"A couple things have changed around here since you've been gone."

"Well, yeah."

"I mean, in relation to your arrest, your supposed death."

"Tell me."

They were speaking Iavaian now, sitting in Shou-Shou's private office. She'd told him only a couple of the girls had any Iavaian, and that just pidgin, but she'd still closed the door. Kieran guessed that the job she had planned for him was a bit less wholesome than fixing fences.

Shou-Shou located a bottle of smuggled single-malt and two glasses before speaking again. She threw her whiskey back in one practiced motion. Kieran sipped his; he'd never liked being drunk.

"When you left the White Rose boys for the Dyers, it weakened them. You were so public about it. Everybody knew they didn't have their big threat anymore. And if they could let you go, maybe others could break loose. So there was chaos. A lot of splinter gangs. The Rose couldn't punish them all."

"I know that, Shou-Shou. I was there."

"I'm just explaining. You were down in it. This is what it looked like from outside."

"Okay. Go on."

"You know that the Rose was after you and the Dyer brothers. What maybe you don't know is that Kinter was obsessed with you. He let a lot of smaller fish get away."

Kieran nodded. He'd noticed that the old halfblood who ran the Rose had seemed especially stubborn about trying to have the Dyer gang destroyed. There'd been a period of several months when Kieran hadn't had to buy ammunition, getting all he needed off the corpses of the Rose boys sent against him. He hadn't known that Kinter was neglecting his other business.

"Sounds like him," he said.

"When the Watch got you, and the papers said they'd shot you, the Rose started gathering in its strays. They didn't like the way you turned into a martyr, but -- did you know someone wrote a song about you?"

"What?" Kieran laughed.

"It was pretty lame. Made you look like a hero, though, so of course the guy who wrote it got arrested. Anyway, after you 'died,' there was a bloody time, bodies turning up everywhere, the cops were afraid to go out. Now I'll come to the point: I guess Kinter wanted to make sure he had the whole town under his thumb, because he started expanding his interests. Now you can't find a bar, gambling house, or brothel that isn't paying protection to him. Including this one."

Kieran blinked, seeing the implications. "Oh."

"We're paying off the Rose and the police. It's cutting into our operating expenses. I want you to take care of it."

"Shou-Shou..." He shook his head slowly. "I can't stay. I have to disappear. You don't seem to understand, having me and Ash here could bring the whole Watch down on you. They won't just shut you down, they'll put you all in work camps. Do you know what those women's work camps are really for?"

"Hell, we're just about doing that already. Cops and Rose boys scare our paying customers away -- we're like their little private harem, only we have to pay our own rent and water bill. I'll take the risk."

"Well, I won't. What are you asking? You want me to stand at the door and pitch them out?"

"No." Her eyes glittered. "I want you to kill them all."

Kieran opened his mouth for another protest, and forgot to shut it as understanding hit him. He laughed in admiration. "Shou-Shou. You are an amazing woman. You don't just want this house, do you? You want the whole poppy trade."

She smiled. "It's about time I took a hand in this town. You know I'd do a better job. Kinter's old. And he's a man -- they get too emotional. Present company excepted, of course."

"You can't afford me," Kieran said, though he felt like he was backpedalling. "All I really owe you is a meal and clothes and one night's lodging. What, twenty, thirty signets? I used to charge fifteen hundred thrones for a job."

"How often did you see it, though?"

He couldn't reply to that.

"Kinter held your fees. He just kept you smoked up. You only got cash when you worked for some out-of-town colleague of his."

"How do you know that?"

"Ami."

"What's she know?"

"Don't you recognize her? She used to be one of Kinter's little pets, until she started looking like a grown woman. Then he fobbed her off on me. This was while you were still a Rose boy. But I guess you didn't see those girls much, did you?"

Kieran was suddenly tired. He wanted to take Ash and go; get away from all this sordidness into the clean emptiness outside. "Shou-Shou, I'm grateful to you. I owe you. But I don't owe you that much."

