was standing patiently in a stall next to Hiinh, who was gazing at her lovingly. I started to unlatch the stall door when a stifled sound behind me turned my head.
	Taric was several yards away with his hand on the neck of a completely different horse. She was an older mare, a tall roan with a dark mane, and he was looking away from me as his hand brushed her coat.	
	“Taric...?”
	“Leave me alone!”
	His head turned to rest against the roan’s shoulder as the crying started again. The horse let him stand there, bending her head occasionally to look at him with dark, compassionate eyes. 
	I took Cinhe out of the stables and led her around to where Aine and Mna were waiting with the twins.
	“Horsie!” shouted Crann, clapping his hands. Frih clapped his too, with a little squealing laugh.
	Mna looked at him. “Yes, that’s a horsie.” 
	Not knowing Keanrih like I’d known him, she didn’t read it the way I did--as another sign that things were going to be far from simple. “Well, I found Taric.”
	“So is he coming?” Aine asked.
	“It’s a little difficult,” I said. “He’s in there crying on the shoulder of Keanrih’s favorite horse. I don’t think he’s going to be done any time soon.”
	Mna looked back at the stables as we stood in some perplexity.
	“You go ahead, shriia,” she said. “The boys and I will wait for him.”
	“Are you sure?”
	“Yes, I’m sure. He’ll come out eventually, but you need to get back to your house. I know you don’t like being away from it.” I nodded. “We’ll come home after you; Hiinh is big enough to carry us. That is--I mean--”
	“What is it?” She had suddenly stopped, in confusion and worry.
	“I mean--he’s back now. There’s...there’s no reason for me to stay with you.”
	I looked back at her through the awkward pause.
	“Do you have anywhere else to go?”
	She shook her head, unwillingly.
	“Then come home,” I said.
	She shook her head.
	“I know you can’t stay with us forever. But until you have somewhere to go, my house is yours.”
	“I can’t,” she said. “Before, it was business. Now, it’s charity. I can’t.”
	“Listen. You asked what you could do for me. Well, this is one thing. Do it to give me some peace of mind, if you can’t do it for your sake or for the boys’.”
	“All right,” she said.
	“Then it’s settled,” I said. Aine swung onto Cinhe’s back; I climbed up after her. “When you get outside the gate, just open the link and I’ll--”
	“What do you mean, open the link?”
	Oh. “Um...for now, just try thinking my name real loud. If it doesn’t work, have Taric do it--he knows how.” I patted Cinhe on the neck. “Home, Cinhe. Not too fast.”
	She trotted off around the winding path that led down the hill around the back of the house. It was longer than the staircase but she took it faster, and we were soon on our way back through the farmland.
	“Will he be all right?” Aine asked.
	“Will who?”
	“Taric.”
	“Idair knows. What a horrible thing this has all turned out to be.”
	“But we’ve got Crann back, and that means Keanrih is still alive. Isn’t that good?”
	“Aine...for Keanrih, maybe, it’s good. But for Taric, I don’t see how this can be anything other than painful. To know that he’s still there, in the body of that two-year-old boy, but that he’ll never be the man Keanrih loved.”
	“But once he grows up...?”
	“I don’t see it. He’ll be so different by then.”
	“I suppose he will.”
	“A new body, new memories and experiences, a new mother...of course he’ll be different. But just similar enough to confuse himself and everyone around him.”
	“Still,” Aine said. “You got him back. He’s home.” I couldn’t see her face, but that adulation was there in her voice, worrying me. “You made Mna so happy. And you saved his life. And you fought Lythril and you won.”
	“I won this time,” I said. “With a lot of help from the rappari and the lurers. Without them she’d have pasted me.”
	“You don’t know that.”
	“No, I guess I don’t.” I shook my head. “Anyhow, this isn’t over, not by a long shot. She’s back up there in the north licking her wounds. She’ll recover soon and be back in business--and Idair’s hair, will she ever be pissed.”
	I laughed. I thought Aine might be laughing too, very timidly, but it was hard to tell. After a moment my laugh died too, and there was nothing left but the darkness around us and the rush of Cinhe’s feet.
	“Are you really going after her?” Aine asked, tentatively.
	“If the Council lets me.”
	“Can I come with you?”
	I had expected the question, and I’d thought about it. “You can, Aine, but I want you to understand the danger. If I go over there, there’s an excellent chance I won’t come back. Lythril is at least a match for me in terms of power and skill, and she’ll have the home advantage. It’s your right to come if you want to, because it’s exactly the kind of thing that will help you finish your education. But it will be very, very dangerous, and there are other ways to become a shriia.”
	“Do you want me to come with you?”
	This was a question I hadn’t thought about so much.
	“As your diaoc, objectively, I would have to advise against it. Ideally, you should only go on this kind of a mission after you’ve started your hreapa--it’s too difficult and too risky for someone at your stage.”
	“But do you want me to come with you? Answering not as my diaoc, but just as yourself?”
	“As myself?” It took a little while to find the answer. “As myself...I know that when I go in there against her, it will have to be alone. But I also know that...” Aine waited. “As myself--it’s going to be a long, hard, lonely journey, and...I do want you to come with me.”
	It felt strange to say it, but I knew it was true.
	“Then I’ll come.”
	“I’ll be glad to have you. And I’ll do what I can to protect you. I just want you to understand that I may not be able to.”
	We rode in silence for a while.
	“Dhiaoc...”
	“Yes?”
	“What did she mean, about my following orders?”
	“Oh, pay no attention to the bitch, Aine. She was just trying to get under your skin. She wanted you not to do as I asked so she was trying to goad you into disobeying me. Typical of her fnaa.”
	“But about that being what I’m good at.”
	“Aine, it doesn’t mean anything.”
	“But it’s true...I mean...I’ve always done what I was told, even as a child, and especially since the scoil...”
	“So it’s true. So what. I never said she wasn’t smart. She saw the whole show with us and the cat, remember; she knows enough about you now to be able to gall you. But don’t let it bother you. Besides, you’ve been making great progress at insubordination, and soon--”
	“What do you mean, progress? Have you been trying to teach it to me?”
	“You didn’t notice?”
	“How do you teach someone to be insubordinate?”
	“I know it seems paradoxical, but it is important. You have to learn to trust your own judgment. Obedience is part of the job, but only up to a point.”
	Aine pondered this for a while. 
	She was still pondering it when we stopped at the gate. “Why only up to a point?”
	“Sometimes the Council knows best--but sometimes it doesn’t. Like with Barant telling me to give up on Crann. Hearing the story, based on her experience, that made sense to her. But see, now, we were right to keep trying. We’ve got him.”
	I put Cinhe away for the night and we went back into the house. Aine and I went to go clear up what could be cleared in the kitchen. She worked silently, obviously still preoccupied, until I finally dried the last dish and started upstairs. Hearing no footsteps behind me, I turned around to look over the banister at Aine. She was standing in the entryway, apparently lost in thought.
	“Aine? Are you all right?”
	Her face, when she lifted it, was drawn and pinched with a strain that the late night couldn’t account for. I had been right, back when it first occurred to me. Something was bothering her--something that was very, very wrong, and that she was afraid to tell me.
	“For Idair’s sake, Aine,” I said, coming down the steps, “what’s the matter?”
	“Dhiaoc,” she said, and started to cry.
	I squatted on my heels in front of her, hoping that would make me less intimidating. “Aine, whatever it is, keeping it secret is hurting you more than telling it would. Don’t be afraid. Tell me what’s wrong.”
	She wiped a hand across her reddening nose. “You heard what she said,” she finally said, “and you still trust me.”
	“Of course I trust you,” I answered. “Is that what this is about?”
	“I was afraid...you’d think...it meant that I...was following her orders.”
	“You mean Lythril’s? Oh please.” I laughed. “Come on, Aine, I have my limits but I’m smarter than that. Maybe she was hoping I’d think that--but still. Given the choice, who am I going to trust? The apprentice who’s spent the past year busting her gleacha trying to serve me, Idair, the Order and everyone else, or the bitch who killed my friend, tortured my lover and ruined my life? Seems like a no-brainer to me.”
	“But...but...your shield being pierced, and her finding you in the ether so fast, and...all these things...it would...if you thought, that someone close to you was...was working with her...I mean, if I were you--I would.”
	“You just don’t know what she’s capable of.” I put a hand on her shoulder in what was meant to be a comforting friendly sort of way. “Aine, please, don’t waste another thought on this. I trust you. You should trust yourself.”
	She nodded, sniffling.
	“Now go off to bed and don’t worry about Lythril. She’s my problem, not yours.”
	“Yes, dhiaoc.” Aine turned to go. “Thank you, dhiaoc.”
	I watched as she went up the stairs. She was still upset, and I didn’t think my little pep talk had helped much. I would have to find some other way to reassure her. Her first exposure to Lythril and already she was doubting herself.
	I didn’t feel like undoing any more. I decided to sit up and wait for Mna and Taric. It probably wouldn’t be that much longer.
	It wasn’t, in fact; I heard Mna’s summons, crude though it was, and went out to let them in. Mna dismounted; Taric handed Frih down to her. Then, not without some hesitation, he lifted Crann.
	“Don’t wanna,” Crann cried, as Taric handed him down.
	“Don’t want to what, chara?” Mna asked, leading him away toward the gate. “Tell mathi what’s wrong.”
	Crann looked over his shoulder at the horse. He turned and started toddling back.
	“Crann, come here!”
	“Tar,” he cried, reaching his little arms up toward Taric’s stirrup. “Tar!”
	“Crann, come back here before the horse kicks you.”
	I knew that horse was too old and too placid to do anything of the sort, but I couldn’t blame her for being upset. Since Mna seemed too scared to get within range of the hooves, I went after him.
	“Don’t go way,” he cried, looking up at Taric.
	“Crann?”
	He stared back at me in that fogged, yet intent way young children have.
	“Taric has to go home to his house. You’ll see him again.”
	“Tomorrow?” he said, as if he didn’t quite believe me.
	“Maybe,” I said. “But tonight you and your mathi and your brother are going to stay with me. Don’t you want to be with your mathi and your brother?”
	He nodded. 
	I lifted him up so he’d be closer to something that wasn’t a boot. “Say good night to Taric, then.”
	He looked up, with a big two-year-old grin. “Night night, Tar-Tar.”
	Taric had to clear his throat before anything could come out of it.
	“Idair with you, Crann.”
	I set him down and sent him off to Mna. He walked toward her, faster and faster as he got closer. I opened the gate and the three of them went through. It shimmered closed.
	When I turned back, Taric was still on the horse, pulling up on the reins. In the dark I couldn’t see his face well, but I was betting it wasn’t a happy one.
	“Taric--” I heard the stirrups creak as he got ready to ride on. “Taric, I have to ask you something.”
	“Don’t ask me to stay here,” he said, his voice rough.
	“I am not a moron, Taric!” I shouted.
	He stammered a bit in surprise. “I--I didn’t suppose you were, shriia.”
	“You think I don’t know what this is like for you?” I was stomping back toward the horse now, thinking of other things. “You think just because I’m a shriia I’ve never loved anyone?”
	“I...”
	“I’m not going to ask you to come spend the night under the same roof with a two-year-old boy who reminds you just enough of your dead husband to drive you out of your mind,” I went on.
	“I’m sorry, shriia...”
	“I only want to ask if you’ll come down to the Pharc tomorrow to testify at the hearing. I need to get them to give me the clearance to go over the border and stop this from happening to anyone else.”
	I thought I heard him swallow, but I couldn’t be sure.
	“You were a good friend to him,” Taric said.
	“I tried.”
	“Would my story help you, shriia?”
	“Yes it would.”
	“Then I will be there.” 
	“Thank you, Taric. I know--” I broke off. “His being gone was hard on Mna, his being back is hard for you. But you helped anyhow because it was better for them.” No answer from atop that dark horse. “You’re a good man, Taric. I wish there was some way for this to make you happy.”
	There was a long pause while I felt the weight of his grief. I was getting better at reading him.
	“Idair with you, shriia,” he finally said.
	“With you too, Taric.”
	“Abhaile, Hiinh.”
	He vanished into the trees.

	If Mna was upset by that parting incident, she showed no sign of it as she settled the twins into their bed. Crann curled up with his arms around Frih’s neck; Frih wrapped his protectively over his brother’s shoulders. Mna sat by the bed, looking at them.
	“All right, Mna?”
	She looked up at me with a happier face than I’d ever seen on her.
	“Look at them,” she said, softly.
	“I know.”
	“Thank you.”
	I nodded. “Idair keep you all.”
	I closed the door quietly behind me and went to peek into Aine’s room.
	She had cried herself to sleep. In the light from the hallway the evidence was visible--wet stains on her pillow, red creases on her face and the shine on her eyelids of undried tears. The poor thing. She wasn’t ready to face a creature like Lythril.
	Apparently, however, I was.
	It still hadn’t really hit me. It didn’t, until I was alone in my room. I’d met her, I’d fought her--and I’d won. A minor battle, compared to the larger one I was about to engage. But still something I could never have imagined, those six years ago when I was sitting down in that dark room wondering how we were going to get out with our lives intact.
	I went over to the window and threw it open. When I leaned out the air was cold, and a breeze was coming through the shield that stirred my hair. I sent a long howl through the night air.
	“I won!” I shouted, foolish though I knew it sounded. “I won, you lost! Run back to your nest of vipers, bitch, because it’s not safe for you on my side of the border!” I drummed on the sill with my hands, laughing. “I’m not a scoilin and I’m not running scared! I’m Theamh ni hUlnach, so get out of my way!”
	She was long gone, of course; too far away to hear. Nobody could hear me. It felt good anyway. For about a minute. And then I had to turn around, to the room I still slept in, alone, on the floor.
	I shut the window and started undoing. It would be a long road yet before I’d get where I was headed.
	But maybe I would get there, now. Over the border and into her lair and whatever cell or dungeon or pit she was keeping Istria in. Maybe after four years of marking time and treading water I was finally moving--headed towards an end, one way or the other. Maybe I wouldn’t come back victorious; maybe I wouldn’t come back at all. But as I pulled the blanket over my tired body, it seemed possible that maybe I would come back, with her. That maybe the next time I slept in this room, it would be on the bed.
	So when I finally curled up on the boards and drifted off to sleep, I was happy, for once. Thinking about having done good and done well and brought one story, at least, to a happy ending. I wasn’t dwelling on that hole in my shield, or wondering what it was that Lilea wouldn’t tell me, or worrying about poor Aine, alone in her troubled dreams with the secret she couldn’t share and the tears drying into salt on her sleeping face. I wasn’t thinking about any of those things.
	I should have been.

