Xantcha bit her lip and sighed. Ratepe wasn't looking, didn't seem to have heard. "Right now, while you're sitting there, can you hear the Weakstone singing Mishra's thoughts in your mind?"

He shook his head. "Only when I'm looking at Urza's eyes, or when he's looking at me."

She began another sigh, of relief this time, but she began too soon.

"I'm worried, Xantcha. It's so real, so easy to imagine him, and that's after just one night. By next year when I'm supposed to go back to Efuan Pincar ... ? You should've warned me."

Trust Rat-or Ratepe-or Mishra-or whatever he wanted to call himself to go for the guilt. "I didn't know about the singing. I knew about Urza's eyes, where they came from anyway, and I did warn you about that. But singing and Mishra? Beyond The Antiquity Wars, I don't know anything but what Urza's told me, and I guess there's a lot he didn't."

The rest of Xantcha's anger went with that admission. She leaned against a porch post, grateful that no one was looking at her. All those times Urza had glowered at her, eyes ablaze-had the voice of Mishra's Weakstone tried to make itself heard in her mind? Why, really, had she gone in search of a false Mishra? What had drawn her to Ratepe? She'd known he was the one to fulfill her plans before she'd gotten a good look at him.

"Can I trust myself?"

Xantcha had no assurances, not for herself or for him. "I don't know."

Ratepe folded his arms tightly across his ribs and shrank within himself. Xantcha had spent all her life with

Phyrexians or Urza. She wasn't accustomed to expressive faces and wasn't prepared for the gust of empathy that blew from Ratepe to her. She tried to shake it off with a change of subject and a touch of humor.

"What were the three of you talking about all night?"

Ratepe wasn't interested. "A year from now, will there be anything left of me? Will I be myself?"

"I'm still me," Xantcha answered.

"Right. We talked, some, about you."

She should have expected that, but hadn't. "I haven't lied to you, Ratepe, not about the important things. The Phyrexians are real, and Urza's the only one with the power to defeat them."

"But Urza's wits are addled, aren't they? And you thought you'd cure him if you scrounged up someone who'd remind him of his brother. You thought you could make him stop living in the past."

"I told you that before we left Medran."

"Are you as old as he is?"

Xantcha found the question surprisingly difficult to answer. "Younger, a bit... I think. You're not the only one who doesn't know who or what to trust inside. He told you I was Phyrexian?"

"Repeatedly. But, since he thinks I'm Mishra, he's not infallible."

The bacon was burning. Xantcha scraped the charred rashers onto the platter and made of show of eating one, swallowing time while she decided how to answer.

"You can believe him." She took a deep breath and recited-in Phyrexian squeals, squeaks, and chattering, as best she could remember them-the first lesson she'd learned from the vat-priests. "Newts you are, and newts you shall remain. Obey and learn. Pay attention. Make no mistakes."

Ratepe gaped. "That day, in the sphere, when you cut yourself-If I'd taken the knife from you-"

"I'd bleed no matter where you cut me. It would have hurt. You could have killed me, you were inside the sphere. I'm not Urza. I don't think Urza can be killed. I don't think he's alive, not the way you and I are."

"You and I, Xantcha? No one I know lives for three thousand years."

"Closer to thirty-four hundred, I think. Urza believes I was born on another plane and that the Phyrexians stole me while I was still a child then compleated me the way they compleated Mishra.

But that can't be true. I don't know what happened to Mishra, but with newts, we've got to be compleated while we're still new. Urza's never accepted that I was dragged out of a vat in the Fane of Flesh."

"So, in addition to everything else, Phyrexians are immortal?"

"To survive the compleation, newts have to be very resilient, immortally resilient. But Phyrexians can die, especially newts, just not of age or anything else that born-folk might call natural."

"And after thirty-four hundred years, Urza still doesn't believe you?"

"Urza's mad, Ratepe. What he knows and what he believes aren't always the same. Most of the time it doesn't make any difference, as long as he acts to defeat Phyrexia and

stops trying to recreate the past on a tabletop."

Ratepe nodded. "He showed me what he was working on."

"Again?" Xantcha couldn't muster surprise or indignation, only weariness.

"I guess, if you say so. Funny thing, with the Weakstone, I get a sense of everything that happened to Mishra." He fell silent until Xantcha looked at him. "You're half-right about what happened. Urza's half-right, too. Phyrexians wanted the Weakstone. When Mishra wouldn't surrender it, one of them tried to kill him. The Weakstone kept him alive then and even when they took him apart later, but it couldn't keep him sane." Ratepe strangled a laugh. "Maybe burning his own mind was the last sane thing Mishra did. After that, there're only images, like paintings on a wall, and waiting, endless waiting, for Urza to listen."

"And now Mishra, or the Weakstone, or both of them together have you to speak for them."

"So far, I listen, but I speak for myself."

"What does that mean?"

Ratepe began to pace. He made a fist with his right hand and pounded it against his left palm. "It means I'd do anything to have my life back. I wish I'd never seen you. I wish I was still a slave in Medran. Tucktah and Garve only had my body. My thoughts were safe. I didn't know the meaning of powerless until I looked into Urza's eyes. I'm as dead as he is, as Mishra, as you."

The self-proclaimed dead man stopped beside the bacon platter and ate a rasher.

"I'm not dead."

"No, you're Phyrexian," Ratepe retorted between swallows. "You weren't born, you were immortal when you were decanted. How could you ever be dead?"

Xantcha ignored the question. "A year, Ratepe, or less. As soon as Urza turns away from the past, I'll take you back to Efuan Pincar. You have my word for that."

Silence, then: "Urza doesn't trust you."

That stung, even if Ratepe was only repeating something that Xantcha had heard countless times before. "I would never betray him... or you."

"But you're Phyrexian. If I believe you, you've never been anything but Phyrexian. They're your kin. My father once told me not to trust a man who led a fight against his kin. Betrayal is a nasty habit that once acquired is never cast aside."

"Your father is dead." When it came to cruelty, Xantcha had been taught by masters.

Ratepe stiffened. Leaving the last rashers of bacon on the platter, he walked a straight path away from the cottage. Xantcha let him go. She banked the fire, ate the last of the soggy bacon, and retreated to her room. Her treasured copies of The Antiquity Wars offered no solace, not against the turmoil she'd invited into her life when she'd bought herself a slave. And though there was no chance that she'd fall asleep, Xantcha threw herself down on her mattress and pillows.

She was still there, weary, lost in time, and wallowing in an endless array of painful memories, when she sensed a darkening and heard a gentle tapping on her open door. "Are you awake?"

If Xantcha hadn't been awake, she wouldn't have heard Ratepe's question. If she'd had her wits, she could have answered him with unmoving silence and he might have gone away. But Xantcha couldn't remember the last time anyone had knocked on her door. Sheer surprise lifted her onto her elbows, revealing her secret before she had a chance to keep it.