She poured another brace of whiskeys and waited for him to drink. Then she said, "You've got no choice. Ami will have gone to them already. They'll be here as soon as they can load their guns and tie their shoes."

He stood, overturning his chair. "You bitch!"

"You should thank me. I'm handing you your revenge."

"You think I need that from you?"

"Kinter was the one who told the cops where you and Shan were hiding. He sacrificed that Burdock creature, that Pyrokinetic of his, to make sure they believed it and knew to call in the Watch." She watched calmly as he clenched his jaw. "Still want to leave your hometown in Kinter's hands?"

Through his teeth, Kieran said, "I don't give half a rat shit what Kinter does. And I'm not going to risk my ass just so you can turn into him."

"I saved something for you." She reached beneath the desk and brought out a bundle wrapped in a towel. It made a heavy thump when she set it on the desk.

Kieran brushed the towel aside; his hand eagerly grasped the thing this revealed before his eyes had quite seen it. His own gun. The one he'd had custom-made when he joined the Dyers. Hart & Sons' brand-new design, an auto-loading pistol that carried a magazine of nine bullets, his little advantage over his adversaries' five- and six-shot revolvers. He ran his thumb across its lapis-inlaid ebony grip, and the familiar weight and texture weakened his knees. He felt whole again. He hadn't realized how weak and cornered he'd been without it.

Closing his eyes, he deliberately slowed his breathing until it was normal again. Then he took the time to examine the gun carefully. Shou-Shou had kept it in good shape. All four of its magazines were nestled in a further curl of the towel, and they were all loaded. Shou-Shou dug in her purse and produced two yellow pasteboard boxes, more familiar to him than the label of the whiskey bottle or the names of trains -- how many times had he said those words at various tack-and-saddle shops all over Iavaiah? Hart's Standard .40-Gauge Rimfire, Fifty Rounds. He snatched them into his pockets, scowling.

"You're overestimating me, you know. A lot. I'm not sure how many men I can handle at once. I hope you put Ash somewhere safe, this isn't his fight."

"Isn't it? Looks to me like he'd walk through hell for you."

"I don't want him to. I'm telling you, Shou-Shou, this is not going to work. You're just going to get a lot of your people killed."

She sniffed. Stood, put away the bottle, rolled her shoulders. "Probably about time to get ready. Now, don't get stupid just to prove me wrong. You know you can do this, Kai."

"Don't call me that," he snapped, and slammed out of the room.

As he stormed to the front door, he heard Shou-Shou in the kitchen telling the girls to go upstairs. Kieran grabbed Ash's bundled coat and sweater off the hooks by the front door. He hated to walk out on a debt like this, but Shou-Shou was asking too much. What she wanted was impossible.

Maybe she'd fed him a few times over the years. It might even have kept him alive once or twice when he wouldn't have made it otherwise. But she hadn't kept his mother from getting killed. She'd waited just a little too long before taking over. Now she wanted to be Kinter. Let her. But not with Kieran's help. He threw open the front door.

They were standing in the yard. Three of them, and Ash, looking wild-eyed with a pistol pressed to his throat.

Kieran's options flashed before his eyes, and every single one of them was unacceptable. The fear on Ash's face was unacceptable. The sudden flame of fury rising in him was unacceptable. He couldn't act, couldn't not act; his mind was reduced to a single glyph of refusal. Half a second later, he was a passenger, and something else had the reins.

He ducked back inside and slammed the door. In the same motion he dropped to the floor and rolled aside. A rifle bullet splintered a hole in the door. Missed him by a mile. He heard a startled sound from the direction of the stairs, someone frightened by the gunshot, but that wasn't his problem. Drawing as he dashed across the room, he put his other hand in his pocket and came out with all his spare clips arrayed between his fingers.

He darted for the back door, dropping to one knee as it began to open. He had put himself in the shadow of the stove, where his dark shape would blend with the black iron and confuse the eye. He didn't wait to see the man's face. As soon as the door was out of his way, he opened fire.

