Dapple laughed quietly.

“What does  that mean?” asked the boy.

“I’ve known him all my life. He stays at my family’s house when he’s on Helwar Island. Though he has never mentioned meeting your kin, at least when I was around.”

“Maybe we weren’t important to him,” the boy said in a sad tone.

Most likely, Cholkwa kept silent out of shame. His own family was far to the north, across the Narrow Ocean, and she’d never heard him speak about any of them. Maybe he had no relatives left. There’d been war in the north for generations now. Sometimes it flared up; at other times it died to embers, but it never entirely ended; and many lineages had been destroyed.

He was a decent man, in spite of his lack of kin. How could he admit to breeding without a contract arranged by the senior women in his family? How could he admit to leaving a child who was related to him —granted, not closely, but a relative nonetheless — in a place like this?

“Will your relatives kill me?” Dapple asked.

“Once you have made one of my cousins pregnant, yes.”

“Why are you here with me?”

“I wanted to know about my father.” The boy paused. “I wanted to know what lies beyond these hills.”

“What good will it do for you to know?”

There was silence for a while. “When I was growing up, my mother told me about Cholkwa, his stories and jokes and tricks. There are cities beyond the hills, he told her, and boats as big as our cave that sail on the ocean. The boats go from city to city, and there are places —halls and open spaces —where people go to see acting. In those places, Cholkwa is famous. Crowds of people come to see him perform the way he did for my family in this cave. Are these stories true?”

“Yes,” said Dapple. “Everywhere he goes, people are charmed by him and take pleasure in his skill. No actor is more famous.” She paused, trying to think of what to say next. The Goddess had given this boy to her; she must find a way to turn him into an ally. “He has no kin on this side of the ocean. Most likely, he would enjoy meeting you.”

“Fathers don’t care about their children, and we shouldn’t care about them. Dead or alive, they do nothing for us.”

“This isn’t true,” said Dapple with quiet anger. “Obviously, it makes sense for a child to stay with her mother and be raised by maternal kin. A man can’t nurse a baby, after all; and few mothers could bear to be separated from a small child. But the connection is still there. Most men pay some attention to their children, especially their sons. If something happens to the maternal lineage or to the relationship between a woman and her family, the paternal lineage will often step in. My mother is from Sorg, but she quarreled with her kin and fled to my father’s family, the Helwar. They adopted her and me. Such things occur.”

“Nothing has happened to my family,” the boy said. “And my mother never quarreled with them, though she wasn’t happy living here. I know that.”

“Your family is not fit to raise children,” said Dapple. “You seem to have turned out surprisingly well, but if you stay with them, they’ll make you a criminal, and then you’ll be trapped here. Do you really want to spend your life among thieves and people who breed without a contract? If you leave now and seek out Cholkwa, it may be possible for you to have a decent life.”

The boy was silent for a moment, then exhaled and stood. “I have to go. They might wake.”

A moment later, she was alone. She lay for a while, wondering if the boy would help her or if there was another way to escape. When she went back to sleep, she dreamt of Cholkwa. He was on a stage, dressed in bright red armor. His eyes were yellow and shone like stars. Instead of acting, he stood in a relaxed pose, holding a wooden sword loosely. “All of this is illusion and lies,” he told her, gesturing at the stage. “But there’s truth behind the illusion. If you are going to act, you need to know what’s true and what’s a lie. You need to know which lies have truth in back of them.”

Waking, she saw a beam of sunlight shining through the hole in her ceiling. For a moment, the dream’s message seemed clear and important. As she sat up, it began to fade and blur, though she kept the image of Cholkwa in his crimson armor.

One of the bandit males came and untied her. Together they went out, and she relieved herself behind bushes.

“I’ve never known anyone so modest,” the bandit said. “How are you going to get a woman pregnant, if you can’t bare yourself in front of a man?”

A good question, Dapple thought. Her disguise couldn’t last much longer. Maybe she ought to end it. It didn’t seem likely that the boy would help her; people didn’t turn against their kin, even kin like these; and as long as the bandits thought she was a man, they might do anything. No rules protect a man who falls into the hands of enemies. She might be dead, or badly injured, before they realized she wasn’t male. But something, a sense of foreboding, made her reluctant to reveal her true nature.

“We have sex in the dark,” she told the bandit.

“That can be managed,” he replied. “Though it seems ridiculous.”

Dapple spent the rest of the day inside, alone at first, in a corner of the cave. The other bandits did not return, and the matriarch looked increasingly grim. Her kin sent their children outside to play. The men were gone as well. Those who remained—a handful of shabby women—worked quietly, giving the matriarch anxious glances. Clearly this was someone who could control her family! A pity that the family consisted of criminals.

At last, the old woman gestured. “Come here, man. I want to know you better.”

Dapple settled by the fire, which still burned, even in the middle of a bright day. This wasn’t surprising. The cave was full of shadows, and the air around them was cool and damp.

Instead of asking questions, the woman grumbled. It was hard work holding together a lineage, especially when all the neighboring families were hostile, and she got little help. Her female relatives were slovenly. “My eyes may be failing, but I can still smell. This place stinks like a midden heap!” Her male kin were selfish and stupid. “Five men! And they have brought me  one, with another promised, though I’ll believe in him when he appears!”

All alone, she labored to continue her line of descent, though only one descendant seemed really promising, the boy who’d been fathered by an actor. “A fine lad. Maybe there’s something potent about the semen of actors. I hope so.”

Evening came. The missing bandits did not appear. Finally the old woman looked at Dapple. “It seems our hopes rest in your hands —or if not in your hands, then in another part of your body. Is there a woman you prefer?”

Dapple glanced around. Figures lurked in the shadows, trying to avoid the matriarch’s glance. Hard to see, but she knew what was there. “No.”