The command for food had been welcomed, but the mentions of the bath and the wraps sounded more ominous. “Don’t do this,” I whispered to him. “Stop it now. Take Olikea and Likari and go. You can’t trust Kinrove. Neither of us have any idea of what will become of us if he tries to reunite us as one. Leave now.”

“Lisana said this was our only path,” he said aloud. “In her wisdom, I trust. I will do as she suggested. I give myself over into your hands.” He seemed to have difficulty speaking that last sentence. He glanced over at Olikea. He cleared his throat. “I am accustomed to the ministrations of my own feeder. Might I ask that she be given help in caring for our son, so that she can assist me in preparing myself?”

At her name, Olikea lifted her head. Her gaze went from her deeply sleeping boy to Soldier’s Boy and back again. Plainly she was torn. But when she spoke aloud, there was no indecisiveness in her voice. “You should not need to ask this, Nevare. No one has the right to separate a Great One from his preferred feeder. And no one has any right to keep feeders from ministering to their Great One.”

She stooped and then stood up. Likari’s limp body dangled in her arms. His head lolled back and his legs, longer and thinner than I recalled them, swung as she walked toward me, carrying her boy. When she reached me, she did not set him down before me, but gave him over into my arms. Soldier’s Boy’s arms curved, lifting Likari to hold him close against his chest. “Likari was Nevare’s feeder when your dance stole him from us,” Olikea said loudly. “When he awakens, if he is himself, he will once more wish to serve him. And I will allow no one to take that honor from him.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

THE DANCE

One of Kinrove’s senior feeders gave over her tent for our use. It was hard to become accustomed to the place. It smelled like someone else’s home, and I knew that Soldier’s Boy felt awkward being there. Olikea did not. She had entered and gestured to the man carrying Likari to put him down on the bed. She had covered the boy warmly against the cooling evening, and then directed the man to move the tent owner’s furnishings aside to make room for the large chair that had followed me from Kinrove’s pavilion. The tent had seemed roomy before the chair was brought in.

Kinrove had given way to Olikea’s indignation with no argument. He had put one of his feeders in charge of us for the time being, saying that he also had to make preparations for the magic he would work. Kinrove’s feeder had made the arrangements for a tent for us, and had received Kinrove’s instructions as to what had to be done to prepare me. I had overheard enough of it to be alarmed. Soldier’s Boy did not appear to share my anxiety. He settled himself in the chair and then sat looking over at Likari. The boy slept on. His color seemed better than it had, but he still had not awakened long enough even to speak to them. I felt Soldier’s Boy concern for the boy’s mind.

“He is so thin,” Olikea said worriedly. She had settled next to Likari on the pallet. Through his blanket, she stroked his back. “I can feel every knob of his spine. And look at his hair, how coarse and dry it is. Like a sick animal’s pelt.”

“From now on, he will only get better,” Soldier’s Boy told her. I wondered if he believed it. Silence settled for a short time between them.

“You spent all of Lisana’s treasure to get us here, and to get Likari back.”

“I do not judge it a bad bargain,” Soldier’s Boy replied easily.

“You called him ‘our son’ when you spoke of him.”

“I did. So I wish him to be known. The son of Olikea and Soldier’s Boy.”

A long silence followed those words. I would have given much to know what Olikea was thinking. Either Soldier’s Boy thought he knew or felt no driving need to know. Her next words were another question. “What is Kinrove going to do to you? Why do you wish him to do it?”

He spoke as if it were a simple thing. “Two men live in this body. One is a Gernian, raised to be a soldier. One is of the People, taught by Lisana to be a mage. Sometimes one controls this flesh, sometimes the other. For when the magic spoke to Lisana and said I was to serve it, she divided me, so that I could learn the ways of both peoples. It seemed wise to her. It seems wise to me now. But the magic can only work through me if I become one once more. A single entity, made of both Gernian and the People.”

“I understand,” she said slowly. And then, looking at me more piercingly, she repeated, “Yes. I do understand. For I have known both of you, haven’t I? How will Kinrove do this thing?”

“He expresses his magic in dance. Perhaps he will have to dance for me, or perhaps his dancers will have to. Maybe I will have to dance.”

“I think that is likely.” She was thoughtful and silent for a time, smoothing Likari’s hair as she sat beside him. Then she asked, “When you are one, will you still want me to be your feeder?” More hesitantly she asked, “Will you still call Likari ‘our son’?”

“I don’t know.” He sounded reluctant to consider it.

She fixed her eyes on the sleeping boy. “I know that you have always loved Lisana. I know that I have sometimes been only—”

Her words were interrupted by an odd noise. Something heavy fell onto the roof. Soldier’s Boy looked up as something scrabbled wildly against the leather tent’s side, clambering awkwardly back up it until it achieved a perch at the top. A moment later, I heard the croaker bird give three satisfied caws. The god of balances and of death sat on the peak of our tent.

“Likari—does he sleep still?” Soldier’s Boy demanded anxiously.

Olikea heard the anxiety in his voice. She leaned down close to the boy’s face. “He does. He breathes.”

Abruptly the door of the tent was flipped open and two servers entered carrying a laden table. There was a single large bowl on it, the size of a punch bowl, holding a chowderlike substance. The aroma that rose from it was both delicious and repellent, as if someone had prepared a succulent dish and then attempted to conceal a strong medicine in it. The two men carrying it positioned the table carefully on the uneven floor and left. Soldier’s Boy breathed a sigh of relief as the tent door fell into place, but an instant later, it was lifted again, and more feeders entered. One carried a large ewer of water and a cup. Others brought various food dishes—breads, new greens, fish, and fowl—that they set down near the vat of chowder.

This parade of food was followed by the feeder whom Kinrove had put in charge of us. She was a buxom, comely young woman, with long gleaming black hair and her face patterned with tiny specks like a scattering of fine seed. Her name was Wurta, and as she introduced herself she seemed very pleased to have been given such an important task. She almost ignored Soldier’s Boy, speaking directly to Olikea, feeder to feeder.

“I have been given instructions that I must pass on to you,” she announced. At her words, Olikea rose, reluctantly leaving Likari, and came to stand beside my chair. The seed-speckled feeder spoke briskly, almost officiously, as she stepped up to the table and stirred the vat of creamy-brown chowder, releasing clouds of steam trapped beneath its thick surface. “This, all of this, he must eat. We have done our best to give it a pleasant flavor, but the roots that feed this magic have their own strong taste. It may be hard for him to stomach. Kinrove has had us flavor his water to give him some respite from it. These other foods are for you to feed him sparingly. Do not let him fill his belly with them; most of what he eats must be this soup, and Kinrove judges that he must eat it all.”

Wurta was interrupted by a loud snuffing noise. Likari, eyes still closed, had lifted his head from the bedding and was sniffing after the steam rising from the chowder pot. His face had a blank, infantile look, or perhaps more like that of a still-blind puppy mindlessly seeking the scent of food. Olikea looked at him with a gaze full of horror.