“—what I fear,” I said, thinking of the wizard. Rosseth blinked in puzzlement. I said, “Never mind. Go on, Rosseth. Let’s talk, then.”

So we talked for a long time, longer than we ever had before, while spiking the last beam in place and plastering a mix of straw and horse dung over the roof to seal the cracks. We do it just so at home. I spoke of the fox being also Redcoat, and of my drowned Lukassa having been drawn up from the riverbed by Lal’s song. Rosseth drew breath both times to give me the lie, but did not; no more than I when he told me about Nyateneri being no woman but a man named Soukyan, who had left two other men— fell, dire men—dead in the bathhouse. (Was it one such who touched me and left me unconscious in the corridor outside the wizard’s room? I never knew.) He flushed and stammered over much of that, but I understood enough to pat his shoulder and nod slightly. In my village, one of our priests says that love between men is a great sin— the other argues that nothing at all is sinful except weak ale, overdone meat, and building a fire in any way but his. As for me, my notions in such matters are my notions.

“So what do we know, when all’s said?” I asked at last. “We know that Lal and Soukyan came here in search of their friend, their master, and that they found him the prey of a wizard named Arshadin, more powerful than he. Agreed so far?”

Rosseth objected. “We don’t know that Arshadin is the greater wizard. If this one were in his proper health, rested and strong, it might well be another story.” Rosseth is very loyal.

“That’s as may be,” I said, “but it’s Arshadin who keeps him from resting, who sends voices and visitations to plague him by night, if Marinesha’s to be believed. So that makes Arshadin his master, by my count.” Rosseth chewed his lower lip and looked stubborn. I said, “And if this Arshadin can do such wicked wonders, then he’s like enough to be at the bottom of all else that’s been bedeviling The Gaff and Slasher all summer.” I realized that I had never spoken the inn’s name since the day I arrived there, and suddenly I longed more than I can say for the world in which I had never known it.

Rosseth was nodding eagerly, beginning to speak, but I cut him off as coldly as I could. “Not that any of this is any of my concern. This midden-heap is your home, not mine, and there’s my one great joy in life just now. Whatever happens or does not happen, whatever becomes of your squabbling little wizards, I’ll be off where I belong, and never know.” I stood up. “We’re done—I am supposed to help Gatti Jinni in the storerooms.”

Rosseth let me get to the door before he said, “Lukassa will be here.” I began to answer, but he interrupted me as harshly as I had done to him. “And so will I be, and Marinesha, who has been kind to you. Will you truly never want to know what became of us, Tikat?”

Two years younger than I, and already going for the belly like a starving sheknath. We stared silently at each other until I looked down first. I said, “I will not leave until she is in a safe place, if there can be such a place for her. Afterward—why, afterward the Rabbit and I may as well go home as anywhere.” Rosseth said nothing. I went on. “The rest of you must look after yourselves. I have no skill at loving more than one person at a time, and that is hard enough. Now I’m going to the storerooms.”

I was already outside the smokehouse, closing my eyes against the onslaught of light, when he called to me. “Tikat? I have lived here all my life and never once called it home, not once. But you are right—it is my home, after all, and I will defend it as well as I can, and my friends, too. Thank you, Tikat, for teaching me.” I did not turn, but kept walking toward the inn, uphill in the pounding sunlight.

THE POTBOY

That was the best time there ever was at that place, because Shadry used to fall asleep by noon, sprawled across his big chopping block like one of his own thick, slubbery sides of meat. Once he began snoring, he’d never stir until it was time to prepare the evening meal, if anyone had the strength to eat. Even so, none of the others ever dared to sneak out of the kitchen with me, not for so much as a quick squint at the guests, or to pet Rosseth’s old donkey. They all curled themselves away in the darkest corners they could find and slept through the day like our master. Snoring exactly like him, too, some of them.

Not me. Each day, the moment Shadry’s wet, squirmy mouth sagged open on his wrist, I was across the scullery and through the side door, already opening my own mouth to gasp even before the full morning hit me. I have never known heat like that: barely past sunrise and you’d feel the sweat begin to sizzle on your skin, like fat meat in the pan. I never saw such a sky, either—first white as bone, then white as ashes in the afternoon. At night, late, it turned a sort of white-streaky lavender, but that was as dark as it ever got; and day or night, indoors or out, we all went on turning and turning in the pan. Everything was the pan.

The scullery would have been cooler—the scullery was the nicest shelter of all, except for the wine cellar where fat Karsh napped out the worst part of the days. But I wouldn’t have passed a single free second in that kitchen, not for anything in the world; and none of us except Shadry was allowed to go anywhere else in The Gaff and Slasher. So I usually stole off first to the stables and helped Rosseth with the horses.

Rosseth was my friend. He was years older, of course, grown up, and often he had too much work to do, or something on his mind, and then we couldn’t talk about things the way we liked to. But he never got angry at me, and two times he let me hide in the hayloft and lied to Shadry when he came hissing after me, swinging his long arms. Rosseth never was afraid of Shadry, no matter what he did. I was always safe with Rosseth.

That day the horses lay in their straw and would not even stand up to be curried or have their feet seen to. Rosseth did what he could with them, and I carried water in and pushed fresh hay down from the loft. Then we rested in an empty stall, where we couldn’t be seen from the door, and we talked for a while. I remember, I asked why it was so hot all the time, even at night, and Rosseth told me that it was because two great wizards were fighting in the sky. He made a whole story out of it for me, but I fell asleep in the middle, with my head on his arm.

I didn’t get to sleep very long, because Tikat came in and woke me—he woke up Rosseth, too, I think—saying that heat or no heat, Karsh wanted a cart of market vegetables unloaded. I never liked Tikat. Not that he ever did me any harm—I just didn’t like him. Sometimes I couldn’t understand what he was saying, because of the southern way he talked, and when I could he was telling me to get back from there, get out of everybody’s way. But he did point at his lunch—a winter apple and two whole heshtis, all crusty-brown with cheese—as he and Rosseth left, meaning for me to eat it. So he wasn’t so bad, I suppose, for a southerner.

For the rest of that day, I dodged everywhere around The Gaff and Slasher, slipping back into the kitchen now and then to make sure that Shadry was still asleep. I hid in the smokehouse, the buttery, the bathhouse—even in the smelly little shrine place on the hillside—trying to follow the shadows as the sun moved. But after a while it seemed to me that the sun was hardly moving at all. I watched and watched it, looking through my fingers, and it didn’t stir as much as the length of my thumbnail. From high noon it hung up above the stable, growing riper and heavier every minute, and brighter too, until it was almost white on the outside, white as daisies. But on the inside it was dark—all hard, swollen dark, like a yolk gone bad in the egg. I stopped looking at it when it went like that, but then I began to hear it beating, thumping like an iron heart—you could feel that slow clang everywhere, all the time, in your bones, in your eyes. And it never moved, that clanging sun.