Del sat back, putting distance between us. Astonishment had faded. Now she stared. Examined me. Evaluated. Comprehension crept into her eyes. "Tiger … we need to leave this place. We need to go."

"Oziri says—"

"I don't care what Oziri says!" She lowered her voice with a glance at the open doorflap. "We have to leave. Tomorrow, first thing."

"You're not ready to leave, bascha. You need to rest."

"You need to get away from here," she countered. "And I've rested enough. Trust me."

Oziri had said that. Trust me. "There are still things I have to do," I explained. "Things I need to learn. Oziri says—"

Del pronounced an expletive concerning Oziri that nearly made my ears roll up. With crisp efficiency she began to gather up her belongings. "We're going. Tomorrow."

"I'm not done learning what I need to know. I realize it's difficult for you to understand, but there are things about me that are—different. Things—"

"Yes! Different! Wrong. That's my whole point." Del stopped packing. She moved close, sat on her heels, reached up to trap my head in her hands. The heels cradled my temples. "Listen to me, Tiger. To me, not to the things Oziri has put in your head. Or to what you believe happened." Her eyes caught my own and held them. "You're right: I don't understand this dream-walking. But what I do know is that it's changing you. You spend most of each day inside your own head. You don't hear anything I say. You answer no questions. You don't even acknowledge I'm present. It's as though your body's here, but your mind is somewhere else. And what you've just told me, this conviction we sparred earlier today—you're confusing reality with what's in your mind. With the dreams. You have to stop."

"I have to learn how to control it, bascha."

Del leaned forward. Our foreheads met. Her skin was smooth, cool. "Let it go," she murmured. "Let it go, Tiger. It's Vashni magic."

"It's just another tool—"

"Magic," she repeated, "and you know how you hate magic."

"If I don't learn to control it, it will control me."

She released my head, ran one supple, callused hand through my hair, almost as if I were a muddled child in need of soothing. "It's controlling you now, Tiger. Every time you go inside yourself."

"It's just stillness," I told her. "It's like ioSkandic discipline. What happened to me atop the spire, in the Stone Forest …" I shrugged. "Well, you know."

Del's hands fell away. "I don't know what happened to you atop the spire," she said. "You've never told me."

My brows lifted. "You were there with me."

"No."

"Del, you were. I saw you. I dreamed you, and you came." And put the jivatma scar back into my abdomen, after Sahdri had lifted it.

The color ran out of her face. "No, Tiger. I was never in Meteiera. I never saw the Stone Forest. I stayed in Skandi until Prima Rhannet's ship sailed." Something flinched in her eyes. "We all thought you were dead."

"You were there, Del. I remember it clearly." So very clearly. I was naked. Alone. Bereft of everything I'd known of myself, whelped again atop the rock. Until she came. "You were there."

Del shook her head.

"You're forgetting things," I told her, beginning to worry. "What happened in Meteiera a few weeks ago, and the sparring match earlier today. Maybe if you talked with Oziri—"

"No." Her tone was certainty followed by puzzlement. "Tiger, we left Skandi months ago. Not weeks. And we sparred five days ago. Not since. Certainly not this morning."

I opened my mouth to refute the claim, but she sealed it closed with cool fingers.

"Listen to me." Her eyes searched mine. "Trust me."

I had trusted this woman with my life more times than I could count. I was troubled that she could be so terribly confused, but I nodded. I owed her that much.

"I need to go," she said. "I need to leave. Will you come with me:

"Why do you need to leave? You're safe here. You're the Oracle's sister. They'd never harm you."

"I need to leave," she repeated. "I promised Neesha we'd meet him."

It took me a moment to remember the kid. Then I frowned. "You don't owe him anything."

Her voice hardened. "I owe him my life, Tiger. And so do you."

"Maybe so, but—"

"It's time for me to leave," she said. "Will you come with me?"

"Del—"

"Please, Tiger. I need you."

The desire to refuse, to insist she stay with me, was strong. I felt its tug, its power. Leaned into it a moment, tempted. I owed a debt to the Vashni for tending her, and Oziri had much to teach me. But I owed a greater debt to the kid for keeping her alive so she could be tended.

She'd said she needed me. That was very unlike Del. Something serious was wrong with her.

With her. Not with me.

I nodded. "All right, bascha. We'll go."

Del averted her head abruptly and returned to packing. But not before I saw profound relief and the sheen of tears in her eyes.

THE STUD, for some reason, didn't want me near him. I found it decidedly odd; he can be full of himself and recalcitrant, but not generally difficult to catch and bridle. When I finally did manage both, I noted the rolling eye and pinned ears. He quivered from tension, from something akin to fear, until Del came out to saddle the gelding. Then he quieted.

"He knows, too," she said.

I tossed blankets up on the stud's back. "Knows what?"

"That things are not right."

I had no time for oblique comments and obscure conversations. I had agreed to go, but I regretted it. "Things are what they are."

"For now," she murmured, and turned her full attention to the gelding.

Annoyed, I did the same with the stud. We finished preparations in stiff, icy silence.

It wasn't until Del and I had made our carefully courteous farewells to the chieftain and actually mounted our horses that Oziri appeared. I heard Del's hissed inhalation and murmured curse as she saw him walking toward us. I reined in the stud and waited. I could feel Del's tension. It was a tangible thing even across the distance between the two horses.

I had seen and heard him laugh. He was a man like any other, given perhaps to more dignity because of his rank but equally prone to expressing his opinion in dry commentary. But as he approached, I saw he wore no smile. His eyes, lighter than most Vashni's, were fastened on Del.

Yet when he arrived at my stirrup, the sternness vanished. "So, you have learned all there is to know about dream-walking. I am amazed; it takes most men tens of years to do so."

I tilted my head in Del's direction. "This is for her. There's an errand we must do. A matter of a debt."

Irony. "Ah. Of course. All debts must be paid."

The stud shifted restlessly, bobbing his head. He watched Oziri sidelong, pinning his ears, then flicking them at the sound of my voice.

"It's easier for me now," I told Oziri. "As you said, the herbs aren't necessary. It's just a matter of discipline and stillness." I shrugged off-handedly. "There's much left to learn—but it's a beginning."

"Beginnings," Oziri said, "may be dangerous."

I laughed. "More so than endings?"

The Vashni didn't smile. He reached to his neck, lifted a bone necklet over his head, and offered it. "This will guide you," he told me. "Wear it in honor."

On horseback I was too tall, even bending, for him to slip it over my head. So I took the necklet into my hands, noticed the meticulously patterned windings of the wire holding the necklet together, and put it over my head. Human bones rattled against sandtiger claws.

I opened my mouth to thank him but was distracted when Del's white gelding, painted and tasseled, sidestepped into me. The toe of her sandal collided with my shin bone. When I glanced at her, annoyed, she had the grace to apologize. But her eyes were not so abashed, and they were very watchful. Almost as if she'd done it purposely.