If Tikat was suffering from the same complaint, I saw no sign of it. Not that I saw much of Tikat in those days: he had quietly taken over the nursing and guarding duties with which I had been entrusted, and now spent most of his free time with the old man upstairs, whom he called tafiya. I missed him sharply—until he came I’d never had a friend of almost my own age to work and talk with, mucking out stalls or lying awake in the loft—and I envied him terribly as well. Mainly, of course, because his closeness to the wizard brought him close to Lal, Nyateneri, and Lukassa every day; but I was jealous, too, that somebody valued his presence and asked for him often, which is different from being sent for. I could have gone on my own, I know that, but I didn’t, and there it is. I was very young.

The women kept even more to themselves than they had done before, whether they rode out or stayed shut in their room, or in the old man’s room. When I saw them at all, I always saw them together, which wasn’t what I wanted. Most particularly I wished to tell Soukyan—who still looked and moved and smelled like Nyateneri—that I liked him no less for the deception, and that I was not avoiding him out of anger or shame. I wanted to ask Lal why and how they had returned so soon, and to tell her that I had looked after her wizard as well as I was permitted. (The third assassin never turned up, by the way—to this day I don’t know what became of him.) And I wanted to say to Lukassa that every time Tikat heard her voice or saw her in the stair or crossing the courtyard, his heart cracked in one more place. Oh, I had a speech ready for Lukassa, I certainly did. I used to practice it aloud on the horses.

But none of all that ever happened, somehow: it was almost as though the three of them had never come riding around that bend beyond the spring, as though I had dreamed the trembling dimples in Lal’s shoulders, dreamed that I watched Nyateneri kill two killers singlehanded. All that was real was a loneliness I had never given name to before they came—that and the heat, and the fear.

Once I asked Marinesha how the wizard was faring, because I would not ask Tikat. She answered, not in her usual starling chatter, but in a subdued, hesitant mumble, “Well enough, I suppose.” When I pressed her further, she bridled at first, and then began to weep—not in mim silence, like a lady, as she always tried to shed her tears, but with great honks and sniffs, wringing my best noserag to shreds. What I made out of her misery was that she had hardly seen the old man since Lal and Nyateneri’s return—“but I hear him every night, Rosseth, all night every night, marching up and down the room till dawn, talking and chanting and singing to himself. He can’t be sleeping at all…”

I petted and quieted her as well as I could, saying, “Well then, he must sleep by day, that’s what it is. And he’s a wizard, Marinesha—wizards don’t need things like sleep and food and such, not the way we do.” But she pulled free of me and looked into my face, and there was a desperate sorrow in her eyes that I had never imagined they could show.

“There are others,” she whispered. “Sometimes there are others, and they answer him. They sound like little children.” She ran away then, back to the inn, still crying, taking my nose-rag with her.

Tikat knew nothing of any voices, and I believed him when he said so. I don’t think that gods, spirits, demons, monsters, or any of that lot will ever put in an appearance in Tikat’s presence. They’ll just wait patiently, as long as they have to, until he goes away. Karsh isn’t like that. You’d think he would be, if anyone would, but he isn’t. I will say that about Karsh—the monsters haven’t always waited for him to leave.

It was a day or two after I spoke with Marinesha that he came looking for me in the kitchen. Tikat was patching the rotting horse trough once again, and our most recent potboy had disappeared—Shadry beats and bullies his way through a dozen in a year; the best you can say is that they often run away without even stopping to collect their wages. After cursing Shadry for at least five minutes without once repeating himself, Karsh suddenly looked up as though noticing me by chance, as he always does, and grunted, “Outside. Wait.”

I stood outside and waited for another five minutes before he came out, purple in the face and wiping his mouth—you’d have thought he had just eaten Shadry with a couple of side dishes. He stood there for a while, not looking at me, muttering to himself, “Bloody stupid, bloody stonefingered, dungmouthed imbecile, whoever gave him the goatfucking notion he was a bloody cook?” Presently, when it suited him, he said, “Rosseth.” I think of that often—the way Lal said my name, and the way he did. I can’t help it, I still do.

“You told me to wait,” I said. Karsh nodded. He said, “Thank you.”

I’ll not stand here and swear that that was the very first time Karsh ever said thank you to me. It may not have been. I can’t even be sure that I really heard it, strangled as he sounded. I’ll just tell you that it shocked me, as much as if he had begun to jig and spin in a circle with his finger on the top of his head. I stared at him. That made him angry, and he shouted, “What are you gawping for now? What’s the matter with you? Always gawping at everything, I never knew anybody like you for gawping, since the first day, first time I ever saw you.”

He stopped there, coughing and spitting, but not taking his eyes off me. I waited, wondering whether he wanted to berate me about the drains again, or warn me to stop upsetting Marinesha. But he shook his head furiously, wiped his mouth, drew in a long breath, and said, “Rosseth. How are you?”

I sputtered a bit myself, getting the words out. “How am I? I am well enough.” Karsh nodded several times, as solemnly as though I had just given him the answer to some riddle that had been itching him all his life. He muttered, “Good, that’s good,” and then, looking just past me, “Rosseth, been meaning to tell you something. A long time now.”

I waited. Karsh said, “You were a… you weren’t a bad child. Didn’t cry much, didn’t get underfoot. You were a nice little boy.”

The last words cost him so much effort that he had to roar them out, daring me to give him the lie. He stood there glaring at me, actually panting, his eyes that strange blue-black they go when he’s really furious. A moment only of that—then he turned and tramped back inside, yelling more insults at Shadry before he even had the door open. I stood where I was, under that scraped white sky, shaking numbly with wonderment and weariness and fear, and wishing I knew my own name.

THE FOX

Too hot. Too hot. Poor little fox, slipping and turning inside nasty draggly bag of wet fur. Man-shape has no fur, but Nyateneri threatens a dozen times death if she sees. So no man-shape, no nice red ale in the taproom, nothing but hot wind in the hot weeds under the tree where chickens sleep. Like eating old brooms. Poor fox.

Day, night, on and on. Nothing to do but sleep. I can sleep a hundred years, if I want—eat nothing, drink nothing, wake if you think about me. But once I look up and there she is, looking down, Lukassa. Eyes so old in that face—as old as I am, almost. She says, “Fox, fox,” so softly. Bends down, picks me up, like the first night, tucks me against her shoulder, against her neck. I lick sweet salt, only a little little.

“My fox,” she says. “Help him.”

Him? Lukassa feels me growl, holds fast. “Oh, fox, he is kind man, he is kind to people.” Not to foxes. Lukassa: “And he is in such danger.” Good. Let that other one take him by scruff and tail, see how he likes it. I lick her throat again. Take man-shape now? But she squeezes me till I squeak, says, “You know them, the ones who come at night. I know you know them. You can make them go away.”