Sumpter nodded. She’s picked up their language very quickly, but all morning she’d been scowling and pretending not to understand what he said. Still, he was growing more uneasy. She was learning amazingly well and he resented this … encounter that would surely upset her. “Rampa might already be in the courtyard,” he said. “We may as well go down now, then.”

She jumped up from the stone bench and walked swiftly ahead of him, as usual. She flung the courtyard gate open and went flying across the mosaic floor, with no thought now of the glittering tile patterns that had once so engaged her attention.

Rampa was already there. She stopped suddenly. He looked so different in the robe they’d given him; so distant and oddly unapproachable. Her eyes narrowed. All at once she saw the other robed figure who was waiting for Rampa as Sumpter was waiting for her. Only this was a young woman! Ma-ah swung around and glared accusingly at Sumpter, who’d let her think all along that Rampa’s teacher was also a man. She stopped for a moment, then began to walk ahead at a slower pace, almost nonchalantly. But her teeth were suddenly chattering and she had to hold her lips tight together in a forced smile.

Rampa stood silently, watching Ma-ah approach. He was uneasy—she saw that immediately. “How different you look,” she said, in their old language.

“You, too,” Rampa said. “Is that man your teacher?”

“Sumpter? I guess so. Is she yours?” Ma-ah pointed toward the girl who stood at the other end of the courtyard.

“Yes, my teacher,” he said, but there was an inquiry in his answer that Ma-ah didn’t understand. She frowned.

“Do you like … him, your teacher?” Rampa asked, in that same peculiar tone.

“I like him well enough,” Ma-ah said irritably. Rampa seemed confused. He looked past her suddenly at Sumpter. A flash of understanding seemed to pass between them that made Ma-ah unaccountably furious. “Well, what are you looking at him for?” she said. “We haven’t seen each other in weeks and you just stand there—”

“I like my teacher very much,” Rampa said. “I’m sorry that you don’t like yours as well.”

Ma-ah glanced past Rampa, over to the girl who stood in the background with her eyes lowered. She was much taller than Rampa, of course; yet Rampa didn’t look small by contrast, simply sturdier and more compact. And he’d changed, Ma-ah realized, as she had. There was nothing between them.

Surprised, she looked closely at him. He laughed and mimicked her shrug as he used to. “I don’t know what’s happened,” Rampa said. “What we shared—that life is gone. For all she’s taught me, my alliance goes to my teacher. How is it that you don’t feel the same for Sumpter?”

Ma-ah didn’t answer. She was staring at the girl.