"And the clothing?"

"To be discarded."

He bowed and then stopped as she lifted a perfectly graceful hand.

"No-keep it. Keep it for me." She seldom changed her mind; it was an open sign of hasty

decision-or indecision.

He bowed again.

It was her custom to start the morning with the samisen or the harp, and the morning after the

Festival of the Moon was, in theory, a morning like any other. But he knew her well enough to bring no instrument on this particular morn; the night cast its shadows, and there was only one way to dispel them.

Her clothing was laid out for her, and after washing and gentle oiling, she felt ready to leave the night behind.

The bra.s.s bell outside of her personal room chimed. Ramdan bowed and left her, returning with a graceful haste.

Sendari, she thought.

"Ser Sendari wishes the pleasure of Serra Teresa's company at her earliest possible convenience."

"And he will be?"

"In the Chamber of Contemplation."

"Very well." She adjusted the swathe of the sari's silk and pulled the braided strands of her dark

hair forward. Then, as a well-schooled Serra must, she obeyed her brother's command.

He did not bow when he saw her, and that lapse of grace was rare. So, too, were the circles under

his eyes, the color of his face. His clothing was disheveled and dusty, his hands dirty, his lips cracked. She should have been shocked.

"Ser Sendari," Serra Teresa said, bowing very low.

Too low. His eyes narrowed at the implied criticism of his own lack of greeting. "Serra Teresa," he said, curtly. "I apologize if I have not yet had time to attire myself in the usual fashion-but I have received a most unsettling... message."

She waited; he kept her there, and silent, a full five minutes, as was his right. The night was gone, the moon dimmed; she was once again a woman, and he her superior. He began again. "The message was carried by a seraf of the clan Caveras. Does this mean anything to you?"

"No, Ser Sendari. Perhaps it has something to do with Ser Laonis?"

"Indeed it does." He clipped each word so sharply it almost sounded as if he were spitting. "And do you know what the gist of the message might be?"

She tired of his game, and her part in it, but she knew how to play it forever. "No, Ser Sendari."

"Lord burn you, Teresa-this is not the time!"

No one in the room moved; indeed, Ser Sendari's serafs froze in startlement at his outburst.

"At your command, then." The Serra drew herself up. "Have you been to your wives?"

"No-but I now know that Ser Laonis, for reasons that are entirely unclear to me, chose to heal

Lissa."

"Yes."

"Do you know what the risks of that healing entail?"

"Yes, Sendari."

"Do you know what it costs?"

"No."

"Well, my clever, clever sister, let me tell you. Ten thousand soldi, payable immediately."

The lines of her face did not change at all; they had frozen in place. "Immediately?"

"That is what I said."

"I am not completely aware of the financial condition of this family." This was almost true. "Is this of grave difficulty?"

"That is," he replied, through teeth that were obviously clenched, "twenty times what we paid to procure Lissa, as you well know. If I could sell all of the serafs I have with me, and most of my wives, I might be able to raise two thirds of that price-but not in one day." He said it because in his sleepless exhaustion he was not completely certain that she knew it; he should have been. "How did you come to allow this?"

She said absolutely nothing.

His voice carried what lay between the words. For the Serra Teresa, the healing had already become a triumph of life over death, of hope over despair; for Sendari, it was a reminder of what lay between them, behind him. Of his failure to convince a long-ago healer to walk the same edge for his wife.

That healer was dead two years, in a riding accident in which he had instantly broken his neck- one of the few accidents a healer of any note could not survive. He had never told her, and she had never asked, if he was the hand behind that death, or if it was merely the Lady come in her time. Whichever, it was clear that that death had not a.s.suaged the earlier one.

After a moment Ser Sendari straightened his shoulders. "Enough." It was not an apology-not quite. But it was as close as he could come in the presence of another. "I have sent a rider to Adano, and I have asked the aid of Captain Alesso di'Marente."

He did not need to tell her that Marente would be reluctant to intervene if Caveras made it clear that Marano was to suffer; very few crossed healers without paying a high price.

She bowed then. "With your permission, Ser Sendari, I wish to retire to the harem."

"While we have it," Sendari muttered darkly, but he nodded.

She found Alana outside of the morning chambers, ringing her hands in a most unattractive and unbecoming fashion. Her hair hung loose, and although it had been washed, it had not been braided or pearled; she wore a sleeping shift, and not a proper sari, and her hands and feet seemed rough and dry.

"Teresa!" Alana lifted her head and straightened her shoulders as she saw the Serra approach.

"Alana. Does something trouble you?"

"Yes, Serra." The relief in the oldest of Sendari's wives was evident; the Serra Teresa was here, and there was very little in the harem that did not bend to the Serra's will. Her hands fell to her sides, although Teresa was not certain that Alana was even aware of the change in her posture.

She should have been more severe, but it had been a long night, and there were no guests, no outsiders, to see such a poor display of schooling on Alana's part. "Tell me," the Serra said quietly.

"It's Lissa," the older woman replied, bringing her hands up and then, as if only suddenly aware of the motion, forcing them down again. "She's-she won't eat. She won't speak, lllia thought it was the baby-it's her first, and you've seen how it is, to lose the first. But I've just come from seeing her myself, and it's not the loss of the child."

"What is it? Was the healing not complete?"

"I-I don't know, Teresa. She won't speak."

"Stand aside, then. Let me go to her."

Serra Teresa had seen death before, her grandfather's first among them, but by no means the last. She knew what a corpse looked like, and knew what a difference there was between a living man and a man whose lips had pa.s.sed their last breath, although that difference might be measured in seconds.

