She slid off the carapace, stood looking down at him a moment. He’d changed so much after she’d healed him that other time; if she hadn’t seen him at the Mesochthon, if he hadn’t identified himself there with his words and manner, she would not have recognized him. I don’t know you, she thought, not at all. We’ve come within a breath of killing each other and we’re still strangers. A groan distracted her, and she went to kneel beside Harskari. The old one was having trouble holding herself in Shareem’s body; the breathing was harsh and uncertain, the eyes dull, the hands groping without purpose, the mouth was making shapeless animal sounds. The body was injured again, not quite so badly as before, only some cracked ribs and organ damage. Sighing, Aleytys reached, poured more energy into the envelope, supported Harskari as she tightened her hold, then closed her eyes and set the body to healing its hurts. That was just as easy as before and just as hard. At least healing is my own gift, not something I got from the diadem. Behind her she felt Kell begin to waken; with automatic speed and skill she tweaked the nerves again and put him back under, then was surprised at what she’d done. Wonder if it’ll all come back, once I’ve practiced enough.

  Harskari pulled away from her, moved her shoulders experimentally, took a deep breath, expanding her ribs as far as she could, let the air explode out. She got to her feet and bent over Kell. “He’s alive.”

  “Yes.”

  “You should have finished him.”

  “Well, I didn’t.” She pulled her hand across his face. “Things were happening too fast.” His hands were plunged beneath the chest piece of the armor. “I need to know what he’s done to Grey. I need …” She dropped to her knees beside him, tugged out one of his hands and began fumbling about inside that massive carapace for the latches that had resisted his fingers. “Help me get this off him.”

  “He’s not going to tell you anything. What do you want me to do?’’

  “Maybe he will if he feels helpless enough. See if you can reach the latch for this front section—I think your side and mine have to be tripped at the same time.”

  “Right.” Harskari began groping about under the carapace. “He knows you can’t … ungh, I think I’ve got it. You ready?”

  They unlocked the intricate pieces of the armor and laid them beside Kell. Aleytys wrinkled her nose. “Must have taken him an hour to get this on. Poor pathetic stupid wretch.”

  “Lee, he’s dangerous.”

  “He’s a better killer—you think that’s strength?”

  “It’s the only kind he understands.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know his kind.”

  “What kind is that? Never mind, I was just thinking how little he and I really know about each other.”

  “You know all you need to know—what he did to you before, what he’ll do to you afterward if you’re silly enough to let him go again.”

  “Yes, yes, of course you’re right, but it … it’s sad, don’t you think? No, I see you don’t.” He started to surface, and she put him under again. “Hunt up something to tie him with. Please?”

  Harskari nodded. She got to her feet, hesitated. “Be careful.”

  Aleytys looked up, smiled. “Yes.”

  Alert to signs of stirring, she hauled him from the lock and stretched him out on the grass. She knelt at his shoulder looking down at him. After a few moments she bent over him and brushed away the hair straggling across his eyelids. She felt strange, uncertain … a lot of anger, but it was diffuse, hanging about her like the dust cloud about Avenar … as if all these years what she’d cursed and hated was an idea, not a man, and now she was having trouble fitting that idea onto Kell … at least while he was lying there with the tantalizing vulnerability most sleepers have. Not that he was asleep … she felt the first stirrings in his brain and put him under again. Again she was tempted to twitch just a little harder, it would be so easy, painless for him and painless for her. She looked away, suddenly afraid. Easy.

  Harskari came: back with a coil of coated wire, pliers and a pair of shears. Aleytys got up to give her working room and wandered aimlessly about, kicking at the grass, trying not to think about what was coming. Harskari wrapped the wire about ankles, knees and wrists, then rolled him onto his face and wired his elbows together. He wore a soft knitted silk shipsuit, a dark blue-green that made his hands and face an icy white, his hair a shout in the brilliant morning light. Harskari tightened the last twist, rolled him back. “Package all wrapped, Lee, neat and waiting.”

  Aleytys came back. She felt the stirring in him. “It won’t be long now,” she said, reluctance and distaste in the slow words. She opened and closed her hands, watching and feeling him swim up out of the darkness she had nearly drowned him in, hoping that when his eyes opened and she saw and felt the strong hate there, she could lose this helplessness before his vulnerability, could lose this image of him as a beautiful battered boy and see the man who’d done his best to kill her, who’d killed her mother. She tightened her mouth into a thin line as the pain of that moment came back to her and the frustration of it, the uselessness of that gesture. But she died of it, my mother died to save my life; yes, one could look at it that way—one could hope she did. That it wasn’t her version of the Vryhh sun dives. Futile act, stupid, useless. Useless. What a snake hiss of a word. She tried to help me, but she died. Tried and died.

  Stand by Kell’s right shoulder. Smile. Harskari stands by his left shoulder. Twin pillars of vengeance we are. Furies we are, with retribution written on our brows. Oh yes.