Luck was with him; his first adversary had pushed at the door, rather than holding it, and when he fell backwards he didn't close it. There were a few scattered thumps and clangs as the Rose boys beyond the dead man tried to find a target, drowned by the thunder of the Hart. Kieran felt their deaths, one after another, like hot breaths on his skin, and then there was no one alive out there. He dropped his clip and slammed another home as he dove back into the front room, making for the shadow of the stairs.

He wasn't quite there when two of the three from the front yard burst in, firing at random. They were using a tactic common in gang warfare -- the usual human urge when bullets are flying is to freeze or run, self-preservation conquering any urge to fight. Those who could return fire would do so wildly, accelerated heartbeat shaking their aim. But all Kieran saw was a pair of targets; everything else was simply gone, the hammer of gunfire just so much background noise. He put holes in the two Rose boys until they stopped being people. There was still a round left in the clip, but he dropped it anyway, not certain what he'd find outside. Not a conscious thought, just the way it was done; conscious thought was gone now.

Kieran knew that the man outside would most likely shoot anything that came out, but there was a good chance his trigger finger would be a little slow, anticipation messing up his sense of time. He took the door at a run, leaping over the crumpled bodies that held the bullet-pocked wood open, not even listening for gunfire -- he'd be hit or he wouldn't. Without pausing to look for his target, he vaulted the porch railing, hit the ground and rolled to his feet.

The last man's gun was following his path; in the heartbeat before that man could correct his aim, Kieran whipped his remaining clip at the guy left-handed. The man's eyes followed the blocky black object flipping toward him, and then red blossoms thumped across his chest and up his face, and he fell.

Kieran looked around for more targets, but there were none. He heard nothing but his own ragged breathing, his own heartbeat, slowing. The rattlesnake mind that had moved him suddenly dropped him back into control, and terror for Ash overwhelmed all else. The last man Kieran had killed was the one who'd held the gun to Ash's throat; had he relinquished his hostage, or killed him?

He heard a whimper: Ash, hurt -- dying hurt, from the sound of it. Kieran was charging for the source of that whimper before he even saw where he was going, tearing out dead rosebushes by the roots to get at the pale shape huddled under the corner of the porch. He didn't feel the thorns lacerating his hands. He wrapped those bleeding hands around Ash's bowed head and raised it to look into his eyes. Blank eyes, like blue paper; he'd seen those before.

"Look at me! Where'd they get you, Ashes? Show me!"

Ash replied by fainting.

Only then did Kieran see that there wasn't a mark on him.

The only blood was smeared on his face from Kieran's hands. His light-colored clothing would have showed any injury, and though Kieran searched for something hidden, a graze across his back or on his inner thigh, felt his boots for holes and checked through his hair for bumps or soft spots on his skull, there was nothing. Terror peaked, tightening Kieran's chest, and then all at once let go. Panic wasn't helping. There was something wrong; Kieran knew the difference between some girly swoon and a real loss of consciousness, and this was the latter. He hauled Ash out into the yard and checked him over again.

Ash was pale, his pulse slow and hard, as if his heart were laboring. His skin felt clammy. His white shirt was half translucent from sweat, and more still poured from his skin, chill and reeking of fear. Something had happened to him, but damned if Kieran knew what it was. He wished there was someone left to kill.

Well, there will be, if I hang around here any longer. The cops'll take their time, they don't care what happens on this end of town, but Kinter's not going to give up. Dumbshit doesn't know when he's beat. It was hard to leave Ash lying there, but dragging him inside didn't make sense, not when Kieran would just have to drag him out again a minute later. He dashed in, jumping the bodies again, to gather his spent magazines.

Shou-Shou was coming down the stairs as he finished. "You're getting sloppy, hon," she said. "Was a time you wouldn't have let them get a single shot off."

