I blinked in agreement, too terrified to move.

“Good.” The knife’s pressure eased a fraction. Datar smiled at me as pleasantly as though we were discussing the day’s journey. “I wanted to wait until you understood. Some things are worth waiting for. I have heard stories of the bed-arts of D’Angeline women. I want you to show them to me. Do you understand?”

I blinked again.

Manil Datar nodded in approval. “If you are good, you will be mine, and mine only. If you are bad…” He withdrew the knife from my throat, tracing a line along my cheek with the sharp tip. “I will cut your face worse than Sanjiv’s, and give you to the men to share. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I whispered, my heart thudding in my chest like a trapped thing.

His unsmiling eyes bored into mine. “You will be good?”

“Yes.”

He shifted his weight off me, tugged away the sheepskin, untangled the woolen blankets, pulling me to my knees. With one hand, he opened his long coat and unlaced his thick, lined breeches. Taking my hand, he guided it to his erect phallus. With another smile that did not reach his eyes, he gestured with the dagger and uttered one of the first words he had taught me. “Mouth.”

I felt sick.

The point of the dagger prodded a spot beneath my ear. “Mouth, Moirin!”

“Slow,” I murmured, stroking the length of his shaft, feeling it throb in my hand. “Slow is best, yes?”

Datar’s breath quickened, his lids growing heavy. “All right, yes. Slow.”

Sick and horrified, I stroked him, watching his face beneath my lashes. When I cupped his heavy ballocks and began to lower my head, his eyes fluttered shut for an instant.

It was all I needed-a second without his gaze on me. Quicker than thought, faster than I’d ever done in my life, I summoned the twilight and spun it around me, taking a half-step into the spirit world.

Manil Datar uttered an involuntary cry, dropping the dagger.

Exactly what he was feeling, I couldn’t say, only that it was unpleasant and unnerving. Bao had said it was like being touched by a ghost. Fury ran hot in my veins, and I tightened my grip on Datar’s ballocks with grim satisfaction, feeling them shrivel and attempt to retreat into his body, his erection flagging. With my other hand, I picked up the dagger he had dropped, setting the point beneath his chin.

Datar stared frantically into the empty air before him, his eyes wide and terrified.

“You will not do this to me, Manil Datar,” I said to him in a hard voice, willing him to hear. “Not tonight, not ever. Do you understand?”

He blinked in assent.

“Good.” I shoved the knife a little. I didn’t know if it would cut him while I was in the twilight and he wasn’t, but whatever he felt, it made him raise his chin higher. I gave his shrinking ballocks a hard squeeze. “Never touch me again, or these…” I didn’t know the word, so I squeezed them again. “No more. I make a curse. You will not be a man. Do you understand?”

His throat worked as he tried to swallow. “Yes,” he said hoarsely. “Yes.”

“Good.” I lowered the dagger and released my death-grip on his ballocks. Manil Datar drew a ragged breath. “Now go, and do not trouble me again.”

He couldn’t scramble out of my tent fast enough, clutching his coat closed with one hand, holding up his unlaced breeches with the other.

Once Datar had gone, I began shaking, and couldn’t stop. I clung to my grip on the twilight and wrapped my blankets around myself, wrapped my arms around my knees, and rocked.

My tent stank of his musky, cloying perfume.

I could still feel his phallus throbbing and twitching against my palm, still hear his voice saying, Mouth, Moirin.

Ah, gods.

Being a heroine was a very lonely affair.

In the end, I released the twilight and dozed fitfully that night, waking from time to time in a start of terror. Manil Datar did not return, but in the morning I found that the mood in the camp had changed considerably.

No one would meet my eyes.

No one brought me food to break my fast; no one saw to watering my mounts. No one aided me in striking my tent and loading my gear, all the little niceties to which I had grown accustomed, all the things that had made the caravan function with swift efficiency.

I heard one word murmured, over and over: dakini.

I did not need Manil Datar to translate it for me.

Witch.

Well, and so. Better that they should fear me than not. The memory of Datar’s knife tracing a line along my cheek was vivid in my mind. And at least it did not seem that the caravan meant to abandon me altogether. A trader’s bond was only as good as his word, and Manil Datar was not yet willing to break his.

So I dined on the tsampa that Nyima had packed for me, kneading roasted barley and butter together in the Tufani manner and popping balls of it into my mouth. I trudged across the meadow with the iron cooking-pot Aleksei had bought in Vralia to fill it from the waterskins the porters’ yaks carried that I might water my horses, since I did not have a bucket of my own.

My saddle-horse, Lady, guzzled down a potful at one go, gazing mournfully at me with a dripping muzzle when it was empty.

Her mate Flick, my pack-horse, looked on eagerly.

I sighed. “More, eh?”

“Here,” a voice said behind me. I turned to see the scarred porter, Sanjiv, a brimming leather bucket full of water in either hand. He ducked his head, embarrassed. “For your horses, Lady Dakini.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Sanjiv nodded without looking at me. “They should not suffer.”

“No,” I agreed. “They should not.”

In silent accord, we watched my horses drink their fill. “Horses are good,” Sanjiv offered after a time. “Yaks, too.”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“They like you,” he said shyly.

“I like them, too.” Curious, I looked at his face full on in the daylight, studying the raking scars that lacerated it, dragging his nose sideways and skewing his upper lip. Despite the disfigurement, his eyes were dark and soft, with long lashes. “Who hurt you, Sanjiv? Who did this to you?”

“No one,” he said simply. “It was a snow leopard. He was hungry. I was trying to protect my yaks. It is not his fault he made me ugly.”

I smiled. “I do not think you are ugly.”

“No?” He met my eyes for the first time, tentative and fearful.

I shook my head. “No.”

FIFTY-FIVE

Without Sanjiv’s kindness, I would not have survived the journey.

For the first couple of days after Manil Datar’s assault, I thought mayhap I could manage. Grueling though it was, I was accustomed to hard work and surviving on my own. Datar didn’t appear inclined to deny me the share of provisions to which I was entitled; he simply ceased to ensure that any aid was given to me.

No one offered me food, but after I ran out of tsampa, no one attempted to stop me when I filled a plate of rice and lentils from the cooking-pot-only glanced at me sidelong and muttered under their breath. And Sanjiv took it upon himself to help care for my horses, which was a tremendous help.

And then I got sick.

I’d always been blessed with a healthy constitution, but it failed me in the mountains. I was already worn down by prolonged travel, worn down by my never-ending destiny. After Datar’s assault, I had trouble sleeping, constantly waking in a start of terror. And, too, the atmosphere of suspicion and hostility in the caravan took its toll on me.

It began with a headache and a scratchiness in the back of my throat. By the second day, it hurt to swallow. My joints ached, and I suspected I was feverish.

By the third day, I was sure of it.

Manil Datar knew it, too. He came upon me struggling to hoist Lady’s saddle in place on the morning of the fourth day. Giving me a tight smile, he addressed me for the first time since he’d fled my tent. “You are sick, Moirin.”