  How harmless you look, my enemy, flat out on the grass, trussed up with that silly purple wire. Purple for a king. King Cobra. Flattened by a pair of quick-foot mongooses. Purple, what a hideous color. Wonder where Harskari found it? Silly, silly. King cobra wound in cheap taffy, one of those poisonous colors they use for glop like that. Harskari, Harskari, it’s lonesome in here without you.

  Kell opened his eyes.

  Her ambivalence vanished.

  Enemy as implacable as time.

  She recognized the finality of this encounter. It was rather a comfort to know she had no choice. Gratitude was an odd bond between them, but there it was. Hunter and hunted, bound in a kind of complicity until the end of the hunt.

  His eyes on her face, he moved his body in a rapid ripple that put sufficient pressure on those wires to tell him there was no way he could break them or break loose from them. He shifted his gaze to Harskari, wasn’t quick enough to hide the flicker of fear when he met her serene green gaze. There was already a change in Shareem’s body. A new persona wore it and shone through it. He looked away.

  As he turned toward her again, she felt a darkness tightening to a knot, reached into him and tweaked those nerves again, putting him under. There was no way he could stop that, as long as she acted in time. As long as she didn’t let him distract her.

  Harskari set her hands on her hips. “Do you think that’s going to change?”

  Aleytys moved a hand, dropped it back to her side, her eyes fixed on Kell as she waited for him to surface again.

  Kell’s eyelids flickered, opened.

  “I can put you under faster than you can strike,” she said quickly, hand lifted again, held as if she meant to push away whatever he threw at her. “Don’t think you can fool me, cousin—I’m aware of every twitch in that twisted brain.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Grey.”

  “Haven’t got him.”

  “He’s in your trap. Tell me how to release him.”

  “You’re dreaming. What trap?”

  “You’re lying. Do you think I can’t tell?”

  “You want me to think you can.”

  “Psi-empath, Kell. Among other things. How do I release Grey?”

  “Go suck a sun.”

  “That’s your answer?”

  “Only one you’ll get.”

  “I see.” She sighed and stepped back. “Harskari, another favor. Fetch me a knife from the kitchen. Make sure it’s sharp.”

  “Let me do this for you, Lee.” Harskari scowled down at Kell.

  “No. Get the knife.”

  “Why a knife? Wouldn’t it be easier …”

  “I don’t want it easier.”

  Harskari pursed her lips, looked as if she wanted to argue some more, but she finally nodded. “Watch him.” She swung around and trotted toward the house.

  “Don’t try it, Kell.”

  He relaxed. “Deal?”

  “Terms?”

  “The answers you want. Peace between us. My life.”

  “I wish I could believe …” She dropped into a squat, frowned at him. After a long silence, she sighed again. “I wish … I was never your enemy, Kell. I never went after you …. I’m afraid there’ll never be peace between us as long as you’re alive. That’s the truth of it.”

  “I’ll swear peace at the Mesochthon on forfeit of my place.”

  “Why don’t I find that reassuring?” She turned her head, spat on the grass. “Your word is worth that.”

  His mouth pinched into a hard straight line. She watched him struggle to control himself, a pinpoint hope beginning to burn in her in spite of her skepticism, a hope that he was trying to deal with the madness that drove him. Harskari came from the house, walking slowly, almost hesitantly. The blued-steel blade of the knife caught the sun and gleamed with a dark deadliness that Aleytys knew was mostly in her head, not in the knife. Pressing her hand against her stomach as it lurched, momentarily distracted by the knife and what it meant, she watched that blue-black sheen and forgot about watching Kell.

  Fire and dark exploded over her

  she fell down down down, shrinking as she fell

  tiny twisting whirling fluff caught in a huffing wind

  enormous pressure on her, squeezing her smaller and smaller

  squeezing her to a point presence toward nothing nothingness

  nada.

  But the pressure faltered before nada, before the endpoint when the point itself would vanish. It returned an instant later, strong as before, but she’d had a breath to anchor herself, she’d had chance to fling up walls about herself, then time to throw a tap into her black river, time to understand that Harskari had thrown herself into this struggle; as before they would whipsaw him, break his timing, his concentration. She sucked the dark energy into herself and blew it out at him. Another break in the pressure; laughter bubbled in her, and she stabbed out and tweaked those nerves he could not protect from her. Turned him off as easily as she turned out a light when she left a room.

  Harskari laid the knife on his chest. “Listen to me next time.”

  “Thanks.” Aleytys pushed up off the grass where she’d curled up under his attack, knelt close to Kell’s head. She swallowed as she saw the bloody socket, the eye leaking its fluids, and understood how Harskari had managed the distraction. She brushed the straggles of sweaty hair off his forehead, sighed for what seemed the hundredth time. “I had to ask,” she said, very softly, almost tenderly. “There was a chance he’d be reasonable.” Her hand started shaking. She held it out, gazed at it a moment, then reached for the knife.

