"Too often, you let it show. Did you really try to free Inclito?"

She nodded. "He'd been nice to me. He let me live with his daughter in his house, and treated me almost as well as her. I'd hurt him and his mother, and if I could I wanted to make amends."

I smiled again, and tried not to let my smile become bitter. "Very few of us are that honorable."

"I'm not fooling you for a minute, am I?"

"To the contrary," I said. "I very much hoped that you were telling the truth."

"Well, I was. But I wanted to get even with Duko Rigoglio too. That message you gave me, I'll bet you thought I wouldn't deliver it."

"I hoped you would, and thought you very well might."

"I did. He had me arrested and was going to chop my head off for it."

I apologized and told her that I had not considered that he might react violently.

"You think I'm clever because you are. You think everybody against you must be clever too. If the Duko had been clever, he'd have wanted to keep me as a spy. I was counting on it, but everybody says he's more than half mad, and he got furiously angry when he thought I'd brought bad news."

I said that I would like to speak with him sometime.

"No you wouldn't." Fava sounded positive.

"So he was going to have you killed. I take it you escaped?"

She laughed again. "Did you think I couldn't? They put me in a little room with bars on the window, and as soon as they weren't looking, I went out between them. We can change our bodies a lot. You know that. I know you do, because you put it into my story that time."

I nodded. "I know you can lengthen your legs and widen your arms into wings."

"We can do lots of other things, too. Remember how Flosser tied my hands? I could have pulled them right out! Don't think I wasn't tempted to, either, just to see his face. We can even slip under doors if there's a big crack there. Want to see me make my neck long and open my hood? It's something we do here to make animals think we're bigger than we are."

I told her it was something that I would like very much to see, if she was confident that no one else would see it too.

"They're afraid even to look at you, and my hair will cover it. I'll only do it a little bit."

She turned to face me squarely, raised her head, and grinned. Nothing happened, and I told her, "We need not worry about their seeing that."

"I can't!"

"Neither can you fly," I said. I was guessing, but I was quite certain my guess was correct. "You can run and jump now, however; and if there were horses here, you might even learn to ride like Mora."

She stared. "What's happened?"

"I have fallen asleep, that's all. You and I sit talking in my dream, and you are as I think of you."

She threw her arms around my neck and kissed me.

When I had freed myself again I said that Krait had told me once that his life was a nightmare in which he was trapped in the body of a blood-drinking reptile.

"That's it! That's it exactly!"

"I don't think so, but I am not your judge. What you must realize-what we both need to realize-is that this really is a nightmare, whether it is mine alone or ours. Your mind has joined my own to produce it. I thought of you as a girl often, though I knew what you really were. And you must think of yourself as a girl frequently as well. Thus in our shared nightmare you actually-"

She had leaped to her feet and raced away, her long hair streaming behind her like a banner. I watched her, recalling how Mamelta had run in the Hall of Sleepers, possessed by a girl locked in a small and stinking bedroom-a girl far too starved and sick to run even if she had been free.

A second more, and Fava had disappeared into the dim farther reaches of the chamber. Another, and she was returning. I had said that she could no longer fly, but she seemed to fly as she raced back to me.

"Some men-" She dropped breathless to the floor. "Are coming. They saw me kiss you. The Soldese-" She pointed.

I looked. "Captain Sfido and Captain Kupus, and another officer."

"Zepter." She gasped. "He doesn't like us."

Zepter was the burly officer with the blond mustache. I muttered that under the circumstances I could hardly blame him, but I am not sure Fava heard me.

Sfido called, "May we speak to you, Rajan?"

"You may speak with me, of course; but I would rather you didn't address me like that."

"What should we call you?" He was advancing hesitantly; even so, he was well in front of the other two.

"In Blanko, the people call me Incanto."

They halted, the three of them looking at one another. "Call him Dervis," Fava suggested impishly. "It's a good name, and I don't think he'll mind."

"We-" Kupus began, and started over. "The men…" He cleared his throat.

"Sit down," Fava told him. "He doesn't like your standing over him like that." (They were still half a dozen strides away.) "Neither do I. Papa's just the same, and I'm sure he hasn't forgotten all those times you made us sit on the cold ground and yelled down at us."

"No insult was intended," Sfido told her smoothly. "I let you sit as a gesture of respect."

"You made us sit because you were afraid he'd kick you again! He would've, too!"

I rose. "These brave troopers haven't come to quarrel with us, I'm sure."

All three nodded, Sfido vigorously.

Fava declared, "These brave troopers wouldn't have come at all if I hadn't shown them you didn't bite."

Kupus said, "We want to make a bargain. You'll have to trust us-"

Fava snorted.

"And you can. You came during a truce, and no one tried to harm you. You exchanged yourself for a prisoner we held legitimately. You proposed the exchange yourself."

"I came voluntarily too," Fava told him, "and Incanto wanted to exchange for Papa and me."

I motioned her to silence. "At that time, I didn't know you could escape whenever you wanted; thus it made no real difference whether you stayed behind with me or left with Inclito. Let's not argue about that. Captain Kupus, what is your bargain?"

Zepter interposed. "The men are saying you carried us here by magic. Did you?"

"No," I told him.

Fava stamped her foot, "Incanto…!"

"I didn't. Would you want me to lie?"

"You-" Her face was flushed with rage.

I spoke to Kupus. "Now that we have settled that point, what is your bargain?"

"Can you carry us back where we were?"

"To that barren hillside in the snow? I'm surprised you don't prefer this."

Angry as she was, Fava giggled.

"He was an inhumu, wasn't he? The man whose servant knocked down Schreiner."

I nodded.

"Do you know where we are?"

"I believe so," I said. "Do you, Captain? Tell me, what whorl is this?"

Kupus shook his head. "Are you saying we're actually on Green? I don't believe it, magic or not."

After a moment Zepter asked, "Do they really have human servants here? I didn't know."

"They have human servants on our whorl, too," I told him. "You're a mercenary, Captain?"

"Lieutenant." He drew himself up. "Yes. I enjoy that honor."

"You serve Duko Rigoglio for a silver card every-"

"Three," Kupus told me. "Two cards per month for a sergeant and three for a lieutenant."

Fava told him, "Four for you," and he nodded.

I asked Zepter, "How many would it take to persuade you to serve the inhumi?"

"I wouldn't!"

"You insist I'm a strego, a male witch; so let me turn those silver cards to gold. Three cards of gold every month, Lieutenant Zepter. Wouldn't that be sufficient?"

Sfido said, "It would. More than enough. Don't deny it, Zepter. I saw your face." He turned to me. "Do you really believe the inhumi may have human servants on-where we came from?"

I shrugged. "I encountered some once in a place called Pajarocu, and it should be obvious by now that they could have them here if they wanted them and had the gold-still better, real cards enough. Or even silver, I imagine."