A disquiet had entered into the soul of Vinaszh the commander. The winter stretched like an uncrossable abyss, day passing, day passing, painfully slow, and then darkfall. The sand, which had never bothered him in his life, he now noticed all the time, everywhere, slipping through cracks in windows and under doors, into clothing, food, folds of skin, one's hair and beard, one's… thoughts.

He had begun drinking too much, starting too early in the day. He was intelligent enough to know that this was dangerous.

And it was as a consequence of all of these things that, when the doctor's servant climbed the winding path and steps up from the town and delivered that household's request for a visit when time allowed, time did allow, almost immediately.

Vinaszh hadn't the least idea what they wanted. It was a change, however something new in the blank, stolid routine of the days. That was enough. The doctor had left a while ago. He'd been planning to spend some days in Sarnica, Vinaszh seemed to remember. Depending on how lone; he'd lingered there, he might even be in Sarantium by now. The doctor's women were pretty, he recalled, both of them.

He sent the servant back with a coin and word that he'd be down the hill later in the day. As it happened, it was easy to be agreeable when the request came from the household of a man about to be elevated in caste and summoned to the royal court by the King of Kings himself. Honour beyond belief, really.

Not that Vinaszh, son of Vinaszh, had been summoned anywhere, or promoted, or honoured, or… anything at all, actually. Not that anyone in the court had paid the least attention while they were here to whose idea it had been to intervene in that mighty company and-at considerable personal risk-urge the summoning of a local physician to the king's bedside that dreadful day earlier this winter. And who had then assisted the doctor and killed a murderous prince with his own blade.

It had crossed his mind to wonder if he was being-however unfairly-punished for the flung blade that stopped a treacherous son.

It could be. No one had said this, no one had even spoken to him, but someone like the round, shrewd vizier might say that his continued existence after such a deed was-or ought to be-seen as gift enough. He had slain royalty. Blood of the Great King's blood. With a dagger drawn and thrown in the presence of the king, the sacred Brother to the Sun and Moons. And yes, yes, he had done that, but he had been ordered to be on the alert for danger when Murash came back to the room. It had been an act of absolute duty.

Was he to be abandoned, forgotten here in the desert, for having saved the life of his king?

It happened. The world of Perun and Lady could not be said to be a place where just rewards held sway. The presence of Azal the Enemy meant that this would always be so, until Time itself came to an end.

Vinaszh was a soldier. He knew this to be true. The army was rife with injustice and corruption. And civilians-perfumed, sensuous court advisers, sly and unctuous-could choose to block the paths of honest, rough soldiers for their own reasons. It was the way of things. Not that understanding this made it easier to be enduring the process, if that was what was happening.

His father had never wanted him to go into the army. Had he remained a merchant down in Qandir, none of this would ever have come into his life.

He would have sand in his wine cups and bed and wouldn't care.

Men changed, Vinaszh decided, it was as simple-and as complicated-as that. It seemed that he himself had now changed. Things happened, small events or large ones, or perhaps time passed, nothing more than that-and you woke up one morning and were different. There had probably been a time, he thought, when Murash was content to be a prince of Bassania, son of his great father.

Difficult thoughts for a soldier. It would have been better to be in the field with an enemy to face. But there was no one to fight, nothing to do, and the wind kept blowing. There was sand in his cup right now, grit in the wine.

He ought to have been recognized for what he'd done. Truly, he ought to have been.

Some time after midday he went down the hill, riding towards the doctor's house. He was received by the two women in a front room with a fireplace. The younger one was really quite lovely, very dark eyes. The older was more poised, did all of the talking, her voice modestly low. What she said, however, took Vinaszh's thoughts abruptly from his own affairs.

Fate, chance, accident? An intercession of Perun? Who would presume to say? But the simple truth was that the soldier son of a merchant from Qandir, who happened at that time to be commander of the garrison at Kerakek, was a man more than a little disposed towards accepting such things as the woman told him that winter afternoon. The nature of the world was far beyond the grasp of men, everyone knew that. And here in the south, near the desert peoples with their inscrutable tribal rites, reports like this were not unknown.

At one point they sent for the boy at his request and Vinaszh asked him some questions, then they sent him back out again. He had answered readily enough, a serious child. He was happiest in his father's empty treatment rooms now, one of the women said, almost apologetically. They allowed him to play there. He was almost eight years old they said, when Vinaszh asked.

He declined their offered wine, accepted a cup of herbal tea instead while he considered what he'd learned. The nomads had tales and names in their own languages for people such as this child might be. Vinaszh had heard such stories, even when young. His nurse had enjoyed telling them. He had seen a Dreamer himself, once, on a desert journey with his father: a glimpse, as a tent flap fell shut too slowly. A large-bodied, soft man among a lean people. No hair on his head at all. Deep, parallel scars on both cheeks, he remembered.

The woman's story, therefore, was not one he was inclined to dismiss out of hand, but aside from finding it interesting, he remained unsure of what, exactly, they expected of him, why he was being told this, and so he asked. And so they told him.

He laughed aloud, in startled dismay, then fell silent, looking from one mother's still, grave face to the other's. They meant it, he realized. They really meant it. He heard a sound: the boy was at the doorway. He hadn't gone to the treatment rooms, after all. A listening sort of child. Vinaszh had been one himself. Shaski came out when they called to him and he stood by the beaded curtain of the door, waiting. Vinaszh stared at him.

Then he looked back at the older of the two mothers, the one who'd done the talking, and said, as gently as he could, that what she asked was simply out of the question.

Why?" said the younger, pretty one, unexpectedly. "You take merchant parties west sometimes."

This was true, as it happened. Vinaszh, an honest man, and confronting attractive women with earnest, steady gazes, was compelled to agree.

He looked back at the boy. The boy was still waiting, in the doorway.

The silence was unsettling, actually. In it, Vinaszh addressed an unexpected question to himself: why, indeed? Why was it out of the question to provide them with an escort? There was no law being broken if wives wished to follow their husband on a journey. If the man was angry when they arrived that was, surely, their problem, or his. Not the escort's. Vinaszh had to assume that the doctor had left his women with sufficient finances to pay for a journey. And once they all ended up at court in Kabadh, issues of money would become trivial for this family. They might be useful people to have in his debt. No one else seemed to feel indebted to Vinaszh, after all. The commander resisted an impulse to scowl. He sipped his tea, made the mistake of looking back at the boy again. The grave, watchful face. Waiting for him. Children. The boy ought to be playing, outside or somewhere, surely.