  “Lee, if you won’t put him down the easy way …”

  “Easy!”

  “… then let me do it.”

  “No.” She laughed, an ugly sound. “Aversion therapy, old friend.” She looked at the knife, then at the unconscious man. “I could do it so gently, you know, a twist and a pull and he’d be dead so fast he wouldn’t feel a thing. I wouldn’t feel a thing beyond perhaps a tiny absence, a gap where something used to be. And the next time, I wouldn’t bother fussing. Bad man, crazy woman, pop! pop! angel of death sitting judgment pop! pop! and where would it end? Old friend, I warned Shadith about the pull of her body and how it would distort her reactions. I think it’s time to warn you about that same thing. When you rode along as my resident conscience, you taught me well, my best of teachers; don’t back off now.”

  Harskari passed a hand across her face, looked bewildered for a moment, then grim. She nodded, but said nothing.

  Aleytys knelt without moving until she felt consciousness stir in him, waited until he groaned with the pain in his mutilated eye, then she pushed the sleeves of her robe up past her elbows, slashed the knife hard and fast across his neck, hot blood splashing over her hands and wrists.

  She felt him die, suddenly and hard. She died with him, but unlike him, she came to life again a few breaths later. Shuddering, her hand shaking so badly she nearly cut her leg, she bent to the side, set the knife on the grass. She hugged her arms across her breasts, leaving bloody handprints on the grass-stained white of her sleeves, and began to cry, gulping tearing sobs that jarred her body but gave her little relief from the ache that seized on her, the cold spreading inside her.

  Arms closed about her. Someone who seemed an uneasy amalgam of Shareem and Harskari held her and rocked her and sang softly to her until the shock passed off.

  With a last pat Harskari let go of her and moved on her knees to Kell’s body. She began prodding at his torso with her fingertips, avoiding for the moment the splotch of drying blood.

  Aleytys started to rub her eyes, stopped, grimaced at the sticky, browning stains on her hands. She wiped her nose on her sleeve, avoiding the bloody handprint, sniffed, scrubbed her hands on the grass, then on the skirt of her robe, turned up a part of that skirt, wiped her eyes on it, blew her nose into it. She knelt watching Harskari a moment. “What are you doing?”

  “Kell’s key strip. His dome and ship should be yours now.” Harskari began poking her fingertips into the glutinous mess at the neck, clicked her tongue as she discovered the catch and popped it loose. She pulled the front of the shipsuit open. “I thought so.” A wide soft belt about Kell’s waist. She used her nails to dig under the overlapping end and pried it loose. “Remember what Loguisse said. Seems to me if you’re the first to touch it after he’s dead, that transfers some sort of control to you.” Wrapping the end around her left hand, she jerked hard. Kell’s body flopped about, it groaned as the air in his lungs was expelled, his arms and legs flailed briefly at the grass, then went still as the body settled back. Harskari got to her feet, held out the belt. “Here. Take it.”

  “I couldn’t …” Her revulsion faded quickly; there were too many reasons why she must. Kell wasn’t her only enemy on Vrithian. She needed a ship. Shareem’s wasn’t … she couldn’t use it, not for a long long time. Harskari might as well have that; no doubt she counted on it. War, Kell, your war, and to the victor the spoils. Oh-ah-Madar! Spoils. She quelled a rising hysteria and got shakily to her feet. “All right. I agree. I’ll claim the things. No. You carry the belt. I don’t want to touch it, not yet.” She looked down at herself.

  “I want a bath.” The words came out sounding plaintive, like a child calling for something she wasn’t sure she was supposed to have. She closed her eyes. Madar! I’m falling apart. Giggles erupted from her throat, surprising her. “All ye all ye out’s in free. Game’s over. I won. Won. Look, at what I won …”

  Harskari mmphed at her, then led her back to the house. “Bath and breakfast, that’ll shut off this nonsense.”

  LOGUISSE: Take the body to the Mesochthon. Not pretty? Doesn’t matter. Dump it in the middle of the floor. Declare the war over and yourself the winner (chuckle), though that would seem rather obvious considering the condition of your opponent. You’re supposed to hold yourself ready to answer challenges. I wouldn’t worry much about that. There’s not a Stayer on Vrithian who’d dare come near you.

  The dome and the ship. Dome first. You’ve got his key strip? good. Shareem tell you … not Shareem anymore? That will take some explaining. Right. This isn’t the time or method for explanations. Once you’ve made the announcement, go directly to Kell’s dome. Yes, leave the body. Not your responsibility after delivery. Where was I? Go directly to Kell’s dome. All kephaloi are linked to the Mesochthon. Kell’s will be waiting for you. You could have trouble with it; he was a very complex man. I suggest you tie Kell’s kephalos into yours, use it to help you overlay Kell’s persona with your own. If you run into something peculiar, give me a call.