When she didn't answer, Richard pushed the rest of his dinner before her. "I don't want your meaningless sacrifice."

She stared at the bowl of millet for an eternity.

Richard felt sorry for her, for what she couldn't understand as she stared at the bowl. He thought about what would happen to Kahlan if Nicci were to fall sick from not getting enough to eat.

"Eat, Nicci," he said softly.

She finally picked up her spoon and did as he said.

When she had finished, she looked up with those blue eyes that seemed so eager for the sight of something he could not make her see. She slid the empty bowl to the center of the table.

"Thank you, Richard, for the meal."

"Why thank me? I am a selfless slave, expected to sacrifice for any worthless person who presents their need to me."

He strode to the door. With his hand on the loose knob, he turned back.

"I have to go, or I will lose my work."

Her big blue eyes were brimming with tears as she nodded.

Richard made the first trip from the foundry through the dark streets to Victor's shop carrying five bars. From windows along the way, a few people blinked out at the man lugging a load past. They blinked without comprehension at the meaning of what he was doing. He was working for nothing but his own benefit.

Bent under the weight, Richard kept telling himself that carrying five bars each time would make it only ten trips, and the less trips, the better.

He carried five the second trip, and the third. By the fourth time he returned to the foundry, he decided that he would have to make an extra trip in order to give himself a break and only carry four bars for a few of the trips. He lost track of how many times he went back and forth throughout the empty night. The next to last time, he struggled to lift but two bars. That left three. He forced himself to carry all three the last time, trading the extra effort for the lesser distance.

He got the last three bars to Victor's place before dawn. His shoulders were bruised and painful. He had to walk all the way to his job at Ishaq's place, so he couldn't wait for Victor to arrive to complete his payment of the last quarter gold mark.

The day of work was a break from the night of exhausting lugging of iron bars. Jori didn't talk unless spoken to, so Richard lay in the wagon bed with a load of charcoal and snatched a few minutes of sleep here and there as the wagon bounced along. He only felt relieved that he had done as he had promised.

-]--

As he returned home after an interminable day, Richard looked up and saw Kamil and Nabbi standing at the head of the stairs. They both had on shirts.

"We've been waiting for you to come home and finish the job," Kamil said.

Richard swayed on his feet. "What job?"

"The stairs."

"We did that last night."

"You did only the stairs in the front. You said you intended to fix the stairs. The front is only part of the stairs. The back stairs are twice as long and in worse shape than the front were. You don't want your wife and the other women of the building to fall and break their necks when they go out back to the cooking hearth or the privy, do you?"

This was their idea of a little test. Richard knew he would lose an opportunity if he put them off. He was so tired he couldn't think straight.

Nicci stuck her head out the front door. "I thought I heard your voice.

Come in to dinner. I have soup waiting on you."

"Got any tea?"

Nicci cast a sidelong glance at the two in shirts. "I can make tea.

Come on, and I'll get it while you have your soup."

"Please bring it out to the back," Richard said. "I promised to fix the stairs."

"Now?"

"There are still a couple hours of light. I can eat while we're working."

Kamil and Nabbi asked more questions than the evening before. The third youth, Gadi, passed by occasionally as Richard and the other two worked.

Gadi, without his shirt, made a point of looking Nicci up and down when she brought Richard his soup and tea.

When Richard had finally finished, he went to the room that had once been Ishaq's parlor, and was now his and Nicci's home. He took off his shirt and splashed water on his face from the washbasin. His head was throbbing.

"Wash your hair," Nicci said. "You're filthy. I don't want lice in here."

Rather than argue that he had no lice, Richard dipped his face in the water and scrubbed his head with the cake of coarse soap. It was easier than talking her out of it so he could go to sleep. Nicci hated lice.

He was thankful, he supposed, that she was at least a clean wife in their fraudulent arrangement. She kept the room, bedding, and his clothes clean, despite the difficulty of hauling water from the well down the street. She never objected to any work necessary to simulate the lives of normal people.

She seemed to want something so badly that she often lost herself in the role to the extent that while he never forgot she was a Sister of the Dark and his captor, she occasionally did. He dunked his head again, swishing his hair, rinsing out the soap.

As a stream of water ran off his chin and back into the basin, he asked, "Who is Brother Narev?"

Nicci, sitting on her pallet sewing, paused and looked up. Her sewing suddenly looked out of place, as if her parody of domestic life lost its aura for her.

"Why do you ask?"

"I met him yesterday, out at the blacksmith's."

"Out at the site of the project?"

Richard nodded. "I had to deliver iron out there."

She bent back to her needlework. Richard watched in the light of the linseed-oil lamp sitting beside her as she took a few more stitches in the patch to the knees of a pair of his pants. She finally paused and let her arms, one sheathed in his pant leg, sink to her lap.

"Brother Narev is the high priest of the Fellowship of Order-an ancient sect devoted to doing the Creator's will in this world. He is the heart and soul of the Order-their moral guide-so to speak. He and his disciples lead the righteous people of the Order in the ways of the everlasting Light of the Creator. He is an advisor to Emperor Jagang."

Richard was taken aback. He hadn't expected her to be so versed on the subject. His caution, along with the hair at the back of his neck, lifted.

"What sort of advisor?"

She took another stitch, pulling the long thread through. "Brother Narev was Jagang's pedagogue-his teacher, advisor, and mentor. Brother Narev put the fire in Jagang's belly."

"He's a wizard, isn't he." It was more statement than question.

She looked up from her sewing. He could see in her blue eyes that she was weighing whether or not to tell him, or perhaps how much she wanted to tell him. His steady gaze told her that he was expecting the whole truth.

"In the language of the street, you could describe him as such."

"What does that mean?"

"Common people, those who understand little about magic, would describe him as a wizard. Strictly speaking, though, he is not a wizard."

"Then what is he? Strictly speaking."

"Actually, he is a sorcerer."

Richard could only stare at her. He had always assumed that a wizard and a sorcerer were the same thing. When he thought about it, he realized that people who knew about magic spoke exclusively of a male with the gift as a wizard. He had never heard any of those people mention a sorcerer.

"You mean he's like you, like a sorceress, only male?"

The question stymied her for a moment. "I suppose you could think of it that way, but that's not really right. If you want to compare it, then you would have to say he has more in common with a wizard, since both are male.

The concept of sorceress introduces irrelevant issues."

Richard swiped water from his face. "Please, Nicci, I've been up all last night working, and I'm dead on my feet. Don't go all abstract and complex on me? Just tell me what it means?"