He shook his head at me. “So, what’re you supposed to do?”

“I don’t know. He said something about two hearts. I’m supposed to be myself and not myself at the same time. Or something.”

“That man, he just strings words together.”

“No, I think he’s right. I just don’t know how to do it.”

“Well,” Sorcha said, “you’re not about to figure it out tonight. Want to smoke?”

“I shouldn’t.”

He grinned. “Ah, you want to.”

I grinned back. “I do.”

“You’re supposed to be all in the present, yeah? Sounds like you ought to smoke a bit to me.”

We smoked. The pipeherb in Vilahna is uniformly good. A man’s status can be derived by the quality of the herb he smokes there, and we were nobodies, but it was still the best herb I’ve ever had before or since. City herb, coaxed out of an inhospitable climate by blue elvish magic, is extremely potent but harsh. Mountain herb is a soft thing, a smooth thing, a pure pleasure. We lay together in bed, mostly naked, under piles of thick wool blankets. For hours we’d nestled up close, trading stories. I told him about Ardijan. I told him about the odd rhythms of factory life. I told him about hours spent swimming the river. He told me about the time he spent living at Falynn’s house. Falynn had three wives and a husband; between them, they had nine children. Sorcha said he slept under piles of children at night. He told me of the first person he’d slept with. It was a girl who worked at a musician’s pub. When I asked him what it was like, all he would say is it was clumsy. But he grinned when he said it. Slowly, the herb wore off. Sobriety crept up, and as my mind began to clear, I could feel the way Sorcha’s mind turned. It was like his thoughts and his feelings flowed out of his skin and into mine. I was on my back, one arm tucked behind my head and the other cradling his shoulders. He lay on his side, both arms wrapped around my ribs. He’d woven one leg over and around mine.

The gift tugged at me. I let it out, and I read him, and what I felt was strange. It was like seeing myself through someone else’s eyes. Like looking in a particularly flattering mirror. For him, in that moment, there was nothing but the two of us in that bed. The rest of the world did not exist.

“You reading me, Ariah?”

“I’m sorry.”

He nestled tighter against me. I could feel him smile against my bare chest. “What did you find out?”

“Nothing. You can’t read an empty mind.”

“You ass.”

“Will you do me a favor?”

“Depends.”

“Will you charm me?”

Sorcha pulled away from me. “What?”