I dreamed I was turning into a pillar of salt, grain by grain. I was thirsty all the time, and hot, and uncomfortable, but there was always someone to wipe me down with a damp cool cloth or lift me up to spoon broth down my parched throat. I could not get enough salty gruel to eat.

Sometimes Rory licked my face with his rough cat’s tongue, rumbling softly as he guarded me in his cat shape. Sometimes Bee held my hand and sang to me, off-key, or combed out and rebraided my tangled hair. Sometimes Vai slept beside me in the bed he had built for us—although I had only slept in it once, I recalled its contours with intimate precision.

Obviously I was hallucinating, because I also saw Kayleigh sitting with her mother in attendance on my sickbed, and it was intriguing to watch how animated Vai’s mother was with her eldest daughter compared to the stiff formality she offered her only son. For what seemed like hours Vai would sit on the bed gently stroking my hands or hair while talking softly to Kofi about the latest radical pamphlet by Professora Nayo Kuti or the setbacks the radical efforts had met with in the Veneti dukedoms under the hand of their overlord, the Armorican prince, and his pregnant daughter who would act as regent if she bore an infant son.

Kofi’s laugh heartened me. “I reckon it is as well we happened to come when we did, for I thought sure I should have to tie yee to a chair lest yee burn down the entire building for the way yee lost yee head. Not that yee can burn things, fire bane! Peradventure yee shall have an easier life of it, Vai, if yee stop and think before yee panic.”

“I did not panic!”

“You did,” said Bee, for I just then realized she was sitting on the bed at my feet, her pencil scratching across a page.

“No more than you did, Beatrice!”

“Is this how it shall be, yee two always bickering?” demanded Kofi. “Because if it shall be this way, I can go back to a more restful domicile in Expedition and likewise not have to suffer this frightful cold.”

“You only think this is cold because you’ve not yet experienced winter,” muttered Vai so peevishly that Kofi laughed again, obviously teasing him, and I realized it was Kofi’s willingness to joke with him that had likely won Vai’s trust when the two men first met.

Bee broke in. “I think the worst was when we were searching and those men at the coffee shop said they had seen a young woman answering to Cat’s description drinking coffee with the horned hunter god Carnonos on the street!”