His eyes, the world, her perceptions, began to flicker.

Infinite depths became dark eyes reddened with frenzied weeping. Perfume became parched, salt flesh, then fragrance, then flesh. Sweet silence became noise and cries, and then silence, and then din again. Painless floating turned to a crushing pressure, headache, thirst, which melted in turn to bliss.

I think He takes His foot to his cat and pushes her to decision. She had no doubt she might yet dodge around that boot in either direction. But just what direction He desired was plain. The unsettling Not yet did at least suggest He did not guide her back toward a body pierced with sword thrusts. The Bastard maneuvers me into this, blast Him. It felt very comfortable, cursing her god. He was a god she might always curse, and the more inventive the invective, the more He would grin. Well suited, indeed, to true Ista.

The flickering slowed, stopped, on parched mouth, weight and pressure, din and pain. On dear, distraught, blinking, merely human eyes. Yes.

And furthermore, my god cheats. He set out this bowl of cream before ever He held the door, and He knew it well. She smiled, and tried to inhale.

Illvin pulled his frantically questing tongue from her mouth, and gasped, "She lives, oh, five gods, she breathes again!"

The crushing pressure, Ista discovered, was Illvin's arms, wrapped around her torso. She stared up into tree branches, blue sky, and his face, bent over hers. His face was flushed with heat and furrowed with terror, and a thin spattering of blood droplets marked it in an angled track from side to side. She raised a weak hand and dabbed at the red beads, and was relieved to find they did not appear to be his.

She whispered through dry, bruised lips. "What has happened?"

"That is what I prayed you might tell me," said Foix's hoarse voice. She looked up to see him looming over them. He still wore his Jokonan mail and tabard, and stood in a convincingly menacing guard stance above his apparent prisoners. She and Illvin were seated on the ground not far from the green command tents. Foix's eyes were white-rimmed, but it seemed not to be the surrounding Jokonans that disquieted him.

"You were marched into the tent," Foix continued in a lower tone. "You looked... ordinary. Helpless. Then suddenly the god light blazed from you, so brightly I was blinded for a breath. I heard Joen cry for your death."

Upon her arm, Illvin's tight clutch tightened further.

"When I could see again," continued Foix, gazing away in guard-pretense, "all the demons in the tent seemed to be rushing into you, like hot metal being drawn through a form. I saw you swallow them all down, Joen's soul as well. It was all over in an instant."

"Save one," murmured Ista.

"Eh. Ur. Yes, there was that. I felt when you freed me from Joen's geas. I almost bolted from the tent then, but I got my wits back just in time. Prince Sordso and some other officers were drawing their swords—five gods, but the scraping seemed to go on forever. Sordso's knuckles were white."

"I tried to get between them and you," Illvin said huskily to Ista. He rubbed at his nose and blinked.

"Yes," said Foix. "Bare-handed. I saw you lunge—a lot of good that was going to do. But instead Sordso whirled around and hacked at Joen."

"She was already dead by then," murmured Ista.

"I saw. She was starting to topple, but his edge caught her just in ... time. Or something. He struck so hard, he spun around and fell backward off the dais. Half the freed sorcerers were running away, but I swear half the rest had the same idea Sordso did. There was one of Joen's women had a dagger out, and was going at the body even as it fell. I'm not sure she knew or cared that it was dead—she just wanted to get in her stroke. Everyone was jostling and yelling and starting in every direction. So I jumped in front of Illvin and you and shouted, 'Back, prisoners!' and brandished my sword."

"Cursed convincingly," muttered Illvin. "I just about tried to leap on you. Except that I had my hands full."

"You fell, Royina. You just... turned gray and stopped breathing and crumpled up. I thought you had died, for your soul was gone from my sight, like a lantern blown out. Illvin tried to lift you up, fell down, then scrambled up again—I dared not help—I let him drag you out, pretending to stand guard over him. Most of the Jokonans thought you were dead, too, I think. Slain in your sorcery, some kind of death magic like Fonsa and the Golden General all over again. So, um ... lie still for a minute, there, till we think what to do next."

It was not a difficult suggestion to follow. Following any other instruction, now that would have been hard. Illvin was staring down into her face, looking like a man whose kisses had just brought his beloved back from the dead and was now too terrified to move least he shed unexpected miracles in all directions. Ista smiled up muzzily at his delicious confusion.

"The demons are all gone," she reported in a vague, dreamy voice, in case they still harbored doubts. "It was what I was sent to do, and I did it. But the Bastard let me come back." To where she was now, it occurred to her—sitting on the hard ground in the midst of an enemy camp surrounded by several hundred very live and agitated Jokonans. Vile sense of humor. Hers had been a timeless interlude, but for everyone else, she realized, bare minutes had passed since Joen's sanguinary end. But however dismasted their high command, not all of the enemy officers were going to stay confused for long. It was hard to summon fear of anything, in her lingering bliss, but she managed a flash of mild prudence. "I think we should leave now. Right now."

"Can you walk?" asked Illvin uncertainly.

"Can you?" she asked, curious. Crawling, now, she would believe crawling of him, in his present interestingly debilitated state. He should be in bed, she decided. Hers, by preference.

"No," muttered Foix. "Got to drag her again. Or carry her. Can you go on pretending to be a corpse for a little longer, Royina?"

"Oh, yes," she assured him, and sank back gratefully into Illvin's grip.

Illvin flatly refused to drag her, on the grounds that it would scrape her already-bleeding legs and feet further, but carrying her in his arms proved still beyond his strength. A short argument, in which Ista, as a corpse, declined to participate, resulted in Foix helping Illvin rise to his shaking legs with her butt-upward over his shoulder, her arms and legs dangling down in an appropriately lifeless manner. It reminded her of the ride on Feather. She tried not to smile in memory, on the grounds that it would be out of character for her part. Her white gown was even splashed with blood, a continuation, she suspected, of the same spray that had crossed Illvin's face. She could guess its source, and shuddered.

They staggered away. "Turn left," Foix directed. "Keep walking." More Jokonan soldiers ran up to them; Foix pointed backward with his sword toward the command tents and cried, "Hurry! You are needed!" The soldiers sped away as their apparent-officer directed.

Illvin muttered through his teeth, "Foix, you may speak a glib camp Roknari, but I beg you will leave sentences of more than one syllable to me. That tabard can't cover everything."

"Gladly," Foix returned under his breath. "Go right here. We're almost to the horse lines."

"Do you think they're just going to let us walk up and steal horses?" asked Illvin. His wheeze sounded more curious than objecting. Ista peered upside down through slitted eyes to take in the guards loitering in the shade. Some of the men were standing and staring toward the uproar around the green tents.

"Yes." Foix tapped his green tabard. "I'm a Jokonan officer."

"You're relying on more than that," observed Ista, her tone almost as detached as Illvin's.