XXIII.
Something Rotten

	“I can’t believe I’m about to do this.”
	I shouldn’t have said it aloud, but my nerves were getting the better of me. I was standing in front of the entrance to the Raed, looking up at the carved image of Cailte seated among the first followers, Idair floating above her head with her flaming arms spread over her in protection. Mna, Aine and the twins had walked down with me and were now listening to my flusterations. I should have presented a more confident front, but it was too much for me. I’d been in there so many times, and so often it had been to get raked over the coals. Now the entire Council was taking an hour out of its busy schedule just to listen to my demented ravings. I knew they would realize the danger as long as I could explain it clearly. But my gut didn’t know that, and my last meal was not sitting well.
	“Shriia,” called a girl’s voice from further up the street.
	It was Ilwath. I was glad to see her--when I’d been out that morning she’d been in the field and I’d had to leave the message with Owdan. Who was right behind her...and right next to Gilish.
	“I’m so glad you could make it. Aine you know, and this is Mna and her boys, Frih and Crann.”
	“Hello,” said Crann brightly, looking up at her.
	Ilwath smiled at him, squatting down to look him in the eye. “Hello, little man.” She turned to Frih as Gilish leaned over. “And hello to you too.”
	Frih turned back to Mna, a little frightened. Gilish smiled.
	“I’d ask how you tell them apart,” she said. “But they’re so different, it would be easy.”
	“It always was,” Mna said, meditatively. “Right from the beginning.”
	“Thanks for coming down, Owdan,” I said.
	“Least I could do,” he answered.
	“Well, let’s go on in,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Just tell the truth when you’re asked a question, and try not to get nervous.”
	Aine shot me a look as we passed through the doors that I decided not to respond to.
	Taric was already waiting out in the hall. He had changed, and was wearing what was probably his only town clothing. He cleaned up fairly well, although his awkwardness was still with him. He was a few feet away from Ethir, dapper as always in his blue robe and polished boots. Neither was looking at the other.
	“Taric, thank you for coming down. This is my friend Ethir. Ethir, this is Taric.” They looked at each other. Taric nodded, embarrassed, and looked away. “I’m not even going to ask if you’re nervous, irritatingly confident self-presenter that you are.”
	“Well then--” He broke off the joke as he saw Crann. “Idair’s teeth, he’s back!”
	“So he is,” I said, enjoying his surprise.
	Ethir went over to Mna. “You’re the mother?” Mna nodded. “Ethir mac Briobh, legal counselor at your service.”
	I thought I saw something clouding Crann’s eyes, but I was sure that by now I was imagining things. Knowing the story, it would be easy to read things into his reactions that weren’t there. 
	Minead appeared at the end of the hall, accompanied by Darin. Minead approached slowly, as if she had nothing to look forward to. Darin, however, leapt forward as soon as he saw the twins.
	“Theamh!” he called, trotting up eagerly. “He’s--” Darin stopped, staring frankly past Mna at Crann, who stared back at him with one hand scratching an ear. “He’s--he’s--you’ve cured him.”
	“Yes, I brought him back, but--”
	He stuck his hand out toward Mna. “Darin mac Donald. We met about a week ago, in the clinic.”
	From Aine’s face I thought she might be talking to Mna. Sure enough, after a moment Mna took Darin’s hand and shook it carefully.
	“Glad to see you again,” she said warily.
	“Darin, you didn’t tell me you were the one who examined him,” I said.
	“That’s how we stay friends, Theamh—you don’t tell me your business and I don’t tell you mine.” He turned to Crann. “Do you—do you mind? If I just have a look at him? I won’t do anything to him, I promise. It’s just—I’ve never seen a child recover from this.”
	Mna looked at me anxiously.
	“You can trust Darin,” I said.
	“All right.”
	Darin dropped to one knee in front of Crann. “Hello, little man.”
	“Hello.”
	“Can you stick out your tongue and say ‘ah?’”
	Crann nodded.
	Darin smiled. “Well, will you do it then?”
	I sat down by the wall as he kept at it. It was strange to see everyone gathered in one place from so many different ends of the earth—Felim, Mablad, the City, big house, farm house and no house at all. And then to see Pel coming in from the courtyard entrance, much more composed than the last time I’d seen her.
	“Pel! That’s everyone, then...Pel, this is--”
	“We’ve met,” Mna said coldly.
	Pel looked at her. “We have?”
	“It was over two years ago,” Mna replied. “In Naucht Point. You may remember telling me that I should count myself lucky to be able to bring my child up in comfort.”
	Pel’s face altered as the memory surfaced. “Ah.” She met Mna’s glare with a level one of her own. “I see I was mistaken. Well, it wasn’t the last time.”
	Before Mna’s anger could break into speech, the door to the main council chamber opened and Doryth stuck her head out. “They’re ready for you, shriia. Bring in your witnesses.”
	“That’s you,” I said. “Let’s hope they put out plenty of cushions.”
	We filed in and waited by the door to be called into the circle. The council chamber is a circle in the square—a concentric set of raised platforms rings a circular floor which is where the petitioners sit. There’s no particular order to the seating, except that there is one bench marked with a star for the head of the Council. I know from Lilea and Slythe that most of the Council members hate the benches. But no one suggests moving to chairs, because they’re harder to make and because it would probably bother Idair. She makes some comment in the seventh scroll about chairs being too much like thrones. 
	There they were, the whole council, all facing into the space I would shortly be standing in. Grinth was at the top over across from the entrance. I know the placement of that bench is determined at random before each session, but I did think it was hard of Idair to have set her where she could glare down on me with those hard eyes as I walked in and waited for the summons.
	Dalen, whose turn it apparently was to take on this duty, climbed down into the circle and stood facing me. In one hand she held a staff made of tilu wood carved with stars, with which she struck the floor of the chamber three times. Silence fell.
	“Petitioner, step forward and tell us who you are and what you ask of us.”
	I walked into the center, under the fire globe hanging near the ceiling. Most of them were waiting impassively. Except for Lilea, who was staring at Crann, and who could barely contain herself. She knew the story, and she knew what this meant, and it was costing her something not to be able to come down and congratulate me. I smiled at her briefly, then faced my more intimidating listeners and began.
	“My name is Theamh ni hUlnach, daughter of Idair and servant to all her children. I ask that I be allowed to cross the border and enter the Cretid Nation, for the purposes of frustrating the designs of a dark user known in this country by the name of Lythril.”
	Dalen turned to face Grinth. “Do you agree to hear the petition?”
	Grinth’s eyes glittered down at me as she stood to answer.
	“We will hear the petition. Before she goes further, however, I think the Council would like to be satisfied that she understands the seriousness of her request and the potential consequences to this country and this Council.”
	There were murmurs of assent from the others. I glanced around as the noise circulated. All the familiar faces were there—Barant, Slythe, Morat, other women I remembered from scoil or from my previous encounters. They were all older than I was, and they looked wiser too.
	“I understand that the Council authorizes such a request only when travel to the Cretid Nation is absolutely necessary in order to prevent a clear and potentially irreparable harm to this country, her citizens or the practice of shri itself. I also understand that as a shriia I am denied, by the laws of the Cretid Nation, the right to practice shri while in their country, and that if I am apprehended doing so by the Cretid authorities neither the Council nor the Seated Leaders will intervene on my behalf. I am aware of Idair’s prohibition against proselytizing and pledge myself to try to refrain from practicing shri in the presence of unbelievers. I understand that if my presence or my actions are judged to be inimical to the security of the Cretid Nation, I may inadvertently provoke a return to the hostilities that ended with the Treaty of Mypril. I understand, in short, that to do what I propose to do will endanger much of what I hold dear, including but not limited to my own safety and freedom.”
	Grinth nodded, apparently satisfied with my answer. “And understanding all this, you still make the petition.”
	“I realize that this is a drastic remedy. However, I believe that the circumstances I will outline more than justify this course of action. And I pledge to do my utmost to limit the impact my presence has on the Cretid Nation and its citizens.”
	Grinth bent her gray head and lifted the silver star from around her neck. She passed it from hand to hand down to Dalen, who crossed the circle to me. I bowed my head.
	“Theamh ni hUlnach has the ear and eye of Idair, and of the members of this council,” Dalen said, hanging it around my neck. 
	Dalen returned to her seat. I looked around, nervously rubbing the back of my neck where the brass chain rested on it. Now that I had their attention I found myself somewhat at a loss as to what to do with it.
	“Sisters,” I began slowly, “what I am about to tell you is a long story, so long that I hardly know where to begin. It is incredible to me that a mere week ago I did not know any of the facts I am about to relate to you, nor had I drawn any of the inferences I will be explaining. What a difference a few days can make.” My eye caught Lilea, who smiled encouragingly. “You’ve already heard from Lilea about the green guuns infecting the minds of at least two of the shriias involved in returning notborns. This phenomenon is one portion of a larger scheme, which I hope to be able to explain to you tonight—a scheme that I firmly believe has been organized and put in practice by Lythril, with the help of confederates on this side of the border.
	“The last time I remember addressing a crowd this size was during Lythril’s trial,” I remarked. “And I guess it makes sense to start there. We were able to establish that Krenham had been possessed by Lythril, and that she had killed him a couple days before his appointed time. What we were never able to figure out was why she should do this. I believe that I now know why.
	“I believe that Krenham was possessed, not by force, but by choice. I believe that he deliberately invited Lythril to take possession of his dying body—indeed, that he paid her handsomely for the service.”
	“Why on earth would he do that?” broke in Kelah, a sharp-featured woman from Kengda who was the head of Possessions, and who had never liked me.
	“Because Lythril had promised him that, if he allowed her to do so, she would arrange it so that instead of dying he would be reborn. While she was in his body, she would trap his spirit the moment before the connection broke, bring it with her out of the corpse, and instead of releasing it to go its way, she would insert it into the newly-vacated body of a notborn. Once it took root there, Krenham’s spirit would become the spirit of a new child, and he would be reborn to live a new life.”
	There was a pause as this sunk in.
	“Is this all speculation?” demanded Riina. “Based on what happened to Lilea?”
	“Some speculation has been involved,” I said, “but I also have evidence to support every conclusion I have made about what is happening, why, and how it’s being done. I believe that Krenham was one of the first clients to take advantage of a service that Lythril is providing to an increasing number of subscribers drawn from the ranks of our wealthiest citizens. I believe this—before you ask—because I have discovered two separate instances in which the spirits of dead men have appeared in the bodies of young children. I believe it because it explains what has been happening with the guuns discovered on Lilea and Pel. And I believe it because last night I got into an open battle in the ether with Lythril over the spirit inhabiting that child sitting there in the arms of his mother.”
	I felt the gaze shift onto Crann. They’d heard about him, of course. And they could tell he was back now. I felt the interest level suddenly rise.
	“That’s him?” Barant asked. “The taken child?”
	“Not any more he’s not,” I said, not without pride. “But yes—he’s the one I consulted you about. He’s spent the past week or so knocking around in the ether, but he’s back now, aren’t you, Crann?”
	Crann laughed, waving his hands in the air. Frih laughed too.
	Barant sat back, looking thoughtful. “I would never have credited it,” she said. “I salute your skill and your perseverance, Theamh. Not everyone could have done this.”
	There were nods of assent. It was a good feeling to hear them recognizing my success, even the ones who had no use for me as a person. And especially to hear it from Barant. As many years as it had been, she was still my dhiaoc, and it still mattered.
	“Thank you,” I said. “I had a lot of help.” I looked back at Aine, Taric, Mna and Minead, all grouped around those two boys. Taric looked a little more composed than he had the previous night, but his eyes were still avoiding Crann. Minead was gray and drawn. Mna had an arm around each twin, holding them loosely, but holding them. 
	The scrutiny made them nervous, so I went back to my text. “I brought in a number of people whose testimony will support my argument,” I said. “That the border is porous enough to allow for this kind of traffic, I suggest on the basis of what Ethir, Darin and Ilwath will tell you about how an illegal drug in a vial made of proscribed material found its way into the hospital—and how Ethir’s attempts to prosecute this flagrant breach of our laws have been unaccountably suppressed by the presiders. That green spirits of unknown provenance have been removing the rightful spirits of notborns and replacing them with other ones, Lilea will tell you based on her experiences in Comings and Goings. You will hear from Pel evidence supporting the contention that these replacements are in fact the spirits of men who should be dead. And finally, the testimony provided by the four people whose interest in the case is most intense—Mna, the child himself, and Taric and Minead, who knew and loved him in his previous incarnation—will show you, as completely as we can, how this plot works and what the human cost is.”
	“Proceed,” Grinth finally said.
	“Mna,” I said, “will you come forward and tell the Council what you know?”
	Mna stepped unwillingly, but unashamedly, into the circle, leaving the boys with Aine.
	“Can you state her full used name?” Barant called out.
	“I’m sorry, I don’t know it,” I said.
	“That’s all right, shriia,” Mna answered. “My name is Mna ni Dhrialan na Lough, and before you start asking questions, I have a statement to make.”
	“Proceed,” said Grinth.
	“My story is not unlike a thousand other such stories you may or may not have heard. I grew up, happy enough and contented enough, in a farmhouse in central Naucht. At fourteen, never mind how, I fell in love with a young man whose family owned the land my family farmed.” Mna’s eyes roamed the ring of faces, challenging the contempt she expected to see there. “I know you can only hear the shape of the old shameful story. I don’t have the power to make you understand what made what happened with us...something else.” Her eyes came back to rest on me. “I can never hope to explain that he didn’t take advantage of my youth, that I loved him with a love that had nothing to do with his wealth or position, and that when I agreed to leave my family and live in the apartment he provided for me, it wasn’t because of what he could give me, but because I could be with him there, without fear or hurry.”
	She turned her gaze back on the listeners, coming to rest on Grinth’s impassive face. “I used leagruh for years, but eventually I became pregnant in spite of that. That was when I discovered...that my life was going to become an old story after all.”
	She glanced down at the floor, then went on with a sigh. “I knew we’d never be married. I accepted it. I assumed, as long as we didn’t tire of each other, that he’d marry the woman his family chose and that we’d go on as before.” Her eyes lifted with that spark of defiance. “You’ll think badly of me for saying that. But it’s a common thing in my part of the country, and in other parts too if the truth were known. And why shouldn’t it be? Let her have the house and lands and money, which I wanted none of, and let me have the love of his heart. We were joined,” she said, her voice lifting with emotion, “without a ceremony and without the law, but in every way Sincil and Anron were.”
	Mna folded her hands in front of her stomach and recalled herself to the task at hand. “So I was with child. His family knew about me, of course. If I had the child, it would be a rival to his lawful children, as long as he acknowledged it; and he could hardly pretend not to if he kept on with me. I knew that. So, without telling him why, I traveled to Naucht Point, where I could have the child returned.”
	This part of the story was becoming more difficult. “I brought the dress and jewels he’d given me, so I’d seem like a woman of means and be treated with respect. Perhaps you’ll think it comforting that my appearance of wealth made no difference to the shriia I saw, who treated me with none.”
	I glanced at Pel, but she showed no emotion. Pel was used to this kind of thing.
	“Her name was Pel, and after finally agreeing to contact my child she informed me that he had refused to return.” Mna paused, and resumed suddenly with an explosive burst. “I hadn’t even known that was possible. I was devastated. My entire life would fall apart as soon as it was known that I was pregnant. My family had already cast me off as a disgrace to their name. I had no friends; since I was young my entire life had been him. I had never learned a trade, had no land, and was shortly going to be burdened with an infant. Pel told me to be glad that at least I could raise the child in comfort. Which I suppose she really thought I could do. 
	“When I returned home, I resolved to tell him what had happened and hope that he would be able, somehow, to protect me.” Her face broke up for an instant, then composed itself again as the tears spilled over her eyelids. “You don’t care about what happened then. All that matters is that he wasn’t able, or willing, to protect me. I gathered up what I could carry and fled.
	“I was able to keep myself fed and warm until after the boys were born. There’s no point in the details; you know the story. It became harder and harder to keep us out of the rain. For the last year and a half I have lived on the roads with them, roaming from place to place, hoping for nothing. The only thing that has been a comfort or a joy to me is the sight of my boys growing up, as best I can help them to it, and sharing the pleasure they take in things.” She took a breath. “I came to the City—and woke up one morning to find Crann sitting there with dead eyes and no voice, insensible to anything. The medicals could do nothing for him. I sat in the public road and claimed the help of the first shriia I saw passing.”
	Mna looked at me. “This part you know,” she said. “Ask the questions and I’ll answer them. I just want them all to understand,” she said, turning back to the audience, “that I am not some public whore with no mind or heart, that I love my boys, both of them, no matter where they came from, and that whether or not I wanted my boys at the moment they were conceived, I fought hard as any mother could to bring him back.”
	Mna was finished. Grinth leaned forward.
	“First of all, Mna, may I say on behalf of all of us how happy we are that your boy’s story has a happy ending,” she said. 
	“Thank you,” Mna answered.
	“I assume Theamh followed the usual practice of helping you call for him.” She nodded. “Will you tell us a little bit about what you saw on your search?”
	Mna told the story. I had planned to do it myself, but I saw that it was much more affecting coming from her; she hadn’t seen everything, but the impressions she had were vivid and powerful and what she couldn’t describe, most of them knew enough to fill in. When she got to the story of the final chase, Grinth interrupted.
	“Theamh.”
	“Yes, Aiv?”
	“Why on earth did you involve these other two people?”
	“Well, Aiv,” I said, knowing this would be the hardest thing for them to swallow. “Because I’d found out that the spirit living in Crann was actually the one that had previously lived in Keanrih mac Minead.”
	There was a rumble of skepticism from the assembly.
	“You mean that after his death, Keanrih somehow was born as that child.”
	“Yes.”
	“And so Minead was his mother too.”
	“Yes.”
	“And this young man Taric--”
	“I’m coming to that. But since they both knew him before, I thought they would help us find him.”
	Grinth sat back, looking dubious.
	“She was right, Aiv,” Mna suddenly put in. “It wasn’t until they were there that we found him. I’m the child’s mother,” she went on. “Believe me, if I could convince myself this wasn’t true, I’d feel much better. But I know what I saw. I know she’s right.”
	“Then what did you see?” Grinth asked. 
	Mna resumed the story. She could only bring it to the moment Lythril and I faced off and Aine took them down; at that point Grinth turned to me to tell the end of the story.
	“After they left,” I said, “Lythril and I continued firing at each other until we noticed the child trying to leave the plane. She grabbed him, and I chased her down. With the help of some friendly rappari I managed to get him away from her.”
	“Friendly rappari?” Morat said, ironically.
	“It’s a long story. Anyhow, she got slowed down in the lurers’ plane, when a mob of them attacked her--”
	“Beautiful!” Morat said, under her breath. Lilea looked at her, amused. Morat knew exactly how much damage lurers could do; and she was plainly and frankly glad to hear they’d done some of it to Lythril.
	“—and so I was able to get back to my body before she could get into my skull.”
	Barant was now suddenly alert. “She made an attempt on you?”
	I shook my head. “She didn’t get the chance. The vigils prevented her from even giving it a try. When I got back they were still keeping her well away from me.”
	“You’re sure there was no penetration?” Barant continued.
	“Yes, I’m sure,” I said, a little testily. “I’m not just trying to get out of a scouring, Barant. There was no attempt, because she never touched me.”
	“I’m glad to hear it,” she said, sitting back. “Continue.”
	“So I revealed, and I drove her out of the room with the fire and the amulet. And she went, although not without a struggle.”
	“Oh, please tell me you hurt her doing it,” Morat interjected.
	A sharp laugh burst out of Lilea, bringing with it some more subdued laughter from others. Barant smiled involuntarily, but tried to maintain that calm, neutral exterior. Slythe looked from Morat to me, worried for some reason.
	“Sadly, I don’t think I did any permanent damage,” I said, “but she was definitely hurting by the time she left.”
	Morat sat back. “Idair be thanked.”
	Grinth glared at her. “Morat--”
	“I know,” she said. “I apologize for my weakness. I should be above taking satisfaction in her discomfort. However, I am not.”
	“Perfection is an unending quest,” Grinth said dryly. “Theamh, although I can’t say I’m hearing this news with quite the relish Morat has demonstrated, I’m nevertheless gratified to hear that you’ve given her, as we say, a little something to think about.” 
	“You honor me, Aiv,” I said.
	“However,” she went on. “Since you have the child, I’m not quite sure what you hope to get out of going over the border. It won’t undo what’s been done, and punishing her is no longer our responsibility.”
	“I understand that,” I said. “But as I’ve said, Crann is just one playing piece in a much larger game. That Crann has been brought back matters to Mna, to his brother, to himself and to me. What matters to you is why he was taken. And I’d like to ask Pel ni Phrana to come down and shed some light on that subject.”
	Pel’s testimony confirmed Mna’s story, although she felt it necessary to spend some time defending her conduct and her professional judgment. But she admitted that she had accepted the notborn’s first refusal, and that she had not been aware of the other child’s presence. She also, in response to my question about her father’s death, delivered a ringing tirade in which she swung from eulogy to calumny as she described the effect he had, and was still having, on her life and spirit. Eventually Grinth had to request that she confine her remarks to the topic at hand.
	“Which is this plot Theamh told you of,” she said with a bitter laugh. “It may seem incredible, but believe it. My father always wanted to live forever. And he wouldn’t care who he had to rub elbows with to make that happen. He couldn’t stand dying before he could see his insane ideas realized. And I wasn’t there when he died,” she said, “but I know from the servants that he wouldn’t let them bring the shriia to watch him out. I can think of no reason for that, unless he expected someone else to be there with him.”
	“Thank you, Pel,” I said. “I appreciate your help, the more so since as those who know us know you are more or less a hostile witness.”
	Pel laughed and began to retire from the floor.
	“Oh--wait!” Pel stopped as the others laughed. “I forgot—the green thing on your head, you want to tell them about that?”
	“Yes, as a matter of fact,” Pel said, swinging back around. “Does getting cleansed have to hurt that bad?”
	“Yes,” called a number of different voices from the benches.
	“It does?”
	“Of course it hurts,” Morat said. “Root something out of anywhere and it hurts. Even taking a splinter out of a finger hurts. Ripping something out of your mindspace is bound to hurt a lot worse.”
	“But getting overtaken doesn’t hurt?” Pel demanded.
	“You weren’t overtaken,” I said. “Your consciousness was still yours. If it had tried to move in on that, believe me, you would have noticed it.”
	“So there I am,” Pel said, turning back to the audience, “having just gone through this emotional breakdown about my father, and now being forced to talk to Lilea who I hadn’t spoken to since the Great Unpleasantness which some of you may remember, and if that’s not enough Theamh out of thurking nowhere calls up her vigils and sets them at me. You could at least have given me some warning.”
	“Oh, that would have been a bad idea,” I said.	
	“The one on my head was given warning,” Lilea pointed out from her bench. “I’ve still got the bruises to prove it.”
	“See, once it knew I knew about it, it would just have tried to kill you off like it did Lilea,” I said. “It had already started by interfering with your sleep.”
	“Well, all right then,” Pel said grumpily, looking around at the others. “Does it always hurt that badly?”
	“Yes!” shouted Morat and the others who had had experience with this.
	“But I think,” I said, as the laughter died down, “I think they’d like to know, maybe, what your impression of this thing was.”
	“I have no impression of it. I saw it wrapped around my head, and then it flew off, but for that part I was writhing in agony, so I don’t remember much else except that you wouldn’t let the vigils chase it.”
	“Why not?” interrupted Riina.
	“Because I know what they’re capable of,” I said. 
	“It’s true,” Lilea put in. “They chased the one riding me, and it almost destroyed one of her vigils.”
	“How?” Kelah broke in.
	“I don’t know, but it made the poor thing scream, and then afterwards--what is it, a he?”
	“No, Jayla’s female.”
	“Afterwards, she was all lumpy and sick.”
	“What do you mean, sick?” Dalen pressed.
	“I mean--look, I’ll just come down and do my testimony already.”
	“I guess I’d better call you, then,” I said.
	Lilea took the floor as Pel retired. I could see people waiting for fireworks when they entered the same space, but they were disappointed; Pel just nodded to her and left with a genuine smile of affection.
	“Lythril or no Lythril,” began Cualha, the head of the rainmaking division. “Some kind of cataclysmic change has rocked the universe, if Pel has become civil.”
	“That’s enough,” Lilea said, cutting off the laugh. “If things have been difficult for her here, they’ve had cause to be. Till you carry her burden don’t criticize her posture.”
	<I’m not sure that’s going to catch on as a proverb.>
	<Just start with the questions, Theamh.>
	Lilea gave her evidence very calmly and clearly. I could feel the balance shifting as she spoke--people beginning to move from rejection into doubt, from doubt toward conviction. The snowball was rolling; every witness would add another layer and by the end there would be no doubt left. I’m not a very good lawyer--I forget questions, have to go back and begin again, and don’t maintain that shield of dignity and invincibility very well--but in a way I think that helped; the Council isn’t a court, and they look for different things. My bumblings and false starts helped them believe I was real and that I believed in what I was doing. Which was what I wanted, and what was true.
	Ilwath’s questioning didn’t last long at all, but I could see Owdan and Gilish both watching her with love and pride as she told the story. Her aspect, and her manners, had changed since that day at siulin—she moved easier, and spoke out with some anger and some defensiveness but a lot more confidence. It was a change I recognized. She was happy. Not all the way yet, but getting there. Because Owdan was learning.
	I called Darin and Ethir together because one could fill in the holes in the other’s story. This at least was amusing for the audience, with the two of them playing off each other’s sarcasm. Darin had little new to report, except that no disciplinary action had been taken against Shearer. Ethir’s attempt to investigate Shearer’s case had not progressed very far, but he had learned a couple of things.
	“The clerk who signed the order to dismiss was not available for comment,” he observed dryly. “It turns out that he resigned his post immediately after signing the order. Moreover, he has left the city for what his erstwhile assistant describes as a much-needed vacation at his villa in the northern mountains. I’ve sent a message up there, but I don’t expect a reply. The erstwhile assistant has offered no specifics on how his clerk came to sign the order or on whose authority. I’m sorry I can’t tell you anything more definite, but believe me, I’m not through with this. I will find out how Bric engineered this miscarriage of justice, and as soon as I know, so will everyone else.”
	Grinth seemed more disturbed by this than she had by anything that had gone before. “Do I understand you to say that you believe one of the Presiders is involved in this plot?”
	“I don’t see how it could be otherwise,” Ethir responded.
	“And Darin mac Donald—you say the hospital is allowing this Shearer to practice?”
	“Well, at least there won’t be any more mind poisoning,” he offered, apologetically. “I’ve gone through the whole pharmacy personally. There was a very small stock of Welbin—either Shearer brought it himself or someone else got it down here in the past three years. But I’ve had it all destroyed.”
	“But why has your organization not reprimanded him? I understood there was a system in place...”
	“I don’t know, is the honest truth,” Darin answered. “Unless there’s someone higher up in the administration back home who’s in on this too.”
	“So the grave injury inflicted on Ilwath, and the great danger Theamh was put in—there will be no response to any of that?” Grinth demanded.
	“Well, not right away,” Ethir said cheerfully. “But Darin has been explaining to me about something called malpractice law. We don’t have it here, but perhaps it’s time we suggested it to the Seated Leaders.”
	“Thank you,” Grinth said, sitting back.
	“Do you have anything else you want to ask them, Aiv?” I said.
	“No,” she answered, looking grave. “I think perhaps we’d better hear from the young man in the back.”
	Darin and Ethir left and Taric stepped into the ring. He was nervous, but it didn’t come out in fidgeting. If anything, it made him stand stiller and move slower. Everything about this situation went against the grain of his nature and it was going to be hard to get the story out of him.
	“Taric mac...I’m sorry, I don’t know your matronym or your line name.”
	“I don’t have a line name,” he said. 
	“Ah. Well, one less thing to learn. Taric--”
	“Or a matronym.”
	This was a surprise. “Did...did you lose her young, then?”
	“I must have,” he said. “I don’t remember her.”
	Around me I felt the general wave of sympathy. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
	“It was a long time ago,” he said shortly.
	“And your father...”
	“I never knew him, that I remember. I was a child of the Order.”
	“Ah,” I said. “I didn’t know.”
But now that I did, I could see that it would explain a lot. 
He would have been raised at one of the Order’s homes for children until he was out of fosterage, and then placed somewhere to learn a trade. We do what we can, but it’s not the same as growing up in a family. All the shriias and apprentices who work in the homes also have other responsibilities. To speak truth, many of us are awkward with children, and it’s worse for boys. It’s better than nothing; the children are kept safe and healthy, they get good protection, and we educate them...
	“But you’re not a reader, Taric?”
	“I never got that far. I ran away.”
	He must have run off fairly young. “You were never recovered?”
	“I found a farm that needed a stableboy. I liked the work so I stayed.”
	And when they found him they wouldn’t probably have argued too hard. If he was happy, and learning a trade, and not being maltreated, it would have made sense to leave him there. How he got from there to owning his own farm was another question.
	“How long have you lived at Felim?”
	“Seven years.”
	“And that was where you met Keanrih mac Minead?”
	“No. I met him before. When I worked the stables at the na Poll house.”
	So that was why he wanted me to read the letter in the stables, and why when he wanted to cry with someone he chose Keanrih’s horse. Taric read the comprehension on my face and he didn’t like it.
	“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “I bought that farm myself. It took me twelve years of brutal self-denial to save enough to buy the worst piece of land in the Vicinity, but I did it. By myself. Without his money.”
	“Very well,” I said. “So you met Keanrih...when?”
	“Nine years, three months and a day from this day.”
	“And you became lovers...?”
	Taric ignored the murmur of reaction, as did I. “Nine years, two months and three weeks from this day.”
	“This really is too much,” protested Vrila, who’s in charge of border maintenance and who comes from rural Dairc, where things are bad for the different. “Have you no respect for this man’s family?”
	Minead stepped forward behind him.
	“I am Keanrih’s family,” she said. “The only family that accepted him from birth upwards as he was and as Idair pleased to make him. I know who he was and I don’t care who else knows.”
	“So,” I said, as things began dying down, “two years later you were able to buy, as you said, the worst piece of land in the Vicinity. Did this end your relationship?”
	“You know it didn’t.”
	“Yes, I know I know it—they don’t, that’s why I have to do all this. I know it seems stupid, but...”
	“I’m sorry,” Kelah cut in, “but it seems stupid to me too. What does the sexual history of a dead man have to do with this plot you’re describing?”
	“He’s not a dead man,” I said. “Not yet. That’s the point.”
	Barant was now looking very concerned. “Keanrih mac Minead died by his own hand two years and--”
	“It’s true enough his hand cut his throat,” I said, “but it wasn’t his idea.”
	“You mean--” Morat put in.
	“That’s what I’m getting to,” I said. “If I might continue?”
	“Go ahead,” Grinth answered.
	“So after you moved out to Felim--”
	“Once I had my own house,” Taric said, “such as it was, and is, things got better for us, in spite of the distance. And it was a year and four months afterward that...” He broke off as his eyes began searching the audience, warily.
	“That...you had your joining.”
	His eyes came back to me. “Yes.”
	“What do you mean, joining?” Vrila demanded.
	“I mean,” Taric said, answering the question directly with his eyes suddenly lifted to hers, “that we made to each other our own promises, and bound ourselves together for ever, just the way you do. I mean—not you, of course, but ordinary people.”
	“You found a shriia to perform this rite?” Kelah said.
	“No,” Taric answered. “We did it ourselves.”
	Kelah sat back, relieved. Morat took up the slack.
	“You understand, Theamh,” she said, “that to call it a joining is somewhat inaccurate--”
	“Yes, all right!” I called back. “I’m not pretending that their joining was or could have been sanctioned either by the Order or by the law. But it’s clear to me that both of them felt bound to the other as much as any pair of joined people do and the reason that matters, before you get at me again, is that it is a further argument against the theory that Keanrih willingly murdered himself. He knew his life was not his own.”
	“That doesn’t stop everyone,” Morat remarked.
	“No,”  I said. “But he did send Taric a letter, just before his death, in which he clearly expressed an intention to go on living until he can be reunited with Taric.”
	“Why was this not brought out in the inquiry?” Dalen asked.
	“First, because no one knew about the letter but Taric, who couldn’t read it, and second, because there hardly was any inquiry. Everyone around him was convinced he had simply ended it because he was tired of the pain. Even me.”
	There was a thoughtful pause.
	“How clearly is this intention to go on living expressed?” Barant pressed.
	Taric turned to her.
	“This is what it said, near the end. ‘I know it has been a long time, and it will be a while longer. I don’t ask you to keep from other men. All I ask is that you believe I still love you, and that when--if--this thing releases me, and I can come to you again without danger to you, that you know I am coming, as you always know, and will find it in your heart to meet me there.’”
	Grinth gave out a short laugh. “Is that verbatim, friend?”
	Taric took the letter out of his shirtfront and handed it to me.
	“Yes...yes, word for word.” I folded it back up. “On one hearing, that’s pretty impressive.”
	“I don’t remember all of it so well,” Taric said, blushing as he tucked it away. “But I remember that part.”
	“This letter was written after the cleansing but before the death, and it describes his own experience of those events that are so familiar to all of us. In it he mentions his anger at seeing that his father was pleased to see the change that came on him after the kraikk took him. I’m going to ask you to remember that later. For now, Taric--”
	“Why didn’t you go to him?” Minead demanded.
	Taric looked at her. “Aiv?”
	“Why didn’t you go to him? You must have known he was suffering—if he had known that you—that you were still—if you had gone to him--”
	“I did go to him!” Taric shouted. “And your husband set the dogs on me!”
	Minead was suddenly quiet.
	“And after the dogs, the law,” Taric went on. “You don’t even know. You don’t even know your husband got a—a barring order against me. So that if I was ever found near him they’d take my farm. And if they took the farm then where would we have to go, once he was finally out of that damn big house!”
	I saw Ethir suddenly get more attentive. 
	“He told me to wait. I waited. All those months without a word from him and without a single person I could go to for news. Getting by on the scraps of talk I would hear about him in markets and taverns. The Aivin’s better, the Aivin’s worse, the shriia hasn’t given him up yet but it doesn’t look good. I thank the Spirit gossip runs as fast and loose as it does or I would never have even known he was dead.”
	He swung away from her, ashamed of his outburst. Minead looked down at the floor. 
	“So you did hear,” I said.
	“I heard about the trial. He sent me the drawings. They said to wait so I waited. Then I got the letter. And then the next day I heard he had died.” He looked up at me. “In the letter he talked of my jealousy. I was jealous, but not because he gave me cause. I was convinced, from the beginning, that we would not last. That our time was borrowed and that we were racing toward a bad ending. I thought he would leave me for someone else. Now I know that it was this.”
	“In the past week,” I said, “you have twice come into contact with the spirit of Mna’s taken child. Would you tell the Council a little bit about that?”
	Taric spoke about the visit from the rappari, and their trip through the ether. I testified to the effect Taric’s call had had on him, and that the child had called him by his name before any of us had spoken it. 
	“Based on what you have seen,” I said, “do you believe that Keanrih’s spirit has been reborn as this child?”
	Taric looked back at Crann, who was watching him with an unchildlike steadiness of focus. He swallowed, once.
	“I never said this, shriia,” he said, “because I didn’t in my heart believe it possible. But from the first day I saw him...I always thought he looked something like Keanrih, about the face. Now that he’s back...” He turned back to me. “It’s him. I know it. To my sorrow.”
	“Thank you, Taric,” I said.
	Grinth’s eyes were on Crann; they had been for most of Taric’s testimony. Even when she leaned forward to talk to me she was still watching him.
	“I’d like to hear from the child,” she said.
	“Very well,” I answered. “Taric, you can sit--”
	“No,” she said. “I want to see them together.”
	Taric stood transfixed in the center, nailed by his inarticulate anguish to the spot where he stood. Mna lifted Crann to his feet and gave him a gentle push forward.
	“Go on, sweet thing. Go to Tar-Tar.”
	Crann advanced eagerly on somewhat unsteady feet, hands waving in the air for balance. He tripped right past me to Taric, bumping up against his foot. Laughing, he threw his arms around Taric’s knee, clinging tight to him. For balance, perhaps.
	I crouched down near him. “Hello, Crann. Remember me?”
	He nodded.
	“What’s my name?”
	“The-amh.”
	“And who am I?”
	“You’re my friend.”
	“That’s right, Crann, I am.” I took one of his little hands and walked him back a step so he could see Taric’s face. “Who’s that, Crann?”
	Crann looked up, with a wide grin. “Tar-Tar.”
	“And who’s Tar-Tar?”
	“Tar-Tar,” he repeated, laughing at his own wit. “Tar-Tar-Fearr-Char. Tar-Tar.”
	I wasn’t looking at Taric’s face but I heard his breath catch. It was just a string of rhyming syllables. Except that “fearr,” which means “man,” can also mean “husband.” And “char,” of course, is the first half of “darling.” 
	<Taric, can I show them the letter?>
	No answer, aside from a lot of upheaval.
	<Taric?>
	<Yes, yes, nothing matters.>
	I brought the letter over to Grinth. “You can see,” I said, handing it to her. “The salutation. ‘Mo fhearr chara.’”
	Grinth passed it to Barant. Barant studied it moodily. As Grinth continued, it went from hand to hand. Taric was now in too much pain to care.
	“Was he in the habit of addressing you that way?” Grinth asked.
	Taric closed his mouth on the word “Yes.”
	“I don’t see what this proves,” Vrila barked, passing the letter on to Dalen. “Children will say any kind of nonsense.”
	Grinth appeared not to notice her. “Let’s see the other twin.”