"I oughta charge you full price for every one of these assholes," he growled. "Would, too, if I thought you had the money." He bent over the meat that used to be an enemy, digging through its pockets. Cash; ammunition; running out of time.

"You're not good enough anymore to charge what you used to. But I guess you'll get plenty of practice in the next few days, won't you?"

"Do it yourself, Shou-Shou." He stuffed the best of the dead men's guns into the deep pockets of his new coat and stood up. "I'm out of this game. I'm out of this town."

She didn't look as if she believed him. "Kai, honey --"

"I told you not to fucking call me that. You are not my mother, Shou-Shou. You're just a crook like the rest of these guys, and I'm done. Thanks for everything." Turning away, he gave a wave that was more dismissal than farewell. He heard her sigh annoyance as he left. She would go on expecting him to come back as long as she thought he might be alive. He'd always come back before. But this time she was wrong. This fight had reminded him how easy killing was, how much he hated how easy it was, like putting your hand through a rotten board. These men had barely been able to fight him, and it made him sick how soft they were. How thoroughly he'd destroyed them. The whole shootout had lasted fifteen seconds, tops.

Still strong with his anger, he lifted Ash easily, settling the northerner over his shoulder. He left the brothel without looking back.

The street was deserted now; people had fled inside the worker barracks at the sound of gunfire. Faces peeked through windows, around the edges of open doors, and there was a current of muttering coming out of the gray clapboard shacks, the occasional child's squalling quickly hushed. Here and there, evidence of a task interrupted sat out on a doorstep; baskets of tobacco leaves, bags of calico squares. The wives and children of factory workers made a few extra moons a day doing piecework, rolling cigarettes or sewing patchwork, and they were waiting to see whether it was safe to return to their tasks. They'd talk about him to anyone who would listen. They'd exaggerate, they'd change things, but he would still be recognized. He had to get out of town.

But he couldn't carry Ash much farther. Now that he was no longer in a huff, he was starting to feel the white boy's weight. Checking up and down the street, he ran through a mental list of hiding places. It was a long list. It seemed, when he thought about it, that he'd spent ninety percent of his life hiding from something or other. Not all of those places would still be there, though, and some that had been ideal for a solitary child made no sense for two grown men.

Two boys the size of grown men, Kieran thought with a sudden pang of self-pity. I wish Shou-Shou hadn't called me by that name. It's weakened me, going home. I should probably never go home again.

Turning down a narrow alley between sets of row houses, Kieran began to take random turnings among the maze of shacks and dumps and wire-fenced machine yards that occupied the backside of the factory row. Police trying to find him by asking witnesses would be scattered and slowed by the complexity of the route, most of which was unobserved. If they had Watchmen with them, though, the deserted alleys would show his trail to their magical senses as if it were written in ink on white paper. He knew three ways to shake off a Watch tracker: running water, railroad tracks, or heavy traffic. None of them were absolutely certain. The riverbank was probably his best bet for now. He'd have to get out of town pretty quick though.

Breathing hard now, he hitched Ash's limp form higher on his shoulder as he went. It was something like three quarters of a mile from Shou-Shou's to the river. He came out just upstream of a coal-oil plant -- upstream and downwind. The eye-watering chemical reek should have awakened Ash, if anything could have, but the redhead just went on hanging useless over Kieran's shoulder. Kieran even dropped him once, skidding down a weed-choked bank, but Ash only flopped like a doll. Kieran swore, sighed, rolled his shoulders to ease the ache, and scooped him up again.

He emerged onto the riverbank beside a rocky backwater, divided from the main stream by a whitehead, a spit covered with wild cotton plants. The shore here was flat, pebbled, pocked with muddy sinks -- and occupied by bums. He hadn't smelled their cookfire, masked as it was by the oil plant's stink. There were four vagrants staring at him as he trudged toward the flat ground. One held a half-tame coyote by a leash made of braided twine. They were all Iavaian, or else he supposed they would have run when they got a look at him. Law-abiding natives might not have been doing well under the Commonwealth, but it was the whites who didn't last long down on the riverbank. These folks weren't scared of him, though maybe they should have been.

