Aneas sat by the spring. He dipped his hands in the spring, which was ops and not water, and washed his hands and arms of all the blood and filth. Fully visible across the meadow was a mound; it stood as tall as a man, covered in beautiful green grass, brilliant in the sun.

Gas-a-ho sat cross-legged by him. “It is good that you have placed them where you can see them,” he said. “You are a strong person. Can you work the ops again?”

Aneas reached into the pool and took potentia in his hand, and formed it.

“Good,” Gas-a-ho said. “But you are changed. You know that?”

“Yes,” Aneas said. “I was dead. Who am I now?”

“Who is anyone, ever?” Gas-a-ho said, but it was said with a sort of self-mocking humour.

And then Aneas was sitting in the real. Gas-a-ho had his hand; Irene had an arm around his shoulders. Nita Qwan handed him a lit pipe and he inhaled deeply of the smoke and shuddered.

He handed the pipe to Irene, and she drew deeply at it and passed it to Gas-a-ho.

Aneas took a deep breath.

Irene looked into his eyes, and he looked into hers.

“You saved me,” he said.

“We don’t have time for your thanks just now,” Irene said. “We think Looks-at-Clouds is possessed,” she said very softly.

Firensi—Tippit

Tippit’s horse was probably the best he’d ever had in a lifetime of making war. His horse was so good he enjoyed riding it; he rose in the darkness, already thinking of the joy of a canter. He didn’t usually name horses; they tended to die faster than he could be bothered to get to know them, but the horse he’d had from the Venikans was a big gelding from Ifriquy’a, with a small, handsome head and a beautiful temperament, and the gelding loved to run.

Which was good, because in the murky dawn he was galloping along a farm road with a dozen other company archers at his back.

The farm road was in Central Etrusca, almost fifty leagues south of the fields of San Batiste. He and his party had ridden all night; they had Short Tooth from the green banda guiding them.

They saw the mill silhouetted against the dawn before they heard the river or the clack of the waterwheel. Dogs were barking at every farm; the dozen of them had made plenty of noise galloping over the plains of Firensi.

Short Tooth reined in. “That’s her, Tip.”

Tippit chewed on an end of his mustache while he looked at the big mill in the growing light. “No rest for the wicked,” he said, loosening the sword on his hip. “Where’s Long Paw?”

Short Tooth shook his head. “Not a fuckin’ clue, Tip. He were ’ere yestere’en.”