	Mna put Frih on his feet, but he didn’t move. After some whispered urgings that went unheeded, Mna had to walk him forward by the hand. Even so, he stood mute and terrified, looking around at all the strangers with one thumb firmly wedged in his mouth.
	“Ask this one,” from Grinth.
	“Frih?” Frih didn’t respond to me. “Mna, you better ask.”
	Mna bent down. “Who’s that?” she said, pointing to me.
	“Shriia,” Frih said.
	“What’s she called?”
	Frih looked up, panicked, and looked back down.
	“Whisper it to me,” Mna said, leaning down.
	Frih stood up on tiptoe and cupped one hand. “Dhiaoc.”
	It was a stage whisper, and the others heard it--including Aine, who laughed once and then squelched it, blushing.
	“Now look what you’ve done,” I called back to Aine, in what I hope was obviously a jovial tone. “It’s the scoil training, Aiv. I’ve been trying for a year to get her to call me Theamh but you got to her first. ‘Dhiaoc’ is all she ever calls me, so now the child thinks it’s my used name.”
	Grinth doesn’t smile easily, but I thought she was amused. “If that’s the case,” she said, “then how does the other one know your used name?”
	I looked at him. One hand went up to rub the back of my neck.
	“I did introduce myself,” I said. “Maybe--”
	“But that didn’t clue in the second twin,” Cualha said, excitement rising in her voice.
	“Perhaps this one’s brighter,” Barant offered, half-joking.
	“Or perhaps,” Grinth said, sitting back, “he knows it from before.” I looked up at her. “He would have used it, wouldn’t he? You were friends, as I remember, and the young generation is becoming lax about these matters.”
	I tried not to show the smirk. “Yes, Aiv, he did use my name. I used his, after all. It’s only fair.”
	It was a proof I hadn’t thought of trying to make; an accidental windfall. But because they could tell it was an accident, they seemed to find it more convincing than anything that had gone before.
	“Ask him who Taric is,” Morat called.
	Mna pointed at Taric. “Who’s that?”
	Frih said the word slowly, clinging to Mna. “Tar-ic.”
	“Who’s Taric?”
	Frih didn’t answer. His eyes got rounder, but nothing else happened.
	“Who’s Taric?” Mna prompted, gently.
	Frih looked back at her and broke out the whisper again, more tentative this time but just as audible. “Athi?”
	Well, that was an interesting little window into his world. Mna cast an involuntary glance back at Taric, then turned Frih around so they were eye to eye.
	“Taric is not your athi,” Mna said. “Don’t say he is.”
	Frih drew back from the severity in her voice. 
	“He’s not your athi,” she said. “You have an athi, but he’s not here. You understand?”
	Frih nodded, and began to cry.
	“There, there,” Mna said, lifting him into her arms and cuddling him against one shoulder. There were tears in her eyes too now. “It’s all right. It’s all right.”
	Grinth looked from this spectacle back to Taric, who was staring furiously at the floor trying not to show whatever he was feeling.
	“I’ve seen enough,” she said. 
	There was a murmur of assent from the others.
	“Taric...” He looked up, with a troubled face that went straight to my heart. “Taric, unless you have anything else to add, you can sit down.”
	He nodded, and lifted his head.
	“Thank you for your testimony, friend,” Dalen said. “You’ve done a hard thing, but we thank you for it.”
	Taric wasn’t the only one looking at her in surprise. One convert won over anyhow. He, Mna and the twins made their way back to the cushions. I called Minead.
	Minead stood uncomfortably in the circle, head bowed a little forward, as if she were shy of their scrutiny. 
	“Minead,” I said, “did you know that your son and Taric were together?”
	She was silent.
	“Did he ever speak of it to you?”
	Minead shook her head.
	“Did you discover evidence of it?”
	She pulled her shawl closer around her and shook her gray head again.	
	“So you didn’t know.”
	Silence.
	“I suppose it doesn’t matter much,” I said, “only I thought it might help establish some history. You knew, of course, that he wouldn’t marry the woman Nocc had chosen. Do you think Nocc knew why?”
	No response.
	“I’m just trying to set it out for them, Minead, so they can see how things were. Did he ever suggest to you that it might be because Keanrih was with a man?”
	Still no reaction.
	“Minead,” I pleaded. “You said you would help--”
	“I’m here, aren’t I?”
	She turned her head away, the gray braid brushing along her straightened back.
	“Now this is a hostile witness, Theamh,” Ethir called.
	And one I hadn’t expected. I had assumed that by agreeing to come, she had been agreeing to testify.
	“So,” Ethir went on, “are you going to break her on the stand, or let her sit down?”
	“Of all the stupid questions,” I said, irritated. “I’m not here to break anyone, I only want everyone to see the truth.” I looked beseechingly at the back of Minead’s head. “I don’t understand, Minead, I thought you--”
	“No, you don’t understand!” she shouted, rounding back on me. “What did I know, when did I know it—those are meaningless questions. What does it matter whether I knew or suspected or said anything? What matters, except that I loved my boy?”
	“Nobody’s doubting that, Minead--” I began.
	“What matters? He never said and I never asked. I loved him knowing or not knowing.”
	“Did I say you didn’t?”
	“Then why do you ask?”
	“I only want to know from you if you think Nocc suspected that Keanrih liked men, because you see if he did that would explain why he--”
	“Of course he suspected it,” Minead shouted. “He’d suspected it from his childhood, before the poor boy could have been attracted to anyone or anything. It’s his fault,” she went on, carried away now, “if it’s anyone’s, how Keanrih turned out. Badgering him and hurting him the way he did.”
	“That isn’t really the point, Minead...”
	“Well then what is your point?”
	“Does it make sense to you that Nocc would care about this enough to have asked Lythril to change Keanrih’s nature?”
	“I had no idea he was even in contact with her.”
	“I’m not asking if you knew then, Minead, of course I don’t believe you did--”
	“You don’t understand!” she repeated, spinning around to face the Council. “None of you have families, you don’t know what it’s like to have a son and husband at war, none of you can understand, none of you can judge me!”
	“I don’t wish to,” I said, a little taken aback.
	“I wanted them to get on,” she said, beginning to shake a little. “I wanted there to be peace between them. It’s the only reason I gave him Keanrih’s name. The only reason. I didn’t know what he wanted it for!”
	Aha.
	“So he asked you for the name...”
	“As Idair is my witness I did not know he wanted it to harm him with,” Minead insisted, voice unsteady. “I thought he was asking because he wanted to be closer to him. That’s what he told me. You’ll say I shouldn’t have believed him.”
	“I would never suggest--”
	“I loved my son! As he was. As he was, as Idair made him. He knew that.” She was staring at Crann now, with the tears coming. “He knew that.”
	“But you also wished him different,” I said, in a dull and disappointed voice.
	“Yes,” she said, almost inaudibly.
	“You didn’t know what Nocc was planning.”
	“No.”
	“But once it happened...”
	She turned away from me.
	“Once it happened...you suspected.”
	The back of her head shook. And then she spoke.
	“No. I didn’t. But I noticed enough…that I should have.”
	I felt the remorse starting to radiate off her.
	“And you didn’t speak to anyone about it.”
	“No.”
	“Why not, Minead?”
	I could see Ethir pricking his ears up. He could tell I’d shifted out of rhetorical questions into real ones. So could Minead, who turned around stung by the reproach.
	“You don’t understand!” she said, again. “I knew nothing. What could I say?”
	“You could have asked me about--”
	“When for once in my life there was peace in the house!”
	“Peace?”
	“You don’t know what it is to live in that kind of war!”
	“Yes I do!” I shouted.
	Minead glared at me.
	“Father and son at war is bad enough; mother and daughter is worse. I lived that for years. I know how it works.”
	“Then you should understand it!” she shouted. “How often, by what betrayal of yourself, have you bought your family’s peace?”
	I stopped in my tracks.
	“Too often,” I finally said.
	Minead nodded.
	“So,” I went on. “That was why you called for the gardai so quickly.” She nodded. “But...last night...you seemed so surprised.”
	“I had to go on living there,” she said, dully. “For him. To live there I had to forget. I buried whatever my suspicions were. And by the time he died...” She shook her head. “Nocc was as upset as I was, in his own way. It showed me...I believed, I still believe, that all being all Nocc did—does—really love Keanrih. And so I believed I must have been wrong when I suspected.”
	“So you thought the death was suicide.”
	“He had reason enough.”
	“And last night...”
	“Rince came and told me what you’d asked him to do,” she said. “I told him to do it, that you must have a reason. And when I knew he’d gone down to meet you, I followed him.” She gave a low, bitter laugh. “I heard the whole thing.”
	“Might we hear the whole thing?” asked Eunem, one of the women in Comings and Goings.
	Minead told the story, convincingly and with mounting anger. The description of the divorce seemed to make the most difference. They felt, I suppose, that if she had been in any doubt she wouldn’t have reacted so strongly. 
	“So you do believe,” Grinth finally asked, “that your son’s spirit returned as Mna’s boy?”
	Minead nodded. “It’s him all right. I’ve no doubt about that.” She looked up, her face set. “A mother knows her child. No matter how he changes.”
	“Thank you,” Grinth said. “Theamh, is there anyone else you wish to call?”
	“Well...” My glance swept the witnesses’ area. “I could call Aine, I suppose, but I’m not sure she has anything to say you haven’t already heard.”
	“In that case, I don’t think we need hear from her,” Barant said. “Just speak your piece, and then you can withdraw.”
	“Very well,” I said, stepping forward.
	It was a moment before I knew how I wanted to start. But once I started, it came easily.
	“Idair never told us what happens after death,” I began. “It was a hard thing for us to accept, perhaps the hardest. There are many, many stories about it, but none with her stamp on them. I believe...that she left us this mystery because there was something to be learned from it. That it was, somehow, important for our welfare that we face this great question to which there can be no answer. Because facing it teaches us so much.” I looked at Morat; her brows were drawn together in concern, and she was following me closely. So were most of them. “We learn the courage of relying on what we know, in the face of what we don’t. We learn that if we want justice, fairness, happiness, for us and for our brothers and sisters among Idair’s children, we must make it here, and not wait for her to make it for us elsewhere. We learn that to do good and to do well is its own reward, right here, right now, and to do it not knowing whether we will live beyond our own deeds. We learn to love and serve Idair whether or not we believe she can protect us in that dark time that will come for all of us. We learn to trust, somehow, that nothing and no one is lost forever, still not knowing how this can be true.”
	I paused, continuing with the kind of diffidence that comes on me at times like this. “This that I have been talking about, this is the beginning of the end of that mystery,” I said. “And with it will end all that it can teach us. But more than that, it ends the equality that Idair wanted us so badly to have.”
	My hands fluttered into the air to try to help me describe what I thought. “From the moment of birth to the moment of death we live in the world, of the world, and the world makes us what we are. But before then, and after then, the world has nothing to do with us. We are made somewhere else, by some process we cannot understand, and we enter the world equal, and we enter it new. And it’s that, only that, that lets things change.
	“Do you see, that if there is now a way to fix this, so that instead of the new entering the world the old returns again and again--that if the rich are able to buy their way out of danger and uncertainty and change--that life itself must suffer?” I asked. “So that slowly, little by little, those who have this power will shape the world so that it can produce only what they want, how they want it? Beyond the question of whether Idair wants this--I don’t think it could be clearer that she doesn’t--do you see that we do not want this either? If life itself can be bought, if death can be paid off, what is free in this world?
	“And there are other questions too. What’s happening to the spirits that are never born? It’s possible, of course, that they simply go back to the source in the usual way, and wait to reenter another body. But I don’t think Lythril is that wasteful. I can’t believe she isn’t working, somehow, somewhere, on something to do with these spirits that we are not going to like one bit.
	“Let alone the strange effect these guuns have on spirituous matter. I’ve seen a rapparan dying of a heartbeat that didn’t belong to him, a plane knot itself into a tightening gullet, and my poor vigil curdled like clotting blood. A defense mechanism, certainly. But there would be less costly ways to defend. I believe that this effect is related to a greater purpose Lythril has. And that it would spread beyond our plane, beyond our lives, to the spirit world.
	“So for these reasons--because this strikes at the heart of every good thing Idair meant to give us, because it is a gross injustice and an outrage on human life and human freedom, I ask you to authorize me to go across the border to look for Lythril and to stop this process. We cannot do it from this end because our other organs of government have been infiltrated. The border is porous, at least one presider is corrupt, and the Seat is filling up with people who want to treat with the Cretids. And the demand will always be there. If I go across the border, I can strike at the source and end it once and for all.”
	Before what I knew would be the final passage I glanced around the room. There was a gravity to the silence that told me I was having the effect I wanted. Hopefully this last part would do it.
	“I know that there are some of you,” I said, looking at Morat, “who will say that I am just seizing the excuse to do what I have long wanted to do. It’s true that I have reasons and motives for going over the border after her that have nothing to do with the plot I have uncovered. I believe in my heart that even so I am the right woman for this job. But I understand why you might not agree. So I will say this: if you decide not to let me go, bitterly disappointed as I will be I will accept the decision.” I paused. “But please, you must send someone. I do believe Istria is up there, and I do want more than anything to find her. But this is bigger than Lythril, it’s bigger than Istria, and it’s certainly bigger than me. Don’t let my history keep you from doing our duty to our people. Someone must go up there. What I want or need doesn’t have to matter to you. But our people need to be sure that life is free to all in equal measure. They need to know that nobody will have to live through the loss and the pain you can read in Minead and Taric, standing there with their love burning inside them, afraid it will hurt him if they let it loose.” The gaze shifted onto Taric and Minead, who met it with equal parts of sullenness and pride. “We need to know that we can call our souls our own. And those things must matter.”
	I bowed my head and took the star off my neck, holding it out. “I have said what I came to say. Thank you for hearing me.”
	Dalen stepped into the ring, in dead silence, and took it from me.
	“Thank you for speaking,” she said. “If you will wait outside, we will make the decision.”
	I bowed and led the troops out. Dalen leaned over to grab the double doors and close them.
	Don’t worry, she said, winking at me. They’ll probably grant in under thirty seconds. You watch.
	The doors closed.
	“Thanks for coming, Pel,” I said. “You were a big help.”
	“Don’t mention it,” she said. “I hope they give it to you. The whole thing makes me sick.” She bowed her way out. 
	I sat down and leaned my head against the wall and closed my eyes. I could still hear the others milling around me.
	“Owdan mac Snelan,” said Owdan’s voice. “You’re at that farm between the crossroads, near the rock that looks like a ship?”
	“Yes,” Taric answered.
	“That really is the worst piece of land in the vicinity,” Owdan answered. “How do you live?”
	Darin’s voice overlapped him. “So no luck on the Bric connection?”
	“I’ll get there,” Ethir answered. “I’ve got Ernth working the assistants. That order was prepared for signing by someone at someone’s direction, and she’ll find out who did it. One way or another someone’s head will roll.”
	“So what did you think of the high life at the Craoibh Oir?” Darin turned to Aine. “Does Ulnach know how to party, or what?”
	“I heard about that,” Ethir broke in. “Tell me what happened.”
	I let the voices fade. It had been a long time since I’d had a decent night’s sleep, and for a long time I was only partly conscious of what was happening around me. I did remain aware, however, that time was passing. More time than should pass.
	“Well,” Darin finally said, standing up, “I’m off back to the hospital. Listen, Theamh, before I go, let me give you a word of medical advice.”
	“All right,” I said. “Since you must.” 
	“When you cross the Zone, don’t drink or eat anything you find there. It’ll all be poisoned from the chemical runoff. Once you get across the border, the running water will be all right, but don’t drink from streams or rivers or ponds. Don’t eat meat that hasn’t been cooked thoroughly, especially poultry. And don’t drink anything that has alcohol in it.”
	“What’s alcohol?” I asked.
	He stared at us. Then, slowly, he started to shake his head, laughing quietly.
	“Priceless,” he said. “Abso-bloody-lutely priceless. If you told people back home, nobody would believe you.”
	“What’s alcohol?” Aine repeated.
	“It’s mind poison,” Darin said, pulling out a piece of parchment and writing on it. “It’s bad for Cretids but it’s much, much worse for you folks.” He handed me the paper. “Don’t drink anything on this list. And--” He took the paper back and started adding things. “May as well add the two hundred other forms of mind poison people consume every day up there that would kill you in a heartbeat...” When he had finally satisfied himself that the list was complete, he folded it up and gave it back. “You can read my writing, can’t you?”
	“More or less,” I said. “How is it that the Cretids are so rich in plagues and poisons?”
	“The Cretids are a plague,” Aine answered.
	“Remember, Darin’s my friend, and he’s a Cretid.”
	“I am not a Cretid!” he snapped.
	I blinked at him.
	“But I thought you were born in Cretid City.”
	“I was.”
	“But doesn’t that make you--”
	“Not necessarily.”
	 “But why--”
	“It’s complicated.” He sat back, looking at Aine. “You’re right. The Cretids are a plague. Always have been. They go abroad to plague the world, and the world plagues them back.” He stood up. “That’s the whole health advisory, Theamh.”
	“Thank you,” I said. 
	“And now I have to ask you a favor.”
	“Of course.”
	He took a letter out of his pocket and handed it to me.
	“If you go to the Cretid City,” he said, “go to the South Corner. You’ll find a woman living down there called Kwenu Umuo. Her name and address is written on the letter.” I looked down; it was addressed in Darin’s sprawling handwriting. “Give it to her, and tell her I would have been there if I could have. And tell her...” He paused, appearing to return to his memory. “Well. Just tell her my last one was thirty years, three months, two weeks and a day from this day.”
	“Your last what?”
	He shook his head. “She’ll know what you mean.”
	“All right,” I said, tucking it into my sleeve. “Anything else you want delivered to the folks back home?”
	“No,” he said, after a sad pause. “That about sums it up.” He stretched. “Well, back to the hospital. Want to walk me out, Ethir?”
	Ethir nodded, waving cheerfully at me. “Don’t worry. You made an airtight case. And you broke Minead like a champ.”
	“For the last time, I did not break any--”
	“Idair with you,” he said sweetly, and walked laughing out with Darin.
	Aine slid over to where I was sitting. “Do you think he’s right, dhiaoc?”
	“It shouldn’t be taking this long,” I said. “Not if they’re going to grant it.”
	“They must grant it.”
	“Dalen seemed to think it was a done deal,” I said. “But obviously there’s more disagreement than she thought.”
	“Disagreement about what?” Mna demanded. “How could anything be plainer?”
	I shrugged. “Who knows. Maybe they’re just talking about me behind my back. They do that sometimes.”
	“Who is Istria, shriia?” Taric asked.
	I laughed.
	“Istria is the woman I love,” I said. “That’s about as short as I can make that story.”
	“And Lythril has her?”
	“I think so. Of course the Council thinks she’s dead. But, you know, we thought Keanrih was dead...”
	“Do you think she might have been...reborn?” Aine asked.
	This possibility had never occurred to me. I didn’t like contemplating it.
	“I hope not,” I said. “Because if she has, I’m sure Lythril put her into someone nasty.”
	Gilish stood up. “I...I’m sorry, but I need to get back to the Felchett house before they lock the doors.”
	“All right then,” said Owdan, getting up along with Ilwath. He looked at Taric, who looked back.
	“Don’t be a stranger,” Owdan finally said.
	The three of them made their bows and left, Taric looking after them in perplexity.
	“What did he mean by it, shriia?” he asked.
	“For Owdan, that’s a big speech. You must have made an impression.” Then, as his eyes changed, “Oh--I very much doubt that, Taric. I think he just wants a friend. He still...” I wrapped my arms around my knees. “He misses his dead wife terribly, he’s never said but it’s written everywhere on him. And he saw tonight you have something in common.” I looked around at the door yet again. “What is taking them so long?”
	“I don’t know,” Minead answered. “But I’m staying till they’re done, I can tell you that.”
	She, Mna and Taric settled down for some more waiting. 
	<What’s the matter, dhiaoc?>
	<Something’s wrong, somewhere.>
	Finally the doors opened and Dalen’s head popped out. “Theamh?”
	There was a sound of scuffling as everyone got to their feet. “Yes?”
	“They want you to come back in and answer some more questions.”
	The others seemed to register the shock that I felt.
	“Correct me if I’m wrong,” I said, “but isn’t that totally irregular?”
	“Tell me about it,” she snapped. “But if you want it granted, you’d better come back in and answer to them.”
	“Wish me luck,” I said.
	“Good luck, shriia,” Mna answered. Aine just looked worried.
	<Will you be all right?>
	<It’s not like they’re going to eat me, Aine.> I followed Dalen into the room.
	The ambient noise was much louder, and there was a lot of gesticulating going on. As soon as the doors shut behind us Barant’s voice rose above the din.
	“Theamh! Come on forward, we have a few questions we want to ask to clear up some things--”
	“Speak for yourself,” interrupted Morat, seconded by cheers from what I guessed was her faction. “I think her presentation was perfectly clear, and I don’t see what anyone hopes to get out of grilling her.”
	“I’ll answer anything I can,” I said, looking around in some confusion. “If you’ll just tell me what the matter is--”
	“How do you know Lythril is behind this?” Kelah demanded.
	“Because she sent a cat to my house and because we did battle in the ether yesterday. If she’s not behind this she’s going to a lot of trouble to make me think so.”
	“Whether she is or isn’t,” Lilea put in, “the replacement business is still happening, and--”
	“But if it isn’t Lythril then there’s no need for a border clearance,” Barant pointed out.
	“And anyhow,” Riina said, “I’m not convinced it is happening.” 
	There was a loud groan from the rest of the assembly. I had the feeling that this was an argument that had gone around a few times already.
	“Why not?” Lilea shot back.
	“You’re identifying that notborn as Pel’s father based on one repeated phrase,” she said. “Who says someone else can’t want to purify something somehow too?”
	“Where is a six week notborn going to get an idea like that?” Dalen shouted.
	“Where do any of us get any of our ideas?”
	“Well, what about that other boy,” Eunem cried. “Keanrih or Crann or whoever he is. You saw him.”
	“I saw him all right,” Riina said. “That proves nothing. Mna could have coached him to act that way--”
	“Oh, come ON!” Morat said. “Why on earth should she--”
	“And besides,” Dalen cut in. “We know Nocc had Lythril kill him, the man as good as admitted it.”
	“As good as,” Kelah answered. “He never did actually confess.”
	“Well, what do you want?” I demanded. “Of course he’s not going to stand there and say, ‘Yes, let me explain to you exactly what I did and how I did it.’ But as far as I’m concerned--”
	“Yes, we know how things are as far as you’re concerned,” Riina said. “But how do we know he didn’t mean something different when he made that woman that offer?”
	“What else could he have meant?” I said, genuinely amazed.
	“He never said that he believed Crann was Keanrih.”
	“He called Crann the child of his spirit,” I argued. “How else do you want to read that?”
	“Maybe Crann really is his son,” Kelah suggested. “In the normal way.”
	“That’s ridiculous!” I shouted. “Mna’s never been to the City before--”
	“That’s what she tells you,” Barant said. “You see, this is my question. You’re basing so much of your theory on the assumption that Mna and Taric and Minead are telling the truth. Just because you’re bound to do that doesn’t mean everyone else is.”
	I thought about this. “All right,” I said. “I guess I am. But let’s go just on what I’ve seen for myself.” I began numbering the points on my fingers. “Mna’s child is taken. That’s not in doubt. He shows up a day later on a rapparan on Taric’s horse. I saw that myself. Taric knew Keanrih and knew him bloody well and we don’t just have Taric’s word for that,” I said as I saw Vrila gearing up for a rebuttal, “because there is that letter, and I know his handwriting.”
	“What if Lythril wrote it for him when he was possessed?” Kelah put in.
	“I--first, the handwriting would be different, second, it was written after I cleansed him and it says some nice things about me which she never would even for the sake of deceiving others, and third, if you’re assuming that, then you’re assuming Lythril possessed him and that Taric knew him which are the two points we’re debating here so what kind of an objection is that?”
	There was an involuntary laugh from Slythe, and some ironic applause from Dalen and some of her partisans. Kelah looked angry, but didn’t answer me.
	“So there is that letter,” I said, “and I know he was possessed by that kraikk because I cast it, and you know from Minead that Nocc asked for his name before--”
	“But if Minead is not being truthful,” Barant said wearily.
	“Look, I heard Nocc try to buy Crann off Mna and I heard him tell her he was the child of his spirit. And once he knew I knew he stopped trying to deny it.”
	“Maybe he was just going along with you,” Riina said.
	“For the love of Idair, why would he do that?”
	“With four people there listening to him? That’s a pretty big intimidation factor.”
	“Regardless!” I shouted. “We know there were guuns on both Pel and Lilea. For all I know there’s one on your head right now.”
	“There isn’t,” Riina said. “I’ve been scoured.”
	“Lucky for you,” I answered.
	“But they have found guuns on three provincial shriias,” Morat said. 
	“And we know they were replacing notborns, I saw it happen. Lilea will tell you the same. And that same kind of guun was carrying Crann around in its gut. And when I found it that last time and we got Crann out of its gut he recognized Mna and Minead and Taric and you have my word as well as theirs on that and Aine would confirm it if you asked her. Now what else do you want?”
	There was a general shout of agreement from the pro-granting faction. I now had a general sense for who was on which side--Morat, Dalen, Lilea and Eunem were the most vocal proponents of my cause with Vrila and Riina on the other side and Kelah just making trouble off and on out of spite. Slythe, I noticed, was sitting pretty quietly, and Barant, as always, was trying to moderate without inclining to either side.
	“So all this,” Riina said, “we know it because you saw it happen.”
	“That’s right,” I answered. “So even if you subtract the testimony, there are enough elements that I can personally verify that prove me right.”
	“That’s right,” Eunem shouted.
	“What if you’re wrong?” Kelah countered.
	“Look, we’re all imperfect, there may be mistakes, but with due understanding of my own human frailty I still say my theory addresses the facts better than anything I can think of. If any of you’ve got a theory that will cover all the facts--even just the ones I can personally verify--let’s hear it. I’d just as soon this wasn’t happening.”
	There was no immediate volunteer.
	“You have to admit,” Morat said, a little calmer now, “it’s a bizarre set of facts, and Theamh’s explanation is the only thing I can see that makes them make sense.”
	“That’s assuming these really are the facts,” Riina said.
	“Look, I just went through this,” I said. “Every one of the major components is something I’ve witnessed myself--”
	“That’s the point,” Riina shouted. “It all depends on your word!”
	“So you have my word!” I shouted back.
	“So what?”
	Silence fell sharp as a blade. The shock reeled around me as I stood staring at her. It was a few minutes before I could convince myself that this was really happening and that I really had to respond.
	“Are you calling me a liar, Riina?” I said, quietly.
	“If the chain fits,” she answered.
	A collective gasp, and then the room erupted in turmoil. Barant sank back on her bench shaking her head. I couldn’t make out any single voice; they were all raised at once. There were overlapping shouts of disbelief, indignation, confusion, anger, shooting around and across the room. I stood there, the only one who wasn’t shouting, staring mute and stunned at the woman who had just called me false.
	Riina was trying not to look at me, but she could feel the stare. And it was bothering her. Her brown eyes flicked from person to person as she watched the progress of the chaos she had unleashed.
	“Riina ni hOalar, have you lost your mind?” Dalen’s voice was the first one I could make out.
	“Or are you just possessed?” Eunem shouted.
	“This entire castle of suspicion stands or falls on her testimony,” Riina shouted. “None of you are willing to even consider the possibility--”
	“No, I’m not!” Morat retorted. “And how you can stand there and--”
	“The whole thing is just so farfetched and improbable,” Riina insisted. “It’s asking a lot to believe it’s true and it’s a lot simpler to believe that Theamh is just--”
	“Well maybe it’s simpler but it’s also flat-out WRONG!” Cualha answered.
	“Look, it’s simple enough to test,” someone from the sidelines put in. “If you really think she’s dark--”
	“Yes, auralyze her and get it over with--”
	“Where’s the gessol?”
	“I think it’s with--”
	“You’re all out of your minds!” Lilea was now joining the fray. “Are you telling me you really believe Theamh ni hUlnach is false?”
	Eorna, who had suggested the auralysis, blenched in the face of Lilea’s anger. “Ah...no, no of course not, only it’s simple enough to prove, and--”
	“Look, let’s ask her,” Barant finally said, standing up. “Theamh, are you willing to undergo an auralysis, if only just to shut Riina up?”
	I was hoping people were interpreting my shocked silence as outrage rather than fear.
	“To hell with that!” I shouted, when I could finally speak. “This isn’t a court of law, my friends. I’m a shriia and this is the Council. If there’s any doubt in anyone’s mind about my veracity or my allegiance, for Idair’s sake don’t thurk around with auralysis. Get on down here and hale me out!”
	“Theamh, that’s not something to joke--” Barant remonstrated.
	“I’m completely serious!” I shouted, my anger now finally giving my incredulity a run for its money. “Riina may think it’s a light matter to accuse me of falsehood but I sure as hell don’t. If you’re going to do this, do it right! Hale me out!”
	“How about someone just touch-tests her?” Kelah ventured.
	“But the touch test is relative, not absolute,” Vrila said. “And it won’t work if she’s only shrimarbh--”
	“Why are we even talking about this?” Lilea shouted. “I challenge anyone in this room besides Riina to tell me on her word as a shriia that she seriously believes Theamh ni hUlnach is a minion.”
	“She could be lying without necessarily being a minion, Lilea,” Barant pointed out. “There is a middle ground--”
	“And are you saying I’m standing there?” I demanded.
	“Theamh...please don’t get emotional...”
	“Emotional!” I shouted.
	“Riina’s just doing her duty by the Order. If she has suspicions, she has to voice them.”
	“Yes, but it does not then follow that you have to take them seriously, Barant,” Morat snapped.
	“This is a very grave matter,” Barant replied, unflappably. “If there is any doubt--”
	“Is there any doubt?” I called.
	Barant looked at me. A vertical line of worry appeared between her brows.
	“Is there?”
	“Theamh, I’m only trying to insure that--”
	“I’m asking you, the shriia, my diaoc, the woman who taught me most of what I know. Is there any doubt in your mind about what I am or who I serve?”
	Barant looked from me to Riina and back again.
	“Theamh, believe me, I personally would never doubt you, but I have to consider the Order, and all things are possible.”
	This amazing statement prompted a fresh wave of shouts and gestures, over which I shouted, as loud as I could, “All right then, Barant, hale me out!”
	“Theamh, you really don’t want her to do that,” Lilea said. “It’s painful--”
	“Like I care!” I shouted. “I’ve been called false in front of the whole council and my diaoc has just credited the charge. At this point haling me out can only cheer me up.”
	“It takes five years off your life,” Morat protested.
	“So what? What have I got to live for? My work, and the possibility of someday finding Istria. You take both away from me, I won’t care how long my life is. So bring it on!”
	“Look, don’t be ridiculous,” Dalen said. “Nobody is going to hale you out because nobody believes this infamous charge. Do we?”
	Riina looked around. “Kelah?”
	Kelah threw up her hands. “I’m not saying I agree with all her conclusions, Riina, but if you want to go there you’ll go without me.”
	“Vrila.”
	Vrila shot a troubled glance from me to Barant.
	“All things are possible, as you said,” she said carefully.
	“I still don’t see why we don’t just auralyze her,” Eorna suggested.
	Lilea snorted. “Where were you for Krenham v. Lythril--under a rock?”
	“But Lythril’s not here now, and--”
	“If we auralyze her now, it will be a disaster,” Eunem reasoned. “If it’s white, Riina will swear it’s been rigged and if it’s black, we will.”
	“Then why don’t we--”
	“Because--”
	“I still don’t see why--”
	The noise was becoming unbearable, at least to me. I could hardly believe this was happening. In all my years in the Order I had never heard a shriia accuse another of blatant, premeditated falsehood--and on such a solemn occasion. Why was Riina doing this to me? Why, for that matter, was Idair?
	“All right, let’s just touch-test her. Barant, you’re her diaoc--”
	SILENCE!
	Grinth might have been old, but she still had it. One blast from her mind and the room was death-quiet on the instant. All the eyes turned to the bench with the star as Grinth brought her frail but still formidable eighty-year-old frame to its full height.
	“I have been a member of the Order since I was twenty-four years old,” Grinth said, advancing through the rows toward the circle and casting a baleful glance on those around her. “I have been on the Council for the past thirty years and I have been fortunate enough to lead it for the past twenty. And in all that time I have never seen a more shameful performance than this.” She was now standing in the first row, glaring across the circle at Riina, who quailed under the stare. “How dare you, Riina, call a sister’s allegiance into question for no better reason than that you don’t agree with what she has to say?” 
	Riina apparently had no answer for this question. Vrila was slinking down into her seat in the vain hope that she would not be next.
	“And all things are indeed possible,” she went on, rounding on Barant and Vrila. “It’s possible that a moment from now I will turn into an Amranthian box turtle and crawl off to make a home on the banks of the Lifhi. Idair sometimes has these whims. But I don’t expect I will, any more than I expect that anyone in this room can show cause why we should not believe that Theamh is serving the Order and Idair as truly as she was six years ago when she walked into that viper’s den because we asked her to.”
	Grinth was now standing in the circle, a few feet from me, walking slowly in a circle as she spoke so that everyone could get the benefit of her scorn. “We will not auralyze Theamh, we will not touch-test her, and we will not hale her out. We will not do any of these things because I am still the head of this Council and I do not countenance Riina’s charge.”
	“So because you’re head of the Council, we’re to just swallow this insane story of Theamh’s?” Riina had evidently found her voice again.
	“Theamh has come here to a room that holds very bad memories for her in order to put herself through what has clearly been the grueling ordeal of revealing to us a very complex, very subtle, and very disturbing plot. Frightening as it is to believe that something on this scale could have been operating for this long without our knowledge, I for one do not find Theamh’s theory implausible.” She swung sharply around on Vrila. “You don’t want to believe it, because it reflects poorly on your department. Let me tell you, Vrila, to attempt to save your own reputation by countenancing a charge this frivolous is at best the height of irresponsibility!”
	“But, Aiv--” Vrila began.
	“As for you, Riina,” Grinth returned, ignoring Vrila completely, “I now give you the opportunity to retract your charge and to apologize to Theamh for the great wrong you have done her. If you do not avail yourself of it, the next item on the Council’s agenda will be your disciplinary hearing.”
	Riina looked at Barant, who was looking at Grinth. Grinth fixed her hard, bright eyes on Riina’s and waited.
	“I do not retract it!” Riina finally burst out, with the fierceness of desperation. “I tell you there’s something rotten in the Order and it’s not my fault that you’re too old or too blind to see it!”
	There was a swelling shout of anger from the rest of the crowd. Grinth, her face red with rage, sprang up toward Riina with her mouth open, but stopped suddenly, clawing the air and not saying anything.
	“Grinth!” I called, starting toward her. “Grinth, what’s wrong?”
	The face Grinth turned toward mine was frozen in a twisted grimace, of shock or pain or something else unpleasant. As I rushed forward the only thing that seemed, to me, to be alive in that face were the eyes, which were pleading with me to hear the message she was sending.
	Help me.
	I caught her before she fell, bringing her down to the floor as slowly and gently as I could. I didn’t know what to do for her, except to put one of her arms around my shoulders and support her head with one of mine. She was lighter than I would have thought, with prominent bones. And her free hand twisting now into a claw as her body shuddered.
	“Lilea, help me, I don’t know what to do!” I shouted.
	Lilea was already on her way down, along with everyone else in the Council. She reached us first, taking Grinth from me into her arms. Grinth’s still-working hand tightened around my wrist and refused to let go. I bent over her as Lilea put a hand to Grinth’s gray temple.
	“What is it, Lilea?” Eunem asked, her voice now hushed like everyone else’s.
	“The uru has come on her,” Lilea said.
	I covered Grinth’s clutching hand with one of mine. “How bad?” asked Kelah.
	“Bad,” Lilea answered, still busy reading the damage in Grinth’s mind. “It must have been the strain of the confrontation that set it off. She’s...” Lilea shook her head. “She might last days or weeks yet but she’ll never be right again.”
	“Well, I hope you’re happy, Theamh,” Riina snapped.
	“You just shut up!” Morat shouted, her voice shaking with emotion. “You’ve done enough for one day!”
	“Me! What have I done but--”
	“Riina,” Barant barked. “This is no time for your squabbling. Be silent, and if you can’t, leave us.”
	Lilea looked up at Eunem. “Help me get her to the Mathair.”
	The crowd drew back slightly as Eunem came forward. Together, the two of them lifted Grinth into the air between them. As her thin, racked body rose in its loose hreapa, her gray hair trailing down toward the floor, the reality of what had happened seemed to set in. Morat was already crying; others now began, loudly or silently, keening the loss that they knew was imminent. Dalen ran to open the doors.
	Lilea and Eunem brought her out, followed by the rest of the council, pell-mell in twos and threes. I was still kneeling where I had been, too stunned to move.
	“Come on,” Dalen said. “I have to shut the doors.”
	I got up, and moved toward her with a broken, shaky stride.
	“Anyone who believed Riina is either stupid or false,” Dalen said. “Grinth proved that with her last conscious action.” We looked at each other across the shocked air of the council chamber. “Something may be rotten in the Order but I’m pretty sure it’s not you.”
	Dalen shut the doors behind us and ran off after them toward the Mathair. 
	Mna, Aine and Taric attacked me immediately.
	“What happened?” Mna demanded.
	“We saw them carrying Grinth out--” Aine said, her face white with alarm.
	“Did they decide, shriia?” Taric asked.
	I shook my head. “They won’t decide,” I said. “Not for a while now. I--” I sat down in the hallway, still not believing what had just happened.
	“What happened to her? Will she be all right?”	
	“No, Aine. She won’t be all right. The uru’s come on her.”
	Aine’s mouth opened in shock.
	“How?” Mna asked.
	“She got into an argument with Riina and she just--the strain was too much.”
	“About what?”
	I looked at Aine. “Would you believe,” I said, “that Riina stood up there in front of the whole Council and doubted my word?”
	“She didn’t.”
	“Oh, yes she did.”
	“But--no one believed her, dhiaoc!” Aine cried.
	“Grinth didn’t,” I said. “But I can’t swear everyone was behind her.”
	Mna looked back to me. “So they won’t decide?”
	“They’re taking Grinth to the Mathair. They’ll want to keep a watch on her day and night now to make sure she has a clean exit. And even without this--they called me in because they weren’t sure.”
	“How could they not be sure?” Minead demanded. “How could they not believe you?”
	“Who knows,” I said. “Maybe Lythril was in there somehow stirring up trouble. Maybe I’ve lost my mind and none of this is really happening. Maybe--”
	“Dhiaoc,” Aine said, “let’s go home.”
	I stood up. “I want to go see how Grinth’s doing--”
	“No.”
	All four of us looked at her in varying states of shock.
	“Aine?” I queried.
	<Dhiaoc, please, we have to go home right now.>
	<Why?>
	<I need to tell you something.>
	<Then tell me here.>
	<I can’t tell you here.>
	<Why not?>
	<Because!>
	“All right then,” I said. <Lilea.>
	<Theamh?>
	<I’m taking the troops home. Call me if there’s any news, and...tell Grinth...I’m sorry.>
	<You’ve nothing to be sorry for, Theamh. Grinth knows that as well as I do. Idair with you.>
	“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
	Taric and Minead got to their feet. Mna took a tired and cranky pair of twins by each hand. 
	“Shriia,” she said.
	“Yes, Mna?”
	The weariness in my voice surprised even me.
	“Something’s wrong.”
	“Yes,” I said, staring back at the doors. “Something’s wrong.”