One of the bums, the biggest one, stood up as Kieran arrived. "This is our spot," he said in Iavaian. From among the grayish layers of his many coats, he produced a kitchen knife sharpened to a sliver.

Kieran ignored him. He knelt to lay Ash gently on the pebbled strand, with the sheepskin coat rolled up for a pillow. Still pale and clammy, still out cold.

"Did you hear me, stranger?"

"Yeah." Kieran glanced up, judging whether the man would be stupid enough to attack. The bum was a little pudgy, probably stayed that way by extorting food from the others. Casting an eye over the rest, Kieran decided that one of the remaining two adults might also be considering starting something. The other adult was clearly too bombed to care. And the little one, an adolescent of unguessable gender, was grinning a gaptoothed, lackwit grin. Shifting his attention back to the standing one, Kieran took his gun out from the back of his waistband and stuck it in the front. "Pretend I'm a bear," he said. "Ignore me, and I won't have to kill you."

Kitchen-knife stared a moment longer, then made his blade disappear and sat back down. None of them sat with their back to Kieran, of course, and they all watched him in their ways, but that didn't matter.

Slapping Ash's cheeks didn't do anything. Kieran hadn't expected it to, but it made him feel a little better. "Wake up, you chickenshit. I can't believe you made me carry you all this way." He checked again for injuries, reassured himself that Ash's heart was still beating, slapped him again for good measure. Supposed there'd be a better chance of that working if he could bring himself to slap hard enough to sting. Took off his headscarf and soaked it in the river to bathe the pale boy's clammy face.

While he was doing this, the smallest of the bums blurted out something incomprehensible. The middle grownup reached across the fire to smack the creature upside the head, but it just burbled and started in again.

"I know you," the child said brightly. "You're Death."

Kieran replied, just to pass the time, "That doesn't scare you?"

"Not anymore." The child giggled.

The big bum explained, with the back of his hand, what had happened to the rest of the kid's teeth. Knocked over backwards, the creature started bawling, which started the tame coyote yapping in excitement.

Ash twitched and whimpered.

Kieran put a hand to the redhead's chest and found his heart racing. He was still unconscious, but the occurrence of violence near him had gotten a reaction anyway. Of course -- he was an empath. What if his state was the result of the deaths of Kinter's men? It would make a kind of sense. Which meant that if he was going to come out of it, he wasn't going to do it while there was any hostility near him. It was a little like the thing Kieran did sometimes, that vacating of himself, except that Kieran walked and talked and killed while he was blacked out, and Ash just sweated and whimpered.

The little bum was babbling while he bawled, and though Kieran couldn't understand much of it, what he did get sounded like bits of old myth-poems. How the kid had come across enough of the stuff to quote, when any mention of the native gods was punishable by death, was a mystery Kieran didn't feel like delving into just now. He said, "You folks need to settle down. You're bothering my friend here."

"Yeah, shut up," said the big guy, raising his hand again.

"Stop!" Kieran ordered. "No hitting."

"You telling me how to raise my own kid, mister?"

"I don't give a shit what you do, but don't do it here. Let the kid talk. Just settle down. If you can't relax, leave."

The kitchen knife came out again. "I don't like your attitude, boy. You think you're some kinda badass cuz you got a gun, I'm sposedta be scared a you? We ain't scared a you. We're Tama, boy, we ain't scared a nothing, specially not some clean-hand whitey-loving punk gangster."

Kieran stared for a moment, then laughed. "You're Tama?"

"That funny?" the man growled.

"Yeah. Sick funny. What clan?"

"Konoku." He named the largest of the Tama clans, the one that was usually translated as Standtall, though the word actually meant lodgepole pine. In the war, the Konoku had led a few other clans, like the Sweetcloud and the Speakingwater, deep into the mountains to hide, believing that the gods would send disasters to punish the foreigners who violated the holy land.

