“She has,” Gun said. “And reports no results.”

“Are we sure… she’s so very old.” Parno hated to say it aloud, but what if the woman was simply too old to Heal?

But Gun was already shaking his head. “I asked. Last week a hunting party came back carrying one of their members with a bad leg break. The bones had pierced the skin. She Healed it.

“And she wants me to go with her this afternoon,” he continued. “To help a small girl child who seems to have lost her wits. Together, Sortera says, we’ll be able to Find them, and Heal her.” Even he could hear the notes of awe and pleasure in his voice as he thought about the old woman’s plan.

As Parno Lionsmane blew his breath out with force, making the woven back of the chair creak as he leaned back, Gun forced his attention back to the matter at hand.

“Then this is not the Lens,” Lionsmane said. “It works for you because it is a scrying bowl. But it would work for everyone, if it were the Lens.”

“What about Dhulyn Wolfshead. Can we get her to try?”

The Lionsmane twisted his lips and looked toward the window.

“You’ve tried already, haven’t you?”

The man nodded. “Good news is, the vera tiles seem to work, though that may be because she’s closer to her woman’s time.”

Gun pursed his lips in a silent whistle. “That’s it then. We’re back where we started. We haven’t got the Lens.”

“Then you’ll Find it.”

Dhulyn Wolfshead’s quiet voice was filled with assurance, and Gun wished that it could do the same for him. He looked up at her impassive face and told himself there was no mistrust, no suspicion in her stone-gray eyes. He wasn’t sure he believed it.

“I don’t know what it looks like,” he said, sounding, even to himself, like a child trying to escape the blame of eating the family’s cakes.

“You didn’t know what Tek-aKet’s soul looked like either,” Parno Lionsmane said. “But you managed to Find that. This is bound to be simpler. It’ll be some artifact of the Jaldeans or even of you Scholars that no one thinks is of any importance.”

“Try again,” Wolfshead said. “Try the way you found Tek-aKet.” She sat down on the stool to Gun’s right, set her left ankle on her right knee, and folded her hands into her lap. The Lionsmane patted Gun on the shoulder before stepping back from the table himself. Behind him, Sortera sat against the whitewashed wall under the shuttered window, in the room’s only padded chair, nodding over the knitting in her lap. Mar had fallen asleep on the pallet next to the old woman, her thick lashes making circled shadows on her cheeks.

Would he ever feel completely forgiven, Gun thought, as Mar so obviously did? Unable to stay awake, sent to bed with a kiss on the forehead like a favored daughter, while he sat here with the scrying bowl in front of him. Gun took a deep breath and set his hands lightly around the edge of the bowl. He was still alive, so he supposed he knew that Wolfshead and Lionsmane both did actually forgive him. He couldn’t expect the affection they showed to Mar. Her offense had been against them personally, while his… He cleared his throat.

“Move the candle a little closer, please,” he said, and out of the corner of his eye saw the Lionsmane’s hand reach into the candle’s circle of light and move it. The light’s reflections on the surface of the water within the bowl flickered and moved, as if someone had taken a page of parchment and shaken it out like a sheet. The water-

is a bright sheet of paper. And he is to write the story of the Lens. Ah, here is the Library. He wastes no time looking around him, but follows quickly the dark line on the floor that only he can see, the thread that will lead him through the labyrinth of library shelves to… Mar?

Mar sits in a carrel, asleep with her head down on her folded arms. Of course. He’s thinking about her, sleeping so near him in the room, warm and soft. Her affection was in no doubt; bright and shining, he Finds it. He has to stop thinking about her, and think only of the Lens. He sees the line again at his feet and follows it, somehow knowing that this time he is going deeper into the library than he has been before, where he does not see even the shadowy outline of others. The line is fine and dark and leads him to…

Mar again. This time she’s snoring.