XXIV.
Now They Tell Me
	
	The living area looked pale and ghastly in the light of the globe. I sat in the big chair, the one I’d made with moments like this in mind. Not that I had ever imagined this particular moment. I couldn’t have. But I knew even then there would be days when I would want to just flop down into that chair and sit there until my bones stopped hurting. Except that in this case, it was really more my mind that was in pain.
	It hadn’t taken the Spirit very long to wreck my life. A bare week ago, I had never met Mna or learned about any of this. Now Grinth was dying, and there were at least two people on the Council who were willing to believe that I was false to my vows. How had any of this happened?
	I’d never been a model shriia. I was a discipline problem from the beginning, and my passion for Istria, of which I had made no secret, meant that a lot of them looked at me askance for various reasons. But after that one unpleasant scene before Istria left, nobody had ever questioned my truth or my dedication. And nobody had had cause. I’d done good and I’d done well. Even at the worst of the fighting with the Council nobody had ever accused me of intentional, outright gratuitous lying, and even Morat had always accepted my integrity even as she cast aspersions on just about every other aspect of my character and intellect.
	“Dhiaoc...”
	Aine was standing a little inside the doorway, watching me with a kind of rattled intensity that boded no good.
	“You got Mna settled upstairs with the boys?”
	“Yes, dhiaoc. They’re both asleep. It was too long a day for them.”
	I nodded.
	“Dhiaoc...”
	“Is Idair punishing me for something?” I asked, lifting my head.
	“Dhiaoc--”
	“Is it possible that Riina’s right? That there is something--underneath--wrong with me?”
	“Dhiaoc, stop it!” Aine cried, her voice high and taut with tension.
	The hand whose fingers raked compulsively through her short hair was shaking, as was the one balled up into a fist at her side. Tears slid out from between her closed eyelids.
	“I’m sorry, Aine,” I said, forgetting my own problems at the sight of her acute distress. “You said you had something to tell me?”
	Aine’s eyes opened, but her mouth didn’t.
	I got up out of the chair, alarmed. “Aine, there is nothing you could have to tell me that’s worth all this fear and agony.” I put a hand on her tensed shoulder. “It will be all right, whatever it is.”
	“Dhiaoc--you’ll be angry--worse than angry--I’ll deserve it--but--”
	“I really don’t think my reaction could possibly be as painful to you as what’s happening now,” I said gently. “Whatever it is.”
	Her reddened eyes looked into mine as she snuffled up the tears that were coming faster now. “Dhiaoc...you know I would...never...I’d never...not knowingly...” She grabbed my hand in both of hers, which were hot and dry. “Dhiaoc, please, you have to believe I would never do anything to hurt you, that I’m loyal to you, no matter what happens, that my allegiance is yours and no one else’s--”
	“Your allegiance is to Idair, Aine. I’m just your dhiaoc.” She whimpered. “It’s all right, Aine, just say what you’re trying to say.” I tried taking a lighter approach. “It’s the perfect time, really. I’m already as upset as I can get.”
	Aine took a deep, unquiet breath.
	“It’s not you,” she said. “It’s not you that’s false.”
	“See, that cheers me up right there.”
	“No, you don’t understand,” Aine said, eyes lighting now with a dangerous spark. “That time...that you asked me to feed the vigils, and I didn’t...”
	“Yes?”
	“I...I didn’t forget.”
	“I know that, Aine.”
	She blinked. “You do?”
	“You never forget anything. You just didn’t feed them because you were scared.”
	“No, dhiaoc,” Aine said, her voice now low and choked. “That’s not what happened.”
	“So what happened then?”
	“I didn’t...I didn’t feed them because...” Her eyes were pleading now, flinching already from the wrath she anticipated. “I was told not to.”
	I didn’t immediately appreciate the significance of that statement. “What do you mean? Who told you?”
	Aine gulped before she could get it out, a hand at her throat as if to help the sound move. “Someone on the Council.”
	Now I appreciated it.
	“What are you saying, Aine?”
	“I--after you talked to me, after you found Mna, I got a message from the Council telling me not to feed your vigils.”
	She must have read the outrage on my face, because she flew immediately into an explanation.
	“I didn’t know--what it would mean--”
	“Someone told you to put my life at risk and you did it?”
	“They told me you wouldn’t be hurt!” she shouted back, sobbing now.
	“And you believed them?”
	“I thought--it was the Council--they must have reasons--”
	“How could you do this to me?” I cried, the shock of it finally sinking in. “To deliberately betray me--”
	“It was the Council! Who am I to go against the Council? I thought they had to be right--”
	“And that I somehow deserved to be invaded and overtaken?”
	“I didn’t know what it would mean!” she shouted, dropping to her knees on the floor in front of me. “I didn’t know what would happen to you if I did what they asked me--”
	“But you did it anyway.”
	“I’m just a scoilin. How could I know better than the Council?”
	I knelt in front of her so that I could see her eyes. She was frightened, and guilt-stricken, and nearly out of her mind with anxiety, but I was still angry, and still hurt.
	“You’ve known all this time that someone on the Council had it in for me and you never told me.”
	“I couldn’t, dhiaoc--I just--”
	“Even after you found out what happened. Even after you got in the habit!”
	“I--not everything has to be said--”
	“I’m not talking about your duty to the Order. Thurk the Order. What about your duty to me?” I cried. “Not even as your diaoc or as a shriia. What about the simple human decency that one friend shows to another?” Aine dropped her eyes in despair. “Why didn’t you tell me I was in danger?”
	My shift from anger to hurt appeared to embolden her. “I--I--I wanted to tell you, so many times I’ve tried to tell you but--”
	“But you were afraid,” I said, sitting back on my heels, drained and sick to my stomach.
	Aine nodded, snuffling.
	“That I’d do exactly what I’ve just done.”
	As an answer, Aine burst into fresh tears. I sighed.
	“I’m sorry, Aine,” I said. “You were afraid I’d be angry and you were right.”
	“It’s not just that,” Aine wailed. “I--I--I’m just a scoilin. If I told you, and you didn’t believe me--and you reported to the Council--and they--and they denied it--”
	“I’d take their word over yours,” I said.
	She nodded tearfully.
	“I’m sure that’s what they were counting on.”
	“And you’d think I was--crazy--or worse--and I couldn’t--I couldn’t stand that--” 
	“You don’t know me as well as you think you do,” I said.
	Aine looked up at me.
	“Who was it?” I finally asked.
	She shook her head.
	“Come on, Aine, you’re not going to tell me all this and not tell me that.”
	“I don’t know, dhiaoc.”	
	“What do you mean you don’t know?”
	“She didn’t say who she was and I couldn’t tell and I was embarrassed to ask--you know how I am!”
	It was true. In Aine’s evaluation file her mindstrength teachers all commented on a particular peculiarity that nobody seemed to know how to correct. For some reason, she had a lot of trouble identifying and distinguishing linked signals. She could do everything else with ease and skill, but it was hard for her to place a voice when she heard it the first time in her head. Some of us have these blind spots, and we work around them. She could identify me after all the practice, but she still couldn’t do it with very many others. And anyone with access to her evaluations would have known that.
	“How did you know it was from the Council?”
	“She showed me the seal.”
	“All right then, Aine,” I said. “Someone on the Council delivered me up to Lythril. Useful information. Thanks for sharing it.”
	“Dhiaoc--”
	“I know, I know, I’m sorry.” I looked at her, and my anger was gone. She was so young, and so broken up. Whoever had done this had been smart to try it with her--Aine arrived with an unhealthy respect for authority, and even after a year I hadn’t broken her of it. To be caught between the authority of the Council and my claim on her as dhiaoc must have been unspeakably painful and confusing for her; no wonder she tried to forget it had happened. Angry already on my own behalf, I got more incensed as I thought about the toll their machinations had taken on her.
	“You know what’s the most improbable thing about this, really, is that knowing this you didn’t just assume they suspected I was dark--and believe them.”
	“I...” She shook her head. “I don’t know, dhiaoc, I just could never believe that about you.”
	“Why not?” I asked.
	“Everything I’ve seen,” she said, “says you’re true. I believe myself.”
	“Congratulations,” I said. “You’ve learned insubordination.”
	Aine’s face reflected my smile, wanly.
	“So,” I said, dragging myself up and over to the chair. “We know now that someone in the Council is dark.”
	“Dhiaoc, I really did not know that she would attack you,” Aine insisted, curling up at the bottom of the chair.
	“No, but whoever gave you that order certainly did,” I said. “Although who could have predicted she’d choose such a dramatic moment to do it. And risky, too, in broad daylight in front of all those people. You’d think she would wait until I was alone...”
	“I’m just--I’m just glad you won, dhiaoc.”
	“It was hairy, but really the danger wasn’t as great as it seemed. I have that amulet, and with her being a dark user there was the warning pain. I suppose her plan was just to strangle me and dump my body somewhere--she wouldn’t have been able to stay in me for long.”
	“Why should she want to kill you?”
	“Spite, maybe. Or because she could tell I was about to start interfering with her plans. But it really is a boneheaded way to do it--taking possession in such a public setting, with all the risk it involved, so that if she failed everyone for miles would hear...”
	I trailed off.
	“Dhiaoc?”
	I started laughing, hollowly.
	“Dhiaoc...what’s the matter?”
	“You know what?” I said, with a laugh born of my growing sense that my own life, death and welfare were nothing but a cosmic joke. “I should have known this all along. I would have, if I weren’t so permanently pissed off at Lythril that I’m capable of attributing to her any kind of malice or folly.”
	“How?”
	“The kind of possession she was trying isn’t practical, especially not from that kind of distance. While you’re in the victim’s body you have to leave your own. It’s dangerous, and the longer you’re gone the more of a strain it is on the connection. It would have to be a short-term strategy. Unless it failed.”
	“What do you mean?”
	“Procedural quiz,” I said. “What’s the first thing you do after you’re cleansed?”
	“Report the battle.”
	“And then what happens?”
	“You report to the Council or its local representative to get...” She looked up at me, suddenly understanding. “Scoured.”
	“She wanted to attack me while I was in the Pharc. That way after I won, the first thing I’d do would be walk into the Raed and ask to be scoured.” Aine was staring at me in horror. “And that’s when they would get me.”
	“Whoever scoured you,” she said.
	“No possession,” I went on. “No need for something as crude and dangerous and difficult as that. I’d go in there, I’d lower my defenses and the scouring shriia would seize whatever parts of my mind and will she needed. And when I walked back to my house I’d be her creature--and I might not even know it. She’d have known everything I knew and she’d have directed my entire investigation, and I would never have discovered what I’ve discovered. And if I ever did catch on to what had happened--well, my trade is dangerous, and there are a lot of accidents that might plausibly carry me off.” I laughed. “Thank Idair I was so mad at you that I forgot to go down there.”
	The two of us sat there, alone in that big, lit room, as the darkness began whirling around us.
	“Here’s a disturbing thought,” I said.
	“What?”
	“How did they know I’d asked you to feed the vigils in the first place?”
	Aine stared at me, without an answer. Then, suddenly, her hands flew to her head and began swiping at it.
	“Get them out, dhiaoc!”
	“Aine--”
	“They’re in my head, they must be, how else would they know? Get them out, quick, please!”
	I grabbed her wrists and kept her hands away from her head. “Calm down. There are a hundred ways to find these things out without actually forcing the mind. And it could just as well be me they’re watching. Now I am going to look for signs of entry or for open doors so just hold still and relax while I do it, all right?”
	She nodded, kneeling in front of me with her head raised in readiness.
	I began the search. Aine’s head was fairly big too, and there were a lot of places to look into.
	<Here it is.>
	<What, dhiaoc?>
	<It’s where you keep your permanent links--there’s a door open here.>
	<What do you mean, a door?>
	<Well, not a real door, of course...> I stopped talking to her as I worked on closing it. <There’s a breach of the boundary right near the link to me. They’ve been listening in on our linked conversations. That’s where they’ve been getting their information.> I backed out of her head. “They must have a thurking lot of it by now.”
	“Is it closed?”
	“It should be.” I sat back, regarding her speculatively. “I wonder how they put it there.”
	“But it’s closed.”
	“I hope so.” I was mentally checking myself. I couldn’t find anything; and if they had Aine’s mind breached there’d be little need to try breaching mine. The chances of my noticing and putting up a fight were a lot greater.
	“Thank you, dhiaoc.” She took a shaking breath. “I...why have they done all this? Why do they hate you so much?”
	“I’m not saying,” I sighed, “that some folks on the Council don’t hate me plenty. But I don’t think that’s what this is about. I found that child and they knew it was going to be a matter of time before I followed the thread to the ball. They’ve been trying to stop me ever since, one way and another.” 
	“Who...who are they?” Aine asked.
	“Riina’s got to be one of them,” I said. “Aside from her...Idair only knows.”
	I drew my knees up to my chin and sat there, for a long time, without saying anything. Aine sat on the floor near the chair, similarly rapt. The globe went on burning above us, and the darkness got thicker and more menacing around the house.
	“Dhiaoc?”
	“Yes, Aine?”
	“I’m scared.”
	“So am I.”
	“Do...do you think it could be...”
	<Theamh.>
	<Dalen?>
	Aine was looking on in alarm. “Who is it, dhiaoc?”
	<I’m outside the shield. Will you let me in?>
	<Dalen, what the hell are you doing out here at this time of night?>
	<I’ll tell you when I get inside. Will you let me in? It’s starting to rain.>
	Indeed it was--a rattling, angry rain that started in slow, paced drops but was falling plentifully by the time I got out to the gate. I opened it up, looking through the dark doorway at the rain glistening on the ends of Dalen’s cropped iron-gray hair. Before she could speak one my hands shot out to grip her by the throat.
	“Theamh?”
	“Well, you’re all right, anyway,” I said, pulling her through the doorway and shutting it. “Come inside.”
	“Do you always greet people this way?”
	“Hardly ever,” I said, sloshing back through the gardens, “but I’ve had a very disturbing day.”
	“Haven’t we all.”
	I ushered her into the living area, where Aine was crouching in an attitude of fear poised on flight.
	“Don’t worry, it’s all right,” I said. “This is Dalen. This is my apprentice Aine. She’s a little skittish right now because we’ve just been discussing corruption in the Council.”
	“You shouldn’t be so hasty,” Dalen said. “Remember, there’s a middle ground. I could just be shrimarbh.” I looked at her, chagrined. She smiled and popped flame out of her lifted hands. “Fortunately, I’m not.”
	Aine looked from her to me.
	“Lying doesn’t necessarily make you dark,” I said. “You lose your fire, but that doesn’t have to mean you switch alignments. Some people just go back to being ordinary citizens. But Dalen here is still in working order, so we can assume she’s on our side.”
	“Since you’ve touch-tested me,” she said, taking one of the other chairs. “I take it that you’re beginning to share my sense that all is not well in the Raed.”
	“Understatement,” Aine muttered.
	“Aine--”
	“No, your scoilin’s right,” Dalen said. “It’s a bad habit.”
	“How long have you felt that way?”
	Dalen leaned forward and rested her bony elbows on her knees. I had always been intimidated by her--more than Morat, in some ways, because she was quieter. Her face was lined with weather and her body had been whipped down by years of tracking in the wilds and woods until there wasn’t a spare ounce of flesh on it. Despite what I said at the time, I came eventually to forgive Dalen for not having found Istria when she went to look. The tenacity with which she pursued Lythril until she found her convinced me that if Istria were still in country Dalen would have brought her home. 
	“When you have my gift, you’re careful about trusting impressions,” she said. “A sense of danger might just be a place memory creeping up under your consciousness. And to feel like you’re being watched is one hundred percent normal.” She sighed. “I had suspicions when we couldn’t find Lythril after you and Istria came back. But I paid them no mind. She’s a crafty bitch. I was more suspicious when we couldn’t find Istria.” The blue eyes fixed me with the cold distance of gemstone. “You’ll think I’m boasting but it’s only the truth. I should have been able to find her. I’m better at tracking than Lythril is at hiding.” Her hands rubbed together as she warmed to the story. “The only reason she eluded us so long after we lost Istria is--it has to be--that someone was warning her. Because when did we find her hideout? After I had decided that I was going to stop filing reports.” She nodded. “Oh yes. For six months they had not heard word one from me. That was as long as I knew they’d go before sending someone else to look for me. But it was long enough. I called Morat and we went in as fast as we could, but even then she’d had warning enough to get her confederates off.” 
	“Collusion...that far back?” I asked.
	“None of it’s provable,” Dalen admitted. “I just had the feeling.” 
	“So then...?”
	“So then...nothing. Except little things, building up and building up. You’re out here in the woods, you don’t see people every day. I can’t explain it to you. But without my being able to pin it on anything or anyone...I started getting the sense that the Pharc wasn’t safe. I never saw anything outright. But I’d walk into rooms and I would get this conviction that something evil had happened there. It’s been nagging and nagging at me, but I’ve had so many road assignments, I’ve never been able to investigate long enough to say where that feeling came from. And to make a charge like falsehood, you have to have better grounds than that.” Her mouth twisted in a half-smile. “Unless, apparently, you’re Riina ni hOalar.”
	“You think she’s dark?”
	“She’s either dark or stark raving mad.”
	“What...” I glanced at Aine, sitting by us and looking hopefully up for solutions. “What should we do, Dalen? Where do we go with this?”
	“Nowhere, until we know for sure who’s involved,” she said shortly. “Otherwise...well, you’ve seen what happens. We play she said, she said until the entire Council disintegrates in chaos.”
	“Who did you suspect?” I asked.
	Dalen dropped her voice and looked around uncomfortably. “I hate to say it about someone I like and respect, but for a long time now I’ve wondered about--”
	<Theamh.>
	“Hang on a second,” I said, raising a hand. <Morat?>
	<I’m outside the gate. Will you let me in?>
	<Shouldn’t you be home in bed?>
	<There’s a lot that should be happening that isn’t. Just let me in, it’s raining buckets out here.>
	<Just a minute.> I closed the link. “Well, that’s Morat. She’s paying us a call. Don’t worry. She won’t get inside till I know who she’s with.”
	I unlocked the door and tramped through the sodden grass. Truth be told, I could not imagine Morat being anything other than what she’d always been--a hard, crabbed woman whose devotion to the truth and the Order had thwarted her connections with the people she was close to. But I was starting to appreciate Barant’s position a little more. At this point, anything did seem possible.
	I moved through the gate and shut it behind me instead of letting Morat through.
	“What are you doing?”
	“Give me your hand.”
	She put it forward without hesitation. I took it.
	“All right, now let’s see some fire.”
	“Oh for Idair’s sake, Theamh--” Morat snapped, annoyed.
	“Look, you know and I know you’re true but at this point paranoia seems like common sense to me so show me the magic.”
	Morat lifted her hand up and shot fire out of it that flew uncomfortably close to my head.
	“Satisfied?”
	“Sorry,” I said, opening the gate. “But you know, my world is exploding, and I’m not quite myself.”
	Morat watched as I closed up. “Where did the cat come through?”
	“There was a little door here, by the base. Slythe fixed it for me.”
	She said nothing more as we trailed through the wet to the house. Dalen was on her feet as we came in, Aine standing in her shadow.
	“It’s all right, I tried her,” I said.
	“Fancy meeting you here,” Morat said, nodding to Dalen.
	“How is she?” Dalen sat back down.
	“When I left, she’d evened out,” Morat said, dropping heavily into the only remaining chair. “Her body is going on, but the mind is no better. She can’t move on the right side, and she can’t speak. Even linked her speech is very slow and very garbled.” Morat looked at me. “She did manage to ask about you. She wants to make sure we grant your petition.”
	I was now sitting on the floor across from them, one hand wringing the other. “I wish this had all never happened,” I said. “If I had known this petition would kill her--”
	“It’s not because of you,” Morat said shortly. “Don’t think that for a minute. If Riina hadn’t started that ruckus Grinth would still be sharp as a needle. I’d suspect Riina of doing it on purpose to kill her but I don’t think she’s cunning enough.”
	“So you think Riina’s dark,” Dalen said.
	“She better be,” Morat answered. “It’s the only excuse for her behavior.”
	“Why Riina?” I demanded. “Why should she turn like that?”
	“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Morat said, leaning her head back over the chair rail and closing her eyes. “It would make things a lot simpler for them to have a confederate in Returns. Probably they sought her out and used whatever tactics they use to suborn her--money, power, threats, whatever, it doesn’t matter. She’s black at heart and she’s as good as killed Grinth.”
	For me, Grinth’s illness was a kind of moral shock--she’d been head of the Council for as long as I could remember and I couldn’t conceive of it without her. But for Morat, who’d worked with her and been trained by her, it was a blow felt in the heart, and the hurt was visible. Which meant it had to be great.
	“What do you mean, ‘them’?” Dalen asked. “You think there’s more than one?”
	“There has to be,” Morat answered. “To keep something like this quiet? It would take more subtlety than Riina’s got. Her accusing you was a mistake,” she said, turning her gray eyes on me. “A big one, made in desperation. I wouldn’t be surprised if her confederates are chewing her out for it right now.”
	“And those confederates would be...?” I asked.
	Morat looked at Dalen. After a moment of communication, Morat looked back at me.
	“It will hurt you to hear of it,” she answered. “Because I know how much you trust her, and of course that’s natural. I trusted her myself, long after I should have stopped. I still look at her and I can’t believe someone that kind, that bright, could be so dark. But--”
	“Morat,” I said, standing up, “you had better not be talking about--”
	<Theamh.>
	“Would you believe it?” I said, holding up a hand to stay her answer. <Lilea?>
	<I came out here as soon as I could. Will you let me in?>
	<Wait one minute.>
	“Who is it, dhiaoc?” Aine asked as I turned to go.
	“Someone I’ve always trusted,” I said.
	The rain had not let up in the slightest, and the mud was getting deeper. When I opened the doorway and stepped through it, Lilea had already stretched out a hand in anticipation.
	“Go ahead,” she said. “I won’t take it personally.”
	I took her hand. “You know, maybe the Cretids are on to something with this whole handshake thing. All right, now show me the magic.”
	Lilea lifted her hands. “Be patient, I don’t do this very...there we go.” Flame burst out of her hands, then receded back into them. “Now let’s get in out of the rain.”
	The sense of anticipation and dread that was palpable in the living area dissipated as soon as they saw Lilea. “There you are,” Morat said, sitting back down in her chair. “Is she all right?”
	“Eunem’s watching her. It’s all right, she knows the score.” Lilea looked around her. Aine scurried into the kitchen and brought out one of the chairs.
	“As long as I’m throwing a party,” I said, “I may as well go heat up some soup.”
	Aine followed me into the kitchen as Lilea joined the circle.
	“It’s not funny, this whole thing,” Morat objected.
	“That’s not why she’s laughing,” Lilea answered.
	While I threw the fire and heated the pot, Aine went through the cupboards looking for clean bowls. “I’m glad it’s not Lilea,” Aine ventured.
	“Me too. Boy would I feel stupid.”
	“It just doesn’t--it--” She turned in the doorway, the earthenware bowls in her hands, face asking for my forgiveness. “You understand, dhiaoc--I tried, so long, to believe that there was some explanation for it--that everyone was true.”
	“I know,” I said. “It’s all r--damn, it’s boiling over.”
	It took us a while, but we got the soup shared out to everyone in the living area. Morat cast a critical eye over her bowl but forbore to speak.
	“All right, I’m a lousy potter,” I said.
	“I didn’t say a word,” Morat said placidly.
	“When have you ever needed to?” Lilea said. “I think your bowls are very nice, Theamh. The irregularities give them a personal character.”
	“You see why I never invite people over?” I said to Aine.
	Dalen was getting impatient with the byplay. “So Eunem...”
	“Eunem’s in on it. She’ll keep her safe and she knows who to watch for.”
	I broke in. “In on what?” 
	Lilea sighed, as if she had been dreading this moment. 
	“You mean...you’ve known? All this time? That there was corruption in the Council?”
	“Theamh, you have to understand...”
	“You knew that and you didn’t tell me?”
	“That was why I wouldn’t let you into my head,” Lilea said. “I was afraid you’d find out.”
	My gestures were now endangering Aine’s soup bowl, which she moved out of my reach. “If I had, you know, it might have been helpful--”
	“When I came to see you, I didn’t know anything for certain,” Lilea said, foreclosing my objections with that exasperating calm of hers. “I had suspicions and gut feelings but I had no proof. I had nothing I could take to someone and show her. I just knew...from my own feelings, from the way nothing got done about my reports, from the notborns...that something was wrong. And I had ideas about what it was, but I was sure no one would believe me.”
	“But since then...”
	“There are a few of us...shriias on the Council, who’ve noticed the same things, and we’ve been communicating--carefully, in secret. Eunem, me...and Morat, after she scoured me, of course...”
	So that was why she hadn’t wanted me to report her cleansing. And why she had asked me those questions I couldn’t understand the point of.
	“So, basically everyone except for me, is that it?” Lilea shook her head wearily. “Do you not trust me?”
	“Theamh, would any of us be here if we didn’t?” Morat objected, sourly.
	“Then why did you let me go down there and make an ass of myself in front of people who already knew what I was talking about? Why didn’t you tell me?”
	“Because!” Lilea shouted, her patience finally wearing thin. “I said it was for your own protection and I was speaking truth. Theamh, you’re a good friend and you’re a great shriia. But I knew you’d make a lousy co-conspirator.”
	“Come on,” I remonstrated.
	“She’s right,” Morat replied. “You’re transparent. You’d give yourself away and they would find a way to take you out--and probably us along with you.”
	She was right. Although, as I was trying hard not to point out, she hadn’t considered this a fatal objection when sending me off to certain failure in Lythril’s den.
	“That was different,” she said, reading the thought. “You never trusted her in the first place, that feeling of betrayal wasn’t there. And besides, I was obsessed with finding her to the point where it clouded my judgment. I realize that now.”
	My astonishment must have showed.
	“You were right, what you said that one time in the Raed,” she said to me. “You’re not the only woman in the Order who has a thing about Lythril.”
	“So who else is in on this? Harani?”
	Lilea lifted her head with an ironic tilt. “Theamh. Dear heart. Think for one instant about what you’re saying.”
	“I’d think she’d be useful as a spy--”
	“Harani only thinks she knows everything about everything,” Morat answered. “Everyone knows she lives for gossip and that’s why no one says anything of importance around her, except for you because you’re temperamentally incapable of discretion.”
	“Thank you very much. Well, what about Slythe?”
	The hilarity went out of the room like smoke up a chimney. Lilea and Morat exchanged glances. Dalen looked down into the skirt of her hreapa.
	“Lilea...?”
	“Theamh, I know this will be hard for you...”
	“No,” I said, backing down onto the floor. “Not Slythe.”
	“I didn’t want to believe it either,” Lilea said. “She’s never had a bad word for anyone, she works like a dog and she’s been so generous with me--with all of us--it hurts just thinking this about her, but--”
	“How can you--what’s your reason?”
	“Little things and big things,” Morat said. “Things like that cat coming in here.”
	“But the cat could have opened the hole itself--”
	“Be reasonable, Theamh. A cat may be linked to a sorcerer, but it’s still only a cat. It couldn’t open up a hole in a working shield.”
	“But--”
	“It’s practical magic,” Lilea said. “It’s such a temptation. Everyone is constantly trying to get something out of you, and the line between abusing the fire and accommodating a legitimate request--it’s blurry.”
	“You have some kind of proof?” I demanded.
	“I started noticing...” Lilea began. “That’s what got me thinking about this. Being in homes where there’s a birth or a death, things are in disarray, the veneer is off. You rummage around looking for linens and water and things...and I found stuff. Things lay people shouldn’t have. Simple things, like household conveniences, or more serious ones. Things like a household having shri fire out of season. I was at one birth in the middle of summer where the women were using it to heat the bath. They were pretending it was ordinary but I wasn’t born yesterday.”
	“So...you think Slythe was selling these things?”
	Lilea nodded. 
	“How? She’d lose her fire if--”
	“She’s got access to everyone else’s,” Lilea said. “She’s the one who requisitions and apportions. A shriia will make something believing it’s for a legitimate purpose and it ends up decorating the house of some local plutocrat.”
	The gloom and dismay hovering over me seemed to dampen everyone else’s mood. “Believe me, Theamh, none of us would say it if we didn’t have solid evidence,” Dalen said. “But there it is. She’s slipped over the edge, and now she’s on the other side.”
	“I...” I shook my head. “I can’t believe it. I won’t. We’ve been friends for years. She did the protections on my house. She fireproofed it, she fixed my--”
	I stopped because memories of the last time I’d talked to her were starting to fall into ominous patterns. She hadn’t wanted to come out to fix the shield. She’d known in advance where the weakness was. She made me fire the showdust and test the floor instead of doing it herself. 
	“Theamh?” Lilea asked, gently, after I had sat for a long time looking down at the hands folded sadly in my lap.
	I ran my hand along the edges of one of the brooches.
	“She made these for me,” I said, finally.
	“I know,” she answered.
	Morat and Dalen sat quiet, sharing my loss.
	“When she made them, Theamh, I’m sure she was true,” Lilea ventured. “This is something recent. Last two years or so, is my sense.”
	Morat nodded. “I wouldn’t put it any further back than that. These things...” I lifted my head. “We must try not to judge, Theamh. I know it’s disappointing--”
	“I don’t care about judging!” I said, the tears finally coming. “I don’t have many friends--”
	There was no point in finishing. They all knew anyway.
	“She set that cat at me,” I said dully. “She let it in. And lied to me after.”
	“Don’t move too quickly,” Morat said. “You don’t know who else is in this.”
	“Maybe...maybe she didn’t know,” Aine said, tentatively. “Maybe she just made the hole...”
	I shook my head. “She’s not a scoilin, Aine. And she doesn’t have your excuse.”
	“Excuse for what?” Dalen said, alert.
	“Maybe it’s time you told them your part of the story,” I said.
	Aine looked at me with terrified white eyes.
	“All right, I’ll tell it.” I put a hand around to rub the back of my neck. It was hard as a rock and just as ungiving. “The day of my battle with Lythril...Aine tells me that someone from the Council ordered her not to feed my vigils.”
	Lilea nodded as if she had expected this. “I knew something was up with that. Not what, but something. That’s why I came out to scour you.”
	“Who was it?” Morat asked her.
	Aine’s eyes dropped in shame. “I--I couldn’t tell.”
	“The old problem?”
	She nodded.
	“It’s a shame,” she said. “You’re perfect otherwise.”
	The look on Aine’s face was priceless. “Morat, you’re getting positively effusive in your old age,” I said.
	“It’s Grinth,” she replied grimly. “The hand of death has closed on her. My time will come soon. A lot doesn’t matter any more.”
	I was startled out of my musings by a loud banging on the door.
	The response was instant and intense. All four of them, Aine included, leapt to their feet radiating panic.
	“Who is that?” Morat hissed. “How’d she get in?”
	“Your guess is as good as--” The banging sounded again.
	“Dhiaoc...didn’t you say...”
	“That’s right,” I whispered. “Slythe knows how to get in here.” The banging continued. “It’s her, it must be.”
	“Unless it’s something worse...”
	<Theamh!>
	No, it was her. But that was bad enough.
	“Don’t answer it,” Morat said.
	“But--”
	<Theamh, please, I have to talk to you.>
	“You can’t trust her,” Lilea warned. 
	“What am I going to do, pretend I’m not home?”
	<Slythe? Where are you?>
	<Can’t you hear me knocking?>
	<All right.>
	I shut off the link. “Now what?”
	“Try to get rid of her.”
	“In the rain this far from town?”
	“You can’t let her in here!”
	“But it’ll look just as bad if Theamh doesn’t answer,” Dalen said.
	“Look, I’m going to the door. The rest of you can...Aine, will you take them to the music room?”
	Aine stood up shyly. “This way, Aiv.”
	When they had disappeared from the living room, carrying their bowls, I trotted down the hall to the door. I had no idea what I would do when I got there.
	“Theamh!” She was shouting now from the other side of the door. “What are you doing in there?”
	“I’m dithering,” I said.
	“What?”
	Well, there was nothing for it. I opened the door.
	And there she was. Hair bedraggled by the rain, face streaming, reddened hands clutched anxiously at her chest. A face the same as it had always been. Except that as soon as she saw me, her mouth opened in a groan.
	“You know,” she said miserably.
	Lilea was right--I was a lousy co-conspirator.
	“Slythe--” I began.
	“I came here to tell you,” she said, stretching her hands out toward me.
	“I’m supposed to believe that?”
	“Why else would I be here?”
	“How do I know?” I shouted. “For all I know you came out here to finish the job that cat started!”
	Slythe’s chest heaved as she took in a shuddering, sighing breath. “Theamh, I know you must hate me now but--”
	“You opened me up to that bitch.” 
	“She said she wouldn’t go after you, she only wanted the child--”
	The admission put me over the edge. Until then, somehow, it hadn’t seemed real. But to hear her talk about Lythril that way drove me out of my mind.
	“Get the hell out!” I shrieked, grabbing her by the shoulders and pushing her away. She tottered backward, her shoes sticking in the mud. “Just get out! I don’t want to see you here, I don’t want to listen to you, I wish you’d never touched a thing in this house!” 
	Slythe was crying now, in quick shallow sobs. “Theamh, please--”
	“And what else have you done that I don’t even know about?” I shouted, red with anger. “How many times has she been through that shield? How many different ways have you sold me?”
	With a wordless cry, Slythe sank to her knees in the mud. Before I could draw back her hands flew out to grab the skirt of my hreapa.
	“Don’t turn me out,” she sobbed.
	“How can you ask--”
	“I came here--I came here to tell you--”
	“That’s what you say--”
	“It’s the truth!” she screamed, drawing herself closer and lifting up her contorted face. “I came here to tell you. She’ll know. She’ll kill me,” she burst out, clutching at me. “You’re the only one strong enough to protect me. I don’t deserve it. I’ve betrayed Idair and the Order and everything else but--” She stopped to swallow her tears. “You were alone once in an evil place with no way out. Give me the help you would have wanted.” 
	“It’s not the same thing,” I said.
	“All right, it’s not. I don’t care. Just--” She gulped again, almost choking. “I can’t do this any more. But I can’t get out of it. I’m not smart enough. I need help. Please.” 
	“Slythe, you’re just as smart as--” I didn’t finish the familiar retort. “I can’t believe I’m standing her arguing with a dark user.”
	“Not dark,” she cried. “You’ve touched me. You know.” This was true. “I’m not dark yet,” she repeated, her chest shuddering. “But I will be, soon, if you don’t help me!”
	I knew it was stupid. But it was something I couldn’t go against. The pull of another spirit on mine, a sense of the truth of her emotions that overrode my consciousness of her perfidy. What she’d said, what she’d done, were different things. But her need, and her fear, and her anguish, were real--and I couldn’t leave her there.
	“I’m going to regret this,” I said.
	She looked up, hopefully. I reached down to put my hands at her temples.
	“Theamh, please--” she protested.
	“You are not coming inside until I know who you are and what you bring.”
	She sighed and closed her eyes. “Then make it quick, for Idair’s sake.”
	Her mind was very noisy indeed. But it was hers; that was something. And it had been hurting, for a long time; the paths in there were twisted and knotted and throbbing with unspoken pain. No desire to hurt me, nothing dark enough to convince me that this was all a ruse--at least nothing that I could find. No open doors, nothing else in there. Whoever she was serving--if she was serving someone--hadn’t thought it worth the trouble to keep an eye on her mind.
	“All right then,” I said. “Let’s get out of the wet.”
	Slythe got up and followed me in. I led her down the hall to the living area.
	“So,” I said, watching the water streaming off the hem of her hreapa. “Your hreapa works even after you’re shrimarbh. I’d wondered about that.”
	“Yes,” she said, mechanically. “That is--it’s still waterproof. I can’t do and undo, so...it wouldn’t protect me, other ways.” Now she was inside she was more subdued--nervous, scattered, looking around in unquiet silence.
	“Oh, sit down,” I said. “I’m sorry for what I said about the house. And Idair knows your print is all over it anyway.”
	“Where’s your scoilin?”
	“Somewhere else,” I said. “Mna and the boys are upstairs. What do you mean, out of it? What’s ‘it’?”
	“I...” The fear got more acute. “I’m not evil, Theamh. I never wished hurt to anyone. Especially not to you. You must believe me.”
	“Slythe...” I slumped back into my chair in defeat. “How have you even been getting away with it? What about Istria’s ceremony, you had to make fire then?”
	She shook her head miserably. “I borrowed it.”
	“Borrowed it? From who?”
	There was a long interval filled up by Slythe’s crying.
	“From Barant,” she whispered, almost inaudibly.
	“Barant?” I gasped.
	She nodded.
	“So Barant knows about you?”
	I did not at all like the look of pity she was turning on me.
	“Theamh...” she said, her voice thickened by the crying. “Barant is the one who spoiled me.”
	My voice was thin with shock. “What are you saying?”
	“I would have been all right,” Slythe said, obviously now in her own story. “I’d never have been famous like you but I’d have served well and lived happy. I’m not evil,” she repeated, passionately. “I would have been all right if I had just been let alone!”
	“Not her,” I said, getting up out of the chair. “You’re lying.”
	“Theamh, why would I come out here and go through all this just to lie to you?”
	“Why not? Why does anyone do anything? Why are we all not stark raving mad? Why should I even believe I have a name or that this day happened?”
	“Theamh.” 
	Behind Slythe, in the doorway that led to the music room, Morat was standing, leaning against the doorjamb and looking even more tired and worn than before, if that were possible.
	Slythe spun around, breathless with fear.
	Morat looked over her head at me. “Believe her.”
	“You can’t mean it,” I said.
	With that same look of pity, Morat advanced into the room. “After what I learned from Lilea, I had suspicions. After that performance in the Raed, I’m certain of it.”
	“Barant--she’s--she’s just even-handed, she likes to see both sides--”
	“You didn’t see her during the deliberations,” Morat said. “She’s so good, it was hard to catch. Without ever saying a single thing you could object to she managed to turn what was a practically unanimous decision into an unresolvable deadlock. And I’m not sure it wouldn’t have been a rejection, except that some of us are wise to her.”
	“It can’t be. This can’t be what’s happening.”
	Lilea and Dalen had now entered behind her. “It’s true,” Lilea said. “She’s got the skill and the subtlety. And in the past three years, none of us can remember ever having touched her.”
	“But...at Istria’s ceremony...”
	“The hands don’t touch,” Morat said. “Fire leaps the space but there’s no flesh contact.”
	“And that’s how they mostly are,” Dalen said. “It’s not hard to avoid touching; we don’t do it freely. It happens at the Burning--but for the past three years, Barant has always managed to be out of town for that ceremony.”
	“That should have been a clue,” Morat said bitterly. “But who was keeping track?”
	“And in three years, not to have brushed someone’s hand, or patted someone’s shoulder? That’s not coincidence, that’s careful.”
	“I won’t believe it!” I shouted, as Aine made her way quietly in. “I trained with her, all that time--”
	“And when you trained with her, she was the best we had,” Morat said. “But she’s not any more, Theamh, and you have to accept that.”
	“She works so hard for the Order--she defended shri in the Seat--she helped me with Crann--”
	“And what happened,” Lilea pointed out, “immediately after you went to her with your problem?”
	I really did not like the answer that my mind offered.
	“She told Lythril about the link to the other twin and Lythril came after the boy,” Morat finished for me. “Aided by our erstwhile colleague Slythe.”
	“Barant promised me she wouldn’t touch you,” Slythe insisted, hopelessly.
	“You were a fool to believe her,” Morat snapped.
	“But she warned me,” I said, that pleading note rising in my voice. “She told me to watch out for Frih.”
	“She was covering herself!” Morat advanced on me, snapping into didactic mode. “Theamh, you have to see this. No matter how kind, no matter how sympathetic she seems to have been to you, she has been working against you since you took up this matter and probably long before.”
	“You can’t be right,” I said, surprised to be finally crying now. “I know her. She wouldn’t hurt me.”
	“Theamh, she would, she can and she has!” Morat shouted.
	“I--”
	Lilea stepped quickly over to me, bending her soft blue eyes on mine. “It’s difficult for you, I know. You trusted your mother long after you should have stopped, because you needed to believe that you could. I know why you’re like you are, so ready to give your trust unconditionally, so wanting to be trusted in return. And most people recognize that trust for the great gift it is and reward you with the love and loyalty you deserve. But some people don’t, Theamh, and Barant is one of them.”
	“But Lilea...”
	She put her hands on my shoulders, gently. “Theamh, back away for a minute and see things for what they are. Riina stood up in full Council and called you a liar. Instead of defending you, Barant fomented doubt and then when you asked her point-blank whether she believed you were false she told you that all things were possible.”
	“She...she was just looking out for the Order...”
	“Tarbhfnaa!” The word burst out of her abruptly with the snap of breaking metal. “If you were on the Council and someone accused Aine, would you do that to her?”
	“Of course not!” I shot back.
	I looked around at the faces. All grave, all sad. Dalen’s with a philosophical disgust for treachery, Morat’s with the loss of a colleague, Slythe with the pain of her memory of her own role in this, Aine distressed at the sight of my pain.
	“No, you wouldn’t,” Lilea said. “You’d defend her until it was no longer humanly possible. Barant didn’t.” She moved in closer to give me the full effect of those searching eyes. “She didn’t act like a diaoc. Or like a shriia. She doesn’t care about you or about the truth. She wants this swept back under the rug and she threw you to the wolves to make sure it happened. She’s not worth your trust, Theamh.”
	“Leave me alone!” I threw her hand off my shoulder. “How can you stand there and tell me my diaoc is working for the Dark One and expect me to take it in stride? My diaoc!” I cried. “The woman who made me!”
	“She didn’t make you,” Morat said. “You’re your own woman. That’s always been obvious.”
	“If she’s dark--all this time--then what the hell am I?”
	Aine advanced timidly toward me, trying to catch my downcast eye.
	“Dhiaoc,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
	I shook my head and kept crying. “No, I’m sorry, Aine,” I said. “You shouldn’t have to see this.”
	“You told me,” she said, forcing me to look at her. “You told me a month after I got here, that I shouldn’t confuse Idair with you and that whatever mistakes you might make it didn’t mean that there was something wrong with shri or with me.” Now her eyes were wet. “It’s the same for you, dhiaoc. I’m not you, I can’t be. I wish I could. You’re not her. You couldn’t be. And thank Idair for that.”
	“Bi I go deo,” said Dalen emphatically.
	I looked around, snuffling.
	“So sit down again already,” I finally said. “I’ll go get another chair.”
	It made more sense than I wanted it to make. Slythe hadn’t wanted to come fix the shield--because she’d broken it, and to come on an errand like that was a duplicity that would still be repugnant to her even after going shrimarbh. But then Barant had told her to go. And out she’d come, too scared to do otherwise. But she had, from what I could see, fixed the shield. Which might have been her first step out of the cesspool she was apparently trapped in.
	By the time I got back with the chair, Morat was lighting into Slythe with a vigor that made me suspect this confrontation had been a long time coming.
	“All those rites,” she was saying. “Invalid, every one of them, because of the two of you. You sent Istria home with false fire.”
	Slythe’s hands twisted together in the skirt of her hreapa. “Grinth helped too,” she said, “and you. I...I hope...she got safe home anyway,” she said, her face twisting in sorrow, “in spite of us...”
	“You hope!” Morat shouted. “I’m sure that’s a big help to her wandering spirit!”
	“You don’t think--Idair wouldn’t--not take her in--just because of me...”
	“Oh, leave her alone, Morat,” Lilea finally said, as Slythe collapsed in a welter of remorse. “She’s got enough to be guilty for in the here and now without your badgering her about eternity. I’m sure Istria got home all right. Idair stands by her children.”
	“Istria was my apprentice,” Morat said, hard and not to be softened. “I didn’t do by her as a diaoc should. I put her in danger she shouldn’t have had to run. Her death is on my conscience and that’s my burden. But to think that Barant’s treachery--and the perfidy of this one here--should have added to her pain--”
	“We don’t know they did,” Lilea said.
	“Because we don’t know she’s dead,” I insisted.
	They let this pass.
	“Look, since she’s here,” Dalen said, “isn’t anyone going to give her the chance to be useful?”
	Slythe was a wreck, her face white and red and lined, hands still knotted on each other. “What do you want to know?” she said, her voice empty of anything but exhaustion. “I won’t hold out on you. My only hope of living long under my own will is your learning enough to stop her.”
	The others came to crowd around her. Dalen started.
	“Who else is in it?”
	Slythe shook her head. “I don’t know. I...she told me that I would be helping her protect the order, and it sounded, from what she said...like there were others too. But she never let me know who they were.”
	“Well, that’s not very helpful,” Morat said.
	“It’s just Barant’s craft,” Lilea answered. “It limits her risk. You can only betray yourself and her.”
	“Well, who do you think is in it?”
	“Riina, of course,” Slythe sniffled. “It makes sense...with what Theamh told us. See, I--Barant had to tell me about the child. I wouldn’t have opened the shield,” Slythe insisted, turning back to me. “I wouldn’t do it without knowing what was going to happen and without making her promise me that you wouldn’t be hurt.”
	“Yes, well, we know what a dark user’s promise is worth,” Dalen observed.
	“It was all I could do!” Slythe cried. “You don’t know what it’s like!”
	“Well then why don’t you tell us,” Lilea said.
	Slythe collected herself for what she knew was going to be a long speech.
	“I wish I could put a finger on it,” she said. “It wasn’t like she came to me and said, ‘Join me on the dark side.’” I laughed. “It was...she would ask me to do things for her, small things, that were just that hair outside the limit of what shri allows. Getting her this or that gadget for some purpose that wasn’t clear or didn’t matter enough to warrant it. And I’d balk, and she’d offer to do something for me in return--get me off a committee meeting, or something like that. And then I’d do it...and she’d be grateful...and the favors got bigger.”
	The rain was still beating down on the roof. I wondered if Mna was up, and if so what she was thinking of all this. Sound doesn’t carry up to their room; Frih couldn’t overhear. But she must have seen the parade, if she were awake, and wondered about it.
	“She asked me for something I wouldn’t do...” She shook her head. “It was a year and a half ago, I can’t even remember now what it was. It doesn’t matter. I said I wouldn’t, and she told me it was my duty and...” 
	Her eyes traveled around the circle of faces, looking for a sympathy she feared not to find.
	“Barant put it this way. She said that the Order exists because everyone else wants it to. Otherwise it would disappear. We don’t make money, we don’t support ourselves that way. We don’t even own the property we use. We’re in the Pharc on sufferance, because people have decided to let us be there. So we have to serve them. And...” Her hands, like mine, came into the air to help her talk. “She said...we can’t handle money, we can’t sell shri, we have to give to all in equal measure, we have to tell the truth, that’s what’s beautiful about the Order and that has to be protected. But she said...there are some shriias, like you--” She looked at me. “She mentioned you--who serve the order by being all that they’re asked to be and by showing people what truth and good and equality are. But those ones are vulnerable, and liable to be destroyed, because being that way prevents them from defending themselves. So there’s another kind...” Here her throat seemed to start giving her trouble. “Another kind who serve the order by making sure that the people with power get what they want, or enough of what they want, so that they don’t try to destroy the Order.” 
	Morat’s expression of horror was nearly outdone by Dalen’s. Lilea was looking at Slythe, willing this to be less painful for her but not able to make it so.
	“I was going to be one of those,” Slythe said. “She laid it out for me like that, she said it was my role to keep them all happy so that people like the rest of you could keep doing good and doing well and living up to it all.” Her eyes went back to me. “She said I would be protecting you. That doing this would keep the rest of you safe.”
	There was a long silence as the rain lashed the roof of the house.
	“Do you think Barant really believes that fnaa?” Dalen said to Morat.
	“Who knows,” Morat answered. 
	“It wasn’t long before I had to lie to someone,” Slythe said. “To get the things Barant was asking for. And then my fire was gone.” She shook her head. “I didn’t feel the change. But I tried to make it...and I couldn’t.”
	Her hands traveled shakily over her knees.
	“So that was it, for me,” she said. “I was shrimarbh. And I would just have to keep lying, and lying, and lying about it. Barant had to help me pretend. She’s still got fire, of course.”
	“Of course,” I echoed, with an edgy mirthless laugh.
	“She’s dark,” Slythe said, looking earnestly up at me. “Believe it, Theamh. She...I didn’t know about her plotting against you but when I heard about the battle...I started wondering. And then she asked me to open your gate...”
	“And how exactly did she sell you on that idea?” Morat said.
	“She doesn’t have to, any more,” Slythe answered in despair. “I’m in her power. She knows it. She did say...that as long as you were on this case, you would be in danger, and the faster you lost the child for good the better.” Her fingers picked at the fabric of her hreapa. “I know better, by now, than to believe that.”
	“So,” Dalen said. “You’ve been selling shri, that’s about the size of it.”
	“Yes.”
	“And faking rituals.”
	“Yes.”
	“And keeping Barant’s secret from everyone else.”
	“Yes.”
	“And doing any other kind of lying or scurrilous thing you had to do to keep us from seeing that you were shrimarbh.”
	“Yes.”
	“Meanwhile, Barant...” Dalen left it open.
	“Barant...” Slythe looked back at me. “I couldn’t believe, even after the cat, I couldn’t believe what she did to you. She must be helping with this plan, somehow, to make it worth that. She didn’t want this to happen,” Slythe went on. “Knowing what I know--I don’t think she wanted Riina to say that. And she didn’t want to answer your question. She’d have preferred if it could just have been tabled as undecided and then forgotten. But now you’ve been charged, and Grinth is dying.”
	“The genius won’t go back,” Lilea said.
	I was starting to worry about Aine. It was rattling enough for me to listen to this--here she was, she hadn’t even gotten her orders and already she was learning things that would make any person of sense doubt the wisdom of joining up. And she was shaken. But there was something else too--a sense of relief, an excitement even at being part of this conversation. Getting to be like the grownups. And getting, as I was finally realizing, to feel as if she hadn’t been crazy, that her sense that something was badly wrong was true and that she was in the right and not whoever had sent her that message.
	“So what do we do about Barant?” Lilea asked.
	Nobody seemed to have an answer.
	“I think the first problem,” I said, in the silence, “is what to do about Slythe. She’s obviously in great danger.”
	“Can’t you just...” Aine trailed off as everyone looked at her.
	“Can’t we just what, scoilin?” Morat demanded.
	“I...I know I’m only a scoilin, I’m wrong probably, but couldn’t you just hale Barant out and everyone would know?”
	Everyone laughed except for Lilea, who saw how sensitive Aine was to mockery.
	“Aine, unless the person is fool enough to consent to the process, as Theamh was today, you can only hale someone out with the approval of the head of the council and three-fourths of the assembled body.” 
	Dalen laughed curtly. “The actual head of the Council is now incapacitated and not likely to recover. And the acting head of the Council...is Barant.”
	“Oh no,” I said.
	“Oh yes. Until the Order elects a new head, by virtue of her office as head of Internal Administration, Barant is the interim head.”
	“But that’s...I mean...what if it was the head of the Council who was dark, there’d be no way to hale her out?”
	“Sure there is,” Lilea answered. “For that you need the approval of nine-tenths of the Council. Minus the head, there are twenty women on the Council. So we need eighteen ready to vote for haling her out. Well, with Grinth gone and Barant in her place, that leaves us with nineteen women. One of them’s Riina...and one of them’s you.”
	Slythe swallowed. “But of course if it came to a vote, I’d vote with you,” she said.
	“The problem,” Morat said, “is not knowing how many other women she’s suborned. My gut says Vrila’s one of them.”
	“It would make sense,” Slythe said, bitterly. “Inion na mhada.”
	Hearing Slythe curse, even after what we’d found out, was like seeing a rabbit spit venom. She met the startled attention with a low and unnerving laugh.
	“I’m not smart,” she said to me. “I’m good with my hands, that’s all. I didn’t see the pattern.”
	“Slythe, you are smart--”
	She ignored me. “One in Practical Magic, one in Comings and Goings, one in Border Control. She’s in Possessions, and probably she’s got someone in Rainmaking too. One in each division.” 
	“We better talk to Harani,” I said.
	“But carefully,” Morat warned. “Just because she’s your friend, that doesn’t--”
	“Believe me, I know,” I said, looking at Slythe.
	Slythe shook her head. “I can’t test anyone any more, not that way. But I don’t think Harani’s in on it. She’s not on the Council--and she can’t keep a secret.” Her eyes dropped. “But then what do I know. What a fool I am.” 
	“Barant’s crafty,” Lilea said. “She deceived all of us. Don’t feel bad.”
	“But to think she’d singled me out,” she said. “Praising my discretion, telling me how important my work was. When all she wanted was a plant.”
	“So if that’s true,” I said, “we definitely don’t have enough people for a vote. Even with Slythe’s conversion you’ve only got sixteen people, seventeen at most.”
	“Suppose she doesn’t have anyone in Rainmaking,” Dalen suggested. “Nobody from Rainmaking spoke against Theamh--and for this scheme, at least, Rainmaking is irrelevant. If that’s true we have seventeen, potentially--if we can induct someone true to the Council fast enough, we can make eighteen.”
	She looked at me.
	“Oh come on,” I said. “No one is ever going to put me on the Council--especially not now, with my honor in question.”
	“She’s right,” Morat said. “We can’t push her candidacy now without completely tipping our hand. How would it look if I suddenly started upholding her as a paragon of circumspection, responsibility and self-control?” I laughed. “Which is not what you are, anyway. If someone asked me why she should vote for you, I’d have to tell them the real reason.”
	“The other strategy,” Lilea said, “would be to make sure Barant doesn’t get chosen as permanent head, and once a new one is elected, go for the three-fourths majority. That I think we could make. We’d need, what, fifteen? There’s four of us here, Eunem’s a fifth, and after what happened...”
	“Either way,” I pointed out, “it’s going to be a long time before we can get Barant out of there.”
	“And in spite of all our efforts,” Morat said grimly, “it may have to be open war.”
	Contemplating this made us all fall very quiet. Aine moved closer to me. I took her hand and tried to give it a reassuring shake, but I was pretty badly shaken myself. Lilea, kneeling next to me, took my other hand. As the rain, now changed to a fine misting patter of tiny, persistent drops, rasped against the windows, the handclasp ran around the circle, joining Lilea to Dalen to Morat and back to Aine. Slythe, alone in her chair in the middle of the circle, looked miserably out at the window at the rain.
	“Idair’s Tears,” she said, using the farmers’ term for this kind of gentle, long-lasting rain. “Appropriate.”
	“Idair always did cry when she was angry,” Morat said.
	“Or hurt,” Aine said.
	“Or when someone she loved was hurt,” Lilea added.
	Lilea left Dalen’s hand on her knee and reached toward Slythe.
	“Idair doesn’t ask for perfection,” she said.
	Dalen grudgingly stretched out her hand too. “Come on. We can’t afford to carry grudges.” 
	Slythe slid out of her seat and joined the circle, her face white with the thought of what lay ahead for her.
	“What should we say to her?” Aine asked timidly, when it became clear what was happening.
	“Say whatever’s closest to your heart, child,” Morat said. “This is one rite there’s no script for.”
	As the oldest and the most senior, Morat started the song. After the initial formula in Old Tongue--a simple request that she look back at us from wherever she’s passed into, and give us her help in the troubles to come--there are no set words to it. Morat’s verse went up first, freighted with the passion that she had kept out of her dealings with other women.
	I don’t ask what I ask for me
	for her or others I might love
	I ask for those I do not know
	your other children yet to be