Which the gods had indeed sent -- in the form of the Suneater clan. Kieran gave another chilly laugh. "Your idiot knows who I am. Stand down, buddy."

A growl from the knife man was swallowed in the babbling of the child, who made a sudden emergence into clear-voiced song, among his tears and snot. "He is coming down from the high places today, the death you asked for, the one you called to, he is coming down. His body is a black cloud, his hair is a black cloud, his eyes are poisonous to look upon, he is coming down --"

Knife man made half a move to shut the kid up, but stopped at the click of Kieran's pistol cocking. "Lemme listen," Kieran muttered. He'd heard fragments of this before, enough to recognize it as a battle song from the war. Even whistling the tune of it would get a man killed these days, but there were always those who would sing anyway when they thought they were about to die. Kieran had never let anyone finish. Now he was curious.

The child went on singing, oblivious. "We are in the mood to kill today, our rifles are hungry, our swords are hungry, today there will be blood. His madness fills us like green wine, he is black and green, he is full of death power, he is full of storm power! Above us in the wind, Ka'an! In the smoke of our guns, Ka'an! Dark angry god, it is your time now!" The battle hymn trailed off into giggles.

The three adults were studying Kieran now, with odd expressions. The big one still seemed a little angry. The drunkard, or opium-eater or whatever he was, simply gazed, his look almost adoring. It was the middle adult who spoke up. "These days, that wouldn't surprise me at all."

"What wouldn't, Vei?" the big man said warily.

"If the gods came back. And Ka'an came first."

Big man clenched a fist. "Shut up. Somebody'll hear."

"Well, look at him." The one called Vei stood up, slapping sand from his tattered trousers. He stepped across the fire toward Kieran, who moved the gun to cover him but didn't bother standing. "Looks just like I figured the Prince of Pain would look. What do you say, son? You got a god in you?"

Kieran shrugged, amused by this turn in the conversation. "Not that I know of. But if I did, I guess it would be that one, wouldn't it? Least, my mom always said Tama'ankan was his special favorite." Kieran raised an eyebrow. "You look real impressed by that. What, are all of you Tama'konoku? Still waiting for the world to end?"

"It will," the drunk chimed in cheerfully. "You gonna make it happen. Kid says so. Kid's a harai."

Kieran nodded. That would explain the babbling, and the fact that it was impossible to guess the kid's sex, if it was a real harai. A holy androgyne, one who lived on the borders. Of gender, sanity, life and death. Only among the vagrants and squatters of Burn River's banks could such a creature still exist. Probably had some congenital defect from its mother drinking river water, but that didn't make it any less creepy. Though he doubted its prophesies really had anything to do with him, he still felt a little uneasy. He lifted Ash's head into his lap and began dragging his fingers through the sweat-damp curls. "So," he said. "What are you doing with this harai of yours? Besides smacking him around whenever he starts to prophesy."

Big man cringed at the rebuke. "Kid thinks everybody's a god. Sees 'em everywhere."

Vei put in, "You're the best bet so far, though. Only I can't figure why you're dragging around a sharn." At least, that was what the word sounded like.

"A what?"

"A sharn. It's something the kid talks about. The kid likes to talk about foreigners when he ain't seeing gods. He says in Yelorre they got these ghosts, kinda like our bear-people only they come outta the water instead of caves. They call 'em sharn. And that --" he pointed at Ash -- "is just what they look like. Right, kid?"

On cue, the harai chirped out, in Eskaran, off key, "O daughters of the Nerrin, don't go walking by the sea, when the wind is high and the moon is high and the land too dark to see, for the siorin boys will come for you and pull you to the deep, to dwell beneath the greeny waves in Medur's briny keep! O their skin is as white as the foam on the sand, but don't go following down the strand, o their hair is bright as the reddest gold, and they'll say if you go that you'll never grow old, but all they'll do is drown you deep, and bury your bones at Medur's keep!"

