Dag was sitting on the ground ten feet away with a staggered look on his face, legs every which way, mouth open, gasping for air just as hard as she was. His left sleeve was ripped off, and his handless arm was bleeding from long scratches. He must have taken a blow to his face, for one eye was already tearing and swelling.

Fawn scrabbled around till her hand encountered the other knife hilt, the green one that had splintered in the malice. Where was the malice? “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I broke it.” She was sniveling now, tears and snot running down her lip from her nose. “I’m sorry…”

“What?” Dag looked up dazedly, and began to crawl toward her one-handed in strange slow hops, his left arm curled up protectively to his chest.

Fawn pointed a trembling finger. “I broke your magic knife.”

Dag stared down at the green-wrapped hilt with a disoriented look on his face, as if he was seeing it for the first time. “No…it’s all right…they’re supposed to do that. They break like that when they work. When they teach the malice how to die.”

“What?”

“Malices are immortal. They cannot die. If you tore that body into a hundred bits, the malice’s…self, would just flee away to another hole and reassemble itself. Still knowing everything it had learned in this incarnation, and so twice as dangerous. They cannot die on their own, so you have to share a death with them.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ll explain more,” he wheezed, “later…” He rolled over on his back, hair sweaty and wild; dilated eyes, the color of sassafras tea in the shadows, looking blankly upwards. “Absent gods. We did it. It’s done. You did it! What a mess. Mari will kill me. Kiss me first, though, I bet. Kiss us both.”

Fawn sat on her knees, bent over her cramps. “Why didn’t the first knife work? What was wrong with it?”

“It wasn’t primed. I’m sorry, I didn’t think. In a hurry. A patroller would have known which was which by touch. Of course you couldn’t tell.” He rolled over on his left side and reached for the blue-hilted knife. “That one’s mine, for me someday.”

His hand touched it and jerked back. “What the…?” His lips parted, eyes going suddenly intent, and he reached again, gingerly. He drew his hand back more slowly this time, the lunatic exhilaration draining from his face. “That’s strange. That’s very strange.”

“What?” snapped Fawn, pain and bewilderment making her sharp. Her body was beaten, her neck felt half-twisted-off, and her belly kept on knotting in aching waves. “You don’t tell me anything that makes sense, and then I go and do stupid things, and it’s not my fault.”