Two more guards died that evening. Bolt himself dragged their bodies to one side, but could not find the strength to do more than that. The fire they had managed to kindle died soon for lack of fuel. The open night on the flat land seemed darker than anything I had ever known and the dry cold a part of the darkness. I heard the groans of the men, and one babbling about his guts, his guts. I heard the restless shifting of the unwatered horses. I thought longingly of water and warmth. Odd pains bothered me. My wrists were chafed raw from the shackles. They hurt less than my shoulder, but in an ever-present way I could not ignore. I guessed the blade-bone in my shoulder was at least fractured.

Bolt came staggering over to where I lay at dawn. His eyes were sunken, his cheeks drawn with his misery. He fell to his knees beside me and gripped my hair. I groaned. "Are you dying, Bastard?" he asked me hoarsely. I moaned again and tried feebly to pull free of him. It seemed to satisfy him. "Good. Good then. Some were saying it was the Wit magic you'd put on us, Bastard. But I think bad water can kill a man, be he Witted or honorable. Still. Let's be sure of it, this time."

It was my own knife that he drew out. As he dragged back on my hair to expose my throat, I brought up my shackled hands to crash the chain against his face. At the same time I repelled at him with all the strength of Wit I could muster. He fell back from me. He crawled a few paces away, then fell on his side in the sand. I heard him breathing heavily. After a time, he stopped. I closed my eyes, listening to that silence, feeling the absence of his life like sunlight on my face.

After a time, when the day was stronger, I forced myself to open my eye. It was harder to crawl over to Bolt's body. All my aches had stiffened and combined to one pain that shrieked whenever I moved. I went over his body carefully. I found Burrich's earring in his pouch. Odd to think that I stopped right then and put it back in my ear lest I lose it. My poisons were there as well. What wasn't in his pouch was the key to my shackles. I started to sort my possessions out from his, but the sun was pounding spikes into the back of my head. I simply put his pouch at my belt. Whatever he'd had in there was mine now. Once you've poisoned a man, I reflected, you might as well rob him as well. Honor no longer seemed to have much to do with my life.

Whoever had shackled me probably carried the key, I surmised. I crawled to the next body, but found nothing in his pouch save some Smoke herbs. I sat up, and became aware of faltering footsteps crunching over the dry earth toward me. I lifted my eyes, squinted against the sunlight. The boy came slowly toward me, his steps wavering. In one hand he had a waterskin. In the other he held the key where I might see it.

A dozen steps away from me, he halted. "Your life for mine," he croaked. He was swaying where he stood. I made no response. He tried again. "Water and the key to your bonds. Any horse you want to take. I won't fight you. Only lift your Wit-curse off me."

He looked so young and pitiful standing there.

"Please," he begged me abruptly.

I found myself shaking my head slowly. "It was poison," I told him. "There's nothing I can do for you."

He stared at me, bitterly, incredulous. "Then I have to die? Today?" His words came out as a dry whisper. His dark eyes locked to mine. I found myself nodding.

"Damn you!" He shrieked the words, burning whatever life strength he had left. "Then you die, too. You die right here!" He flung the key from us as far as he could, then staggered off in a feeble run, squawking and flailing at the horses.

The beasts had stood all night unpicketed, had even waited all morning hoping for grain and water. They were well-trained animals. But the smell of sickness and death and this boy's incomprehensible behavior were too much for them. When he screamed suddenly and then fell facedown almost amongst them, a big gray gelding threw up his head, snorting. I sent calming thoughts toward him, but he had thoughts of his own. He pranced nervously away, then suddenly decided this was a good decision and broke into a canter. The other horses followed his lead. Their hooves were not a thundering on the plain; rather they were the diminishing patter of a rainstorm as it vanishes, taking all hope of life with it.

The boy did not move again, but it was a time before he died. I had to listen to his soft weeping as I searched for the key. I wanted desperately to go look for waterskins instead, but I feared that if I turned away from the area where he had thrown it, I would never be able to decide which unremarkable stretch of sand held my salvation. So I crawled over it on my hands and knees; manacles cutting and chafing at my wrists and ankles, as I peered at the ground with my one good eye. Even after the sound of his weeping became too soft to hear, even after he died, I heard it still inside my mind. Sometimes I still can. Another young life ended senselessly, to no profit, as a result of Regal's vendetta with me. Or perhaps because of mine with him.

I did eventually find the key, just as I was certain that the setting sun would hide it forever. It was crudely made and turned very stiffly in the locks, but it worked. I opened the shackles, prying them out of my puffy flesh. The one on my left ankle had been so tight that my foot was cold and near numb. After a few minutes, pain flooded back into my foot with life. I didn't pay much attention. I was too busy seeking for water.

Most of the guards had drained their waterskins just as my poison had drained all fluids from their guts. The one the boy had shown me held only a few mouthfuls. I drank them very slowly, holding the water in my mouth for a long time before swallowing it. In Bolt's saddlebags I found a flask of brandy. I allowed myself one small mouthful of it, then capped it and set it aside. It was not much more than a day's walk back to the waterhole. I could make it. I'd have to.

I robbed the dead for what I needed. I went through the saddlebags and bundles on the heaped saddles. When I was finished, I wore a blue shirt that fit me in the shoulders, though it hung almost to my knees. I had dried meat and grain, lentils and peas, my old sword that I decided fit me best, Bolt's knife, a looking glass, a small kettle, a mug and a spoon. I spread out a sturdy blanket and put these things on it. To them I added a change of clothing that was too large for me, but would be better than nothing. Bolt's cloak would be long on me, but it was the best made, so I took it. One of the men had carried some linen for bandaging and some salves. I took these, an empty waterskin, and Bolt's flask of brandy.

I could have gone over the bodies for money and jewelry. I could have burdened myself with a dozen other perhaps-useful possessions. I found I wanted only to replace what I'd had, and to be away from the smell of the bloating bodies. I made the bundle as small and tight as I could, cinching it with leather straps from the horses' harness. When I lifted it to my good shoulder, it still felt much too heavy.

My brother?

The query seemed tentative, faint with more than distance.

With disuse. As if a man spoke in a language he had not used in many years.

I live, Nighteyes. Stay with your pack, and live also.

Do you not need me? I felt his twinge of conscience as he asked this.

I always need you. I need to know you are alive and free.

I sensed his faint assent, but little more than that. After a time I wondered if I had not imagined his touch against my mind. But I felt oddly strengthened as I walked away from the bodies into the deepening night.