That song went on for a while, but it was drowned in the chugging of a barge passing on the river. That reminded Kieran that he had to get moving pretty soon, whether Ash woke up or not. It would be easier if Ash woke, though. The theory that it was empathy that had knocked him out was the best one so far, so he'd operate on the expectation that Ash would come around when things felt safe. He hitched the lolling body higher, so that Ash's head rolled on his shoulder, and wrapped the pale boy tightly in his arms. "Come on out, Ashes," he whispered, knowing that the barge's engine covered it. "I've got you. You're safe now. I'll keep you safe. I won't let anyone hurt you."

After the chugging engine had faded away upriver, the child's song rambled to a close. Something about falling for that Medur character and being turned into one of those sharn things. It wasn't clear whether Medur was supposed to be a goddess or a monster or what, but the water ghost things were the souls of handsome men she'd taken with her into the sea. It was kind of funny that the bum thought Ash looked like one of those. Sure, he was pale and red-haired, but the song didn't say anything about being covered with freckles, and his hair was more rust-colored than 'bright as reddest gold' -- and as for handsome, well, most people wouldn't call Ash good-looking.

Sure, which is why you've got a hard-on from cuddling him like this, right? You're a sick critter, Kai. It's easier for you to kill six men in fifteen seconds than fuck a boy who's gagging for it. Like it's going to hurt any less to watch him leave or die if you stay frustrated.

Not that there was any reason to expect that Ash would still want him, after he went back in the house and left the kid as a hostage. An empath would know that Kieran hadn't been the least bit torn up about it. He didn't think Ash would understand how he'd gone away and left the reptile in charge.

"Whatcha doing?" The bum named Vei talked into the silence that had fallen after the end of the harai's song. "Looks like you might be a bit harai yourself."

"He's a homo, you mean," said big man. He spat. "So much for Suneater."

Kieran was tired of their weirdness. "I think you need to leave now," he said. "I think if you don't get the fuck out of here now I'm going to shoot you."

The biggest bum met Kieran's stare for one moment, then went gray-faced. He grabbed his still mumbling and singing child by the arm and shoved it down the beach, away. The other two caught on quickly. With many glances back, they made their way slowly off along the riverbank, and eventually disappeared into some cut or side channel. When they were out of sight, he put the gun away. He gave Ash all his attention, trying to will some color back into that waxy face.

Most people, he thought again, wouldn't describe Ash as handsome. Because they associated rusty curls and freckles with some image of awkward childhood, or because he was so frail-looking. It had taken Kieran a while to see. But now -- the delicate lines of him, the colors, the shape of his lips, the sound of his breath -- he was a pearl, a thread of gold, a ruby. To expect for one moment to be allowed to keep this treasure, Kieran was certain, would be insane.

"Those were some pretty strange people, huh?" He made his voice soft. He supposed it didn't matter what he said, as long as he said it quietly. "You know, it's weird to think there are all these places in the world, all with their own different stories. You'd think that would kinda prove that they're all wrong. But I know some of ours are true. So maybe theirs are true too, and things are just different all over. Like if there actually were all these different gods, before the Dalanists chased 'em out. Where do you figure a god goes when it gets evicted?" He used his kerchief to wipe Ash's face again, though the cloth had dried out and wasn't doing much good. It would have been awkward to get up and go wet it. Besides, he didn't feel like letting go, just now.

"I really need you to wake up, Ashes. We can't stay here. We shoulda been gone already. This fainting shit has to stop, too. If you don't wake up pretty quick here..." Kieran didn't finish the threat. The hell you're gonna leave him, Trevarde. You can't even take your hands off him.

Well, if trouble came, he'd deal with it then. He wrapped his arms more tightly around Ash's narrow shoulders and rocked him slowly. Hummed in the back of his throat, songs with no purpose, starting in the middle and not finishing. Little by little, his posture bent so his face was pressed into Ash's hair. He put his lips to Ash's clammy forehead. Tasted his eyelids, feeling the eyeballs twitch and jerk beneath. Picked up Ash's hand, ran his thumb across the palm. Doing this hurt a little, somewhere under his ribs.

