“No. I think that you loved Hu and want the best for her home.”

The growl become a groan. “I don’t want to talk about Hu.”

“Yes you do. And so do I. Come.”

Baru’s clothes were soaked through with nightmare sweat. “Fine. Fuck it. I do need a bath.”

Sharp wind outside, and a gentle chill to edge the warmth. Baru gasped in wonder. The stars shimmered behind a mighty aurora, wings of green, red sheets of pyroclast, vast bars of purple light tilted like pillars seen from below.

“I’ve never seen it so bright.”

“There was a wildfire somewhere, and this is its ghost.”

“You just made that up.”

“Surely I wouldn’t.”

“You would, though,” Baru realized, with some delight, “I bet you do it all the time.”

“I am Wydd’s faithful student,” she said, not smiling, except in the roll of her hips as she walked. She was powerfully calm, like a hand run over the world to smooth it out. Home, Baru thought, suddenly: her dark seal body was so comfortable in itself that it made Baru think of a home. And she wanted to learn that art, of being at home wherever you stood.

“Come,” Xe said, “there’s a drain behind the well.”

Execarne had built a screen to wash behind after long days in the field. Baru stripped down, drenched herself in lukewarm water from Xe’s pot, and went to work, too hard, with a wire scour. Cold clean wind. Starlight. Caldera gods, she never wanted to go back inside. The runoff water went into a clay half-pipe, down into the fields, and the pipe murmured gently to itself as it worked.

“My lady,” Xe said. “Your Majesty. You’re scraping yourself raw.”

“How can you even tell?” Baru demanded. “Wait a minute. Are you on mason leaf?” Divers loved the stimulant leaf. It helped night vision, and also made them prone to fights and forthrightness.

“A little,” Xe said. “We smoked too much weed with Faham, so I took a pellet to stay awake.”

“Oh. So that’s why you’re so friendly.”

“Why didn’t you go to her sooner?” Xe said, softly. Baru had just turned to get at her back, so Xe was on her blind side: the words drifted in like stragglers from a long retreat.

“What?” Baru said.

“Why didn’t you go to Tain Hu in the autumn? You could’ve been with her all winter. She wanted you. She spoke of you, with some frustration.”

Baru had something on her back, lumpy and disfigured, and it had to come off—ah, no, those were her vertebrae. “I couldn’t. I knew what was coming.”

“But you went to her at the end.”

“I am a fucking idiot at times.”

“You think it was a mistake?”

“No,” Baru admitted. “No, I can’t think that.”

“Did you go to her at Sieroch because you knew she’d die?”