There was a quality in Sortera’s laugh that made the young Scholar blush. Dhulyn had been willing to swear the old woman had been sound asleep. “Easy to see what the lad’s trying to Find,” Sortera said. “Whether he knows it or not.”

Dhulyn got up and stretched, pushing her hips first to one side, then the other. “She’s right, my Scholar. It’s late and all you can Find is your bed. We’ll try again in the morning.”

As Dhulyn watched, Gun took off his boots, shrugged out of his tunic, and in his shirt and breeches squeezed himself onto the pallet beside Mar. He put an arm around her, but Dhulyn couldn’t tell if it was from real affection, or from lack of space. She hoped it was the former.

Parno tapped her on the shoulder and motioned with his head to the door, picking up his crossbow and hanging his sword on his belt as he went. The door’s closely fitted planks gave immediately onto the steep stone staircase that ran between Sortera’s narrow house and the building that was its neighbor.

Parno stepped down until he was standing a stair below her, and cupped her cheek in his calloused hand. “My Brother, my soul.” He spoke softly, mindful of the Clouds that lay sleeping all around them. “You look tired. Get some rest.”

“I know what that means,” she said, forcing a smile to her lips. “When a man tells you that you look tired, he’s telling you that you look old.”

“If this is what you’ll look like when you’re old, I sincerely hope we both live to see the day.”

She felt her muscles loosen as she rested her forehead against his, felt his arms come up around her, drew in a breath full of his scent and nearness. “You’ll be late for your watch,” she murmured. She felt him nod, felt the touch of his lips on hers.

“I’ll go for now,” he said. “But I’ll be back. I’ll always be back.”

“In Battle,” she said.

“And in Death,” he answered.

She watched him until he’d gone all the way down the narrow stone steps and turned the corner into the street-just as narrow but not so steep-below.

Dhulyn stood there in her vest and linen trousers until the cold mountain air had time to make her shiver. Then she lifted the wooden latch and stepped back inside Sortera’s house.

Gun and Mar were both asleep, nested together like two arrows in a quiver. At first, Dhulyn thought Sortera had fallen asleep in her chair, but something about the length of the old woman’s regular breaths, the deliberate movements of her fingers along the needles of her knitting, told Dhulyn Sortera was probably in a Healer’s trance.

Wonder if she’s Healing herself, Dhulyn thought. One way at least to explain how so old a woman could still be alive.

There was another pallet in the interior room, but Dhulyn’s turn at watch along the upper slope would come soon enough to make sleep more of a bother than a help. Instead, she took Dal’s small box from the shelf beside the hearth, pulled the chair Gun had been using closer to the table, and sat down in the light thrown by the lamp they’d lit to eat their suppers by. She opened the box and began taking out vera tiles.

MAR IS DANCING. SHE WEARS A CLOTH-OF-SILVER GOWN WITH A CAREFULLY MENDED TEAR IN THE SHOULDER, A GOWN THIN ENOUGH TO SHOW THE SHADOW OF HER LIMBS AS SHE MOVES. WEDDING CLOTHES? DHULYN THINKS. SHE IS DANCING AT HER WEDDING. DHULYN LOOKS AT THE GUESTS, BUT IN THE WAY OF DREAMS, SHE CANNOT TELL FROM THEIR FACES WHO THEY ARE. AT FIRST THE DANCE IS A CIRCLE, MAR HOLDS THE HANDS OF THE PEOPLE NEXT TO HER, THEN THE CIRCLE BREAKS AND THE DANCERS WEAVE IN AND OUT, TAKING AND RELEASING HANDS AS THEY SKIP AND HOP PAST EACH OTHER, TURNING AND WEAVING A PATTERN IN THEIR DANCE. MAR IS NOT SMILING AND WHEN SHE LOOKS OVER HER SHOULDER AT WHERE DHULYN STANDS, IT IS A DIFFERENT WOMAN, OLDER, AND HER PALE BLOND HAIR IS DRESSED DIFFERENTLY. BUT SHE IS DANCING, STILL…