“He’s fun to ride. I never saw a horse striped like him before.”

“I had to do something original before I was accepted as a healer, so I made Squirrel,” she said. “No one ever isolated that gene before.” She realized Melissa would have no idea what she was talking about; she wondered if the fight had affected her more than she thought.

“You made him?”

“I made… a medicine… that would make him be born the color he is. I had to change a living creature without hurting it to prove I was good enough to work on changing the serpents. So we can cure more diseases.“

“I wish I could do something like that.”

“Melissa, you can ride horses I wouldn’t go near.”

Melissa said nothing.

“What’s wrong?”

“I was going to be a jockey.”

She was a small, thin child, and she could certainly ride anything. “Then why—” Snake cut herself off, for she realized why Melissa could not be a jockey in Mountainside.

Finally the child said, “The mayor wants jockeys as pretty as his horses.”

Snake took Melissa’s hand and squeezed it gently. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay here, mistress.”

The lights of the courtyard reached toward them. Swift’s hooves clattered on the stone. Melissa slipped from the mare’s back.

“Melissa?”

“Don’t worry, mistress, I’ll put your horse away. Hey!” she called. “Open the door!”

Snake got down slowly and unfastened the serpent case from the saddle. She was already stiff, and her bad knee ached fiercely.

The residence door opened and a servant in night-clothes peered out. “Who’s there?”

“It’s Mistress Snake,” Melissa said from the darkness. “She’s hurt.”

“I’m all right,” Snake said, but with a shocked exclamation the servant turned away, calling for help, and then came running into the courtyard.

“Why didn’t you bring her inside?” He reached out to support Snake. She gently held him away. Other people came running out and milled around her.

“Come get the horse, you foolish child!”

“Leave her alone!” Snake said sharply. “Thank you, Melissa.”

“You’re welcome, mistress.”

As Snake entered the vaulted hallway, Gabriel came clattering down the huge curved staircase. “Snake, what’s wrong? — Good lords, what happened?”

“I’m all right,” she said again. “I just got in a fight with an incompetent thief.” It was more than that, though. She knew it now.

She thanked the servants and went upstairs to the south tower with Gabriel. He stood uneasily and restlessly by while she checked Mist and Sand, for he had urged her to take care of herself first. The two serpents had not been hurt, so Snake left them in their compartments and went into the bathroom.

She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror: her face was covered with blood and her hair was matted against her scalp. Her blue eyes stared out at her.

“You look like you’ve almost been murdered.” He turned on the water and brought out washcloths and towels.

“I do, don’t I?”

Gabriel dabbed at the gash across her forehead and up above the hairline. Snake could see its edges in the mirror: it was a shallow, thin cut that must have been made with the edge of a ring, not a knuckle.

“Maybe you should lie down.”

“Scalp wounds always bleed like that,” Snake said. “It isn’t as bad as it looks.” She glanced down at herself and laughed sadly. “New shirts are never very comfortable but this is a hard way to age one.” The shoulder and elbow were ripped out, and the right knee of her pants, from her fall to the cobblestones; and dirt was ground into the fabric. Through the holes she could see bruises forming.

“I’ll get you another,” Gabriel said. “I can’t believe this happened. There’s hardly any robbery in Mountainside. And everybody knows you’re a healer. Who would attack a healer?”

Snake took the cloth from him and finished washing the cut. Gabriel had cleaned it too gently; Snake did not much want it to heal over dirt and bits of gravel.

“I wasn’t attacked by anyone from Mountainside,” she said.

Gabriel sponged the knee of her pants to loosen the material where dry blood glued it to her skin. Snake told him about the crazy.

“At least it wasn’t one of our people,” Gabriel said. “And a stranger will be easier to find.”

“Maybe so.” But the crazy had escaped the search of the desert people; a town had many more hiding places.

She stood up. Her knee was getting sorer. She limped to the big tub and turned on the water, very hot. Gabriel helped her out of the rest of her clothes and sat nearby while she soaked the aches away. He fidgeted, angry at what had happened.

“Where were you when the crazy attacked you? I’m going to send the town guards out to search.”

“Oh, Gabriel, leave it for tonight. It’s been at least an hour — he’ll be long gone. All you’ll do is make people get up out of their warm beds to run around town and get other people up out of their warm beds.”

“I want to do something.”

“I know. But there’s nothing to be done for now.” She lay back and closed her eyes.

“Gabriel,” she said suddenly after several minutes of silence, “what happened to Melissa?”

She glanced over at him; he frowned.

“Who?”

“Melissa. The little stable-hand with burn scars. She’s ten or eleven and she has red hair.”

“I don’t know — I don’t think I’ve seen her.”

“She rides your horse for you.”

“Rides my horse! A ten-year-old child? That’s ridiculous.”

“She told me she rides him. She didn’t sound like she was lying.”

“Maybe she sits on my horse’s back when Ras leads him out to pasture. I’m not even sure he’d stand for that, though. Ras can’t ride him — how could a child?“

“Well, never mind,” Snake said. Perhaps Melissa had simply wanted to impress her; she would not be surprised if the child lived in fantasies. But Snake found she could not dismiss Melissa’s claim so lightly. “That doesn’t matter,” she said to Gabriel. “I just wondered how she got burned.”

“I don’t know.”

Exhausted, feeling that if she stayed in the bath any longer she would fall asleep, Snake pushed herself out of the tub. Gabriel wrapped a big towel around her and helped her dry her back and her legs, for she was still very sore.

“There was a fire down at the stable,” he said abruptly. “Four or five years ago. But I thought no one was hurt. Ras even got most of the horses out.”

“Melissa hid from me,” Snake said. “Could she have been hiding for four years?”

Gabriel remained silent for a moment. “If she’s scarred…”He shrugged uneasily. “I don’t like to think of it this way, but I’ve been hiding from almost everyone for three years. I guess it’s possible.”

He helped her back to the bedroom and stopped just inside the doorway, suddenly awkward. Snake realized all at once that she had been as good as teasing him again, without intending to. She wished she could offer him a place in her bed tonight; she would have liked the companionship. But she was not inexhaustible. Right now she had no energy for sex or even for sympathy, and she did not want to tease him even more by expecting him to lie chaste all night beside her.

“Good night, Gabriel,” she said. “I wish we had last night to live over again.”

He controlled disappointment well, disappointment and the embarrassment of realizing he was disappointed, though he knew she was hurt and tired. They merely kissed good night. Snake felt a sudden surge of desire. All that kept her from asking him to stay was the knowledge of how she would feel in the morning after tonight’s physical and emotional stress. More exertion of body and mind, even pleasurable passion, would only make things worse.“

“Damn,” Snake said as Gabriel stepped back. “That crazy keeps adding to what he owes.”

A sound roused Snake from deep, exhausted sleep. She thought Larril had come about the mayor, but no one spoke. Light from the hallway illuminated the room for an instant, then the door closed, leaving darkness again. Snake lay very still. She could hear her heart pounding as she readied herself for defense, remembering what Melissa had said about her knife. In a camp it was always nearby, though she no more expected to be attacked while traveling than while sleeping in the mayor’s castle. But tonight her belt and knife lay somewhere on the floor where she had dropped them, or perhaps even in the bathroom. She did not remember. Her head ached and her knee hurt.