How much time I passed in that state, I will never know. I do know that, before Soldier’s Boy awoke again, I sensed him there with me. He coalesced around me, and for one brief moment, I thought I’d be able to take him into myself and become whole again, on my terms. I was very still, afraid that if I roused him in any way, he would resist the process. Slowly I began to sense my body again. My head ached and whirled. I could see nothing and sound was just a formless roar around me, like the surf I had listened to earlier that day. My hands and feet tingled strangely. I felt my fingers twitch against the fabric of my robe, and that rasp of flesh against thread was, after my deprivation, the most heady sensation I’d ever felt. I pressed my hand against the weave, treasuring the contact, but in that moment, Soldier’s Boy became aware of me. By a means I could not sense, he wrested control away from me.

“You have no right!” I railed at him as we floated together as prisoners within the body. “I was born to this body and it belongs to me! You would use it to turn me into a traitor to my own people. How can you do that? I do not understand you. How can you be so dishonorable, so false?”

His response shocked me. “Do you think that I don’t recall my boyhood in the Midlands? Do you think I was not born into this body as surely as you were? You cannot think I came suddenly into being when Lisana made me hers? No. I was always a part of you. She peeled that part of me free of you, and gave me my own life, my own will, my own experiences, my own separate education. But she did not create me from nothing. Do you think I don’t recall Father and his ‘discipline’ and endless requirements? Locked from the instant I drew breath into being his ‘soldier son,’ separated from all else so that he might convince me it was the only thing I could be. How could anyone forget that? How do you manage to forget it? Why are you still his puppet, still the obedient little soldier that your people made you be? You say you do not understand me, because I look at what was done to me and resent it. I cannot understand you, because it seems all you long for is to return to that servitude. You would be the game piece of a king who has never seen your face, no matter what injustice or abomination you must commit in his name.”

For a moment, I was speechless, shocked at the bitterness and anger in his voice. Stunned, too, that he could accuse me of longing to be a puppet and a tool of tyranny. A moment later I marshaled my own indignation. “What of you? How are you different? If Dasie takes you at your word, you will be killing people who only ever offered you kindness. How can Spink or Epiny deserve your anger? How can the prisoners deserve to be attacked by you and driven back west? What righteousness is there in that?”

“The Specks were here first! And their forest stood long before your fort. This land is theirs. The intruders must be driven out. I but side with the people who were here first.”

“Then perhaps I should side with the Kidona. Did not they have the foothills before the Specks ever ventured down into them? Were not the Specks the ‘intruders’ then into the Kidona lands? How far back shall we go, Soldier’s Boy, to decide who is right here?”

“He’s waking up. Quick, water, but not too much!”

The voice was Olikea’s, right by my ear. I was suddenly aware that I was lying on my back, and my head was cradled in the softness of her lap. I could feel her warmth, and smell the good smell of her body. A moment later, my head was lifted and I felt liquid lap against my lips. Soldier’s Boy parted them, and moisture came into my mouth, and with it, sweetness. My body became a single surge of hunger, of thirst. Mindless, Soldier’s Boy sucked at the liquid and a moment later recognized it as fruit juice. He drained the cup, gasped, and then forced a word from my lips. “More.”

“Slowly. Go slowly.” Those words were to me. Then, “Refill the cup. Quickly!” That command was given to someone else, probably Likari. He’d opened my eyes, but shapes and colors seemed to whirl and blend rather than resolve themselves into sensible images. He closed them again. The cup came back, and with it my sense of smell. It was a thick apple juice, spiced and warmed, and this time he drank it more slowly. It helped but my whole body was still in distress. Things simply felt wrong inside me, far beyond the horrible hunger that chewed at me. I’d come as close to dying as a man could and still step back from the brink, I decided.

“Can he speak yet?” The voice that demanded an answer to that question belonged to Dasie.

“You nearly killed him. Can you expect him to speak so soon after such damage? Look at him! The skin hangs from the bones of his face. It will take me weeks to rebuild him to where he can eat with pleasure, let alone wield any power.”

Soldier’s Boy coughed and then cleared his throat. It took all his will to drag in his breath, and something more than mere willpower to send it out as words. “I can speak.” He opened his eyes again. Light and darkness swam and mingled, shadows formed and suddenly Dasie’s face was looming over his. He shut his eyes and turned away from her, sickened by the memory of iron.

“You said the magic made you for a reason. That because you have been one of the intruders, you know how to drive the intruders out. You said it was not by Kinrove’s dance, nor by my fighting a war as they fight them. But what else is there? Tell me, now, unless it was all just a trick to keep me from killing you.”

The liquid Soldier’s Boy had swallowed seemed to have fled my mouth. Likari hastened back with another cup. I could smell it and Soldier’s Boy could not keep my eyes from being drawn to it. But Dasie’s outstretched palm denied the boy access to me. Soldier’s Boy could not think of anything at that moment except the cup of lifesaving moisture, just out of reach.

“Speak!” she commanded Soldier’s Boy and I felt a feeble spark of his temper.

He tried to clear his throat and could not. He rasped out the words “If…a trick…stupid to…abandon now.”

Anger flared in her eyes. She had pushed him too far. “Then I’ll just kill you now.”

He coughed. His throat was thick, as if he’d been ill for weeks. “That’s your…answer for everything. Kill it. Better kill me then. You don’t have patience. For strategy.”

“What strategy?”

He shook his head. He could barely lift his hand but he pointed a trembling finger at the cup Likari held. His lips remained closed.

Dasie gave a snort of disdain. “Very well. Your ‘strategy’ seems to be that you will keep silent until I allow you food and drink. I shall. Because I know that at any time I need to do so I can kill you. You will keep. Right now, I have other things to attend to.”

She straightened up and looked around. In that moment, she looked to me more like an officer assessing a situation than a Speck mage. She spoke to her feeders. “Bring me fresh food and drink. I have need of it. Necessary as the iron is, it still leaches strength from me to be around it. Have all of the swords put safely away, except for two. I wish a man with a sword to remain here, at an appropriate distance from Kinrove. He should be aware of the iron while taking no harm from it. The same for Intruder Mage here. He”—and she gestured toward Jodoli—“may leave as soon as his feeders have him ready to travel. I go now to speak to all the dancers. Those of our kin-clan will travel to our winter grounds with us. Others who have saviors among our warriors may go with them. But I want everyone enslaved by the magic and forced to dance to know that they are now free, and that if they require help to return to their own kin-clans, we will give it.”

Olikea held a piece of soft bread to my mouth. It had been dipped in oil and honey. As Soldier’s Boy chewed, my body rejoiced at the sweetness. Strength from it came into me.