I did not.

I held myself, small and silent in a dark corner of his mind. I waited. I had not liked it that he addressed me by name. I knew we were both more aware of the other than we ever had been, and slowly we were becoming more accessible to each other. I felt exposed. I waited for his mind to dim into sleep. I thought he might dream, but he did not. Perhaps he was too weary.

I let the night deepen to full dark before I dared stir. Then, almost as if I had my own body, I stretched my being. Gently I peeled my awareness away from his and wondered if he would awaken to that loss.

He slept on.

Dream-walking was still a new skill to me. When I ventured out in search of Epiny, it was like riffling the pages in not just a thick book but in all the books in some grand library. I did not feel that I moved geographically but through some other nameless spatial layer. I had to focus not only on where Epiny might be but also on how her dream had felt to me the last time we had touched. I finally discovered an anchor in her silly silver whistle. I thought of it, how it shone, the otter’s shape, and finally its shrill annoying blast. As Scout Buel Hitch had once described it, so it was. As if I walked into another room, I entered Epiny’s dream.

Perhaps she would have called it a nightmare. We were in a small curtained alcove just off a grand ballroom. I could hear the music and catch glimpses of the lovely dresses and gaily slippered feet of the dancers and their finely attired partners as they whirled past a crack in the curtains. I could smell hundreds of fine beeswax tapers burning as well as catch the aroma of rich roast meat, freshly baked bread, and the waft of fine wine. Through the music, I could hear the tinkle of silverware and glasses and cheery laughter as the richly dressed aristocrats dined. All were enjoying the jovial festivities.

But in her dream, Epiny was a tiring maid. Pregnant and heavy in a worn gray dress, she was hastily pinning up hair disheveled by a lively dance or mending a slipper whose tie had been torn, or primping a bit more powder onto a haughty young girl’s graceful neck. Her dream, I quickly saw, was all about waiting and working in the dim shadows while others danced and laughed and enjoyed themselves in the splendor of Old Thares. She was weary. Her back ached and her feet were swollen but no one seemed to care for the discomfort of her advanced pregnancy. The merry dance went on without her.

“Do you wish that you could go home?” I asked her softly.

“Home?” She smiled bitterly. “This isn’t home, Nevare. Do you wish you could go back to your old dreams?”

She gestured at me, and I looked down at myself. I was slim and dapper in my green cavalla cadet uniform with the gleaming brass buttons. My black boots shone with a high gloss. I looked as if I had come as a guest to dance at her dream ball. I felt oddly embarrassed.

Epiny’s spirit was strong and her mind quick. As soon as she realized that we were in a dream together, she took control of it. The music softened and the chattering women in the alcove vanished. Only Epiny and I remained. She sat down gratefully on a hassock that hadn’t been there a moment ago. “So,” she said into the quiet, “you’ve come to let me know you’re alive and well. When will you come home?”

“I am alive. And well, in a way. But I don’t think I’ll be coming home anytime soon, if ever. Soldier’s Boy still has control of my body. He has made me a Speck, complete with dapples. And we are staying in Lisana’s old lodge. He has unearthed a cache of her jewelry. He has a plan to make himself a powerful man among the Specks. After that, I don’t know exactly what he intends, but I know he still thinks all Gernians should be driven far from the Barrier Mountains. There is little I can do about whatever he plans. I have to keep my guard up just to retain my own awareness. I am still Nevare, and I don’t want to let go of that self. But I’m not sure how long I can hold out against him.”

It was strange. I hadn’t planned to say those things to her, or realized how worried I was that Soldier’s Boy would absorb me. “Is that why you’ve come to me? To ask my help?” She almost sounded hopeful.

I was startled. “Do you know a way to help me?”

The brightness of her face dimmed. “No. But I was hoping you were going to ask something that would make me feel useful. Something that would make a difference.” She looked up at me. “Why else would you come to me in my dreams like this?”

Why had I come? I spoke honestly, wondering if it would be my last chance to speak to her. “I came for comfort, I think. To find someone who cared about Nevare.”

The light not only came back to her face; it warmed and gentled her features. “Nevare, I thank you for coming, then. I am that. I do care about you, and if you take comfort in hearing me say it, then I am comforted that I can say it.” She looked, for a moment, as young as she had been in Old Thares. I realized then how much her harsh life at the frontier outpost was aging her. Her features were sharper, her skin more weathered. She had never been a fleshy person, but now it seemed that the resources of her body had dwindled away from her arms and legs and face and into her burgeoning pregnancy. Compared to the women of the Specks, she was a stick figure. In a Speck gathering, she would have been pitied and Spink disdained for his failure to keep the woman he had impregnated plump and gleaming through her pregnancy.

“You are so thin,” I said without thinking.

She laughed and placed her hands on her rounded belly. “Thin?”

“That is the baby. I am speaking of you, Epiny. Your fingers are like little twigs.”

Concern flitted through her eyes. “My stomach is still unsettled by my pregnancy. Everyone has told me, over and over, that my morning sickness will soon be over. But it just goes on.” She shook her head at me. “But I am tired to death of talking about myself. Whenever I see another woman, it seems all she wants to do is advise me or commiserate with me.”

“Even Amzil?” I asked her, smiling.

She did not smile in return. “I am concerned for Amzil,” she said softly.

“Is she sick?”

“Would that it were something as simple as that! She is bitter beyond telling, Nevare. She had a glimpse of a dream, and then it was gone before she could put her hands on it. And she blames everyone and everything for her unhappiness: the town, the cavalla, the soldiers on the street, the officers and their wives, the townsmen. I think she even blames Spink and me to some degree.”

“With time, it will pass,” I said, with no confidence I spoke truth. There had been time, but each time I thought of the life I would never share with her, the pain was still as sharp. It had not passed for me.

“I wonder if she will allow it to pass? She seems to treasure her pain. She swings from holding her children and weeping over them, saying they are the only love she will ever know, to snapping at them impatiently or to simply staring past them, her needlework neglected in her lap.” She halted the tumbling flow of her words and then said hastily, “I do not mean to speak against her or to gossip. There are times, of course, when she is just Amzil, and she works very hard to keep the house tidy and the meals prepared. But I fear for her.”

“Fear for her? Why?”

“Oh. It is the same thing I told you about before. Whenever she sees one of the men who…who accosted her that night, or who looked on and did nothing, she will not look aside, but stares at them as if her eyes could burn holes in them. Or she asks them, with acid courtesy, how they are doing that morning and bids them ‘good day’ in a tone that plainly says she hopes they have anything but a good day. Some of them are cowed by such behavior. But there are a few who regard her with hatred that she knows their shame and fears them not. They cannot clearly recall what happened that night. Neither can Amzil nor Spink. There is a gray time in their minds, and I know that Amzil and Spink are tormented by what might have happened in those moments. Spink would like to think he behaved honorably and with courage. But he simply cannot remember. Amzil would like to think that she fought off her attackers, but she has nightmares in which she goes limp with terror and cannot even cry out and the men do foul things to her before you can intervene. I cannot think what those men imagine to fill in those missing hours. It eats at them like a canker, I think. Amzil has led them to believe that she does recall what happened, and she flaunts that in front of them and treats them with fearless disdain.”