“Hush!” Mia said. She sat with her legs apart and her huge belly rising before her, looking out across the empty street. “’Twas a man of the King who gave me a chance to fulfill the only destiny ka ever left me. Not Sayre but one much greater than he. Someone to whom Sayre answers. A man named Walter.”

Susannah started at the name of Roland’s ancient nemesis. Mia looked at her, gave her a grim smile.

“You know the name, I see. Well, maybe that’ll save some talk. Gods know there’s been far too much talk for my taste, already; it’s not what I was made for. I was made to bear my chap and raise him, no more than that. And no less.”

Susannah offered no reply. Killing was supposedly her trade, killing time her current chore, but in truth she had begun to find Mia’s single-mindedness a trifle tiresome. Not to mention frightening.

As if picking this thought up, Mia said: “I am what I am and I am content wi’ it. If others are not, what’s that to me? Spit on em!”

Spoken like Detta Walker at her feistiest, Susannah thought, but made no reply. It seemed safer to remain quiet.

After a pause, Mia went on. “Yet I’d be lying if I didn’t say that being here brings back … certain memories. Yar!” And, unexpectedly, she laughed. Just as unexpectedly, the sound was beautiful and melodic.

“Tell your tale,” Susannah said. “This time tell me all of it. We have time before the labor starts again.”

“Do you say so?”

“I do. Tell me.”

For a few moments Mia just looked out at the street with its dusty cover of oggan and its air of sad and ancient abandonment. As Susannah waited for story-time to commence, she for the first time became aware of the still, shadeless quality to Fedic. She could see everything very well, and there was no moon in the sky as on the castle allure, but she still hesitated to call this daytime.

It’s no time, a voice inside her whispered—she knew not whose. This is a place between, Susannah; a place where shadows are cancelled and time holds its breath.

Then Mia told her tale. It was shorter than Susannah had expected (shorter than she wanted, given Eddie’s abjuration to burn up the day), but it explained a great deal. More, actually, than Susannah had hoped for. She listened with growing rage, and why not? She had been more than raped that day in the ring of stones and bones, it seemed. She had been robbed, as well—the strangest robbery to which any woman had ever been subject.

And it was still going on.

ELEVEN

“Look out there, may it do ya fine,” said the big-bellied woman sitting beside Susannah on the boardwalk. “Look out and see Mia before she gained her name.”

Susannah looked into the street. At first she saw nothing but a cast-off waggon-wheel, a splintered (and long-dry) watering trough, and a starry silver thing that looked like the lost rowel from some cowpoke’s spur.