It was as if both their worlds had receded and they themselves were all that was left.

"What must you get by?"

"Hmm?" He turned his head. He'd been right, he thought, there really was nothing but her. "I mean I do all right. I do regular legwork for a lawyer. Jake, the one I thought had hired you. He's got a sick sense of humor. That's why I love him."

He staggered at the curb, tried to orient himself when she steadied him. "It is this way." She turned the corner, glanced up and down the street. "Where is the well? You require water."

"Doesn't work that way here." But she was right about one thing. His thirst was vicious. He nodded toward a sidewalk vendor. "There."

With her arm banded around his waist, Kadra watched Harper exchange several small disks for a bottle. He fought the top off, drank deep.

"You must pay for water? Does it have magical properties?" She took it, drank. "Nothing but water," she said with some amazement. "The merchant is a robber. I will go back and speak to him."

"No. No." Despite the dizziness, Harper laughed. "It's just one of the acceptable lunacies of our little world. When water comes out of the tap, it's free. Sort of. When it comes out of a bottle, you pay on the spot."

She pondered this as they came to the intersection. She'd watched the way the people, the cars, the lights worked together. When the metal tree ordered the waiting group to walk, everyone hurried, often sliding and swooping between cars that jammed together and faced other metal trees with lights of amber, emerald, and ruby.

Everyone in the village played along.

She felt Harper sag, and pinched his waist ruthlessly to snap him back. "We have only…" She flipped back to his earlier term for the section of road. "One more block."

"Okay, okay." He could feel sweat running a clammy line down his back. His vision was going in and out. "Let's talk about me. I'm thirty. As of yesterday. Unmarried. Came close a couple years ago, but I came to my senses."

"Had the woman bewitched you?"

"No." He had to smile at the term. "You could say that was the problem: she didn't bewitch me. This is a huge disappointment to my parents, who want grandchildren. As I'm an only child, I'm their one shot at it."

"Is it not possible in this place to make young without a lifemate? Can you not select a breeding partner for this purpose?"

"Yeah, you could, and a lot of people do. I guess I'm more of a traditionalist in that one area. If I have kids, I want them to have the package. You like kids?"

"I am fond of young. They have innocence and potential, and a special kind of beauty. In time I will select a breeding partner so that I may make life. It is a great honor to make life."