"Sahdri, " he whispered, as if the word took all his breath.

The metri stood up abruptly from her chair. "You are not to be here! You and your kind are not to be here!"

I spun then, even as Del did, and we saw beyond the torches, walking softly upon the wall, a barefoot man in night-black linen.

And then I realized his feet were not touching the stone.

TWENTY-EIGHT

"YOU ARE not to be here!" the metri cried. "This ground is mine; you profane it! You soil it! You are not to be here!"

The man atop the wall-no, the man floating above the wall-paused, smiled, lifted a hand as if in benediction. Rings glinted on fingers, in brows, in ears, depended from his nostrils, pierced the flesh of his lower lip. In guttering torchlight, his shaven head writhed with blue tattoos.

Ah. One of those.

His tone was immensely conversational, lacking insult, offering no confrontation beyond the fact of his presence. "But I am here, because I choose to be here. And your tame ikepra can wield no power against me, even if I permitted." His dark eyes were rimmed in light borrowed from the flame. "Nihkolara Andros, you have been gone much too long. We have missed you. You must come back to us." For all the world like a doting relative.

A shudder wracked the first mate from head to toe. And then he dropped to his knees, bent at the waist, set his brow upon the ground. In clear tones, he said, "I cannot. I am ikepra."

The multitude of rings glinted in torchlight. "Forgiveness is possible."

Nihko shuddered again, hands digging into the soil. "I am ikepra."

"Forgiveness is possible," the man-Sahdri-repeated. His language was accented, but comprehensible. "You need only come with me now and begin the Rituals of Unsoiling."

"Come with you where?" I asked, since no one else seemed willing to.

The light-rimmed eyes turned their gaze on me. I wasn't sure if the illumination came from the torches, or from the eyes themselves. "loSkandi," he answered. "Where people such as the great and gracious metrioi of the gods-descended Eleven send us all to die."

I glanced at Prima Rhannet. I expected her to speak, but she offered nothing. She stood there, locked in silence, staring at the priest-mage as her first mate knelt to him in abject obeisance.

"Well," I said finally, "it doesn't look like you died."

"That hour will arrive. Just as it shall arrive for Nihkolara Andros." He inclined his head toward the kneeling man. "He has returned, you see, and now is ours again. Or shall be, when he understands what lies before him, and what he is to do."

The metri too was trembling, but not from fear. "Go," she said thickly. "This man has guest-right."

The irony in his tone was delicate. "This man? Here?"

"This is business of the Stessoi," she said with a curtness I had never heard in her. "You are not of this family, nor do I grant you guest-right. Unless you and the others have forsworn all rites of courtesy in the Stone Forest, you know what you must do."

"Depart," he said with evident regret. "I had hoped for a cup of fine Stessa wine."

If possible, she stood a little straighter. "Save you steal grapes from the vines themselves, no wine of my vineyards shall pass your lips."

"I am desolate." But his gaze had shifted again to Nihko, who still knelt in the dirt. "You have a fine ship, Nihkolara," he said gently. "Surely you can find your way home again."

At last, Prima's voice. It scraped out of her constricted throat. "He is home."

Rings glinted as he lifted an illustrative finger. "His home is ioSkandi. It has been so since the day he understood what he was; was made to understand by such as the metrioi and the Eleven, who will not tolerate such as he, such as me. He has no place here. He came willingly to ioSkandi and embraced the service of the gods."

"He left," she said. "He left you."

"And so became ikepra, and abomination." His tone was matter of fact. "He was tolerated when he lived on your ship upon the seas, but he spends more time now on the earth. And so, according to the laws of the Eleven, he must be sent to live with us." He spread his hands gently. "Is this not so?"

"He has guest-right," the metri repeated tightly.

"For how long?" the priest-mage countered. "Shall you have him live among you as a Stessa? But no. Shall he go to the Palomedi metri, whom he insulted by bedding her daughter while he also bedded her? But no. Shall he go to his own folk, the Androsoi?"

From his position in the dirt, Nihko cried, "No!"

"There." The man nodded. "He knows his place."

"He's mine," Prima declared hoarsely.

Sahdri looked at her and smiled. "But he was mine first."

"Look," I said, "I'm not exactly sure what's going on here, but the metri has asked you to leave. Just when do you plan to do it?"

And he was there, before me, his breath warm against my face. I hadn't seen him move from the wall to the terrace. Hadn't seen any indication he would.

"Who are you?" the priest-mage asked.

I opened my mouth, shut it. This was magic, living, breathing magic in the body of a man, encompassed by no more than fragile flesh. He stank of power. By rights I should be spewing my dinner across the terrace, but Nihko's brow ring, still attached to my necklet, was doing its task.

Sahdri saw it. Saw me. Smiled. "Are you vermin, that I should squash you?"

The metri's voice rang out. "He is my grandson."

Every head, including mine, whipped about. I heard Herakleio's inarticulate cry of outrage, Prima Rhannet's hissing indrawn breath; saw the smoothing of Simonides' face as he donned his servant's mask.

And for some strange reason, the metri's announcement frightened me.

Nihko still knelt against the ground. Not even for such an unexpected declaration would he raise his head in Sahdri's company.

The priest-mage himself bowed in my direction. "Kal-Iha nahkte, " he murmured, and the torches blew out.

I blinked into the sudden darkness, aware of the man's absence. "What did he say? What was that spell he spoke?"

Darkness was replaced with the pale, soft luminance of moon and stars, a glow from lamps inside the household. Nihko lifted his dust-powdered face from the dirt. "He said 'good night.' "

Only Del was detached enough from the emotions of the moment to find that amusing. I heard the expulsion of breath in brief, smothered laughter, glanced at her; saw how she immediately set her face into bland innocence. She met my scowl with a guileless smile.

I shook my head, drew in a deep breath, looked at the metri. "Nice timing," I said. "Do you think it worked?"

Her face wore its customary mask. "The truth often is of great effect."

Herakleio, who had been gripping the two wooden practice blades, hurled them down. They clattered against the tile. Even in muted illumination I could see how high the color stood in his face. "Truth," he snarled. "Truth, is it? Why? "

The metri answered steadily, "Truth is truth."

His cry was anguished. "You would put him in my place?"

She was unmoved. "No more than I would put you in his. The place is the place. The proper man shall be put in it when I am certain of his worth."

Oh, she was the stone, as she had told me less than a month before. Hard, sharp, brilliant, and scintillatingly shrewd.

"Let's start over," I suggested. "I take it our unexpected visitor is someone with connections to our friendly first mate?"

Nihko had risen. Having recovered much of his equanimity now that the priest-mage had departed, he glared at me. "One holds one's tongue when in ignorance, lest one lose it."

I saluted him with the sword, letting moonlight like liquid run down the blade. "Any time you like."