could, and Adrah lit them while Idaan pulled the thin silks from under

her robes. The richest dyes in the world had given these their colorone

blue, the other red. Idaan hung the blue over the window's frame, and

then peered out, squinting into the night for the signal. And there,

perhaps half a hand from the top of the tower, shone the answering

light. Idaan turned away.

With all the light gathered at the window, the rooms were cast into

darkness. Adrah had pulled a hooded cloak over his robes. Idaan

remembered again the feeling of hanging over the void, feeling the wind

tugging at her. This wasn't so different, except that the prospect of

her own death had seemed somehow cleaner.

"He would want it," Idaan said. "If he knew that we'd planned this, he

would allow it. You know that."

"Yes, Idaan-kya. I know."

"To live so weak. It disgraces him. It makes him seem less before the

court. It's not a fit ending for a Khai."

Adrah drew a thin, blackened blade. It looked no wider than a finger,

and not much longer. Adrah sighed and squared his shoulders. Idaan felt

her stomach rise to her throat.

"I want to go with you," she said.

"We discussed this, Idaan-kya. You stay in case someone comes. You have

to convince them that I'm still in here with you."

"They won't come. They've no reason to. And he's my father."

"More reason that you should stay."

Idaan moved to him, touching his arm like a beggar asking alms. She felt

herself shaking and loathed the weakness, but she could not stop it.

Adrah's eyes were as still and empty as pebbles. She remembered Danat,

how he had looked when he arrived from the south. She had thought he was

ill, but it had been this. He had become a killer, a murderer of the

people he had once respected and loved. That he still respected and

loved. Adrah had those eyes now, the look of near-nausea. He smiled, and

she saw the determination. There were no words that would stop him now.

The stone had been dropped, and not all the wishing in the world could

call it back into her hand.

"I love you, Idaan-kya," Adrah said, his voice as cool as a gravestone.

"I have always loved you. From the first time I kissed you. Even when

you have hurt me, and you have hurt me worse than anyone alive, I have

only ever loved you."

He was lying. He was saying it as she'd said that her father would

welcome death, because he needed it to be true. And she found that she

needed that as well. She stepped back and took a pose of gratitude.

Adrah walked to the door, turned, nodded to her, and was gone. Idaan sat

in the darkness and looked at nothing, her arms wrapped around herself.

The night seemed unreal: absurd and undeniable at the same time, a

terrible dream from which she might wake to find herself whole again.

The weight of it was like a hand pressing down on her head.

There was time. She could call for armsmen. She could call for Danat.

She could go and stop the blade with her own body. She sat silent,

trying not to breathe. She remembered the ceremony of her tenth summer,

the year after her mother's death. Her father had taken her to sit at

his side during all that day's ritual. She had hated it, bored by the

petitions and formality until tears ran down her cheeks. She re membered

a meal with a representative from some Westlands warden where her father

had forced her to sit on a hard wooden chair and swallow a cold bean

soup that made her gag rather than seem ungracious to the Westlander for

his food.

She fought to remember a smile, an embrace. She wanted a moment in the

long years of her childhood to which she could point and say here is how

I know he loved me. The blue silk stirred in the breeze. The lantern

flames flickered, dimmed, and rose again. It must have happened. For him

to be so desperate for her happiness now, there must have been some

sign, some indication.

She found herself rocking rapidly back and forth. When a sound came from

the door, she jumped up, panicked, looking around for some excuse to

explain Adrah's absence. When he himself came in, she could see in his

eyes that it was over.

Adrah pulled off the cloak, letting it pool around his ankles. His

bright robes seemed incongruous as a butterfly in a butcher's shop. His

face was stone.

"You've done it," Idaan said, and two full breaths later, he nodded.

Something as much release as despair sank into her. She could feel her

body made heavy by it.

She walked to him, pulled the blade and its soft black leather sheath

from his belt, and let them drop to the floor. Adrah didn't try to stop her.

"Nothing we ever do will be so bad as this," she said. "This now is the

worst it will ever be. Everything will be better than this."

"He never woke," Adrah said. "The drugs that let him sleep ... He never

woke."

"That's good."

A slow, mad grin bloomed on his face, stretching until the blood left

his lips. There was a hardness in his eyes and a heat. It looked like

fury or possession. He took her shoulders in his hands and pulled her

near him. Their kiss was a gentle violence. For a moment, she thought he

meant to open her robes, to drag her back to the bed in a sad parody of

what they were expected to be doing. She pressed a palm to his sex and

was surprised to find that he was not aroused. Slowly, with perfect

control and a grip that bruised her, Adrah brought her away from him.

"I did this thing for you," he said. "I did this for you. Do you

understand that?"

"I do."

"Never ask me for anything again," he said and released her, turning

away. "From now until you die, you are in debt to me, and I owe you

nothing."

"For the favor of killing my father?" she asked, unable to keep the edge

from her voice.

"For what I have sacrificed to you," he said without looking back. Idaan

felt her face flush, her hands ball into fists. She heard him groan from

the next room, heard his robes shushing against the stone floor. The bed

creaked.

A lifetime, married to him. There wouldn't be a moment in the years that

followed that would not be poisoned. He would never forgive her, and she

would never fail to hate him. They would go to their graves, each with

teeth sunk in the other's neck.

They were perfect for each other.

Idaan walked silently to the window, took down the blue silk and put up

the red.

THE ARMSMEN GAVE HIM ENOUGH WATER TO LIVE, THOUGH NOT SO MUCH AS to