Below it was a set of questions, questions that rang oddly familiar in my mind. An aide’s notes below each one recorded my answer. Did you go to Dark Evening in Old Thares?

Yes.

Did you eat or drink there?

Yes.

What did you eat? What did you drink?

Potatoes, chestnuts, meat skewer. Cadet denies drinking anything.

Did you encounter any Specks there?

Yes.

Cadet specifically mentions a female Speck. “Beautiful.”

Did you have any contact with any Speck that evening?

Cadet evasive.

Did your contact include sexual congress?

Cadet denied. Continued questioning. Cadet evasive. Cadet eventually admitted sexual contact.

I stared at the damning words. But I had not. I did not. I hadn’t had sexual contact with a Speck on Dark Evening, and I certainly hadn’t confessed that I had to the aide. I remembered him now, vaguely, as a dark shape silhouetted against a window that was too bright with light. I remembered him badgering me for an answer when my mouth was dry and sticky and my head pounded with pain. “Yes or no, Cadet. Answer yes or no. Did you have sexual contact with a Speck?” I had told him something to make him go away. I didn’t remember what. But I’d never had sexual contact with a Speck. At least, not in real life. Only in my fever dreams had I lain with Tree Woman. And that had been only a dream.

Hadn’t it?

I shook my head at myself. It was becoming more and more difficult for me to draw a firm line between my real life and the strange experiences that had befallen me ever since the Kidona Dewara had exposed me to Plains magic. In her medium’s trance, Epiny had confirmed that I had indeed been split into two persons, and one of me had sojourned in another world. I had been willing to accept that. I’d been able to accept it because I thought it was over. I’d recovered the lost part of my self and made it mine again. I had believed that my Speck self would merge with my real self, and the contradictions would cease troubling me.

Yet time after time, that strange other self intruded into my life, in ways that were becoming more and more destructive to me. I recognized him when I’d lain beside the farm girl, and he’d triumphed at Dancing Spindle.

That Nevare, I felt, that “Soldier’s Boy” had been the one to spout anger so drastically at Carsina. I’d known him by the anger pulsing in my blood.