“But you lean too far forward in every stance, leaving you off-balance and slow in your counter-strikes, a vulnerability I would not expect in a warrior of your rank.”

“How dare you?” The warrior was near apoplectic, knowing full well that what I said was true, and that I had revealed it to his opponent. “I’ll show you my weakness. Give this insolent vermin a blade.”

A stupid thing to do. I’d spent a rough morning with Damon and was scheduled for a wager match with my old friend Gabdil an hour before sunset. A small crowd of warriors and Drudges gathered to watch. Everyone was placing wagers while Damon’s slavehandler detached me from the wall and gave me the weapon the warrior had discarded. My opponent heard the bettors, and his face turned purple.

The match took half an hour. The Zhid was as strong as a bull, and his technique wasn’t as bad as I’d implied. Happily, he decided to yield rather than make me kill him. When I knelt and spread my arms at his command, I steeled myself for a touch of the collar, but he chose a powerful kick in the belly instead.

The forgotten slave sat in the corner to await the slave-handler, and while I worked to get air in my lungs, and my stomach returned to its proper place, he raised his open palms to me. A gracious gesture, though he was unlikely to be in the position to do anyone a service anytime soon. Most likely he could have taken care of himself-but perhaps not. He looked as sick as I felt.

The swordmaster reattached my tether, and I leaned against the stone wall, watching the crowd break up. The sun was in my eyes, so I could not make out one figure that stayed longer than the rest, standing stock still in the middle of the moving mass of people. All I could see in the glare was that it was a Drudge. No red kerchief covering the hair, so it wasn’t a woman… wasn’t Seri. Soon everyone was gone, and I drifted off to sleep.

The match with Gabdil went well. He gave me a painful slash on my back which made him feel accomplished, so that he wasn’t too angry when he had to yield. The wound wasn’t deep or in a place where it would cripple me, which pleased me. A number of people watched the match. Drudges, Zhid, slaves. Impossible to see through the sweat dripping in my eyes. The slavehandler bound my hands and led me back to the surgeon and my cell.

Late that night, I dreamed of snow. Seri and I had loved walking in the snow. She preferred clear winter days when the light was so brittle it would shatter on the ice-glazed gardens of Windham. I loved the quiet, blue-gray days when the drifting flakes seemed to muffle and soften the harshness of the world. In this particular dream, I stood by a frozen lake in the high mountains, while Seri strolled along on the far side of it. I was trying to pick my way across the icy boulders that crowded the shoreline to get to her, but whenever I looked up, she had moved farther away. I wanted to call out to her, but I beat my hand against my mouth and no one would tell me I could speak. At last I decided that the only way to reach her was to cross the lake, so I stepped onto the ice, trying to avoid the center where the color warned me that the glaze was thin and treacherous. But I couldn’t see because it had started to snow, and the ice crystals pelted my face…

I brushed my hand against my face. It wasn’t snow, but straw. The cold was only the familiar dry chill of the desert night. I burrowed deeper in the straw, determined to find out if I made it across the lake, but a straw pricked my face again, and it was not the wind that whispered outside the bars of my cell. “Ssst.”

I glanced around before I moved. No one stood in the aisle between the rows of cells, and the cells to either side of me were empty. With so few of us, they could keep us wide apart. So the sound was from outside the pen. Shifting sluggishly toward the outside, as anyone might while sleeping, I peered through the close-set bars… straight into a grimy, freckled face that split into a grin as I’d not seen in a lifetime.

“Blazes! I knew it. Holy, great damn! I knew it all along… it’s you!”

“Paulo!” Our exclamations were muffled whispers, but no less filled with astonishment.

“I knew you weren’t dead. We both knew it, though we didn’t say it to nobody, not even to each other… and then today, when I saw you save that fellow’s life… blazes!”

“You were the third. You and Seri.”

“You know she’s here, then?”

“I saw her. Just for a moment. Does she know-?”

“She don’t know you’re here-nor me. They weren’t going to send me, but I made ‘em do it. Were you the one supposed to give the signal then-to take us out?”

“Things didn’t go quite right.”

“Guessed not.” He paused for a moment, a rosy flush dousing his freckles. “Except for being here like this… are you all right? Together in your head?”

“I remember everything.”

“All of before I knew you… and when you showed up in Dunfarrie… and this time, when you fixed my legs and all?”

“Everything.”

“Blazes.” His gaze fell to the ground, but not before I saw innocent awe overtake him.

“I remember Sunlight, now. You told me you’d taken care of him, but I couldn’t figure how you had come to have a horse of mine. You’re the first one from those times-from our world-the first one I get to meet again. Extraordinary, isn’t it?”

“Makes my head hurt to think on it.”

“Mine, too.”

We were both quiet for a moment. Life was such a wonder.

Then Paulo screwed up his face, lifted his gaze, and took up again, evidently deciding that awe of royalty or dead sorcerers come back to life was minor beside the business of the moment. “So what went wrong? How’d you get in this fix?”

“The only way I could get into Zhev’Na was as a slave. Once everyone believed I was dead, our allies put a mask on me-an enchantment that made me believe I was someone else-so I could pass the initial interrogations and be brought here. The man who was supposed to help me when I arrived-to remove the mask and leave me free-died unexpectedly. Only when I caught a glimpse of Seri a few weeks ago did I finally remember who I was and what I was supposed to be doing. But of course, penned up like this, I can’t do much of anything.”

His gaze roamed the row of cages. “Maybe I can steal the key and let you out.”

“Don’t! It’s too risky-and not of any use. As long as I wear this collar, I’ve not a scrap of power. Even if we could get Seri and Gerick, we’ve no way out of Ce Uroth, because I can’t take us.”

“I could get something to cut off the thing, maybe.”

“I wish you could. More than you’ll ever know. But sorcery is the only way to take it off.”

“Well, I’ll think on it. We’ll figure some way.”

“You mustn’t put yourself at risk, Paulo. I- Listen to me. To know that you’re here… with her… You have to keep yourself safe. Do you understand? So there will be someone…”

“I understand. But nothing’s going to happen to you.”

“I’m not exactly in a secure profession.”

A guard relieved himself just outside the cell across from me, close enough to remind me of our precarious position.

“Keep yourself safe, Paulo. It’s so good to see you, to know a faithful friend is nearby, but you must stay away from me. There’s nothing to be done here. Not yet.”

“Well, you just watch yourself. I’m going to take care of this. You’ll see.”

He slipped away as quietly as he had come. I sat for a long time watching the flickering lights of the Zhid forges across the dark courtyard, pondering the wonders of a universe that would place its future so confidently in the hands of an illiterate fourteen-year-old boy. For the first time since Dassine’s death, I went to sleep with a smile on my lips.