	protect the love you brought to us
	protect the labor of your heart
	protect the gift you only gave
	protect the right, the true, the just

	give us the might to make your name
	mean what it has always meant
	keep your story’s meaning true
	let the Dark One lose this game.
Dalen’s voice was the next to rise above the general chant.

	what I try but cannot  read
	lies open as the page to you
	make the hidden traces plain
	give my eyes the sight they need

	where the serpent twists too small
	and evil runs too close to ground
	send your fire along the trail
	bring me to them after all

	eyesight, insight, aftersight,
	gifts from you, not feats of mine;
	let them serve the one they love--
	let the Dark One lose this fight.

The prayer had moved around to Slythe. She couldn’t find her voice right away, and what should have been the first verse was one long wordless cry, a message of pain and repentance that only Idair understood. After that, she was able to put it into words.

	too long I have lived without
	raising eye or voice to you
	that I failed you, well you know
	that I love you, never doubt

	silent I will take my part
	of the pain I earned, but still
	save what still is true to you--
	let the Dark One lose my heart.

Giving Slythe’s hand an encouraging squeeze, Lilea started hers.

	bearer of the mother’s pain
	giver of the life she gives
	hands and heart that touch and save
	help us make birth ours again

	you who wanted birth a right
	shared out equally to all,
	keep the child and mother safe
	keep birth free and in the light

	you who fought the greed of gain
	all the time you stood with us,
	break the web that’s being spun--
	let the Dark One lose his pains.

I hadn’t prayed with anyone in such a long time that it was hard for me to start. But once I opened my mouth I found the words coming.
	
	mother when I needed one,
	friend when I had lost all else,
	help to Istri in her pain,
	bring us back into the sun

	not for her and not for me,
	but for those I still can save,
	make them give me time and space
	to prevent this injury

	if a heart not brave or wise
	can help break the evil chain,
	let me go and hunt her down--
	let the Dark One lose her prize.

Aine’s voice was quavering with her shyness in front of us all, but the sincerity and the emotion behind it carried the words above us.

	least and last to ask your aid
	stranger to your mysteries
	half-made shriia without your fire
	weak, pale-hearted and afraid

	though the war be hot and long
	let me stand and fight with you
	and be worthy of my diaoc
	please, create me true and strong

	hold me up and make me brave
	like your daughters sitting here
	let me help you beat them back--
	keep the Dark One in its cave.

The six of us sang the closing verse and then sat, for a long time, listening to the rain gradually get softer and lighter on the roof.
	“I don’t know about anyone else,” Lilea said, “but I feel better.”
	The feeling seemed to be universal--especially for Slythe, down whose silent, pale face tears were still running. It’s bad enough to be evil and happy about it. But to have been roped into a plot like this against the wish of your heart must be worse.
	“Still,” I said. “What are we going to do about Slythe?”
	“First thing is to think how Barant will go after her,” Morat said. “Assuming she finds out, and it’s unlikely she won’t.”
	“She might do what she did with me,” I said. “Have Lythril attack her and then scour her.”
	“All right, then,” Morat said. “Best thing for that is to block her.”
	“But she won’t be able to reveal,” I said.
	“As if she could,” from Dalen.
	“I’m sorry. I keep forgetting.” I looked at her. “You look the same.”
	“No, she doesn’t really,” Morat said. “Maybe you don’t feel it--you’re not sensitive that way. But you can sense it. There’s something different about her.”
	“I think it’s just because you know,” Lilea argued. “If you didn’t, I doubt you’d notice--”
	“Regardless,” Dalen broke in. “If we block her, she won’t be able to link with anyone. I think it’s asking her to run too much of a risk.”
	“First time Barant tries to call her she’ll know,” Lilea agreed.
	“But if we’re assuming she’ll know anyway--”
	“Well she has a will, ask her,” I said.
	Slythe looked from one to the other.
	“I don’t know,” she groaned. “Do what you think best. I was never good at this.”
	“I don’t like it,” Dalen said. “To cut her off like that leaves her too vulnerable.”
	“Well, suppose we just make sure that if she’s attacked, one of us scours her?” Morat said.
	Slythe shook her head. “If you scour me, it’ll go in the report, and Barant will know you know what I know.”
	“She’s right,” Lilea said. “If you’re entered, you’re thurcte either way. The thing is to stop it from happening.”
	“You know what you need,” I said as the idea struck me, “is a vigil.”
	Like most people who don’t work with them, Slythe was terrified at the mere thought. “Oh, Theamh, I could never catch one of those things. Especially not now.”
	“You don’t have to. I’ll bond you with one of mine.”
	“It’s a good idea,” Morat said. “And you can borrow one of mine; that way you’ll have two.”
	“It won’t be like having your own. But if something comes after you, they’ll warn you and they’ll warn us, and we can hopefully chase it off before it goes in.”
	“What do I have to do to...bond with it?” she asked.
	Aine looked whitely up at Slythe’s equally terrified face.
	“That bad?” Slythe asked her.
	Aine nodded.
	“Being overtaken and thralled by Barant would be worse,” Morat said.
	“All right,” Slythe agreed in a voice that barely rose above a whisper.
	“So what other things does she need to look out for?” Lilea asked.
	“If you notice yourself becoming clumsier than usual, walking into ditches, that kind of thing,” Morat said, “call one of us.”
	The poor woman was just getting more terrified. I tried to cheer her up.
	“You know, it’s possible Barant won’t even know,” I said. “She didn’t have any doors open into your mind when I looked for them. That means she’s not taking the trouble to spy on you, so she may be trusting too much in your cowardice or your shame. And the beauty of it is, Slythe--you can lie.”
	“I don’t want to develop a taste for it,” she said sadly.
	“Of course not. But if ever a situation called for a little mendacity, this is it. She’s been lying to you all this time, probably--lie back, for as long as you think it’s working. The longer she believes you’re still with her, the safer you’ll be, and the safer we’ll all be.”
	Slythe nodded. “I’ll try.”
	“Second thing,” Morat said, moving on with that ruthless efficiency that made her such an effective committee head. “Theamh’s proposal. What if they don’t grant it?”
	“Oh, I’ve made up my mind about that,” I said. “I’m going anyway.”
	“And I’m coming with you,” Aine piped up.
	“Even without an official sanction?” Morat asked, still scandalized by my failure to be impressed by protocol.
	“You bet your hreapa. This is too important. I’ll have hell to pay when I get back, but if I can nip this in the bud it’ll be worth it.”
	“Yes, but Theamh,” Dalen pointed out, “if they don’t authorize the mission you won’t be able to get across the border.”
	“She might,” Lilea said. “We’ve got a potential confederate at one of the Amst posts.”
	“Are you sure she’s true?” Dalen demanded.
	“Not one hundred percent,” Lilea admitted, “but she did file a report on weaknesses in the border, and then a follow-up demanding--in fairly vehement terms--to know why she’d had no response. There’s also a perfunctory message from Vrila on record acknowledging her report and dismissing it. I sent her my own response.”
	“Did you tell her about--”
	“No, of course not, without touch-testing her I can’t be sure enough for that. I just told her I thought her concern was valid. Since then we’ve been in fairly regular contact. She’s cagey too, not knowing if she can trust me. But I think if you got up there, Theamh, and you could test her, she’d let you through.”
	“Unless she’s false, in which case she’d kill me and dump my body in a ravine,” I pointed out.
	Aine looked at me, horrified.
	“I’m joking,” I said.
	“Only partly,” she answered.
	“So the upshot is,” Morat said, “it will make this a lot easier if we can get the Council to vote on this fast, before Barant consolidates her power and before Grinth dies. The whole Council knows she wants Theamh to go. As long as we trade on their loyalty to her, everyone but Barant and her minions will vote for it. And unless this blight is more widespread than I think it is, that’ll be enough.”
	“I agree,” Lilea said. 
	“Of course,” Dalen said, “Barant will come after you no matter what happens.”
	I nodded.
	“You too, scoilin.”
	“I go where she goes,” Aine said.
	“You’ve really made an impression on this child,” Dalen remarked to me.
	“She’s not a child.”
	“Neither are you then, I suppose,” Dalen said with a smirk. “So. The two of you, off to the border, with Lythril before you and Barant at your back. I don’t envy you.”
	“You’re the ones with the hard job,” I said. “Staying here and dealing with this mess. It’s the kind of thing I have no head for.”
	“The right tool for the right job,” Lilea said. “Idair’s not stupid. She knew what she was doing when she sent you to Mna.” She nodded. “You did a good job with that child. That’s one thing to be proud of, whatever happens.”
	“And let us not forget,” Morat pointed out. “Because of you, Lythril got the whipping that’s been coming to her since we tossed her sorry gleacha out of the scoil.”
	“How like you to find the silver lining,” Lilea said, slapping Morat on the shoulder.
	I stood up. “Well, let’s go on down to the vigileacha and get Slythe set up.”
	Lilea stood. “We should go, it’s getting--”
	<Theamh.>
	The look on my face stopped all of them cold.
	“Who is it?” Morat whispered.
	“Barant,” I mouthed. They stared at each other.
	“Now what?” Dalen muttered.
	“It doesn’t mean she knows--”
	<Theamh.>
	“But what should Theamh do?”
	“Answer her, of course,” Morat said. “Or she’ll know something’s wrong.”
	<Theamh, answer me.>
	<What do you want, Barant?>
	<Why didn’t you answer?>
	<Because I don’t really want to talk to you right now.>
	<I understand you might be upset by what happened today-->
	<Might be?>
	There was a harassed pause. I thought I could feel the strain of duplicity, the unnatural burden it placed on her. But I might have been imagining it.
	<That’s what I want to talk to you about. Will you come down to the Raed?>
	<What, now?>
	<It’s urgent.>
	<Barant, it’s after dark and it’s been raining for Idair knows how long. Can’t this wait until-->
	<It’s about your proposal, Theamh. If you really want them to sanction your mission, there are some questions that need to be addressed. And if it’s as urgent as you say it is, we need to do that as soon as possible. I know how you hate traveling out of hreapa, but this is important.>
	I hoped the chill I felt as I understood her full intention wasn’t transmitting through the link. I was keeping it as narrow and focused as I could.
	<It so happens I am in hreapa, but I still don’t-->
	She didn’t even miss a beat. <Well then I would think you should want to come. If this is really so important to you.>
	<All right, Barant, I’ll come down. Will you be in your office?>
	<No, I’m in my apartment. Come find me there.>
	Fantastic. At least maybe I could get lost in the Raed on my way up to that top story and avoid meeting her. 
	<Idair with you.>	
	<And you too.>
	I made damn sure the link was closed and secured before I turned to the others.
	“Well,” I said. “She wants me to come down to her apartment for a chat.”
	“Do you think she suspects?”
	“I don’t think so,” I said. “I would hope she’d have more respect for my intelligence than to think I would go down there out of hreapa if I knew she was dark.”
	Even knowing, as they had for longer than I had, that Barant was dark, it was still a shock to them to see the evil in action. Aine looked from one disturbed face to the other, vaguely apprehending the danger.
	“But you’re still in hreapa, dhiaoc.”
	“I am, but she didn’t know that. Since it’s long after sundown she assumed I’d undone. That’s why she wanted me to go now instead of waiting for tomorrow--so she could attack me.”
	“What did you tell her?” Morat said.
	“I told her I’d go.”
	“What?” from Slythe.
	“Look, if I don’t, she’ll know I have a good reason not to,” I said. “And she’s not stupid. She’ll figure out what it is.”
	“Theamh, I knew you knew the minute I saw the look on your face,” Slythe objected. “You can’t see her now, it’ll be written all over you.”
	“Not necessarily.” Morat rolled her eyes. “All right, I can’t hide what’s there but maybe I don’t have to. I have a good, true reason to be angry with her, and feel betrayed, and mistrust her, after what she did to me in the Raed. If I can convince her to attribute everything to that I can get through this all right.”
	Morat was looking at me levelly over those crossed arms. “That’s a big ‘if,’ Theamh.”
	“I know,” I said. “But now I’ve said I’d go. I’ll have to.”
	“If you can pull it off,” Lilea said, “it will convince her she’s safer than she is. And that would be useful.”
	“Be careful,” Morat warned. “You know what she said--if you try to tell the truth, you will. The spirit matters more than the letter.” I nodded. “If you are deliberately not trying to tell the truth...well, you better make absolutely sure that the letter is accurate.”
	“I understand,” I said gravely.
	“It’s a hard line to walk,” Lilea said. “It’s been hard for all of us. And I’ll tell you the same I told Eunem. If it comes to the choice of betraying us or going shrimarbh, betray us. Don’t destroy shri trying to save it. We’ve seen where that logic leads.”
	Dalen nodded. “They speak for me too. Don’t let her trap you.”
	“Well all right then,” I said. “I’d better go, I don’t want her asking what took me so long.” I looked around at them.
	“We’ll wait for you here, Theamh,” Lilea said. “If something happens, you call us. And if it has to be open war, then we’ll wage it.”
	I looked at Aine, still sitting on the floor, her heart obviously in her mouth.
	“Don’t worry,” I said. “Maybe she just wants to find out how much I know.”
	“Maybe,” Morat said sardonically.
	“Idair stay with you,” I said, giving Aine a pat on the shoulder.
	Aine got to her feet. “Let me come with you, dhiaoc.”
	“Oh no.”
	“But I can be useful.” I looked at her. “Really! She won’t want to talk about anything secret in front of me. If you keep me with you she can’t ask you dangerous questions. And if she does, I can lie for you.”
	“It’s an idea,” Dalen said.
	“No!” My answer was a little over-emphatic. “I’m not going to use you as a human shield, Aine. It’s a promise I made to myself and Istria.”
	“You’re right,” Morat said, shortly. “Go alone.”
	“Thank you.” I turned back to Aine. “You can help by staying here and praying for me.”
	“I will.”
	<Morat, walk me out, will you?>
	Morat stood and followed me to the doorway while Lilea and Dalen comforted Aine. She stood with me on the threshold, still looking at me with that iron-gray resolution and conviction I’d always seen in her.
	“You are right,” she said. “Not to use her that way.”
	 “Thank you, Morat, your--your support means a lot to me.” I went on before either of us had to acknowledge this little admission. “Listen--” I glanced over my shoulder back down the hall. “If something does happen to me down there, I want you to get Aine out of the Vicinity. They know she’s got information that can expose them and if they take me out they’ll come after her next. Promise me you’ll protect her.”
	“Of course,” she said.
	 I stepped out the door.
	“Theamh.”
	I turned.
	“Remember,” she said. “No matter what she says--you can’t trust her. Don’t.”
	“I won’t,” I answered.
	“Idair ride with you,” she said, and closed the door.
	Through the window I could see the light globe in the living area, with Dalen, Lilea, Slythe and Aine grouped together on the floor, waiting for Morat to come back. As I watched, she reappeared, blurred like them all through the streams of rain on the window, and sat down between Aine and Slythe. They joined hands again. The house kept the sound from me, but I knew they were singing. Doing what we do at times like this. Words against the darkness. Believing, that when we say something, that makes it so.
	I brought Cinhe out of the stable. She was not too happy about having to work, but she sensed my trouble and didn’t give me more. I led her out to the gate.
	On impulse, I squatted down in the muddy grass and began testing around the opening. Where the cat door had been it was as sound as ever--no softness or give, no sign of anything but air and light passing from one side to the other. Slythe really had fixed it. And maybe, someday, we would be able to fix Slythe. But then again, maybe there were some things that couldn’t be changed. Maybe after a fall all you can do is live broken.
	It doesn’t seem like Idair would want it that way. She believed we were good, till we proved her wrong. She would want to bring Slythe back to the light, to keep us all there--even, maybe, to give Barant her second chance. But the world is not as Idair would have it. There were things she wanted that she couldn’t make happen. Including, perhaps, the victory they were praying for inside my rain-wrapped house.
	“To the Pharc, Cinhe,” I said, after I closed the gate. “Hurry there.”

