"They could die tomorrow too," Dirk said uncertainly. "And I'm responsible for that. Now you say I should desert them."

Gwen stepped very close to him and lifted her hands. Her fingers lightly grazed his cheeks as she brushed gray-brown hair back from his forehead, and the wide green eyes stared into his. Suddenly he remembered other promises: the whisperjewel, the whisperjewel. And times long gone came flashing back, and the world spun, and right and wrong began to melt and run together.

"Dirk, listen to me," Gwen said slowly. "Jaan has been in six duels because of me. Garse, who doesn't even love me, has shared four of those. They've killed for me, for my pride, my honor. I didn't ask it, no more than you asked for their protection. It was their conception of my honor, not my own. But still, those duels were for me as much as this one is for you. Despite that, you asked me to leave them, to return to you, to love you again."

"Yes," Dirk said. "But– I don't know. I've left a trail of broken promises." His voice was anguished. "Jaan named me keth."

Ruark snorted. "If he named you dinner, you would jump into the oven, eh?"

Gwen just shook her head sadly. "You feel what? A duty? An obligation?"

"I guess," he said reluctantly.

"Then you've answered yourself, Dirk. You've told me what my answer to you must be. If you feel so strongly that you have to fulfill the duties of a shortterm keth, a bond that doesn't even have any reality on High Kavalaan, how can you ask me to discard the jade-and-silver? Betheyn means more than keth."

Her soft hands left his face. She stepped back.

Dirk's hand shot out and caught her by the wrist. The left wrist. His grip closed around cold metal and polished jade. "No," he said.

Gwen said nothing. She waited.

For Dirk, Ruark was forgotten, the workroom had faded to darkness. There was only Gwen, staring at him, eyes green and wide and full of-what? Promises? Threats? Lost dreams? She waited, all silent, and he fumbled over his words, never knowing what he would say next. And the jade-and-silver was cool in his hand, and he was remembering:

Red teardrops full of love, wrapped in silver and velvet, burning fiercely cold.

Jaan's face: high cheekbones, the clean square jaw, the receding black hair, and the easy smile. His voice, quiet as steel, always even: But I do exist.

The white ghost towers of Kryne Lamiya, wailing, mocking, singing bright despair while a distant drum sounded its low, meaningless booms. In the middle of it all, defiance, resolution. Briefly he had known what to say.

The face of Garse Janacek: distant (the eyes blue smoke, the head held stiffly, the mouth set), hostile (ice in his sockets, a savage smile at play behind his beard), full of bitter humor (his eyes snapping, his teeth bared in death's own grin).

Bretan Braith Lantry: a tic and a glowstone eye, a figure of fear and pity with a cold and frightening kiss.

Red wine in obsidian goblets, vapors that stung the eye, drinking in a room full of cinnamon and a strange fellowship.

Words. A new and special kind of holdfast-brother, Jaan said.

Words. He will be false, Garse promised.

Gwen's face, a younger Gwen, slimmer, with eyes somehow wider. Gwen laughing. Gwen crying. Gwen in orgasm. Holding him, her breasts flushed and red, the blush spreading over her body. Gwen whispering to him, Ilove you, I love you. Jenny!

A solitary black shadow, poling a low barge down an endless dark canal.

Remembering.

His hand trembled where it gripped her. "If I do not duel," he said, "you will leave Jaan, then? And come with me?"

Her answering nod was painfully slow. "Yes. I thought of it all day, talked about it with Arkin. We had planned it so he would bring you up here, and I'd tell Jaan and Garse that I had to work."

Dirk unfolded his legs from beneath him, and they tingled to the jabs of a hundred tiny knives as the sleep and the stiffness ran out of them. He stood up, and he was decided. "You were going to do this anyway, then? It's not just because of the duel?"

She shook her head.

"Then I'll go. How soon can we leave Worlorn?"

"Two weeks and three days," Ruark said. "No ship till then."

"We'll have to hide," Gwen said. "All things considered, it's the only safe course. I wasn't sure this afternoon whether I should tell Jaan my decision or simply leave. I thought maybe we would talk, then go up together to face him. But the duel business settles it. You would not be allowed to leave now."

Ruark climbed down off his stool. "Go, then," he said. "I'll stay, keep watch, you can call and I tell you what happens. Safe enough for me, unless Garsey and Jaantony lose their duel. Then I'd come quick, run and join you, eh?"

Dirk took Gwen's hands. "I love you," he said. "Still. I do."

She smiled gravely. "Yes. I'm glad, Dirk. Maybe it will work again. But we have to move fast, lose ourselves thoroughly. From now on, all Kavalars are poison to us."

"All right," he said. "Where?"

"Go down and get your things, you'll need warm clothing. Then meet me up on the roof. We'll take the aircar and decide after we're on our way."

Dirk nodded and kissed her quickly.

They were airborne over the dark rivers and rolling hills of the Common when the first blush of dawn touched the sky, a crimson glow low in the east. Soon the first yellow sun rose, and the darkness below turned to a gray morning mist that was fast dissolving. The manta aircar was open, as ever, and Gwen had pushed its speed to maximum, so the chill wind rushed about loudly, making it impossible to talk. While she flew, Dirk slept by her side, huddled up in a patchwork brown greatcoat that Ruark had given him before they left.

She woke him when the shining spear of Challenge came into sight ahead of them, by pushing gently against his shoulder. He had been sleeping lightly, uneasily. At once he straightened and yawned. "We're there," he said, unnecessarily.

Gwen did not answer. The manta slackened in speed as the Emereli city grew larger and nearer.

Dirk looked off toward the dawn. "Two suns are up," he said, "and look, you can almost see Fat Satan. I guess they know we've gone." He thought of Vikary and Janacek, waiting for him at the death-square, chalked on the street, waiting with the Braiths. Bretan would have paced impatiently, no doubt, and then made his odd noise. His eye would be drained and cold in the morning, a dead ember in his scarred face. Maybe he was dead as well by now, or Jaan, or Garse Janacek. Briefly Dirk flushed with shame. He moved closer to Gwen and put an arm around her.

Challenge swelled before them. Gwen took the air-car up in a sharp ascent through a bank of wispy white clouds. The black maw of a landing deck lit at their approach and Dirk saw the numbers as Gwen took them in. The 520th level, an airlot vast and immaculate and deserted.

"Welcome," a familiar tone said as the manta hovered and sank to the floor plates. "I am the Voice of Challenge. May I entertain you?"

Gwen killed the aircar's power and climbed out over the wing. "We want to become temporary residents."

"The charge is quite reasonable," the Voice said.

"Take us to a compartment then."

A wall opened, and another of the balloon-tired cars rolled out to meet them. In everything except color, it was twin to the one that had carried them during their last visit. Gwen got in, and Dirk began to load the vehicle with the luggage from the back seat of the aircar: a sensor pack that Gwen had brought along, three bags jammed with clothing, a package of field supplies for jaunts into the wild. The two sky-scoots, complete with flight boots, were on the bottom of the pile, but Dirk left them in the aircar.