She knew that the healers, should they so choose, could call a man back from that last breath. And she had never seen it done, never once, although the clans had the money for it. But until she spoke, on that first morning, with Lissa en'Marano, until she saw the shattered gray-ness of the young woman's usually bright face, until she saw the lift of eyes, the slight tip of head, the nuance of gesture that was not-quite-Lissa's, she did not understand why.

To bring this-this half-wife back, I would have to become her.

He had told them the truth.

"Lissa," she said, and stopped as Lissa en'Marano came into view.

The girl's face was mired in tears; her hair, unwashed and untended, was matted to her shining skin. Her eyes, wide and dark, were unblinking and reddened, and they looked into a distance that was so far away, Teresa thought that walking all her life, she might never bridge the gap. Beside her, trays of food, untouched, and a full pitcher of clear, sweet water, showed that the serafs had been unsuccessful in their attempts to feed her.

There were no serafs now.

"Lissa," Serra Teresa said again, her voice less stern. "Alana says that you will not speak with her. What ails you?"

The girl did not answer.

Teresa walked quietly across the room, kneeling on the foremost of the cushions against which Lissa lay like a broken doll. "Lissa," she said again, but this time, the word carried her concern, her authority, the fear she felt, and the desire to protect this youngest of the wives.

If it carried compulsion, it was a compulsion that no magic could reproduce, no stranger's voice. Lissa en'Marano turned to face her.

She opened her mouth, but she did not speak; the words were too large for her lips, or so it seemed to Serra Teresa as she watched the girl struggle. After a moment, she gave up entirely on the words, and instead opened her arms and pulled the girl in as if she were still a child in the harem's private chambers. Lissa stiffened a moment against the brace of her arms, and then she collapsed there, crying in a way that no woman of any worth did-loudly, grace-lessly, noisily.

At another time, she might have brushed those tears aside and explained to her that tears could be, if they were absolutely necessary, an embellishment to a woman's beauty-a hint of the vulnerability that some men found so appealing-if they were done gracefully and minimally. She knew that Lissa was beyond listening. Later, perhaps.

Or perhaps not.

"Lissa," she said, ignoring the stiffness in her neck and her shoulders, "please. Only tell me what ails you, and I will do what it is in my power to do to help."

Sobbing, choked and quieting as Lissa raised her head, was the only answer that Serra Teresa received for several minutes. She brushed strands of hair out of a wet, wet face, pulling it back, attempting to return to Lissa some of the beauty and the clean simplicity that she had been chosen for. Lissa did not resist her, but Teresa thought it might be because she simply didn't care. She waited, sitting within the circle of Lissa's privacy.

Then, words breaking as if they were vessels dropped a long distance onto the peaks of rocks and barren ground, Lissa said, "He left me."

Teresa knew better than to interrupt the words with questions. One of the most important lessons she had ever learned in life was when to wait.

"He's gone. Teresa-it was so dark and so cold-I was so tired-I wanted someone to come for me-I thought they would come-"

She knew that she would need cleaning herself; knew that the work of her serafs would be undone by such close contact with Lissa. But what, after all, were serafs for? She held the youngest of Sendari's wives as tightly as she could. Because no one else could do it. And because, yes, no one was there to witness it.

"But they didn't come. It was so dark. And then-and then I heard it-I heard singing-I thought it was my mother's voice, when she was young-but I couldn't feel her-I was cold-"

"Lissa, Lissa, Lissa."

"And he came instead. I didn't know who he was. And I thought he didn't want to-I thought he didn't want to find me-he was angry-but he called me, and he was the only one there-"

"It's all right, Lissa. It's all right."

"And then he touched me, and I knew." She was crying now, and her voice was heavy with loss. "I knew he would bring back the light. I knew he could keep the darkness away. I saw what he was, Teresa. Do you understand? I saw him on the inside. He was afraid of being me. Of being with me. He was-I was afraid-and he saw that, too. You told me-you told me I wasn't to trust anyone, not even Sendari. But it was so dark, and I was alone-it was different there. It didn't matter.

"He had to know who I was. I-I answered all the questions. But they weren't questions, they weren't-I told him, but I didn't have to speak. And then he answered me, and he was afraid of me, and then he was happy-I didn't care, if he was frightened and he was a clansman, he was like me- "He's gone, Teresa. He knew everything about me. He understood everything I am. He promised to bring me back-here-and he left." She raised a tear-streaked, swollen face. "And he's not what he looks like, he's not. Do you know when he first learned about his gift? He healed a dog, Teresa-and it wasn't even his, but it was hurt. It's been so hard-to not heal, to leave us to die- he hates it-he has to-"

"Hush, Lissa." Teresa covered the girl's moving lips with her forefinger, pressing them gently. "Of that, you must never speak. Do you understand? Believe that there are reasons why all men hide their true face, whatever that face may be." She put her arms around the young girl again, and began to sing softly. And she sang sleep, with all of the power that she had, gentling it with the love and the loss that she now felt.

Would it have been better to have Alora alive, but to lose everything else about her? To have her either live as an empty sh.e.l.l, or to live in the harem of another, with no allegiance to the oath rings and the promises that had been her earlier life?

Even now, she could not say for certain.

Ramdan returned to her, and bowed, interrupting her musing, which was just as well. The serafs had finished anointing her hair with the hint of a summer fragrance; she gestured them aside as the chief of her serafs lifted his head.

"Ser Sendari will see you," Ramdan said gravely. He offered her a hand and she rose. Together, Serra and seraf, they walked down the halls toward the chamber of contemplation that Sendari had made a fortress within his residence.

"Are the preparations made for our leave-taking?"

"Yes, Serra."

"And the horses?"

"Ready as well."

"Good."