"Ashes, please. We have to get moving. Wake up. Please. For me. I'm asking as a favor, all right?" Kieran took Ash's chin in his hand. He looked older than eighteen, now, with his eyes closed. It was his eyes that made him look so young. "Open up those pretty blue eyes of yours, now. Look, the sky's the same color. Don't you want to see?"

When this had no effect, Kieran began to think it didn't matter what he did or said. Nothing would work. He kissed Ash's slack lips. It was like kissing a corpse. He gave a groan of frustration.

"Damn it, boy, what are you doing in there that's so much more interesting than being in the world with me? You still scared? Didn't I tell you I'd keep you safe?"

Ash's adam's-apple bobbed. His brows drew in and his lips pressed thin.

Kieran nearly choked on hope. "That's right. Wake up now."

With a small, helpless sound in the back of his throat, Ash opened his eyes a sliver, frowning. He swallowed a few times. "No," he whispered.

"Yeah," Kieran contradicted. "You have to wake up."

"No, you --" More swallowing. "You never said you'd keep me safe."

Suddenly embarrassed, Kieran shifted his grip to help Ash sit up. "Well." Kieran cleared his throat. "I guess I said it while you were out cold. Come on, get up now, my leg's gone to sleep."

"Oh." Ash shifted awkwardly, climbing off Kieran's lap. He was wobbly, as if he'd been down with a fever for weeks. Still frowning, he looked around, then turned back to Kieran questioningly.

"You collapsed during the shootout. You've been out maybe an hour."

"I'm sorry."

"Uh. Yeah. It's okay." Kieran busied himself with his hair, getting it all behind his shoulders and retying the kerchief to keep it back.

"I'm... I'm glad you weren't hurt."

"What?"

"In the fight. I'm glad you won."

"You sure about that? Thought you'd be mad I let 'em keep hold of you."

Ash shook his head. He sniffled, scrubbed at his eyes and nose, then lifted his chin with new calm. "They meant to kill us both. You did the right thing."

"Wasn't sure you'd see it that way."

"You didn't care how I saw it. I'm not sure why you bothered bringing me along. Did you carry me? You must have. Why didn't you just leave me?"

Kieran shrugged, looking away. He stood up and dusted off his coat. "Guess I got used to having you around." He offered a hand.

Ash stared at Kieran's hand for a moment before he grabbed it and let himself be pulled to his feet. He stumbled forward -- no, it was deliberate, he flung himself at Kieran's chest, throwing his arms around, buried his face in the dusty leather of Kieran's coat. His voice was muffled: "Thank you."

"Huh. All right." Kieran returned the embrace reluctantly, afraid that if he didn't pull himself out of his maudlin mood quickly, he'd get stupid and nail Ash right here on the riverbank, and they'd be arrested naked.

After a minute, Ash drew back and let go, giving a wry little laugh. "I scared you. Just now."

"Nah, you surprised me is all. We should get moving."

"No, I scared you. But I could hear, a little bit, when I was coming to -- you were being so sweet to me, and now you get scared if I hug you. I don't get you. I'm going to figure you out, though."

"This empath shit is getting to be a real pain in the ass. Look, this is me leaving. You coming or not?"

"Okay, hold your horses, I'm coming." Ash grinned.

"And quit grinning at me. You look like a monkey."

"Sure I do."

"You do. Big red grinning monkey."

"You've never seen a monkey, I bet."

"Have too. Saw a circus once. In Trestre. They had monkeys looked just like you."

"You win. I'm secretly really a monkey."

Kieran gave in and laughed. He felt like his chest was full of birds, all rustling and battering to get out. He didn't know what to call the feeling, but he was pretty certain it was one of the ones that turns horrible when thwarted.