XV.
Ask Me No Questions... 
	
	That day I’d forgotten to get scoured is the only time I can recall where my deficiencies actually worked in my favor. Otherwise, I forget when I’d rather not and get lost when I’m in a hurry; if there’s something unpleasant ahead of me I’m sure to remember the date and the way there. So that now I found myself in the top floor of the Raed, walking down the stone corridor to the door that marked Barant’s apartment.
	Behind doors along the hallway I was treading there were women on the Council, retired for the night into their individual lives, caught up in whatever dreams they had. And most of them were probably true. Or if not, at least most of them were probably asleep.
	Vrila and Riina were somewhere on that floor, unless they were out cavorting under the moon offering worship to the Dark One. Of course with so much rain there wouldn’t be a moon tonight. Idair helping me out, maybe. 
	Idair says, somewhere in the first scroll, that she has nothing against the moon, she just finds it hard to manage. Changing the way it does, it requires more maintenance, I suppose. Aine asked me rather nervously about that when she first came--the moon is important to the Jiprani, they measure the tides by it. I told her that the Dark One’s badge is a silver chain, ours is a silver star; two uses for the same metal. Two faiths under the same sky; two readings of the same scrolls. Two kinds of fire, the difference invisible to the eye. The moon is the moon; she goes about her business in her inscrutable way, unconcerned. The evil, or the good, lives in us.
	I wondered, as I lifted my hand to the door, what would happen to Cinhe if I were to die in that room. Would she sense it, and be smart enough to flee? Would she treat the Pharc inmates to the tragicomic spectacle of a mare trying to charge up those stairs in a desperate effort at rescue? If I were to return to her under the Dark One’s power, would she know, and refuse to bear me? Or carry me back home to spread the evil there?
	All right. No sense imagining what may be worse than what’s real. Go in and get through with it as fast as you can and make your anger your truth.
	I knocked, gently. The door swung slowly open.
	Barant was sitting at the other end of the room, under a window looking out into the courtyard. Being where she was she got one of the good apartments, with a view of the tilu tree. She’d opened the door without touching it, to impress me as I’d tried to impress Aine. That day, one week and a million years ago, that I’d come home from the Pharc having done battle not just with Lythril but with Barant and Idair knew who else to a scoilin who would, as soon as that door flew open, begin the long tearstained process of learning how crooked the human heart could be.
	“Theamh,” Barant said, standing up. “I’m glad to see you.”
	Lie number one.
	I stepped in, leaving the door open. Barant was out of hreapa, having undone for the night. She was wearing slippers and a green robe of some thick, soft material that tied with a cord at the waist and fell softly around her as she moved forward. A gift from someone, probably. We were allowed to accept gifts as long as they were not precious--that is, contained no material that was intrinsically valuable. Judging with an eye used to big house fashion, I guessed that her robe was on the very edge of that prescribed limit. Almost precious. But not quite. Not enough to be proof.
	“Close the door, will you?” 
	I pushed it closed with a snap.
	The rope of her braided hair hung down one side of her neck, yellow shot with graying white. And that note of concern was there, that I’d heard so often, that had persuaded me so many times when Morat or Grinth couldn’t.
	“Do you not feel safe here?” she asked, a little hurt.
	“I don’t know what to feel any more,” I answered, perfectly truthfully.
	“You’re angry, of course,” Barant said, her glance sliding down and away from mine in regret and resignation. The fingertips of one hand trailed gently along the polished stone gameboard set out on the table by her armchair. “I understand that.”
	The board looked as if she were in the middle of a game of dubh solus, with the cards lying face-down where she must have laid them and the little carved pieces of white and black stone arranged on the squares in strategic patterns. It’s a popular game in scoil. Your hand is determined by chance, and then the card values restrict your movements in certain ways; the skill is in working within those restrictions to outmaneuver your opponent. Your opponent is allowed to ask you what your next move will be, at up to three points, and if you’re playing with the white pieces, you have to answer truthfully. The player with the black pieces is allowed to lie. As you find out if you play long enough, lying can be as revealing as telling the truth. It teaches what scoili need to learn: that knowledge is not power, that truth need not be a liability.
	I thought for a moment she was going to ask me to play; but Barant was subtler than that. “I was as shocked as you were when Riina said that. It was the shock, really, that led me to believe that there might possibly be something to it. It’s hard to believe a woman of her standing would make such a charge without some justification.”
	“And it’s easier for you to believe that your own apprentice is false to the Order?”
	“Theamh...” She sighed, deeply, as if weighed with cares I could only imagine. “You don’t, you never will understand this. I can’t allow myself to be swayed by personal loyalties. I have to consider the welfare of the Order, and to put it above the welfare of any individual shriia, and that includes myself. And you.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry that hurt your feelings. But it was my duty to make sure we heard her out.”
	“You’ve done a lot more than hurt my feelings,” I said with an acidity that was not at all feigned.
	“What do you mean by that?” she said, head inclining very slightly.
	“What I said,” I answered.
	We stared at each other until she realized I would not be forthcoming. “You’re different now,” Barant finally said, walking around me toward the door. “Closed, somehow.” She turned back reproachfully. “Are you masking?”
	“Can you blame me?”
	“Theamh, despite what I said to you today in the Raed, I do trust you. I’m not for a moment concerned about your allegiance. I asked you down here tonight to prove it to you.” She looked down at her green robe. “I undid on purpose to show you that.”
	“If you don’t believe her then why did you say that to me?”
	“If I had dismissed her charge out of hand it would have looked as if I were trying to protect you,” she said. “People might think you had something to hide, and that I was trying to help you hide it.”
	“Well,” I said. “I don’t think you need have any worries on that score. I doubt anyone would confuse what you were doing with protecting me.”
	“You’re not my apprentice any more,” Barant said. “You have to fight your own battles.”
	Anger was pushing the fear out of the foreground. Whether she knew it or not she was helping me survive this. “In five years of practice I’ve come to you for help once. And this is what you offer me.”
	“What do you want from me, Theamh?”
	She said it in a voice that was bone-tired, drained dry with fatigue. It was hard to remember Morat, to remember not to trust the emotions any more than the words.
	“I want this day never to have happened,” I said.
	“Ask for something I can give.”
	What did I want from her. To be who I’d thought she was. Another thing she couldn’t give.
	“All right then,” I said. “I want you to vote to authorize my mission. I want you to convince the Council to vote with you.”
	She laughed. “Is that all?”
	“No, but it’s first on the list.”
	“I cannot vote to send you up there if in good conscience I don’t believe that your theory is correct and that you have some chance of success. Neither can any of my colleagues.”
	“So you don’t believe my theory is correct?” Barant paused, looking at me. “Or that I have any chance of success?”
	“You admitted yourself that you have ulterior motives,” she said. “This obsession you have with Istria can’t possibly help you in your search, and will probably hurt.”
	“First you listen to Riina when she doubts my word,” I said. “Now you won’t even give me credit for being a professional.”
	“Istria is the one thing about which you have consistently failed to show anything approaching responsibility. I don’t think it’s unfair on my part to have doubts about your ability to stay focused on your client once you think you’re within reach of her.”
	“But you do think I’m right about what’s been going on.”
	Barant looked at me, trying to decide on an answer.
	“I’m not convinced,” she finally said.
	“All right then,” I answered. “You said you called me down here to clear some things up. So tell me what they are.”
	She sat back down in her armchair, waving me toward a seat on the cushioned stool opposite it. Diaoc and scoilin, lecturer and note-taker. But with everything changed, under the surface, and neither of us sure how much the other could see that.
	“First off,” she said, leaning back and putting her hands together in a gesture that now, for the first time, struck me as stagy and false. “Your assumption that these replacement notborns are the spirits of departed adults strikes me as more intuitive than rational, and suspect for those reasons.”
	“Barant--” The realization that I was arguing with a woman who knew perfectly well what was going on came to me with a sudden wrench, and I faltered. I tried to pass it off as sulkiness. “Never mind. You’ve made up your mind already.”
	“Now that’s not fair, Theamh. You know I’m willing to consider all possibilities--”
	“Including the possibility that I’m--”
	“Can you not get past that?” Barant suddenly shouted.
	I had primed myself not to trust anything. But this did seem like a break in the armor--something real coming through, frustration and anger with herself for the part she was playing, with me for making her play it. 
	“It’s just a little difficult,” I said, aware that my voice was getting edgier. “Riina and Vrila don’t really know me, except by reputation. But you do--at least you should. And you should know I’m not dark. And if you don’t, there’s something wrong, either with you or with me.”
	“And of course,” Barant said with an infuriating slow smile, “you couldn’t possibly come to the conclusion that there might be something wrong with you.”
	“There’s a lot wrong with me,” I said, in a stifling voice. “But the one spot in my rotten heart that I’m sure is clean is the part that loves Idair.”
	“I believe you, Theamh. I trust you. Don’t you believe that?”
	I looked at her, wary.
	“Don’t you?”
	“I believe that in your heart you know I’m not false,” I said.
	“But you don’t believe that I trust you?”
	“Trust me to do what?” I demanded. “You don’t trust me to carry out this mission to your satisfaction, evidently.”
	“That is a different issue, Theamh.”
	“No, it isn’t, really,” I said. “If you believe in me then you must believe I was telling the truth when I said this thing was bigger than Istria and bigger than me. And you said to me, that day that seems like it was years ago, that if I can’t understand that saving thousands of people from a menace like this is more important than my personal desires then I don’t deserve to wear this robe. So if you trust me as a shriia then you should trust me with this mission, because I do believe it’s bigger than me,” I said, leaning forward aggressively. “I do believe it’s bigger than Istria, important as she is to me.”
	Barant leaned back in her chair, looking at me. And as she thought, something occurred to me. Even though my mind knew she was dark my gut didn’t, so I was still appealing to her as if she were true--trying to prove that I could do the job. But that was exactly the wrong approach. Since she was as she was, the smartest thing Barant could do, really, would be to support the mission but to give it to one of her confederates--Riina would be too bizarre a choice, but Vrila as a border guard would be more plausible. The matter would be inquired into, no evidence would be found, the case would be closed. If I wanted this to come to light, I had to convince her that it was smarter for her to let me go up there--that in fact, I would fail, and either come home empty-handed or not at all. So how to do this by telling the truth.
	“Look, I can’t pretend that if I go up there, I’m not going to look for her,” I said. “For four years, almost, I’ve been waiting for you to lift that damn restriction so I could look for her. I’ve been living with the guilt of my inaction and expiating it in all kinds of bizarre ways you don’t want to hear about. My life in the first years after she disappeared was a hell even the Dark One would flee and the only thing pulling me through it was the thought that she was still alive and that one of these days I would get myself, somehow, over the border to look for her. And what I said in the Raed was true but I still want to be the one to go up there and I want that badly.”
	I let the passion, the bitterness and the anger come through because it would make me seem more unstable; and indeed it made me feel more unstable, tottering on the edge of a breakup. “That bitch has been torturing her for years. She owes both of us a lot of pain and blood. What I did to her last night doesn’t even start to pay her back for what she’s done to us. I know the rules and I’ll keep within them. But if it should happen that to stop her I have to hurt her--I’m not going to be sorry about it.”
	“You know what Idair would say about that,” Barant said, reproachfully.
	“I certainly do, but my heart is my heart and that’s what’s there. I love Istria, and more than anything in the world my heart wants to end her pain, break her out of there and make her whole and happy. And after that, I want to see that bitch suffer for what she did to her. Now that may not augur well for my spiritual health but it certainly gives me an incentive, doesn’t it?”
	I felt it did. But I was hoping as I said this, of course, that Barant would read it the other way--believe, as so many on the Council did, that love could only be a liability and that my desires would cloud my judgment and drive me to take unacceptable risks.
	Barant was still watching me, her decision unmade, weighing my words and my aspect. “You didn’t say this in your closing argument, Theamh.”
	“Of course not,” I said. “I want them to let me go, don’t I? And besides, they all know it anyway. I suppose, in a lot of ways, it would be smarter for them to appoint someone else to do this--someone with more experience and a cooler head.”
	She was giving me that look I remembered from my apprenticeship. Sizing me up, judging my material, looking to see what was in me and whether it would suit her purposes. At the time, I’d accepted it as a normal part of the relationship. Now, it made the hair stand on the back of my neck.
	“Have you thought about what will happen,” she said, “if you find her?”
	“Yes,” I answered.
	There was another long, unsettling pause.
	“It was heartbreaking to watch,” Barant said, resting her chin in one hand as she leaned back into the chair. “The two of you, trying to be lovers and shriias at the same time. I thought separating you was the kindest thing we could do, really. You didn’t see it that way.” She didn’t expect a response and I didn’t provide one. “I don’t think you or anyone else will find her, Theamh. She’s gone home to Idair. But suppose for a minute she hasn’t. And suppose, even, that what you find is not some kind of broken, irreparable wreck of what she once was. That problem’s still there.”
	“That’s as may be,” I said. “But at least she’ll be safe.”
	“Your ruling passion,” Barant said, matter-of-fact. “Since before you came to me. It’s not something I understand, as you’ve pointed out in various contexts with varying degrees of insolence. I’ve never felt that way about another human being. But I do feel that way about the Order.”
	She got up, as if she were restless, and paced over to the window, the hem of her robe brushing gently past the foot of the lacquered wood table holding up the gameboard. With her hands spread along the sill, the folds of dark fabric fell in heavy drapes from her shoulders, the skirt sweeping down from the waist in a lush green swath. It came to me, with a clarity that surprised me, what she was doing. Displaying the robe, the way her movement had drawn my attention to the carved foot of the table and the workmanship of the pieces on the board. Inviting me to notice. Drawing me into her secret.
	“It’s been my one passion, my one desire, all these years,” she said, still looking through the window at the darkened courtyard. “To keep shri safe from those who wish it ill. To make sure that the Order survives, as what we know and love. Training you was part of that.” I got to my feet, uneasily. “You’ve done well by the Order, despite your flaws. As I hope I have, despite mine.”
	If she were lying, that was scary enough. If she thought she was telling the truth, that was even more frightening.
	“You’ve done things, for her sake, that were dangerous,” she went on, turning her head sideways to look across the room meditatively. “Disobeyed orders, got into trouble, taken on Lythril, Grinth, Morat, and anyone else. Come right up to the brink of loss violation.” Barant turned around, leaning against the windowsill and dismissing my objections with a look. “I know you never crossed the line, but believe me you were close. That was obvious to all of us.”
	“What happened that night is not what you think!” I said.
	“Theamh, it doesn’t matter, the point is...” She sighed, bringing one arm across her chest to rub the other shoulder. “For someone you love, you were willing to bend rules. Circumstances made it necessary. Morat never understood why it was worth it to you. I do.” Her arm dropped, hand coming to rest on the tabletop. “I do agree with you about one thing. The Order is in danger. For years I’ve been the only one who saw it or tried to protect against it. We’ve fought the power of wealth for so long, it’s never occurred to anyone that it’s a battle we might lose.” Her hand left the board and traveled to rest at the base of her throat. “It has, at long last, occurred to you. Which, however you may feel about my reaction to your proposal, is something I find heartening.” She looked at me. 
	“We’re on the same side, Theamh. We want the same things.”
	Spirit almighty, she was going to make a play for me. In one minute she was going to say something that told me just a fraction more than I could safely know and then there would be only two ways to end this conversation. Either she would corrupt me, or she would kill me. Unless I could stop her.
	“Theamh--”
	“Tarbhfnaa!”
	Her eyes snapped open a fraction wider. “I beg your pardon?”
	“You can’t love an institution like you love a person,” I said, with anger that was real enough. “It’s so not at all the same thing--I can’t believe you even tried the analogy. That you would even think these things are comparable shows how far apart we are. You have no idea what it was like for us and I resent your claiming to have one. People have been telling me since it became public knowledge that what I felt for her was really this or really that or really the other thing--because it couldn’t be love, could it, that doesn’t happen to us!”
	“Theamh...” She seemed genuinely confused by my abrupt shift into defensive anger, but that was all for the good.
	“Just--don’t talk about it! Don’t say another damn thing to me about her, I’m sick of it from you and Morat and Grinth and everyone else. None of you understand what I went through and none of you are capable of it no matter how much you love the Order. What happened with us was a different thing altogether and don’t try to explain it to yourself or to me because it is outside your frame of reference!”
	“Well,” she said, after the silence that followed. “In the future I’ll choose my analogies more carefully.”
	“You do that!”
	With any luck, that tinge of amusement in her voice meant that she took my outburst at face value--another ranting justification of a love nobody wanted, me leaping gratuitously to defend even though she hadn’t been attacking. Because if she did, it meant she was assuming I had misread her last speech, in that boneheaded blundering way I sometimes have. And that was what I would have to trade on, to get out of here alive and unscathed--the density, the refusal to take a hint, the obliviousness to all other perspectives that my colleagues were so willing to attribute to me.
	“It might perhaps be easier,” Barant mused, “to get clearance for someone else to go up there.”
	“Maybe,” I said. “And if you could get them to put a Council member in charge, it would at least show that they took the plot seriously.”
	There was a beat as the implications occurred to her. “So you think we should go that route?”
	“I think I should be the one to go. I’ve told you that. But if I go, you know, the Council can stay out of it--whatever goes wrong will be mostly my fault. Sending a Council member says that this isn’t just my problem, it’s everyone’s. And that would be a good thing, even though it would make me unhappy.”
	Barant stepped from the window back to the chair, dropping casually into a meditative pose. “Unhappier, you mean.”
	In the space that my answer did not fill I looked down at the gameboard. You can’t play dubh solus alone. And since someone has to lie, you can’t have a proper game if you’re playing with a shriia. But she was playing with someone.
	Barant had had plenty of time to set the stage for this encounter. That gameboard was there because she wanted me to see it. It was a test.
	I wrinkled my brow in surprise. “Have you got a new apprentice, Barant?”
	Her eyes flicked toward mine. “No. Why do you ask?”
	“Looks like you’re in the middle of a game,” I said. “It’s a scoilin’s game, so...” I deepened the frown. “Who are you playing with, then?”
	“Slythe,” she answered.
	Ignoring her meaningful glance, I shrugged and leaned over the board. “You folks must get bored up here. This game’s tedious enough in its original form. Without the lying it’s deadly. Istria and I gave it up after scoil.”
	“You know, Morat says,” Barant ventured after a few moments, “that Lythril used to be the scoil champion, when she was here.”
	“I believe it,” I answered. “It’s exactly the kind of thing she’d be good at.”
	“Did you ever play it with her, while you were there?”
	My anger was coming through the mask now, but I let it come.
	“We were too busy,” I said, coldly.
	“So you don’t know,” she said. “Whether you could beat her.”
	I laughed bitterly. “Barant, I hope you didn’t drag Slythe in here to play with you just to make you a prop for your little homily. This is a game. It’s played on a finite board with inanimate objects according to logically coherent rules. What I’m about to do, if you let me, is a whole different thing. Pure strategy is not my strong point. Lythril outmaneuvered me once and I’m sure she could do it again. But we got away and we got her in the end because cunning and ruthlessness, when you come down to it, are not enough. If I bring her down it won’t happen because I’m handy with a gameboard. If I win it’ll be for the same reasons I beat her last night. Because I have heart and right and Idair on my side and she doesn’t.”
	“And you think that’ll be enough.”
	“Don’t you?”
	She watched my face for what seemed like a long time.
	“I wonder,” she finally said.
	I crossed my arms and looked away.
	“I’m only trying to make sure,” she said, gently. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, Theamh.”
	Another lie.
	“Well,” I said, “if I go, something will happen to me, whether it’s good or bad.”
	She watched my face. I didn’t know what should be on it, so I didn’t try to compose it. I suppose I looked angry, hurt, maybe frightened. All things I had good reason to be.
	“This is really what you want?” she said. “Knowing the danger you run and the difficulty of the chase? And what kind of power you’re up against?”
	“Yes,” I said. “That’s what I want.”
	“The Council is meeting tomorrow to deal with Grinth’s illness,” Barant said. “I’ll introduce the question then.” I nodded. “I can’t promise anything, but we’ll see what happens.”
	“Thank you, dhiaoc,” I said. 
	“Don’t thank me,” Barant answered, with a sudden change in demeanor. “I won’t be doing you a favor.”
	I knew what she meant, of course, but I was still surprised enough to hear her admit it that I looked as puzzled as I should have looked.
	It seemed to me that at that moment, something opened up--a window, a door, set into the invisible wall around her, a narrow breach through which, maybe, I could get to her. The spirit of who she had been, flitting white and mournful past the dark windows of its prison. But I couldn’t take the risk. I set my face hard.
	“I know,” I said. “You don’t have to tell me. You’re not doing it for my sake.” She watched me withdrawing. “It’s always about the Order, isn’t it?”
	“It seems so strange, and sad, to me,” Barant said wistfully, “that after all this time, you still can’t understand me.”
	“There’s a lot I don’t understand,” I said.
	The door swung open behind me.
	“Safe home, Theamh,” Barant said. “Idair ride with you.”
	“Good rest to you,” I said. 
	I walked through the door carefully, sure not to speed up, and closed it softly behind me. My steps down the hallway were unhurried. When I found Cinhe outside the door to the Raed I said nothing unusual. Barant’s windows didn’t look out there but I had no way of knowing what she was capable of.
	I pulled a light globe out. It was hard to avoid a sigh of relief when I saw the fire come. I was mighty glad to see it.
	I hung the fire over Cinhe’s head. “Home, Cinhe.”
	She trotted down the street that led out of the Pharc, out of the City, back to my home where they were keeping the vigil.

	It was strange seeing the living area all lit up through the window. The rain had stopped, and though the glass was still streaked I could see them more clearly now; Morat, Slythe, Lilea, and Aine, sitting in their circle. But no Dalen.
	I stood for a few moments looking in at the window, trying to see if perhaps she was in one of the corners or moving around in the shadows. But there was no sign of her. Maybe she was in another part of the house, or on a visit to the privy.
	Then again, maybe she was right behind me.
	Before I could turn around one of her wiry arms had hooked around my neck from behind, pulling me back against her while the hand clutched at my bare shoulder. Her other hand gripped the hair at the side of my head. 
	“Dalen, it’s all right. I don’t need to be throttled.”
	The grip relaxed. I turned around to look at her. “I’m glad you’re on my side.”
	“Aren’t we all,” she said, slipping her hands demurely inside the sleeves of her hreapa. “So, show me the magic.”
	I brought the flame out. “You know, it’s only been a day and already that’s getting old.”
	The others were on their feet and waiting for news when we walked in.
	“So what happened?” Lilea was the first out with it.
	“Well--” I sank into the nearest chair. “How about I just show you.”
	“What about me?” Dalen complained. “We don’t have a link.”
	“You link with Morat, she can relay it to you.” As I was about to bring it up, I stopped. “You all know to use your personal connections, right, not the Council--”
	“What do you take us for?” Morat scoffed.
	“Has anyone looked into Slythe?” I said.
	“Morat gave her a good cleaning while you were gone,” Dalen answered.
	“Find anything?”
	Slythe shook her head. “Nothing,” Morat answered. “And I double and triple-checked the link to you. It’s secure.”
	“It’s almost embarrassing,” Slythe said. “That she wouldn’t think I was worth spying on.”
	“It does suggest she’s underestimated you,” Morat answered. “But you underestimate yourself, so that’s only natural. And I’ve also had a look at Aine.” Poor Aine’s expression of pained chagrin now became more explicable. “That door is closed. You can link in safety.”
	“Well, I did close it myself...”
	“It never hurts to have a second opinion, Theamh.”
	<So, are we all in here?>
	I heard back from Morat, Slythe, Lilea, and Aine.
	<Dalen hooked up?>
	<She’s here,> Morat answered.
	<You all right, Aine? Morat wasn’t too rough on you?>
	<I...I’m...> I forgot she was in the habit; I shouldn’t have asked. <Yes, she was rough on me, but I’m glad to know it’s closed.>
	<Well, all right folks, here it is.>
	I brought up the memory of the confrontation, sharp and detailed as if I were still living it. Going over it again I got the added benefit of second-guessing, examining everything I had said and every move I had made afraid it was wrong, that she knew, that I had given everything away and she had let me go only because she wanted me at large for some reason while she worked on a way to wreak her revenge.
	“Well,” I said, after I’d shut off the links. “What do you think? Have I blown it?”
	“I think you’ve been very clever,” Lilea said.
	“Too clever for me,” Slythe answered. “What was that business with the gameboard?”
	“Because--” Morat started.
	“Let Theamh tell it,” Lilea said, with a smile.
	“Here was my thinking,” I said. “Barant contacted me hoping she could lure me down there undefended. Once she knew I was still in hreapa she had to change plans. So what are the only things she could get out of this meeting? If she wasn’t going to turn me--which, I think you’ll agree, she did try--” Morat nodded. “Then the one thing she did absolutely have to know before she let me walk out was whether I had been in contact with you.”
	“What does a game of dubh solus--”
	“Listen, she’s telling you.”
	Slythe subsided, quashed by Morat as so many had been quashed before.
	“The gameboard was to see if I knew she was dark,” I said. “It’s weird to have it around the place, if you’re a shriia. You can’t play it alone and nobody goes up to that floor who’s not either in the Order or apprenticed to someone on the Council. And to play the game properly, someone’s got to lie. So let’s say I walk in there already suspecting that she’s dark but not sure. I look around, I see the gameboard. It’s evidence that lying has happened in her apartment, and she’s the only one around. So I look at it, and my suspicions are confirmed. And being as transparent as I am, the shock and horror will be visible if not audible. She will then know that I know.”
	Slythe nodded.
	“On the other hand, let’s say I walk in there as I in fact did--already having heard from you all that she was dark. My main concern is to make sure that Barant doesn’t know that I know she’s dark. So I will naturally try to avoid anything that would bring the conversation around to questions like that, because if she asks me whether I think she’s false either my answer or my silence will give me away. There I am, talking to her, and I see the gameboard. It fits with my suspicions, but my plan is not to let her see that I suspect. So I’ll say nothing about it because I don’t want her to see that I’m on to her. You follow me?”
	“I think so.”
	“Now, let’s say I walk in there having no idea in the world that she could be anything other than honest. I notice the gameboard as something strange. But--and here’s the thing--if I’d gone in there totally innocent, just seeing the board wouldn’t lead me to assume that she was dark. It’s such a small thing. So I’d naturally comment on it, and ask what it was doing there, especially since--if I didn’t already know she was dark--my first assumption would be that she was playing against either a scoilin or a lay citizen, neither of which would normally be found in her apartment.”
	“So she asked that question,” Dalen explained, “thinking that it would prove to Barant that she didn’t suspect. And I’d say you were right.”
	Slythe was looking at me with that combination of envy and forlornness that was common with her. “You thought of all that just looking at some pieces on a table.” She sank a little in her chair. “No wonder this happened. She’s too deep for me.”
	“And her naming you when she said who she was playing with,” Morat went on. “That was another stroke. If Theamh had gone in there knowing you were shrimarbh, but not about Barant, that would have been her first sign that Barant knew about you--and that shock would have shown up. But if Theamh already knew both of you were dark, especially with Barant putting it in such stage-villain terms, she would read it as a challenge, an ‘I know you know’ that required some kind of arch, double-meaninged response. If she still thought both of you were all right, she’d just assume you were playing the glas rules, where both players tell the truth. So that’s what she said.”
	“Do you think,” I ventured, “that my having answered right both times...shows that I was trying to be crafty? That I knew, and was trying to think around her--”
	“Oh, don’t torture yourself,” Lilea said. “You gave her the signs she was looking for, and she won’t go further than that.”
	“I don’t know,” I worried. “All that time we were in Lythril’s den, we thought we were fooling her. Maybe Barant’s just letting me think that I--”
	“No,” Morat cut in, with a definitive motion of the hand. “I understand why you’d think that, but I don’t see it. Barant’s not as smart as Lythril.”
	“Oh, I don’t know about--” Dalen cut in.
	“She isn’t!” Morat insisted, anger lighting her gray eyes. “She thinks she’s being so smart, using Lythril for her own agenda, but we know who’s really getting the profit from this deal. And all that stuff she was handing you and Slythe about protecting the Order by doing evil--well, Idair help her, she may believe it, but if so that only proves that she bought a bill of goods Lythril was selling. She’s not the brains of this operation.”
	Morat had had to work with Barant closely the past few years; their relationship had always been cordial, although I never looked close enough to see whether it went beyond professional respect. But the answer was there in her anger--the betrayal, the grief, the echo of my own loss. 
	“Lythril’s smarter,” Morat repeated. “She sized her up, found the weakness, and went right for it. I was watching that scene and hearing Barant’s words but that was Lythril talking. There’s nobody so clean that there’s not something crooked she can find, and she works the wedge in until the spirit splits and now here we have it.”
	“But Barant...she always seemed...” Slythe said.
	“It was ambition that did it,” Morat returned. “She called it everything else she could think of but there it was, at the bottom--wanting to lead the Order, wanting to be the Order, and now it’s mutated into ‘protecting the Order from itself’ but it’s the same idea. And if she doesn’t see that for the pile of fnaa it is, it’s because she was not smart enough to see what Lythril was doing when she made her the offer.”
	“Are we smart enough?” Dalen said, after a pause.
	Slythe bent her head sadly.
	“Maybe it’s not about being smart,” I said. “Maybe it’s just about knowing your own heart.” Lilea looked at me. “Knowing your weaknesses. Slythe...” Slythe looked at me with the quick, frightened glance of a hurt animal. “You just--you always believed that you weren’t smart enough and everyone else was brighter and you were just good with your hands. And that’s how she got to you--telling you that she knew better and that you shouldn’t listen to your conscience. You’re listening to it now. That makes you smarter than her.” Slythe’s eyes were still red. “And that makes all of us smarter than Lythril--where it counts.”
	“Hey!” Lilea suddenly broke in.
	“What?”
	“Till tonight it was just me, Morat and Eunem. Then we came out here and Dalen, Theamh and Aine joined us. And then Slythe turned up. You’re the seventh.” Slythe looked at her, sadly. “There’s seven of us now, because of you. Isn’t that a good sign?”
	A little hope seemed to come into Slythe’s face. “You mean...”
	“You’re good luck,” Lilea said. “We were missing one, and then you came. We’re complete.” She rose, flushed with conviction. “It’s a sign. We can do this. With you.”
	 Slythe got tentatively to her feet. “I will help. I just don’t think...I’ll be much use.”
	Morat stood also. “The longer we’re away from the Pharc the more danger there is. We should leave one by one; we’ll be less conspicuous that way.”
	“I’ll go first,” Dalen volunteered. “If anyone’s watching the place, I’ll see her.”
	“All right then,” I said. “I’ll let you out.”
	“Idair go with you, Dalen,” Morat said. The others echoed her. 
	“And stay with you,” she said. “May she write us a good end to a bad story.”
	I let Dalen out through the gate. She melted into the woods as if she wasn’t even there. It was a real gift, that she had, one I wished I were able to learn. 
	“Well, come on, Slythe,” I said as I came back into the entry. “Let’s bond you. Aine, you better come too, to see how it’s done.”
	“Would--”
	“What, Morat?”
	She was hesitant, but I could see she really wanted to ask it. “Could I come too? To see how you do it.”
	“Sure, why not. Lilea, you want in on this party?”
	“I know them quite well enough already, thank you.”
	We trouped down to the laboratory. There they were when I opened the door, Shaineen humming along the length of her green column, Jayla pulsing in a globe around her plinth, Zott crackling in his whirlpool, and Phredi floating hither and yon, drifting aimlessly around and between them. Aine stood watching them quietly. Still not at ease, still perhaps frightened of what was about to happen. But with a look that communicated something, that recognized them as related to her. The difference, the change that I’d been waiting for so long to happen to her--coming to see them not as monsters or as inscrutable mysteries but as neighbors, colleagues, fellow-citizens of the strange world that we have to live in. She’d made the leap she had to make. She was making progress.
	Slythe was a different story. She stood nearby frozen in panic, looking from them to me with nervous eyes. Morat watched her a little sardonically.
	“Go on,” Morat said. “Stand in the middle there, and Theamh will introduce you.”
	Slythe looked at me.
	“Come on,” I said, taking her hand and leading her into the middle of the floor. “As long as you’re who you say you are, they won’t hurt you.” Which did not stop her from looking around as if expecting them to attack. But they didn’t. Which was good. 
	“They are going to visit you one by one,” I explained. “They don’t mean any harm; try not to fear any.”
	Slythe nodded.
	I started the song. I had to do it once in each language, for each vigil. I explained to them that Slythe needed my protection and that I was asking them to give it to her. I left it up to them to choose who would take her in, and for the one who chose to signify that by remaining in the center after the others had returned to their homes.
	Shaineen was the first to pour forward and pool around her, spiraling down from the ceiling to wrap her in a kind of loose, transparent coil. Slythe shivered a little, but otherwise held up.  The coil slid back down to the floor, then snaked toward the plinth and flew up toward the ceiling again.
	“Well, Shaineen’s evidently not your type,” I said. “Let’s see who...really, Slythe, it’s all right--”
	Of course Zott is a little intimidating, even to me, so I couldn’t blame her for flinching. Poor Slythe disappeared behind a blue whirlwind as the breeze from his motion fanned the hair around Morat’s face. When he finally departed, Slythe was considerably more frazzled and considerably less sure that she wanted to go through with this.
	“He doesn’t want me either?” she asked timidly.
	“Don’t take it personally,” I said.
	“Thank Idair,” she sighed.
	Before she could recover, the bright yellow sphere that was Jayla dropped suddenly from the ceiling to envelop her. Through the light we could see Slythe, inside the ball, putting her arms out as if to brush away fog. Jayla lingered for a long moment, while Slythe waved her arms like an insect struggling in amber, and then retreated.
	Slythe took a deep, shuddering breath. “Is that...no, no I see there’s one more.”
	The pink mist pooling around her feet rose gently up. At first it drifted across her in idle and random tendrils, slipping imperceptibly over her shoulder or about her waist. Gradually the mist condensed, withdrawing into a shape that more or less reproduced the contours of Slythe’s quailing form, forming a thick, rosy nimbus.
	“I think it likes you,” I said.
	Phredi continued to cling to her form, the mist circulating gently around her. Then he expanded gently into a cloud and hung near her in the middle air, waiting for my order.
	I took out a loaf of bran bread and held it out to her. “Hang onto the other end and we’ll both offer it.” I stood behind her with my other hand on the back of her shoulder.
	Slythe nodded. 
	We held the bread out as I began singing again.

from the mystery of this flesh
from this dense opaque dark heart
from this place you enter but
never know at end or start
to the mystery of your flame
to this life that lives in light
to the power you let me wield
trusting me to do the right
one of Idair’s children calls
to another, asking you
make the circle one life larger
as you guard me, guard her too.

A pink tendril floated around the bread, enveloping the loaf and both our hands. Slythe watched the loaf disappear without much anxiety. She was used to seeing things dissolve. 

lonely in your high wild kingdom
isolate, intense and free
still you heard a stranger singing
something in you answered me
knowing me as I now know you,
not at all, but totally,
still you fight to keep unsolved
the enigma that is me
one of Idair’s children calls
on another, asking you
make the circle one life larger
as you guard me, guard her too.

The bread was gone. I put both hands on the back of Slythe’s bare shoulders. Phredi drifted into me, leaving a faint rosy iridescence around my arms and hands. The last verse would finish it.

who I am you know a little,
who she is you know still less
still I trust your fierce defense of
mystery, difference, singleness
from all who would make it other
you preserve the thing that’s me
just because you think it matters
just because you want to see
one of Idair’s children living
her own story to its end
so is Slythe one of those children--
as you guard me, guard my friend.

From my hands the rose-colored light bled into her shoulders, flowering along her back as Phredi moved through me into her. For a few moments we stood there connected by that glowing envelope, linked through the thing that was moving through both of us. Then it left us gradually, flowing into a cloud above our heads and then trailing across the room toward its plinth.
	“That’s it, Slythe,” I said. “You’re bonded. How do you feel?”
	She held her hands out in front of her and turned them over, looking at them carefully. “I look the same, but...I do feel different.” She lifted her head hopefully. “I feel...not alone.” I nodded. “That wasn’t so bad...” She looked timidly over at Morat. 
	Morat’s mouth quirked in just the slightest bit of a smile. “Don’t worry. It’ll get worse.”
	“What does she mean?” Slythe looked back at me.
	I herded everyone out and locked the door. “She means her technique is different.”
	“Technique, hell,” Morat said. “My vigils are different. Very different.”
	“What does she mean, Theamh?”
	We had now reentered the living area, where Lilea looked glad to see us. We were all still shaken, and nobody was looking forward to the inevitable moment when we would each retire alone with the night and the evil living in it and in us.
	“Phredi’s gentle,” I said. “It’s just how it is. It doesn’t make it any less fierce in defense, but it’s just much easier to handle than the others.”
	“Is that because it’s ungendered?” Aine asked.
	That half-smile came back to Morat’s face. “No.” She turned back to me. “So you favor the collaborative approach.”
	“It works better with my personality, I think,” I said.
	Morat nodded. “I know Barant would have advised you to go that route anyway--she was always a big proponent of...”
	She trailed off. 
	“Anyway,” I said. “I use it, it works. I know some say it’s less reliable, but my vigils have seen me through a lot and kicked a lot of evil gleacha, and I’m satisfied.”
	“It would explain why you ended up with Phredi,” Morat said. “Does that thing really fight?”
	“Of course it does. It’s--see, Phredi works with the others. There are three very volatile, very violent beings in there and Phredi is what keeps the mix from exploding. It--it mediates, I guess. It looks out for the others, and they look out for it, and in the process they look out for me. And it’s got teeth, bite and power as much as any other vigil.”
	Morat shrugged. “You can’t argue with success.” She nodded to Slythe. “Come on, I’ll see you home and you’ll find out just how different two vigils can be.”
	Slythe looked at me piteously.
	“They won’t hurt you,” I said. “But they will be a lot scarier. Morat uses challenge and command.”
“Oh does she,” Lilea said, amused.
“Be what you are, that’s what she said,” Morat snapped.
	“Slythe, you’ll be all right,” I said. “Come on, I’ll walk you out.”
	Slythe watched uncomfortably as I approached the gate. She stopped a few steps away from it, clasping her hands behind her back and looking down.
	“I did fix it,” she said. “Really.”
	“I know,” I answered.
	“I don’t know...what...” She lifted her head, the tears coming to her eyes. “I don’t--know--what made it--worth it to me, to do that to--”
	“Slythe, you didn’t think you had a choice, it’s all right, it’s--”
	“Talk and talk and reasons and logic,” she shouted, as it broke out of her now. “It’s so simple, it’s so simple, how did I forget?”
	Morat put a hand heavily on her shoulder.
	“Nothing is ever as simple as it should be,” she said gravely. “The world is not as Idair would have it.”
	Slythe snuffled and nodded.
	“Idair with you,” I said, opening the gate.
	They went through it, Morat still with an arm over Slythe, admonishing but comforting, warning and saving like the hand of a parent. Of a good parent.
	It was just Lilea and Aine when I returned. They were talking in low voices when I came through the hall.
	“But how can you know?”
	“We just do, that’s all.”
	“You can’t touch-test me. I can’t make fire. So how can you know?”
	“I know because I know.”
	I walked in. “You’re wondering...?”
	Aine turned, her mouth slightly open, face still unsettled with anxiety.
	“She’s wondering why we did all this conspiring in front of her when she’s just a scoilin,” Lilea answered. 
	I sat down across from Aine.
	“I’ve worked for Idair for thirteen years,” I said. “No one knows her completely. But I know her pretty well. I have a sense for what she wants for me, for the story she sees me living out. She marked me for sadness, for some reason, for struggle and for a long hard time of doubt and failure. But she gives one way when she takes in another. I lost Istri through whatever machinations of whatever evil, and Idair hasn’t been able to bring her back. But she has sent me you.”
	Lilea nodded. Aine watched me, nervously.
	“The world is not as Idair would have it, but neither is it as the Dark One would have it. And we know from her that she could not uproot all the evil, all the time. But to make you evil in spite of and against everything about you that I see and know--to give me a spy and a traitor when more than anything else in the universe I need a friend--that would be a piece of cruelty of which I know she is not capable.”
	“You are you who believe you are,” Lilea said. “Who Theamh knows you are. Who I see you are.”
	“But...you thought Barant was...and she...”
	I shook my head. “Barant was a good woman. But she had a heart where twisted things like this could take root. You don’t.”
	“No,” Lilea said, matter of fact. “If you turn, it’ll be a clean break and it’ll be obvious the minute it happens.”
	Aine went paler.
	“But you won’t,” I said. “You won’t. Don’t worry.”
	“But...” Aine shook her head. “She was Barant. And...and...who the hell am I?”
	“You’re Aine ni hEmer na Ruadh,” I said. “And you’re all right.”
	She looked at me, a little tentatively.
	“Understatement?” she asked.
	Laughter broke out suddenly, with the report of a snapped stick. And it went on for a long time, because we needed to laugh. Lilea slipped out of her chair and sat on the floor near me, leaning on my shoulder as her sides shook. I put an arm around Aine’s shoulders and pulled her into the hug.
	“Yes, Aine,” I said. “Understatement.”
	Wiping her eyes, Lilea finally slid back against one of the chairs. “You bet it was,” she said. “You are the future of shri, child. I really hope Theamh doesn’t get you killed up in the Cretid Nation, because the Order is going to need you when all this is over.”
	“What do you think will happen, Lilea?” I asked. “When all this is over?”
	“Well,” Lilea sighed, “either Barant will win, or we will. If we win, there will be a huge magic trial and a few dark users will be sent over the border where they can plot with Lythril to their hearts’ content. The people’s confidence in us will be shaken, and I imagine the Seated Leaders will reevaluate some of the privileges they extend to us.” I nodded. “If Barant wins...she’ll destroy all seven of us, one way or another. Dark magic will take root in the Pharc, the replacement of notborns will continue, and Idair help us all. Or rather, help Idair’s other children, because we won’t be here to be bothered by it.”
	The matter-of-factness with which Lilea discussed our deaths was getting to Aine, who clung to her brave face with the determination of youth. “Do you think...” she began, looking hesitantly at me. “Do you think...Idair would...let Barant win?”
	“She doesn’t want Barant to win,” I said. “I’m sure of that. But that doesn’t mean Barant won’t.” The silence got heavier. “There were problems Idair couldn’t solve. The problem of greed was one of them. And that’s what this whole conspiracy is about.”
	“So we might lose,” Aine said quietly.
	“We might,” Lilea answered, looking at her.
	There was a long silence while each of us thought about what this would mean.
	“If Barant wins,” Aine said, lifting her chin resolutely, “then this will be a world I don’t want to live in, and we’ll all be well out of it.”
	“That’s my scoilin,” I said, clapping her on the back as cheerfully as I could. “Now you better be getting home, Lilea. Morat and Slythe should have enough of a start.”
	She walked with me out to the gate. I raised a hand to open it.
	“Theamh.”
	I turned back to look at her. She was on the edge of emotion, whatever it was, but her natural serenity was holding it back.
	“You believed in me even I couldn’t,” she said. “From the trial all through this. If--none of this works--if I go back down to town tonight and I never see you again--”
	“Lilea--”
	“I’m not saying that will happen but if it does--” She took a breath. “I want you to know how much that’s meant to me.”
	“You’ve always been true, Lilea. I could never doubt that.” She nodded. To break the tension, I said, “And you damn well better be. You’re my naming shriia. If you go to the dark side I’m thurcte for good and all.”
	“You know,” Lilea said, “Barant’s named a few people in her day.”
	This had never struck me before. 
	“Some of them are probably adults now,” Lilea went on. “Youths, at least. And they’re all in danger.” 
	I sighed. Lilea shook her head.
	“It’s a black day for shri, Theamh,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. But even if we win...this battle can only hurt the Order.”
	“I suppose,” I said. “But as I’m learning, shri and the Order are not necessarily the same thing.”
	“There is that,” she said. I opened the gate. “Well, good night, Theamh.” She hugged me as if I were the only prop keeping her from falling. “Idair stay with you.”
	“And go with you.”
	She stepped through the gate, and the shield wavered back into place between us. 
	
