She got her arm free and slapped at him, missing his face but striking him hard against the neck. He stopped in surprise, then began to step toward her again but she used one of Shaso’s holds to grab his arm and shove him to one side, then she fled across the courtyard back toward the women’s quarters, tears of rage and shame making it hard to see.

“You will come to me,” he called after her, no more shaken than if someone at the market had rejected his first price. “You know that I am right.” A moment later his last words came, now with a hot edge of anger. “You will not make a fool of me!”

13

Messages

Why was it ordered so? Why should the entwining of two hearts’ melodies give birth to the destruction of the Firstborn and the People, too? The oldest voices cannot say. When Crooked spoke of it he called it “The Narrowing of the Way,” and likened it to the point of a blade, which cuts where it is sharpest and which cannot shed blood without dividing Might Be from Is.

—from One Hundred Considerations
out of the Qar’s Book of Regret

CHAVEN SEEMED A LITTLE BETTER with the cup of hot blueroot tea in his bandaged hands, but he was still shaking like a man with fever.

“What is all this about?” Chert demanded. “Your pardon, but you acted like a madman while we were in your house. What is happening?”

“No. No, I cannot tell you. I am ashamed.”

“You owe us at least that much,” Chert said. “We have taken you in—you, a wanted fugitive. If you are found here by the Tollys, we will all be thrown into the big folk’s stronghold. How long do you think before one of our neighbors sees you? It has been nearly impossible, sneaking you in and out by night.”

“Chert, leave the man alone,” Opal growled at him, although she too looked frightened: the physician and Chert had come through the door with the harried look of two men chased by wolves. “It’s not his fault he’s fallen on the wrong side of those dreadful people.”

“Ah, but it is my fault that I trusted one I should not.” Chaven took a shaky sip of tea. “But how could Okros know of it? That was the one thing I never showed him—never showed anyone!”

“What is the one thing?” Chert had never seen the physician like this, trembling and weeping like a small child—not even after his escape from death and the horrors of Queen Anissa’s chambers.

“Not so loud,” Opal said, quietly but fiercely. “You’ll wake the boy.”

As if we did not have enough troubles already, Chert thought. Two of the big folk in my house, one a grown man, both of them half mad. Just feeding them will kill us long before the castle guards come for us. Not to mention the uncomfortable and unfamiliar brightness of having to burn lamps at all hours to make Chaven and his weak, uplander eyes more comfortable. “You owe us some explanation, sir,” Chert said stubbornly. “We are your friends—and not the kind who have betrayed you.”