Snake nodded.

“Healers know how to help — how to—”

“Merideth, no,” Jesse whispered.

“ — how to take away the pain.”

“She can’t…”

“One of my serpents was killed,” Snake said, more loudly than she had intended, belligerent with grief and anger.

Merideth did not make a second outburst, but Snake could feel the unspoken accusation: You couldn’t help her live, and now you can’t help her die. This time it was Snake’s gaze that fell. She deserved the condemnation. Merideth let her go and turned back to Jesse, looming over her like a tall demon waiting to fight beasts or shadows.

Jesse reached out to touch Merideth but drew her hand sharply back. She stared at the soft center of her palm, between the calluses of her work. A bruise was forming. “Why?”

“The last war,” Snake said. “In the craters—” Her voice broke.

“So it’s true,” Jesse said. “My family believes the land outside kills, but I thought they lied.” Her eyes went out of focus; she blinked, looked toward Snake but did not seem to see her, blinked again. “They lied about so many other things. Lies for making children obedient…”

Silent again, her eyes closed, Jesse slowly went limp, one muscle at a time, as if even relaxation was an agony she could not tolerate all at once. She was still conscious but did not respond, with word or smile or glance, as Merideth stroked her bright hair and moved as close as was possible without touching her. Her skin was ashen around the livid bruises.

Suddenly she screamed. She clamped her hands to her temples, pressing, digging her nails into her scalp. Snake grabbed for her hands to pull them away. “No,” Jesse groaned, “oh, no leave me alone — Merry, it hurts!” Weak a few moments before, Jesse struggled with fever-fired strength. Snake could do nothing but try to restrain her gently, but the inner diagnostic voice returned: aneurism. In Jesse’s brain a radiation-weakened vessel was slowly exploding. Snake’s next thought was equally unbidden and even more powerful: Pray it bursts soon and hard, and kills her cleanly.

At the same time that Snake realized Alex was no longer beside her, trying to help with Jesse, but had crossed to the other side of the tent, she heard Sand rattle. She turned instinctively, launching herself toward Alex. Her shoulder rammed his stomach and he dropped the satchel as Sand struck from within. Alex crashed to the ground. Snake felt a sharp pain in her leg and drew back her fist to strike him, but checked herself.

She fell to one knee.

Sand coiled on the ground, rattling his tail softly, prepared to strike again. Snake’s heart raced. She could feel the pulse throbbing in her thigh. Her femoral artery was less than a handsbreadth from the puncture where Sand had sunk his fangs into muscle.

“You fool! Are you trying to kill yourself?” Her leg throbbed a few more times, then her immunities neutralized the venom. She was glad Sand had missed the artery. Even she could be made briefly ill by a bite like that, and she had no time for illness. The pain became a dull, ebbing ache.

“How can you let her die in such pain?” Alex asked.

“All you’d give her with Sand is more pain.” Disguising her anger, she turned calmly to the diamondback, picked him up, and let him slide back into the case. “There’s no quick death with rattlers.” That was not quite true, but Snake was still angry enough to frighten him. “If anyone dies of it, they die from infection. Gangrene.”

Alex paled but held his ground, glowering.

Merideth called him. Alex glanced at his partners, then stared at Snake again for a long challenging moment. “What about the other serpent?” He turned his back on her and went to Jesse’s side.

Holding the case, Snake fingered the catch on Mist’s compartment. She shook her head, pushing away the image of Jesse dying from Mist’s poison. Cobra venom would kill quickly, not pleasantly but quickly. What was the difference between disguising pain with dreams and ending it with death? Snake had never deliberately caused the death of another human being, in anger or in mercy. She did not know if she could now. Or if she should. She could not tell if the reluctance she felt came from her training or from some deeper, more fundamental knowledge that to kill Jesse would be wrong.

She could hear the partners talking softly together, voices, but not words, distinguishable: Merideth clear, musical, midrange; Alex deep and rumbling; Jesse breathless and hesitant. Every few minutes they all fell silent as Jesse fought another wave of pain. Jesse’s next hours or days, the last of her life, would strip away her strength and spirit.

Snake opened the case and let Mist slide out and coil around her arm, up and over her shoulder. She held the cobra gently behind the head so she could not strike, and crossed the tent.

They all looked up at her, startled out of a retreat into their self-sufficient partnership. Merideth, in particular, seemed for a moment not even to recognize her. Alex looked from Snake to the cobra and back again, with a strange expression of resigned, triumphant grief. Mist flicked out her tongue to catch their smells, her unblinking eyes like silver mirrors in the growing darkness. Jesse peered at her, squinting, blinking. She reached up to rub her eyes but stopped, remembering, a tremor in her hand. “Healer? Come closer, I can’t see properly.”

Snake knelt down between Merideth and Alex. For the third time she did not know what to say to Jesse. It was as if she, not Jesse, were becoming blind, blood seeping across her retinas and squeezing the nerves, sight blurring slowly to scarlet and black. Snake blinked rapidly and her vision cleared.

“Jesse, I can’t do anything about the pain.” Mist moved smoothly beneath her hand. “All I can offer…”

“Tell her!” Alex growled. He stared as if petrified at Mist’s eyes.

“Do you think this is easy?” Snake snapped. But Alex did not look up.

“Jesse,” Snake said, “Mist’s natural venom can kill. If you want me to—”

“What are you saying?” Merideth cried.

Alex broke his fascinated stare. “Merideth, be quiet, how can you stand—”

“Both of you be quiet,” Snake said. “The decision’s up to neither of you, it’s Jesse’s alone.”

Alex slumped back on his heels; Merideth sat rigid, glaring Jesse said nothing for a long time. Mist tried to crawl from Snake’s arm and Snake restrained her.

“The pain won’t stop,” Jesse said.

“No,” Snake said. “I’m sorry.”

“When will I die?”

“The pain in your head is from pressure. It could kill you… any time.” Merideth hunched down, face in hands, but Snake had no way of being gentler. “You have a few days, at the most, from the poisoning.” Jesse flinched when she said that.

“I don’t wish for days anymore,” she said softly.

Tears streamed between Merideth’s fingers.

“Dear Merry, Alex knows,” Jesse said. “Please try to understand. It’s time for me to let you go.” Jesse looked toward Snake with sightless eyes. “Let us have a little while alone, and then I’ll be grateful for your gift.”

Snake stood and walked out of the tent. Her knees shook and her neck and shoulders ached with tension. She sat down on the hard, gritty sand, wishing the night were over.

She looked up at the sky, a thin strip edged by the walls of the canyon. The clouds seemed peculiarly thick and opaque tonight, for though the moon had not yet risen high enough to see, some of its light should have been diffracted into sky-glow. Suddenly she realized the clouds were not unusually thick but very thin and mobile, too thin to spread light. They moved in a wind that blew only high above the ground. As she watched, a bank of dark cloud parted, and Snake quite clearly saw the sky, black and deep and shimmering with multicolored points of light. Snake stared at them, hoping the clouds would not come together again, wishing someone else were near to share the stars with her. Planets circled some of those stars, and people lived on them, people who might have helped Jesse if they had even known she existed. Snake wondered if their plan had had any chance of success at all, or if Jesse had accepted it because on a level deeper than shock and resignation her grip on life had been too strong to let go.