The picture part of the tapestry that Tick-Tick’s neighbor was weaving in the atrium was done. Young Andrew sat sprawling at the base of his tree, his arms and legs in painful-looking attitudes. The bag on his lap had partly spilled into the grass, and the rope weaving was accented with metallic fibers there. The brothers were leaving the clearing at one end—one of them taking a last glance over his shoulder at his handiwork—as the wolves prepared to enter from the other. The border was in progress, but I saw that if Weegee had found his skull, he hadn’t installed it.

All the bamboo blinds were let down over the windows on the west side of the Ticker’s big room, which made it a little dimmer than I was used to.

“Hope you aren’t trying to read in this,” I said.

She was stretched out on the couch. “The light hurts my eyes. You can raise them, though, if the gloom weighs on your spirit.” She smiled when she said it, but followed it up with a fit of coughing. It was a dry cough, and sounded painful. I filled the kettle and put it on the heat.

“My spirit can take it for the sake of your eyes. How do you feel?”

She didn’t answer immediately. I put the first herb tea I could find in the teapot and got the honey out, along with a spoon and a mug. Then I went over to the couch.

Whatever this was, she’d gotten it from Linn, all right. She had that same dimmed and faded look. I put a hand on her forehead, and it was hot under my palm. “I don’t know much about diseases of elves,” I said apologetically.

“Neither do I, to speak truth,” the Ticker said. She spoke softly, maybe to keep the cough at bay. “Though oddly enough, we are healthier in the Borderlands than in the lands that gave us birth. The evil airs that bring disease are ill-suited, perhaps, to this hybrid place.”

I went back to the stove, poured water into the teapot, and brought it and all the accessories over. “How much honey do you want in it?”

She shook her head. “I suppose it had better be a lot.”

That’s what I gave her. We found ourselves dwelling over the commonplaces—”Careful, it’s hot,” and “Set it down over there,” and all the rest of them—and 1 thought of Rico and Linn, and the giving and taking of orders. And instead of telling her about my visit to Rico, I said, “This isn’t a cold, is it?”

She looked up at me, and I could see the fright in her eyes. “I don’t know. It might yet be.”

“But you don’t think so.”