Unimpressed, Xantcha handed him a smaller knife to tuck inside his boot, then closed the chest on her treasures wondering if she'd ever look at Kayla's picture again.

CHAPTER 23

Urza 'walked them to the royal city shortly before sundown. Knowing that Pincar was crowded with revelers and that the journey would leave Ratepe incapacitated, Urza strode out of the between-worlds near the orchard where Xantcha had battled the Phyrexian priest. Other than birds and insects, there were no witnesses to the trio's arrival. Few signs of the previous year's skirmish remained. Trees still sported scorched and unproductive branches, and there was a gap in the geometric rows where a broken tree had

been removed.

Ratepe was stunned and shivering. Urza knelt beside him, heal' ing him with warm, radiant hands and saying nothing about the small fortune in gold hung around his neck.

"You'll be careful getting over the walls," Urza said to Xantcha while Ratepe finished his recovery.

"Of course," she replied, irritable because she was suddenly anxious about entering the city.

Neither of them had asked her if she wanted to watch the spiders scream from the plaza of Avohir's great temple, not far from the catacomb where she'd encountered Gix. Xantcha knew she would have lied even if they had. She'd never told Urza about the demon before, and events had moved too swiftly since Narjabul to tell him now. Besides, she hadn't expected to be anxious. If the demon had wanted to find her, he could have found her. Phyrexian demons were many terrible things, but they weren't shapechangers the way Urza was. If Gix hadn't pursued Xantcha to any of the out-of-way places she'd been since their encounter, she didn't expect him to simply appear in the middle of Pincar City's crowded plaza.

"You'll need these," Urza offered her two lumps of milk-white wax.

She hesitated before taking them and asked the question, Why? with her eyes.

"You're vulnerable, and the armor might not be enough protection. Plug your ears first. You'll know when, and you'll have time. Don't fret about it."

He must think the spiders themselves were what made her jumpy, and he might have been right, if it weren't for Gix. "I won't worry," she lied and tucked the wax in the hem of her sleeve. Then she asked the question she'd been avoiding. "Afterward? Should I break the crystal?" She still had the one he'd given her for Narjabul.

"I'll find you."

Xantcha dipped her chin. After three thousand years, it would end without even a good-bye. She could see Kayla frowning in her mind's eye. The Antiquity Wars should have prepared her for this.

Urza 'walked away. She and Ratepe waited silently for sundown. Their lives were unraveling, pulled apart between the past and future. Xantcha wanted to hold the present tight. This past year with Ratepe was as close as she had ever come to forgetting that she hadn't been born. She sensed that once the present became the past, regardless of whatever lay in the future, these moments wouldn't be recaptured.

But when Xantcha looked at Ratepe, staring northwest, toward the city of his past and future, she had nothing to say to him until the sky darkened and the first stars had appeared.

"It's time," she said.

They sat together as Xantcha recited her mnemonic and the sphere formed around them.

Country folk who didn't want to pay for a room within the city had pitched tents in the fields and fairgrounds beyond the walls. Between the smoke from their cookfires and a scattering of clouds overhead, Xantcha had no trouble getting the them over the walls and above the southeast

quarter of the city. Ratepe said he knew the area and provided directions to a quiet street and the long- abandoned courtyard of a burnt-out house.

"You lived here?" Xantcha asked when the sphere had collapsed.

He pointed at a gaping second-story window. "Last I saw, it was burning. My mother was yelling at my father, telling him to carry me and forget about his precious books."

"Did he?"

"Yes." Ratepe put his arm on a charred door. It opened partway, then struck a fallen roof beam. "We weren't poor. I'd've thought that by now someone would've taken advantage of our misfortune."

Xantcha took his hand, tugging him toward the alley that led back to the street. "Remember how you said everything was smaller since Urza's war? Everything's even smaller in Pincar City."

She and Urza weren't the only ones letting go of their pasts. Xantcha could almost hear Ratepe's disillusionment as they made their way to the wide plaza between the royal palace and Avohir's temple. There were as many empty houses as occupied ones, and those that were inhabited had shuttered windows, despite the summer humidity. Their doors were strapped with iron.

Ratepe didn't see anyone he might have recognized because they didn't see anyone at all. The sounds of the festival came filtered over the rooftops, along with the faint scent of sleepers, but the neighborhoods were locked tight.

When they got to the great plaza between Tabama's palace and Avohir's temple, they understood why, and saw why so many festival-goers had chosen to pitch tents outside the city walls. The crowd was sullen and mean- spirited, looking for fights and, by the sounds of it, finding them with each other. Most of them were men dressed as Ratepe and Xantcha were dressed in the nondescript garments of the countryside. The few women whom Xantcha could see didn't appear to be anyone's wife, mother, daughter, or sister-not quite the family gathering Ratepe had promised.

He didn't said a word when the crowd surged and parted, giving them a glimpse of eight grim-faced men coming through a palace gate, headed for Avohir's temple. The men were uniformed in black-dyed leather and chain mail, except for their sleeveless surcoats, which bore a broad red stripe above the hem. Two of them carried torches that could double as polearms, the other six carried short halberds-wicked weapons with a crescent ax facing one direction and a sharpened gut-hook going the other way. Xantcha knew the kind of damage such weapons could do against a mostly unarmored mob; she hoped she wasn't going to witness it again.

The crowd reformed in the Red-Stripe wake, watchful and not quite silent. Someone muttered fighting words, but not loud enough for Red-Stripe ears. That would come later. Xantcha figured her hopes were futile. Both sides wouldn't be satisfied with anything less than bloodshed.

"I-I don't know what's happened," Ratepe stammered. "Sleepers?"

He wanted an affirmative answer, which Xantcha couldn't give. There was oil in the air, the smell faint and mostly coming from the temple or the palace, both still secure within their separate walls. "We happened," Xantcha replied, as grim as the Red-Stripe faces. "We made sure the truth got out, didn't we? These are all your folk, Ratepe, ordinary Efuands, the ones who got caught up with the Red- Stripes and the ones who didn't. Now everybody's got a grudge."

Screaming spiders and Phyrexians would just get in the way.

"I was afraid of what would happen if we just took out the Red-Stripes and the Phyrexians, but this is worse than I imagined it could ever be," Ratepe said. His hand rested momentarily on her shoulder, then fell away.

Closer to the temple, the plaza erupted in shouts and screams. Ratepe succumbed to gawking curiosity as he eased past Xantcha for a better look at the skirmish. She grabbed his arm and rocked him back on his heels.

"Unless you know a better place with food and beds," she snapped, "I say we go to ground in your family's old courtyard." They were traveling light on everything but gold. "This will be calmer come daylight, or the whole city could be in flames," she added.