	After clearing up in silence for a while, we finally looked at each other across the kitchen table, both unable to believe in the events of the past 24 hours.
	“I’m glad you told me when you did, Aine,” I said.
	“I...I wish I’d told you before.”
	“No matter,” I said. “Trust yourself, Aine, that’s the lesson from this story. You know a lot more about what’s right and wrong than some people who are older than you and should be wiser.” She nodded. “Let’s try to sleep through what’s left of the night.”
	Slowly we started to the upper story. I pushed the door open to the guest room and looked in. The twins were still asleep, and so was Mna--not in the bed, but curled up on the floor, wrapped around the little trundle bed. She hadn’t wanted to leave them.
	I took the covers off the bed and threw them over her. She didn’t even move. After so many days of worry and anxiety, she was finally getting a good night’s sleep.
	Her story was over. At least for now. Crann was home, and she’d have her own problems. But she no longer had to worry about mine.
	I backed out of the room, closing the door. Aine was still standing in the hallway, her dark eyes fixed on me.
	“Good rest to you,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
	She didn’t move, or take her eyes off me.
	“I’m scared to go to sleep,” she said.
	I didn’t have an answer so I didn’t give one.
	“I’m scared nothing will be here when I wake up.”
	“What do you mean, nothing?”
	“Do you not feel,” she said, “like the world is breaking up into little pieces?”
	“I do, but--”
	“What if it falls apart? What if I don’t even wake up?”
	<Tell you what, Aine.>
	<What?>
	<Go on in to bed, and keep the link open. That way you’ll know I’m still here. I’ll close it once you’re asleep.>
	<I...will you?>
	<Would it help?>
	<Yes.>
	<Then I will.>
	<Thank you, dhiaoc.>
	She went off to her room and I went off to mine. 
	Undoing took a while; I was tired, and in no hurry. The noise coming through the link was a distraction, but my own head was distracting me a lot more. At last I sat down in my shift, huddling under the blanket and looking out the window at the dark sky, waiting for Aine to fall asleep.
	<Dhiaoc?>
	<Sleep, don’t talk.>
	<You’re still there?>
	<I’m still here, Aine.>
	<Lythril can’t hurt us once we’re dead, can she?>
	<Best not to think about that.>
	I pulled the blanket closer around me. The rain had stopped, but the clouds were still hiding the moon. There was nothing out there but black. And behind the black, Idair. But it was hard to see through to her on a night like this.
	<Dhiaoc?>
	<You’re not falling asleep, Aine.>
	<Would you...>
	<Would I what?>
	<When I was little...and I couldn’t fall asleep...>
	<All right, what did your mother use to do?>
	<She used to sing to me.>
	<Sorry, I can’t.>
	<Why not?>
	<I used to sing to Istria.>
	<Oh.>
	I dragged the box out and began rooting through it. I found the flute.
	<Here.>
	I deepened the link so she could hear what I heard and lifted the flute.
	I was out of practice, and anyway I could never memorize music. It was just a tune, made up as I went along, slow and repetitive and not following any particular pattern. But it was quieting for me, having to use those long breaths and listen to the waver of the note in the air. And for her, too, because before long I could feel her mind slipping away into half-consciousness.
	<Dhiaoc?>
	<Shhhh.>
	I played a lot after Istria left--I had a hard time falling asleep alone. Of course, I’d always been alone--literally--but knowing she was there, linked even if we weren’t saying anything, had made a bigger difference than I realized. Even after she was gone, she would call me from the road, sometimes, before she decided that was too risky. 
	Aine was asleep. I closed the link and lay down on the boards under the blanket.
	if something happens
	nothing will happen, Istri
	if something happens, I want you to promise me
	promise you what
	promise me you won’t come after me
	My body didn’t notice the boards any more. Discomfort didn’t even register. That wasn’t what was keeping me up.
	I can’t promise you that 
	if she traps me that’s enough don’t let her lure you after me
	Istri, how could I sit here knowing
	promise me
	no
	promise me
	I can’t
	if it were you, you’d want me to promise
	and you’d refuse
	I would
	well, so do I
	The world would be there, when I woke up.
	Theamh
	I’m here
	I’m scared
	I know
	scared I won’t find her
	scared you will
	whatever happens
	Istri, you’ll be all right
	whatever happens, you’ll know
	Istri
	you’ll know, won’t you
	you’ll come back, Istri, don’t talk like
	you’ll know I love you, always
	like I love you, always
	wherever I am
	like I love you
	I’d fall asleep. Like I had then. I’d wake up. Like I had then.
	And she would be gone. Like she was then.
	But the world would still be there.
	Wouldn’t it?

XVI.
Business as Usual

	“Well,” I called cheerfully as I clattered into the kitchen. “World’s still here, right?”
	Mna turned a puzzled face in my direction. “Where had it gone?”
	“Never mind. Where’s Aine?”
	“Changing the twins.” I must have looked disgruntled; she rushed to explain. “She wanted to. She said it would calm her down. I think she’s crazy, but...”
	<Shriia.>
	<Taric?>
	<Can you let me in?>
	<I’ll be right there.>
	I tramped out to the gate, passing Aine as she returned from the privy with the twins. “All right, Aine?”
	“All right, dhiaoc,” she said, embarrassed. “It doesn’t seem...quite so bad, now.”
	“How’s Crann?”
	“His fnaa is pretty liquid, even for a child his age,” she said frankly. “I think being gone was bad for his digestion.”
	Aine went in carrying the boy. I opened the gate.
	Taric was standing next to the stallion, looking a little more composed than he had last night.
	“Thank you for coming, Taric,” I said, waving him in. “I wouldn’t have asked it of you, but I need a favor and I didn’t know who else could do it.”
	“What favor?” he asked, still planted by his horse.
	“Aine and I will be going soon,” I said. “The gardens will die; I’m resigned to that. But someone has to take care of Pertlo and Cinhe.”
	“Who’s Pertlo?”
	“My chicken,” I said.
	He cracked a smile.
	“She’s scrawny and she’s ill-tempered and old, but she’s always been a reliable layer,” I said, a little embarrassed. “She’s held up her end of the bargain, hard as she’s always driven it, and I must do right by her. I thought...would you have any use for a hen, or a mare? Cinhe’s a dream--good as gold, not temperamental--”
	“But won’t you be riding her?”
	“We’re going among the Cretids; it’s no place for a horse. They use machines instead, up there.”
	Taric looked at me closely. “Won’t you miss her?”
	“Of course I’ll miss her.” I started back through the gate; he followed. “But I’ll be easy in my mind knowing she’s well taken care of--and I can’t think of anyone who’d take better care of her than you would.”
	I thought I saw pride in his face for a moment. “I’d be glad to do it, shriia. She’s a fine horse, even if her form’s not all a breeder would look for.”
	“Thank you,” I said. “Aine will help you pack Pertlo up.” I looked back at the house. “Do...do you want to say goodbye? To Mna and the boys.”
	Taric cleared his throat.
	“Shriia...” I waited for him to get it out. “I’ve been thinking.”
	“That’s good,” I said, trying to sound encouraging rather than sarcastic.
	“They’ve nowhere to go, have they?”
	“I’m hoping Minead will take them in.”
	“Yes, and let that bastard of a father interfere with him again.”
	“But they’re separated now--”
	He shook his head. “I know them both, from him. She loved Keanrih, right enough. But she also loves that bitter old bastard. They may never be joined again, but she won’t sever him, not completely.” This was a new wrinkle. “Shriia, I’m--I’m not easy in my mind about it, but I wanted to ask you--”
	“Ask me what?”
	“I’m thinking maybe it would be good,” he said, “if they stayed at my place.”
	I stared at him.
	“Taric, are you sure you could stand it?”
	He put a hand on Hiinh’s neck, for comfort. “It’s like this, in my mind, shriia. And I’m not a smart man. But it’s like this.” The explanation came haltingly, with the frowning pauses of someone not used to abstractions. “He doesn’t know--now--who I am. He knows he knows me. But he doesn’t know what we were. He can’t. He’s only a child. And I know who he was. But I don’t know who he is. He’s different, even now. He’ll only get more different, the longer he’s here. It’s--it’s--I’m not a smart man,” he repeated. “But it seems to me...it seems that it’s about how I think. If I just don’t see--him--when I look at the boy. If instead I could see--like--if it were his son. Which in some way it is. Then it would be all right.” His puzzled, troubled eyes went back to mine. “Do you see?”
	“I see what you mean,” I answered, looking at his head framed by the branches of the tree. “I still think it would be hard for you.”	
	“It’s not even for Crann, really,” he said. “It’s the boy Frih. He--” Unused to talking about hard things, he had to stop again. “I know I’m not. His athi. But...”
	“But you’ve gotten attached to him.”
	He nodded.
	“And to Mna.”
	There was a pause, but he nodded.
	“And you know they need a friend.”
	He nodded.
	“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “Come on inside, and we’ll put this to Mna. She knows you, and she knows the boys, better than I do. Can your farm spare you for a few hours?” He nodded. “Why don’t you stay here for the afternoon, and see how things go.”
	He led Hiinh off to the stables. As I was headed back to the house I heard another summons. 
	<Theamh.>
	<Lilea?>
	<Barant’s going to convene the Council soon, and there’ll be no one to watch Grinth. Can you come down here and take over?>
	<Has anything happened?>
	<Not since last night. Barant convened the disciplinary committee this morning; they’re in there with Riina right now.> 
	The DC consisted of Barant, Morat and Grinth. Now Grinth was stricken it would be just the two of them and Riina.
	<I’ll pray for Morat.>
	<You and me both. But hurry, Theamh. I don’t like the idea of leaving her alone. Idair with you.>
	I shut the link off. “All right, folks.” Aine turned away from the sink, wiping her hands on the towel. “Taric’s here, and he’s going to take Pertlo and Cinhe for us. Aine, I told him you’d help with that.” She nodded. “Once you’ve got Pertlo ready, you’re going to be in charge of packing. Whatever we have in the way of food that’ll keep, blankets, oilcloths, cooking pots--”
	“I’ve been in the woods before, dhiaoc,” Aine said gently. “I know what to pack.”
	“You have?”
	“Of course. My brothers and I used to go poaching up--” She broke off. 
	Well knock me over with a feather. “Aine ni hEmer na Ruadh,” I said, while Mna laughed. “Who knew you had a criminal past?”
	She lifted her head with a look of such anxiety that I decided to abandon the teasing. “I’m joking. It’s all right--”
	“You’re not disappointed in me?”
	“I’m thrilled. We’re probably going to be on the run for at least part of this trip, so it’ll come in handy.” She nodded. “It just doesn’t fit with your personality, that’s all.”
	“Just because they own land, that doesn’t mean they deserve my obedience.”
	“Well put. Go to it.” Aine headed out to the hencoop. “Mna...Taric wants to talk to you about something. I hope that’s all right with you.”
	“Of course, shriia,” she said. “I’ll be glad to see him.”
	I let myself out. On the other side I took a deep breath.
	Whether they granted it or not, we were in for a rough trip through a lot of pain and danger. Because Barant might be hoping that I would fail, but I was guessing she wouldn’t leave it to chance. Getting there would be difficult. Battling Lythril would be bad. And coming back--if all went well--would probably be worse.
	Ah well. No one said it would be easy.

	As soon as I got through the gate to the City I knew the news had got around. There’s something about the way people look when they stand in those little knots--you can sense that hunger for the story. I tried not to pick up conversations and thoughts that were arching over my head. Some of it was unavoidable--mostly about Grinth, although those who knew me by sight would usually turn the topic as I passed. Council meetings are closed to non-members, but in the Order you can’t keep secrets. So they knew Grinth was dying, they knew it had happened in Council, and they knew that the Council had been considering my petition. How much else they knew it was hard to say.	
	“Shriia!”
	Bloody hell. I was being accosted.
	It was a woman, about middle-age, wearing a woolen dress under a stained apron. Poultry merchant, probably, judging by the smell wafting off her as she bore down on me.
	“Shriia, oinach!”
	I stopped as she reached me. Other pedestrians began to break their trajectories and group themselves around us.
	“What can I do for you, friend?”
	“Is it true what they’re saying?”
	“Tell me first what they’re saying.”
	“That Grinth ni Virhe is dead, and that demons are among us, and that there are dark users in the Order?”	
	“And among them Theamh ni hUlnach,” added a man who had stopped to listen.
	“Theamh ni hUlnach is dark?” another interjected. “You heard that wrong.”
	“No, it wasn’t her,” someone else put in. “I heard it was someone down at the Mathair. What’s her name--Lolia or Lytle--”
	“No, I heard Theamh, I remember distinctly--”
	“Enough!” I shouted.
	They fell silent, watching me with insistent eyes.
	“So far as I know, Grinth ni Virhe is not dead. She’s ill, and she’s not going to recover. But she’s not dead.”
	“What happened then?” said the first man.
	“She was arguing with someone in council and the uru came on her.”
	“Arguing about what?”
	“About--”
	“So will she be all right?” the woman interrupted.
	“No, she won’t be all right,” I answered. “She’ll die. There’s no question about that.”
	“Who’ll be head then?” asked an old woman standing three deep in the crowd.
	“Whoever the Order elects. Until then Barant is the interim head.”
	The current of relief that ran through the crowd when they heard this depressed me greatly, but I tried not to show that.
	“But what about this Theamh--”
	“I’m telling you you heard it wrong--”
	“I know what I heard--”
	“Well then someone was repeating it wrong, because there’s no way--”
	“What was she arguing about?” The poultry merchant was now asserting her right.
	“She was arguing about...” I passed my hand over my forehead, trying to remember. “One of the other shriias had said she was too old and blind to know what was going on in the Order, and she got angry, and that was when it happened.”
	“What is going on in the order?” a man demanded.
	“Darkness and corruption, that’s what I keep trying to tell you,” said that first man. “Someone found out that Theamh ni hUlnach was dark.”
	“That’s not how I heard it,” piped up a messenger from the back. “I heard she called the meeting to accuse someone else.”
	“Theamh ni hUlnach is dark?” asked someone from the sidelines.
	“I am Theamh ni hUlnach!” I shouted.
	The conversation died on the instant.
	“I asked the Council to meet to hear a petition I thought it necessary to make. One of the shriias didn’t agree with my interpretation of events and she accused me of lying. Grinth defended me against her and it was during that argument that the uru came on her. That’s the true story from one who was there.”
	The woman nodded. “Thank you, shriia.”
	“What was this petition?” The first man, the one who’d been saying I was dark, had been momentarily cowed by my self-declaration but was now returning to the fray.
	“I don’t have time to get into that,” I said. “But I did not go down there with the intention of accusing anyone on the Council.”
	“Who was it accused you, shriia?” asked the first woman.
	“Listen--I need to get to the Pharc. I know how upsetting this all is but I just don’t have time to stand here talking about it. You asked if it was true what you heard.” She nodded. “Grinth is not dead. There are always demons among us. And...”
	“And?” She, and the rest of the crowd, waited with drawn breath.
	The energy drained out of me suddenly.
	“Friends,” I said, in a voice that sounded much closer to breaking than I had expected, “I have to get to the Pharc.”
	The woman who had stopped me unexpectedly put a hand on my arm.
	“Of course, shriia,” she said. “You’ve given what I need.”
	I nodded and started walking.
	My progress up the sidewalk felt like swimming between the walls of an aquarium, watched from both sides by silent staring spectators. I wasn’t sure whether it would be polite or impolite to stare back, so I just kept walking.
	The Mathair was full of people--shriias, but also ordinary folk who had come in to keep the vigil for Grinth. Some of the apprentices were in the hallway with them, leading them in the songs. I picked my way up the hall, heading toward the departure rooms.
	“Thank Idair you’re here,” Lilea said, as I stuck my head into the first room. “The meeting’s just about starting.”
	“Lilea--if she goes--what do I--”
	“She won’t go, she’s not there yet,” Lilea said, getting up from her bedside. “Anyway, you know how to watch people out, just do it.”
	I looked at the thin, knotted body under its sheet on the bed, one hand still twisted into a claw, her face slack and at the same time contorted, with those eyes still peering out of their wrinkled lids.
	“But this is Grinth,” I whispered.
	“You’ll be all right,” Lilea said, patting me on the shoulder. “Just keep things clean around her. And if you can do it, talk to her. It’s driving her mad, being cut off like this.”
	“How, talk to her?”
	“Linking still works,” she called, on her way out the door. “Not well, but it does.”
	The door swung shut. 
	I took the stool next to the head of her bed. The sunlight through the windows fell white and pitiless on her draped form. Someone had undone her since her attack and her bony hands projected from the sleeves of one of the thick red robes they gave out to the people who came to these rooms. They’re warm, and must be comforting that way. And they put you in mind of going. 
	She looked as if she wanted to turn her head, but couldn’t. I took her hand in mine. We were alone in the room, although that probably wouldn’t last long. Grinth had a brother and two sisters, and they had children, and they would be on their way from Kengda. And other shriias would want to come in and sit with her, once the news got around. People who weren’t either in the Order or related wouldn’t be let in, unless Grinth specifically asked for them, and there wasn’t much she could do to ask, now.
	It shouldn’t have been me at the head of that bed. It should have been someone she was close to, someone she’d trusted and shared things with. Not some under-thirty upstart who had been causing trouble and headache for her since the day she was ordained. I could at least trust that she respected my skill, and that as I made the motions and said the words that cleared the space around her she could at least rest easy.
	<Theamh!>
	<Harani, it’s not a good time.>
	<Why, what are you doing?>
	<I’m in here with Grinth trying to keep her safe. Listen, I’ll talk to you later-->
	<Talk to me later. I like that. You turned the entire Order inside out yesterday and you didn’t even tell me about it after?>
	<Harani, I’ve got a lot on my mind-->
	<And now I hear Riina accused you in front of the Council? And you never said a word to me about it?>
	<Do you think it’s something that I yearn to talk about? The whole Council witnessed the shame of it, I don’t need to go spreading the story to others.>
	<If there’s shame coming to anyone it’s due to Riina, not you. Why did she do it?>
	<Harani, I really don’t want to talk about it right now.>
	<Do you think she’s false herself, and is that why-->
	<Look, I told you I don’t want to talk now. Please. Don’t make me block you.>
	There was a wounded pause, and I immediately felt bad, but her insistence was slowly driving me mad. I knew I couldn’t tell her anything until I had tested her, and I knew that the longer she kept picking and picking at me the greater the chance that I would eventually slip up and reveal something. 
	<Well, if you’re going to be like that.>
	<Harani--> But she had already closed the link.
	I sighed. Grinth’s seamed face was still twisted away from me, her eyes bent dully on the sleeve of her red robe. I patted her uncomfortably on the shoulder.
	“I know I’m not much company for you. But it’s better not to be alone, isn’t it?”
	There was no answer, of course. I settled onto the stool and waited.
	enter entrance into
	It wasn’t coming from my own mind, and it wasn’t coming through a link either. I waited to see if there would be anything else.
	member membering mem memor memordet
	It could only be Grinth. Which would explain its not making sense.
	mememberem ember bury memembury
	“I hear you, Aiv, but...”
	She could tell I didn’t understand. With a sigh, she closed her eyes.
	pain
	It was the last thing, sent as an afterthought without the same effort and with the despair of someone who has given up on being understood. But it made the difference. She was trying to link to me.
	I put a hand gently against the side of her gray head and took up the burden.

	if there are no memories
	but fragments, shards and twisted things
	coming to your broken mind
	give me these and only these
	
	neither lover, friend nor kin
	I may never make the sense
	having never seen the whole
	I cannot fit the pieces in

	stricken, palsied, in despair
	still fight through your fading mind
	find the thing that can be read
	where you find it, meet me there.

It was a struggle. Her mind was curdling, that’s the only way to describe it--turning in on itself, lumping up, thickening in clots and thinning in puddles. But having been through Ilwath’s mind so recently, I was able to navigate. And at last, I found something that I thought was her.
	<Aiv?>
	<The...>
	<It’s Theamh ni hUlnach.>
	The irritation came clear, even if the words were hesitant. <I knoknow.>
	<I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to patronize you.>
	<Not. Matters. IfIcouldjust...but.>
	Her frustration, and her grief at being so hindered, came sharp and painful to me and brought out hurt in my own gut. <The Council is meeting.>
	<Talking at me. About. Me.>
	<About what to do if...>
	<When.>
	<When you leave us, yes.>
	<Barant?>	
	<Barant what?>
	<Head?>
	<I assume she’ll try for it. I don’t know for sure.>
	<Theamh.>
	<Yes, Aiv?>
	<Barant.>
	<Yes?>
	<Think?>
	<Do I think what about her?>
	<True?>
	I thought for a minute about how to answer. She was dying, and could be well out of it before she had to know how bad things had gotten; perhaps I shouldn’t let her know. And besides, if one of the others did manage to penetrate her mind somehow--
	<Thought so,> came her disgusted answer. <Not.>
	<Aiv-->
	<Should seen, should seen her.>
	<How could you know, Grinth? I didn’t.>
	<Theamh.>
	<Yes, Aiv?>
	<Going?>
	<Yes, Aiv.>
	<Even no?>
	<Whatever they say, Aiv.>
	<Good.>
	We waited a while as she rested. Even these short bursts were almost too much effort for her. It was only because of forty years of mindstrength that she was even able to speak this clearly and understand this well in her condition.
	<Theamh.>
	<Yes, Aiv?>
	<We were...> I waited. <We were...wewer...were too...>
	<Too what?>
	<Too hard.>
	<Too hard how?>
	<On you.>
	<I gave you cause.>
	<Wish...well. Too late.>
	With a great effort, she shifted in bed so that she could look at me.
	<Glad you’re here.>
	<Thank you, Aiv.>
	<Rest now.>
	<All right, Aiv.>
	I shut the link off. I wondered what would happen when she died. When I tried to activate the link, would it just not open, like it was broken? Or would it send me down the end of an unanchored cord into some open space I knew nothing of?
	Istria broke her link to me, after that last call. One day I tried to open it and there was no answer, not even the buzz that tells you the other person is blocking. Just dead, hanging there with no endpoint. I told the Council immediately but of course they waited until she failed to report to them before doing anything about it. 
	<Theamh.>
	It was Dalen, on the Council frequency. I’d been avoiding it so much lately it was a shock to get an official communication through that channel.
	<Yes?>
	<The Council wants you to report to the Raed to hear their decision.>
	<Will someone else watch Grinth?>
	<Eunem is on her way.>
	<I’ll wait till she’s here.>
	<Very good.>
	She shut off. I wondered, if anyone had monitored that, what they thought--if the conversation was normal enough, formal enough but not so formal as to be suspicious. I didn’t like living this way or thinking these things--it reminded me of that month with Lythril.
	“Eunem’s coming to take over for me,” I said, patting Grinth’s hand. “She’s much better at this than I am.”
	I don’t think she heard me; she looked to be asleep. It was a few long, silent and lonely moments before Eunem came in through the door.
	“Thanks, Theamh. Hurry, they hate waiting.”
	
	I hustled through the halls to that room of evil memory. I discovered that I was intensely averse to entering. The pain of Riina’s accusation hit in my gut and made me, for a moment, too white and scared to lift a hand to the door. Then I got over it.
	The room looked the same, except for a few things. They had moved the bench with the star on it to the left side of the room. And Barant was sitting on it. 
	I walked into the circle alone and stood there, looking up at my colleagues. The gravity of the situation was written on their faces--the knowledge of the changes about to happen, the danger and uncertainty. Lilea looked at me encouragingly; Morat looked impassive, and Dalen watched with flintlike eyes from a face set hard. Barant stood up.
	“Theamh ni hUlnach, thank you for appearing a second time. We recognize that this is irregular, but then everything these past days has been irregular.” I nodded. “Before we proceed, however, I call on Riina ni hOalar to perform what she has promised.”
	Behind me, Riina stood up. I turned to watch as she made her way to the floor, slowly and with a sense of dread. Her face was lined, and it looked as if she hadn’t had much sleep. Her eyes were on me, but she was really looking at Barant.
	Everyone in the circle was looking at the two of us--me, with my bushy reddish hair and the pile of drapery that was my hreapa, her with her yellow hair swept up in a graceful curve and her hreapa falling gently in a cascade from her shoulders to just above her feet. Older than me, more assured, more confident--usually.
	I suppose I knew what she was going to say,  but it was still a shock when she dropped to her knees and spread her hands.
	“Language is power, speech is a weapon,” she said. “We are charged to wield it only for the good, and to make power serve and save.” Around me I could feel the weight of the stares resting on my shoulders, and on hers. “I have failed that charge and violated that trust. Here before our sisters I withdraw the words that wounded you. In my pride and anger I accused you without cause.” She dropped her eyes for a moment and took a troubled, interrupted breath. Raising them again, she brought her hands together. “I ask that you forgive me for the hurt I have done you, or that you choose the penalty whose payment will quit my debt to you.”
	She was trying to mask, but it wasn’t working. And what I was reading was a wave of something almost nauseous, a sense of standing at the edge of a cliff. She was desperately afraid of something. And it wasn’t me.
	Barant had orchestrated this performance; she must have. Riina was afraid of not doing it right--that she would be unconvincing, that Barant would be displeased and that she would be punished, later, for having come so close to exposing them. Because this was a smart move--Barant got to look like a leader, the charge became a regrettable indiscretion soon amended, and the question of who was dark and who was not would recede as quickly as it had arisen. As long as Riina looked and sounded properly contrite.
	Looking at her kneeling in front of me, I knew I couldn’t forgive her. Not there, with the wound still smarting in me, and with the knowledge of her treachery in my heart. And it was with a shudder that I realized Barant must have known that. Because otherwise she wouldn’t have risked this. If I could say the word and forgive her, the ritual called for me to seal that by raising her up and embracing her. Which, of course, would make it obvious to everyone that one of us was dark. But unless I could say I forgave her, I wouldn’t be called on to do that. And I couldn’t.
	Another test? To see how much I knew? Because if I knew she was dark, I would want to avoid this test too, and refuse to forgive. But then even if I didn’t know that, I doubt I could have forgiven her anyway, after what I’d just gone through.
	“Riina ni hOalar,” I said. “I wonder if you can imagine what it would feel like. To have your truth, your honesty and your allegiance challenged, out of the blue, in front of the whole Council.” She watched me, not sure if it was something that required a response. “Maybe, the day after receiving such a wound, you could forgive the woman who gave it to you. But I can only be who I am. I serve and love Idair and I wish, every day, to be as she would have me be. But I’m not. I’m only Theamh ni hUlnach. And right now, I cannot forgive you.”
	Riina nodded, and I felt the relief, filtered through that incomplete mask. She put her hands behind her back and bowed her head.
	“Then choose your penalty, and I will perform it if I can.”
	I had thought about this while she was doing her apology. I cleared my throat.
	“There is only one thing I want from you,” I said.
	She waited.
	“I want you to order that the transcript of my session with the Council be published.”
	Speech murmured along the ranks of the listeners as the responses circulated. 
	“Theamh, this is between you and Riina. You cannot ask for a remedy that involves the entire Council,” Barant said.
	I broke eye contact with Riina, who was quailing at the thought, and scanned the ranks. “On my way to the Pharc, I was accosted by a woman who wanted to know what had happened here yesterday,” I said. “Word is out. There are a hundred versions of the story, and I know that at least one of them has it that I really am dark. There is only one way to stop that rumor, and that is to make it clear exactly why and under what conditions I was accused. Since the accusation, somehow, has already become public knowledge.”
	“Then publish the apology,” Barant offered.
	“The apology will not quell the rumors,” I said. “Only the truth will do that.”
	I saw other women nodding--Morat, and Lilea, but also Cualha and others who were not among the guests I had entertained last night. We’re uncomfortable with secrecy, and if there’s a question of whether something should become public most of us will incline to publish. Barant was within ordinary boundaries to argue against this for a little while, but if she pushed it too far she would undermine their trust in her. 
	“My good name has been taken from me and she owes it to me to return it. Publishing the transcript of yesterday will accomplish that as nothing else can. As a member of the Public Relations Committee she has the power to order it published.”
	“Theamh...” Barant sighed. “Have you considered that this report will alert the partners of this...conspiracy to the fact that you intend to go after them?”
	“Lythril already knows I’ve found her out. I’ve lost the advantage of surprise.”
	“Or the damage this wild theory of yours may do to your reputation as a woman of sense and talent?” Barant pursued.
	“Better that people should think me cracked, or incompetent, than false,” I said. 
	“Or--”
	“Aiv,” I broke in. “This is the remedy I claim, and I will have no other.” 
	I looked back at Riina. Her head was hanging and I couldn’t read her face. But in the pause that followed, I bet she and Barant were having a bit of a consultation.
	“I have wounded you and I owe you remedy,” she finally said. “I will order it published as you ask. Will that quit my debt to you?”
	“Yes,” I said.
	Riina got up. We bowed at each other, and Riina returned to her seat.
	I watched her go with some compunction. Although Barant had seen me force her into it, Riina was still in a difficult position. Not only would publishing that transcript cast doubt on Riina, but it would lay out the whole conspiracy, at least as much as I had known. And once the common people got wind of it, this genius wasn’t going back.
	“Well,” Barant said. “Theamh ni hUlnach, are you ready to hear the decision?”
	“I am, Aiv.”
	“You don’t have to Aiv me,” she said with a smile. “I’m still your dhiaoc.”
	I forced a smile back. “Well, then, dhiaoc, I am ready to hear the decision.”
	“The Council has voted unanimously to allow you to pursue your search.”
	Unanimous. So she’d gotten all of her cohorts to toe the line, and the rest had agreed--probably out of respect for Grinth. Another smart thing. Now there was no way to use the vote to tell who was against us. And when the people heard about what had happened, they would trust that the whole Council had done what was best for them.
	“Thank you all,” I said, turning to look at as many as I could. “I will do my best to be worthy of the trust you have put in me and bring the story to a happy end.”
	“We have also authorized you to take with you any assistance you may deem necessary. You will communicate your plan of action to the Mission Committee along with the names of everyone in your party.” I nodded. “When do you intend to set out?”
	“As soon as possible,” I said.
	“Then this may be the last time we see you,” Barant said.
	I swallowed.
	“It might.”
	Barant stood. “Duireann siad an hailabh.”
	The others rose after her. Dalen stepped into the circle.
	“Idair gheofe tu ag an tsraid,” she began.
	The others took up the song, sending the harmonies waving around us as they began separating into different strands. It was a powerful sound, all of those voices in their different timbres asking Idair to keep me safe and bring me back whole. And a powerful feeling, looking at Morat and Lilea and at Dalen standing near me, even Slythe joining in with a fervor I hoped Barant wouldn’t remark on. I had to look at Barant, and to look comforted. But even knowing she had a black heart, I was glad to hear it. 
	Dalen put her hand on my shoulder. “Theamh ni hUlnach, are you ready?”
	“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I said.
	“Go with our hopes and Idair’s blessing,” she said. “Call when you are in trouble. Help is here.” I nodded. “Safe there, Theamh. And safe home.”
	I bowed to them, turned, and left the room.
	The corridor as I walked through it was empty, but not for long. Harani appeared as if from thin air and hauled me by the sleeve off into an anteroom.
	“So, did they grant it?”
	“How did you even know it was me?” I said.
	“Petitioner always leaves the room first,” she answered. “So did they grant it?”
	“Yes, they granted it. How do you know about this?”
	“Theamh--” She pushed the door to the room shut. Putting one hand on my shoulder, the lifted the other and popped flame out of it. “Now will you talk to me?”
	“How did you know about--”
	“I heard it from Cualha. I’ve been putting things together. So has she. There’s something very wrong, isn’t there?”
	I nodded.
	“Theamh, how many times--”
	“I’m sorry. Yes. There’s something very wrong.”
	“I’m not going to ask you more than that. Don’t worry.”
	I bridled in surprise. “Goodness, Harani. You really are serious.”
	“Gossip is my life, but this thing is life and death. I’m not stupid, Theamh.”
	“I’m sorry to have--”
	“Never mind. As soon as I unlinked I realized what it was. Of course you were right not to talk to me until you could test me.” She sighed. “So. What’s next?”
	“I go home, get Mna and the twins settled somewhere, and we’re on our way.”
	There was a pause while she faced me with growing incredulity.
	“Theamh, aren’t you forgetting something?”
	“What?”
	“You may never come back from this mission.”
	“I know.”
	“Don’t you think you should go see your parents?”
	I blinked.
	“It never occurred to me,” I said.
	“Lucky you ran into me then.”
	“What kind of a woman am I?”
	“Scatterbrained,” she said. “Go, run out to the Sixth and make peace if you can.”
	And Harani was off. One more on our side--two, if Cualha was in on it. And in Rainmaking. So that was good.
	And I was off to the Sixth, to see my parents. Perhaps for the last time. A journey, in its way, more painful than the one I was about to undertake.

