"Foix, stand by her feet. Keep an eye on her demon," Ista directed. Foix nodded and did so. Ista was unhappy to be demanding yet one more duty of him, when he was so plainly drained to the point of swaying on his feet. He desperately needed to rest for a few hours before the sortie. But Joen had taught her greater caution of demons.

Ista called up her inner sight and closed her hands around the flow of soul-fire from Catti's heart, reducing it to the tiniest trickle of contact with Arhys. Ista imagined the look of life flowing from his face in the next room, and her chest tightened. The demon shadow squirmed in agitation, but did not challenge Ista's control. Cattilara's eyes flew open, and her breath drew in. She sat up abruptly, then swayed, dizzy. Liss pressed a tin cup of water into her hand. By the way she guzzled, pressing it to her dry lips, Ista thought they were none too soon with this sustenance. Liss transferred the tray to a small table by the bedside and drew off the linen cover. Plain fare, and stale, presented on a miscellany of battered old plates.

Catti glared over the cup at Ista and glowered down at the tray. "What is this? Servants' food? Or a prisoner's? Is the mistress of Porifors so dethroned by her usurper, now?"

"It is the last and best untainted food in the keep, reserved for you. We are now surrounded by a Jokonan army and besieged by a troop of sorcerers. Their demon magic is chewing everything within these walls to pieces and spitting it out upon us. All the water is gone. The meat seethes with maggots. Half the courts are burned, and a third of the horses lie dead. Men are dying tonight below us of disease and injury without ever having come within bowshot of Joen and Sordso's troops. Joen's new way of making war is ingenious, cruel, and effective. Extraordinarily effective. So eat, because it is the only meal Arhys will have tonight."

Cattilara gritted her teeth, but at least she gritted them on her first bite of dry bread. "We could have fled. We should have fled! I could have had Arhys forty miles from here by now, and out of this. Curse you for a lack-witted bitch!"

Foix and Liss stirred at the insult, but Ista's raised hand stayed them. "Arhys would not have thanked you. And who is we? Are you even certain whose voice speaks from inside your head right now? Eat."

Catti gnawed, gracelessly, but too driven by her ferocious waking hunger to spurn the proffered meal. Liss kept the water coming, for Cattilara's sunken features betrayed how dangerously parched she had grown. Ista let her chew and swallow for several minutes, until she began visibly to slow.

"Later tonight," Ista began again, "Arhys rides out on a hazardous sortie, a gamble to save us all. Or die trying."

"You mean him to die," Catti mumbled. "You hate him. You hate me."

"You are twice mistaken, though I admit to a strong desire to slap you at times. Now, for instance. Lady Cattilara, you are the wife of a soldier-commander and the daughter of a soldier-commander. You cannot possibly have been raised, here in this dire borderland, to such wild self-indulgence."

Cattilara looked away, perhaps to conceal a flash of shame in her face. "This stupid war has always dragged on. It will always drag on. But once Arhys is gone, he's gone forever. And all the good in the world goes with him. The gods would take him and leave me bereft, and I curse them!"

"I have cursed them for years," said Ista dryly. "Turnabout being fair." Cattilara was furious, distraught, writhing in overwhelming pain. But was she divorced altogether from reason?

So what is reality now, here in this waking nightmare? Where is reason? Absurd, that I of all women should insist on reason.

"Keep chewing." Ista straightened her weary back, crossed her arms. "I have a proposition for you."

Cattilara glowered in suspicion.

"You may accept or refuse, but you may not have other choices. It quite resembles a miracle, in that regard. Arhys rides out tonight against Joen's sorcerers. Illvin has volunteered to accept his wounds, to the point of death. It seems to me that two bodies, both nourishing Arhys's sword arm and bearing his hurts, would carry him farther than one. Perhaps just the needed edge, that little difference between almost succeeding, and almost failing. You can be a part of his ride, or you can be shut out of it."

Foix, startled, said, "Royina, Lord Arhys would not desire this!"

"Quite," said Ista coolly. "No one else here will offer you this choice, Cattilara."

"You cannot do this behind his back!" said Foix.

"I am the appointed executor of this rite. This is women's business now, Foix. Be silent. Cattilara"—Ista drew breath—"widow you are and shall be, but the grief you will carry into the rest of your life will be different depending on the choices you make tonight."

"How better?" snarled Cattilara. Tears were leaking from her eyes now. "Without Arhys, all is ashes."

"I didn't say better. I said, different. You may accept the part apportioned to you, or you may lie down and be passed over. If you do not take your part, and he fails, you will never, ever know whether you might have made the difference. If you accept the part, and he still falls—then you will know that, too.

"Arhys would have protected you from this choice, as a father would a beloved child. Arhys is wrong in this. I give you a woman's choice, here, at the last gasp. He looks to spare you pain this night. I look to your nights for the next twenty years. There is neither right nor wrong in this, precisely. But the time to amend all choices runs out like Porifors's water."

"You think he will die in this fight," grated Cattilara.

"He's been dead for three months. I did not war against his death,

but against his damnation. I have lost. In my lifetime, I have looked two gods in the eye, and it has seared me, till I am afraid of almost nothing in the world of matter. But I am afraid of this, for him. He stands this night on the edge of the true death, the death that lasts forever, and there is none to pull him back from that precipice. Not even the gods can save him if he falls now."

"Your choice is no choice. It's death all ways."

"No: death in different ways. You had more of him than any woman alive. Now the wheel turns. Be assured, someday it will turn for you. All are equal in this. He goes first, but not uniquely. Nor alone, for he will have a large Jokonan escort, I do think."

"He will if I have anything to do with it," growled Foix.

"Yes. Do you imagine not one of them is also beloved, as Arhys is? You have a chance to let Arhys go out in serenity, with his mind clear and unimpeded, concentrated as the sword which is his symbol. I will not give you leave to send him off harassed and dismayed, distracted and grieved."

Cattilara snarled, "Why should I give him up to death—or to the gods, or to you, or to anyone? He's mine. All my life is his."

"Then you shall be hollow and echoing indeed, when he is gone."

"This disaster is not my doing! If people had just done things my way, this all could have been averted. Everyone is against me—"

The food on the tray was all gone. Sighing, Ista touched her ligature, and opened the channel wide once more. Cattilara sank back, cursing. The flow of soul-fire from Catti's heart was slow and surly, but it would suffice for the next few hours.

"I would have liked to give her a chance to say good-bye," said Ista sadly. "Lord Illvin's remarks on kisses withheld and words unspoken weigh much on my mind."

Foix, his face appalled, said, "Her remarks were better left unspoken to Lord Arhys just now, I think."

"So I judged. Five gods, why was I appointed to this court? Go, Foix, get what rest you may. It is your most urgent duty now."

"Aye, Royina." He glanced at Liss. "Will you come down to see us off? Later on?"