XVII.
Away

	I stood outside the side door, even lifted my hand to rap on it. But halfway there I thought better of it, and my hand dropped. For something like this, it was only right that I see Mathi first. So I circled the house, climbed the steps, and knocked on the front door.
	I’d figured Frene would be surprised to see me coming in through the main entrance. But I hadn’t expected him to actually turn white and stand there, looking as if only his long years of training to be the perfect steward were preventing him from dropping his jaw and gibbering.
	“Are you all right, Frene?”
	He snapped out of his catatonia, but when he spoke it was with a rattled kind of wariness that was not part of his normal personality. “Perfectly, Aiv.”
	“Is mathi around? I need to talk to her.”
	“Certainly, Aiv. She’s in the parlor at the moment.”
	“Well, that’ll save her a trip,” I said grimly. “Can you tell Athi I’m here and I’d like to see him?”
	“Of course, Aiv.”
	“Is there some reason why you’re Aiving me all of a sudden?” When he didn’t answer, it came to me. “I am going to come see you and Iela afterwards, Frene. I’d have come to see you first, but I just feel like for an occasion like this, it would hurt her feelings too much--”
	“Of course, of course,” he said, anxiously. He stared at me again.
	“Frene, what in Idair’s name is wrong?”
	“You’ll have to excuse me, Aiv,” he said. “I-I’m needed in the kitchen.”
	And with that he fled.
	Frene was never needed in the kitchen. Iela was constantly trying to get him to stay out of the kitchen. For some reason my arrival had spooked him badly. I couldn’t understand it. I’d never seen Frene scared of anything, not even my mother.
	As I got closer to the parlor, I could hear my mother’s voice. Raised, as it sometimes was, but freighted with a raw kind of emotion I hadn’t heard from her in a long time. Maybe that was it--she was having one of her fits, and it had him rattled. I hoped she wasn’t fitting at Iela. She didn’t take mathi’s fnaa very meekly.
	It wasn’t Iela, though. The voice that answered hers was lower, and the articulation was cleaner. It was the voice of a younger woman--and it sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Not the pitch so much but the intonations, broken as they were--they fell into patterns I thought I could recognize if I could just remember the context in which I’d encountered them.
	“You told me it was what you wanted,” my mother said. “You wouldn’t listen when I told you different.”
	“I know,” sobbed the other woman. “I never let you tell me anything. It wasn’t right. I’m sorry for everything, mathi, for all the time I’ve wasted--”
	“It’s all right,” my mother said, weeping. “It’s all right now, you’re back.”
	It takes longer to tell it than it did to happen. I swung around the corner, stopping cold in the parlor doorway before they noticed me. I saw my mother, standing by the divan, tears leaving blurred trails in the paint on her face, in whose expression pain seemed to be changing into triumph. And she was addressing a woman sitting in an armchair across from her--a woman with bushy red hair, a shapeless white robe, and my body. They were too intent on each other to notice me--and I was too paralyzed to speak.
	“I forgive you,” my mother was saying, reaching her gauze-draped arms toward the thing she thought was me. “I never held grudges, Theamh--all I ever wanted was to know what was going on with you. You’ve been so cold, so closed off, all these years--”
	“And I’ve hated it,” said whatever this creature was, standing up as that voice broke with feigned emotion. “I want to be close to you, like I should have been all this time--”
	“Chara,” said my mother. “You are, now. Things will be different.”
	“Mathi,” she snuffled.
	“Theamh.”
	“Oh mathi--I can’t believe--” She broke off, apparently overcome by joy. “Show me it’s really happening, mathi.” There was a pause as they both wept. “Show me we’re mathi and daughter again.” My mother wiped her eyes. “Say my name.”
	“THURKING HELL!”
	Well, I’d found my voice. And I’d turned my mother’s head pretty fast. And the head of the thing that looked like me, which recognized my face and drew back into the crouch of a cornered animal.
	 “Who made you?” I shouted.
	It spotted the side entrance to the sitting room, and sped through it.
	“No you thurking don’t!” I was off after it, leaving my mother to make whatever an unbeliever could make of this situation. It would have to find an open window before it could escape--it wasn’t exactly solid, but it wasn’t spirituous enough to go through other matter. And before it did that, it would have to outrun me.
	I had it cornered for a moment in the steward’s pantry, as it flicked its panicked, hollow eyes around searching for exits. But it shot off, trailing luminous mist as it traveled down the steps to the kitchen. It was breaking up.
	I fired a burst at it just to keep it rattled. “Tell me who made you!”
	With an inhuman shriek, the thing sailed down the steps ahead of me. Now it wasn’t trying to imitate human motion any more--and it could fly faster than I could run. I tripped halfway down and went rolling down the rickety wooden steps, fetching up in a heap at the bottom.
	“Block the chimney!” I shouted, before Iela could even move in my direction.
	With more speed and presence of mind than Frene could apparently summon, Iela pulled the cord and closed the damper. Frustrated, the thing veered away from the fireplace and toward the door, but by the time it was fumbling at the latch I had sorted myself out well enough to fire. The beam froze it where it stood, hand on the metal handle, racked with the pain of my unfriendly fire.
	“Who made you?”
	It stared at me with empty eyes--black holes now, through which I could see into the nothingness at its core. The weave was dissolving as whoever had made it began breaking it up. As the three of us watched, the fingers clutched at the doorlatch shimmered into clouds of tiny iridescent particles.
	“Before she breaks you, tell me who made you!”
	It was too late. By the time I had tightened my grip for another try, the only part left that hadn’t dissipated into that cold bright mist was the head. Even that only lasted a moment, its blank eyeholes blurring into the same gauzy cloud.
	“Well, there’s no point holding it now,” I said. “Frene, will you get the door?”
	No, Frene wouldn’t. Iela, with a sardonic glance his direction, got up and unhooked the latch. I stepped out onto the lawn and withdrew the beam. The thing floated up and hissed into nothingness on the afternoon breeze. 
	“Inion na mhada,” I said, bitingly.
	Iela stepped up behind me. “What was it, Theamhin?”
	I shook my head. “It was a cheap trick,” I answered.
	She followed me back into the kitchen. “What do you mean?”
	I had gone over to the hob where Frene was sitting, his face the color of unfired clay. He rubbed his brow distractedly with a shaking hand.
	“So...so that wasn’t you,” he finally said.
	“Nope,” I answered cheerfully, clapping him on the shoulder. “I’m me.”
	“I should have known,” he answered. “One does trust one’s eyes, but when I heard you telling Herself you were leaving the order--”
	“What?” Iela and I shouted together.
	“That’s just what I thought,” Frene answered, his composure coming back slowly. “Idair told us that all things are possible, but I’m still glad there turned out to be a perfectly reasonable explanation.”
	“Well,” I said, standing up angrier than I’d been when I sat down. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, Iela, to tell you what I came to tell you. But first, I have to go upstairs and disappoint my mother yet again.”
	Frene didn’t follow me up the stairs; either he was too worn out from his recent ordeal, or he could hear the coming confrontation in the way the steps cracked under my stamping feet. When I got back to the parlor, my mother was still there, having dropped onto the divan, looking toward the entrance to the sitting room with one hand on her throat.
	“Mathi?”
	She was still crying, but they were no longer tears of joy.
	“Mathi, it’s all right, it’s gone.”
	Her head dropped and her shoulders sank as she sobbed even more bitterly.
	“I’m sorry, mathi.”
	“I should have known,” she choked out, still turned away from me. “I should have known. As soon as she looked at me that way I should have known it couldn’t be you.”
	“Mathi, I know you’re disappointed--”
	“Just leave me alone!” Twisting violently around in her chair, she shouted at me, her throat raw from crying. “You don’t want to be here, you don’t need me, you don’t have to stand there and pretend you care. How could I have been so stupid?” she demanded, with a laugh that was as far from mirth as you can get. “How could I have let myself think, for a moment, that you would ever come here of your own free will to tell me you loved me and you wanted to work things out?”
	I couldn’t do anything, for a while, but stand there and watch her cry.
	“You can’t even say it,” she said, thrusting an accusing hand out at me. “You can’t even say it, because you’re not sure it’s true.”
	“I--mathi, I do--”
	“Don’t!” she screamed. “Don’t stand there and lie to me, just leave me alone!”
	“Mathi, I came here to tell you I’m going away,” I said, as she put her head in her hands. “I’m going over the border after Lythril.” Another sarcastic, empty-hearted laugh from her. “I may not come back. I came to--to say goodbye, in case--”
	“Stop it!” she cried, lifting her miserable face. “I can’t stand the way you have to make a drama out of everything. If you want to go, go!”
	“Mathi...”
	“Just go! Go do what you have to do and I’ll talk to you when you get back.”
	 “But...”
	It was hopeless. She couldn’t even see me now. I wasn’t there to her. For a few minutes she’d been within reach of her dream--the daughter she’d wanted, the one who saw what she saw, the one who knew how to talk to her and could say exactly what she wanted to hear. And now it was gone--all because I had unreasonably wanted to destroy this beautiful creation, whose existence had managed to solve so many long, intractable problems.
	“Farewell, mathi,” I said.
	I waited.
	I wanted to say it. I love you, and I want to work things out. And I wanted it to be true. But she was right. I wasn’t sure.
	There was nothing else to do but leave.
	On my way down the hall I met my father, who had heard the ruckus and descended from the study.
	“What is it, Theamh?”
	“It’s...it’s long to explain. The short story is, I’m leaving--going over the border after Lythril. I came to say goodbye.”
	He nodded, anxiously. “You’ll do well, Theamh. You’ll get it done and come home safe.”
	“I hope so.”
	“Safe there, Theamh,” he said, giving me an awkward hug. “We’ll pray for you.”
	Well, he probably would, anyhow.
	“You better go talk to mathi,” I said, as I saw him nervously wondering what to say next. “She’s pretty upset.”
	He nodded. “Take care of yourself, Theamh.”
	He walked, I thought a little grimly, toward the parlor. I tumbled down the steps into the kitchen.
	Iela was standing there holding onto Frene, crying into his shoulder as she pummeled him with one fist.
	“Iela?”
	“She will cut you into ribbons,” Iela said, her voice shaking as she swung around on me.
	“Who, my mother or Lythril?”
	Frene smiled, but Iela was not to be brought around so easily. “She is twice your age and she has all the demons of hell behind her. It’s like sticking your head into a furnace. It’s suicide.”
	“I’m  a big girl now, Iela,” I said. “I’ve beaten her once--”
	“You’re not ready!” Iela shouted.
	“Iela, I’m going,” I said. “That’s not a question. I just came to--”
	“Oh, of course not. What I think doesn’t matter. You’re your mother’s daughter and you can do what you like--”
	“Iela--”
	“You’re just like her,” Iela said, stepping forward. “Barging through life getting your own way and listening to no one--just another stubborn, self-willed, big house bitch!”
	She stumbled back into the kitchen and collapsed onto a stool, sobbing into her hands as she huddled up into a shaking, weeping mass.
	Frene’s hand landed on my shoulder, quietly. “She doesn’t mean it, Theamhin.”
	“I do mean it!” she cried, but without apparent conviction.
	“Iela, I’m sorry,” I began, hurt with the knowledge that I couldn’t make things right.
	For a while the only sound was her weeping. Then she looked up, the anger gone but the pain still there.
	“You went to her first,” she said. “Got her cold comfort and then came down here to me. You’ll leave and it’ll be what she said that matters. It always has been.” I waited, stunned by the force of this sudden emotion. “She birthed you. But when she birthed you, who took your saoc out of the dustbin where that medical dumped it and took it to the shriias to be burned? When you had to be given your used name again, who did you ask to do it?”
	She seemed to want me to answer, so I did. “It was you, Iela.”
	“It was me,” she repeated, pressing a fist into her stomach. “I’m the one’s cared for you, I’m the one’s watched out for you, I’m the one’s going to break my heart with grief when you die, and for nothing!”
	“But--Iela--I’ve always--you know that I--”
	“I’m not your mother!” she shouted. “No matter how much I care for you!” Even Frene was rattled by now. “All this time and trouble and what have I got? Not a daughter. Just this headstrong child trotting gaily over the border to kill herself without asking my leave or my blessing.”
	“You didn’t give me a chance,” I said.
	Iela looked at me. “You asked Herself?” she said, quieting down.
	I shook my head. “She didn’t offer. I hoped maybe you would.” My eyes dropped in embarrassment. “Although of course...maybe that was...” I looked up to see her brows contracted in worry. “I didn’t realize...I...” Crossing my arms, I looked away. “Of course it’s complicated. I always knew it was complicated. I just...”
	 Iela pushed herself off the stool and gave a snuffling laugh. “Of course even if I was your mother you wouldn’t listen to me.”
	“That’s right.”
	“She never minded Herself,” Frene said. “Not about things that mattered.”
	Iela lifted a hand. I put it on my shoulder, covering it with one of mine.
	Her face twitched as she tried to keep her mouth straight to say the words. “Safe journey, Theamh,” she said. “Safe where you rest, and safe where you roam, safe to your end and then safe back home.”
	“Thank you,” I said, giving her hand a squeeze before lifting it off my shoulder.
	“Oh Theamhin, I’m sorry I called you a big house bitch.”
	Instantly I was engulfed in an embrace from which, had I wanted to, it would have been difficult to disengage. I stood there for what seemed like a long time, with her broad arms around me, as she cried onto my hreapa.
	“It’s all right,” I said, ineffectually. 
	“I’ll miss you,” she said. “Come safe back.”
	Finally she released me. I went to Frene and gave him a hug.
	“I’ll try not to get into trouble,” I said.
	“You’ll try but you’ll fail,” he answered. “Best of luck to you, all the same.”
	“Idair stay with you,” I said, ducking out the door.
	As soon as I was out of the house I started linking.
	<Lilea?>
	<Theamh?>
	<Lilea, do me a favor: if I come up to you at some point and ask you to say my name, don’t.>
	<Why do I get the feeling there’s a story behind this?>
	<I’m just coming back from my parents’ house. Somebody sent them an aidolen.>
	<Iandar and Cailte.>
	<It wouldn’t tell me who made it, but I’m pretty sure it was Barant.>
	<But we can’t make--> There was a break as her mind laughed. <Sorry. I’m still getting used to Dark Barant. You really think she’s learned how?>
	<I think so. Lythril doesn’t know enough about me and my mother to pull this off. Barant does, because I confided in her, fool that I was.>
	<You mean your mother couldn’t tell the difference?>
	<You should have seen my mother eat up the fnaa this thing was dishing out.>
	<She didn’t--she didn’t tell it your name?>
	<How could she? She doesn’t know it.>
	Lilea seemed to find this amusing. <All that trouble for nothing.>
	<It wasn’t for nothing. I’m sure she made mathi very happy. Maybe Barant could make her another sometime and she could adopt it. It might be better for both of us.>
	<You don’t really mean that, Theamh.>
	I sighed. < Maybe not. Anyhow, the point is, she’s going around making aidolens--and that’s not a skill you learn in the first month. She’s been at this a while.>
	<Wonder what else she’s got up her sleeves.>
	<I prefer not to.>
	<She’s going to hound you all the way to the border, Theamh. You know that.>
	<If I didn’t before, I do now.>
	<Watch your back.>
	<Watch yours. She knows you’re my naming shriia.>
	<I will. Safe there and safe home, Theamh. We’ll be waiting.>
	I suppose Barant might have thought she was doing me a favor, in a sick kind of way. So that at least my mother would remember me fondly, after Barant destroyed me. Barant knew, of course, that my mother hadn’t named me; but she must have assumed that I told her my name after Lilea gave it to me. Almost anyone else would have It’s not right for your mother not to know your name. But there was a lot about me and my mother that wasn’t right. And that I would probably never have the chance to put right, now.

	I was still in such a bad mood that I didn’t even greet Aine when I came home. Instead I blew right past her up the stairs to the storeroom. She followed me anyhow, watching as I shoved implements into my bag pell-mell. 
	“Are you all right, dhiaoc?”
	“No.”
	“Did something happen to you?”
	“Yes.”
	“Are you going to tell me what it was?”
	“Not right now.” I stuffed a fistful of amulets into the bag. “We’ll have plenty of time for it on the road.”
	She nodded. “You sure you’ll have everything we need?”
	“No, we won’t,” I said. “Aha.” I pulled a black velvet sack out of the back of one of the cubby holes. “This is what I was looking for. Come on down to the vigileacha.”
	She traipsed after me down the stairs. “Dhiaoc?”
	“Yes?”
	“You never said if they’d granted it.”
	“Didn’t I?” I laughed. “Well, brace yourself, Aine--they did.”
	Aine stopped, surprised, as I stood in the middle of the floor and opened the bag. “They did?”
	I nodded, holding up the cieridh. “Tabhair, mo sielnai.”
	The four streams of light flowed from the plinths toward the four quadrants of the ball in my hand, settling into them so that they glowed with faint light. When they had had time to sort out their nests, I dropped the ball into the bag and closed the drawstring.
	Aine was still staring at me as I tucked the black bag into my larger one.
	“What?”
	“Don’t they...isn’t is kind of...small, in there?”
	I shrugged. “Space is different for them. They don’t mind.”
	“What if you lose the ball?”
	“See, this is the thing about vigils,” I said, closing the door of the laboratory and locking it. “Where you see them and where they are are not always the same thing. Sometimes you see them where they are but then sometimes they’re there and you can’t see them, and then sometimes you see them and they aren’t really there. You understand?”
	“Dhiaoc, how could I possibly understand that, it made no sense.”
	“I’ll try again later when I have more time. All right, we’re...” I looked around at the living area. “Where’s everybody else?”
	“Taric’s up helping Mna pack up their things,” she said.
	“So...?”
	Aine shook her head. “She’s going with him. I would never have credited it. But they’re staying at his farm, until she can find somewhere else to go.”
	I sighed. “Aine, can I ask you something?”
	“What?”
	“Do you think that’s a good idea? Because I’m undecided.”
	“I don’t know what I think, dhiaoc,” she said. “I truly don’t. Both the boys love him--that’s obvious. And he and Mna...” Her eyebrows wrinkled with the puzzlement of it. “You know, you were right, in a way. He does like her. Not that way, but...there is a connection.”
	The seat cushions sent out a puff of dust as I plumped into the chair. “Could this get any more complicated?”
	“I suppose we could find out that Frih is the reincarnated spirit of Mna’s lover,” she said. 
	I laughed. She smiled, glad to have made a joke that worked. I wondered, again, whether I was having too much of an influence on her character.
	“Well,” I said. “Taric’s a good man, and he’s smarter than he thinks. If it gets to the point where things are just--too--” Aine nodded. “I trust him to do what’s right. Meanwhile, they’re adults, and ultimately what we think doesn’t matter.” I heard them coming down the steps. “So let’s just wish them well, and try not to think about it.”

	“Well, Mna,” I said. “This is it.”
	She nodded. Taric had loaded Pertlo onto Cinhe, along with Mna’s things. He stood by Hiinh’s head, waiting for us to say our goodbyes.
	“Whatever happens now,” I said, “I’m glad to have been able to find your boy for you.” I felt hopelessly awkward, but I went ahead. “And I’m glad to know you. The place will seem strange without you, if we ever get back to it.”
	“Oh shriia,” she said. “You’ve been so good to me. I’ll never forget it. I hope you whip her good and come safe back home.” I bowed at her. “And--Aine--”
	Mna’s eyes were misting now. Aine swallowed, ashamed of her own tears.
	“Good luck to you,” Aine said. “I wish every good thing to you, and to Frih, and to--to Crann--” 
	Mna handed him to her. Aine hugged him, tears coming through her closed eyelids.
	“Idair with you, little man,” Aine said.
	“With you,” he chirped.
	Aine stood him on the ground in front of her. “You remember to mind your mother,” she said. “And always share with your brother, and be nice to Taric.”
	Crann nodded, solemnly.
	“And remember--what’s my name?”
	“Ai-ne.”
	“And who am I?”
	“My friend.”
	“That’s right.”
	Crann looked back at me.
	“The-amh.”
	“That’s me, Crann.”
	“Thank you.”
	“Idair with you, Crann,” I said.
	Mna and Aine looked at each other. Mna took a quick step toward her, and grappled her into a hug.
	“I’ll never forget what you did for him,” Mna said. 
	“Wherever I am, you have a friend there.”
	“Same here.” Mna released her. “I--” She shook her head. “I’m no good at this. I’ve always just slipped out under cover of darkness.” Aine laughed. “I’d better just go.”
	Taric handed her onto Hiinh’s back, and hoisted the twins up after her. He took the reins in his hand and looked back at Cinhe.
	“Follow Taric,” I said.
	She moved into position behind him.
	“Safe there, safe home,” he said, looking at us.
	I nodded. “And luck to you.” 
	“When you come back,” he said, after a pause. “Don’t be a stranger.”
	I smiled. “I’ll remember that.” He shifted from foot to foot. “Now go on, you’ve got to leave sometime.”
	I opened the gate. They watched the doorway appear, for the last time.
	“Walk up, Hiinh,” Taric said, starting forward.
	The gate shimmered closed behind them.
	“Well,” I said, turning back to Aine. “It’s just you and me.”
	We shouldered our bags and locked up the house. On the way out I stopped and gave it a good long look.
	Aine followed my glance, sharing my wistfulness. “It’ll be all right, dhiaoc.”
	“I hope so,” I said.
	When I closed the gate behind us, the way it vanished into the trees unnerved me, for the first time in a long time. Just that dying shimmer, and then the view closed up as if nothing existed there. As if my house had already been wiped out, the site reclaimed by the trees and lichens. Not a good omen.
	“Where to?”
	“Down to the river, and then...” I sighed, fluttering one hand out in a gesture toward the invisible horizon. “Away.”

	I was staring up at the boats that jostled for space along the piers with a somewhat despairing heart when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around to see Ethir behind us, next to a young man in the clothes of a sailor.
	“Harani said I could find you here.”
	“How does Harani--” I began.
	“This young fellow says he wants to talk to you.”
	He looked up at me, apparently terrified. I startled him further by exclaiming.
	“Wait! I know you. I do, don’t I? I’ve seen you before? Please tell me I’m not making that up.”
	A shy smile lightened his terror. “The shriia honors me. You have seen me before.”
	“So tell me where,” I prompted after a pause.
	“My name is Manaan mac Kir,” he said. “My people are from Cacht, in Kengda.”
	“That’s right!” I cried, pointing at him in my excitement at finally placing his face. “That’s right, your father was one of the thralled, wasn’t he?” Manaan nodded. “How is he doing now? Don’t tell me it’s come back to them?”
	The man shook his head. “All’s well there now, shriia. Athi’s right as rain, and we’re all...we were all...” His courage failed him, but he plucked it back up again. “You left so quick, before anyone could give you anything. Mathi’s been sad about that ever since. I know she’d want me to take this chance, now that I have it.”
	“Chance to do what?”
	“I heard the repeaters,” he said. “You’re going over the border. You’ll need a way up there. I’ve--I’ve got a boat.”
	I smiled.
	“She’s not a passenger ship,” he went on, hastening to deprecate himself as he saw my enthusiasm. “Just a trading scow, running wool up to Amranth and ore back down to the City. But she’s got enough room for you, if you don’t mind lying rough, and we’ve got provisions, and we’re all...we’re all...” Another pause, and another rally. “There’s three of us work the boat, shriia. There’s Kimin--he was thralled like my athi, shriia, you might remember--”
	“Yes, I remember.”
	“--and he’d do anything for you, he would. And our pilot, Fili--”
	“No,” I said. “Not Fili mac Shiana.”
	He nodded. “The same, shriia.”
	“But...”
	“I know, shriia, but it was him said we should go for you. He says it’s weighed heavy on him these four years, that he gave you his curse when he should have thanked you.”
	“Well,” I said. “How odd that the three of you should all be working on the same boat after all this time.”
	He shrugged. “It was that clinched it,” he said. “Kimin just looked around and said, ‘Now we know why Idair brought us together.’” Ethir laughed. “It’s true, Aiv. We get on well and we’ve been successful. But we’re sure now--this is why we found each other. So we’d be ready to take you when the time came.” He looked back at me. “So if it’s agreeable to you, shriia--”
	“You don’t have to ask me twice,” I said. “Take us down there, and I hope Idair will reward you for this because I can’t.”
	Manaan smiled. “Thank you, shriia, it will make us all very proud.”
	Ethir clapped me on the back. “I’ll see you down there,” he said. “Someone ought to be waving from the banks as you pull away.”
	The boat was, as he had promised, nothing much--stained wood with iron bands, crusted with use, and smelling of the oil that lubricated it and the fish they had on board for provisions. But there was a fairly commodious space in the hold where we could bed down.
	Kimin was glad to see me again, but didn’t press the issue; beyond welcoming me and making sure we had everything that could be offered, he didn’t overpower me with expressions of gratitude the way some people will. Fili was ashore, apparently, taking last-minute orders from merchants about where to stop and what to unload. 
	While Aine sat by the mast and watched Kimin and Manaan begin the long process of getting underway, I walked Ethir back to the edge of the gangplank.
	“I suppose this is it,” he said, squinting up at me with those blue eyes. “The last time in this life I can be sure of seeing you.”
	“That’s right,” I said, with a nervous laugh. 
	His response didn’t come immediately. In fact it didn’t come for quite some time. The squint relaxed and his eyes widened as his face assumed an unaccustomed gravity.
	“But I may come back after all,” I finally said, hoping to break the mood. “One never knows.” And, as he seemed not to be reassured, I clapped him on the shoulder. “Cheer up, Ethir! You’ve still got Lilea. She’s almost as interested in law as I am.”
	“Theamh,” he said, heavily.
	“What is it?”
	“You know, don’t you?” His head shook slightly. “You read people. You must know.”
	“Know what?”
	The sardonic light came back to his eyes. “You don’t know, then.”
	“Once again I repeat, know what?”
	He laughed, shook his head, and then took a deep breath, holding his arms stiffly by his sides.
	“I’ve always loved you,” he said.
	“What?” I demanded, incredulous and horrified at the same time.
	“Gotcha!” he shouted, breaking into a wide grin and thumping me on the shoulder. 
	“Don’t do that to me at a time like this,” I said, relieved.
	“Couldn’t resist,” he answered, still laughing. “Safe journey and safe home, Theamh. Go on up there and knock her on her gleacha. You can do it.” He clattered down the gangway onto the pier, waving farewell as he disappeared into the crowd. 
	Soon after he melted into the throng, another face emerged out of it--young, under a thick shock of blond hair, but lined with experience that had come to him early. He walked with a confidence that had not been his when I met him four years ago in a farmhouse on the banks of the Ubh, crouched by the bedside of his dying wife.
	“Fili mac Shiana,” I called as he started up the gangway. “I owe you a debt for this.”
	His face altered as he saw me--into what, I wasn’t sure. I thought the memory of that time, maybe, was breaking in on him, with its sorrow and regret. But I didn’t know him well enough to read him with any confidence.
	“The debt is mine, shriia,” he said. 
	He swung himself aboard and began taking in the gangway. 
	“How has it gone with you since?” I asked.
	He shrugged. “It’s gone as you see it,” he said. “I left the farm and took to the river. I’ve done middling well. The constant travel was new to me, but I got used to it. It’s not a bad life, unless you have a wife or children.”
	“Fili...” I began, but I didn’t know how to finish.
	“I don’t blame you, shriia,” he said. “If you’d been there a week, two weeks earlier, you’d have saved her. I can see that now.” The gangway was stowed now. At a nod from Fili, one of the dockworkers untied the bow rope and Manaan began drawing it in. “It was just easier to blame you than to blame Idair, or the Spirit.”
	He walked away before I could answer. “Are we ready?”
	Aine, who had been talking to Kimin, went to the tiller as the other two sat on the bench in the middle, each gripping an oar in both hands. Fili stood at the prow, looking out up the river.
	“Haul awa-ayyyy!”
	Kimin and Manaan pulled together at the oars, Aine steering the boat away from the pier and out to the center of the river. I watched the bank get smaller, thinking about what we were leaving behind. We were in the open river now, with the sail spread to the breeze, and Aine underneath it looking up past the canvas at the birds circling the mast, as if she was finally home.
	“Off with the mooring and up with the mast,” Aine called out, in that same rolling chant.
	The men took it up, concealing surprise if they felt it. “Away, my boys; awa-ay...”
	“The tiller is loose and the mainsheet is fast,” Fili sang from the bow.
	“Away, my boys; awa-ay...”
	“Fly away east to the bog and the fen,
	 Fly away south to the sheep and the hen,
	 Won’t be back home till the spirit knows when,
	 Away, my boys; awa-ay O.”
	“Run with the tide till the tide turns on you,” Manaan called, having stowed his oar and moved back to the tiller.
	“Away, my boys, awa-ay...”
	“Fight with the current, the wind and the crew,” he called back.
	Aine wrapped a rope around a cleat with an easy, absentminded precision. “Away, my boys, awa-ay...”
	“Fly away west where the rocks break your hull,
	 Fly away north where the cold cracks your skull,
	 Flit like the minnow and scream like the gull,
	Away, my boys, awa-ay O.”
	The prow was cutting through the water now, cleaner than its warping planks and pitted bands would have made you think possible. The heave was rising in my stomach, but I was still able to manage it. For now. Who knew what the rest of this river had in store for us.
	
	“Work not the sod, but the shuddering swell,
	Away, my boys, awa-ay...
	Give up your roots and the shade of the dell,
	Away, my boys, awa-ay...
	Death comes to all either sudden or planned,
	Might as well die with a sheet in your hand,
	Close to the stars if you’re still far from land,
	Away, my boys, awa-ay O.”
	
	<Dhiaoc?> Aine said, as I heard her drop out of the song, the worry crossing her face.
	<Yes?>
	<Will they be all right? Mna, and Crann, and Taric?>
	<I hope so. I think so. Complicated as it is, they’re three good people. I have to believe it will work out, somehow.>
	She nodded, apparently reassured. And then asked the other question.
	<Will we be all right?>
	<Now that,> I said, <is a different story.>
	It was a little while before she prompted, <And how will it end, do you think?>
	That trust in me, again. To know the answers she didn’t.
	<I guess we’ll know when we get there.>
	She lapsed back into silence. And for a long time, under the singing of the three sailors, it was silence that reigned on the deck of that little boat, as we slipped quietly up the river away from the City toward the thickening trees and the dark gray clouds that were gathering in the northern distance.	

	Nobody knows, when you’re down in the deep
	Away, my boys, awa-ay...
	What put you under or where your bones sleep
	Away, my boys, awa-ay...
	Still, for the stories you learn on the way,
	Still, for the lark and the taste of the spray,
	Still, for the thrill of the movement we say,
	Away, my boys, awa-ay O.	
THE END