"Let any other speak who will; I have done," I said. "I am heartsick with my beloved's pain, and weary with this day. I shall be in my chambers hard by if any should require speech of me. I will rejoin you at midday."

I stepped off the platform and found a way made for me.

I could not tell if it was an honour or if they simply did not want to touch me, nor did I care. I was hungry and thirsty and I needed to know how Lanen fared, and to talk with Shikrar.

I woke in a bed, warm and comfortable. The last thing I remembered was searing pain as the Healer took my hands in his. I could feel my hands and arms now only as swollen lumps lying outside the bedclothes, and blessed the Healer for it. I opened my eyes slowly and saw that I was alone save for Rella, who snored in a chair against the wall near the fireplace. There was a bright blaze, and I was warmer than I had been for days.

Fireplace?

Wall? In the camp?

"Rella? Where am I?" I creaked.

Rella opened a red-rimmed eye and said, "In Marik's second cabin, where his guards slept until now. Thanks to you I got to spend the night in a chair and my back is killing me. How are you feeling?"

"Terrible," I murmured. "But better than I was. My arms and my hands don't hurt at all." I could see them now, wrapped carefully in bandages. I lifted my left arm and tried moving a finger. It didn't go very far, but it didn't hurt either. From the shoulder down I was, for the most part, blessedly numb. ''What hour of the day or night is it?''

"It lacks but a scant hour of dawn, and you'll oblige me by putting your hands back down and keeping still," said Rella. ''The Healer said leave them be for the rest of the day, you're not to move 'em or touch anything. They still glowed bright blue when he bandaged 'em, my girl, I'd do as he says."

I gingerly tried to bend my right arm a little at the elbow. There was no pain. "That must be some Healer Marik's got," I said in awe. Our village Healer had been nothing special, able to speed healing a little, cure small aches and pains. This man had healed my arms and hands almost completely—I shuddered again at the memory of great lumps of skin in sea-water—and I knew that, beyond even the burns, he had saved my life.

I had little memory of the night before until Rella told me of our arrival in camp, but I vaguely remembered when the Healer was just beginning to work (when Akor bespoke me), and the fact that even when he had taken the pain from my bums, I could not stop shaking. I was roasting and freezing by turns, I could barely breathe, and I had started coughing horribly.

Now, only a few hours later, I felt as though I had the remains of a cold, and that on the mend.

"Aye, 'twas his own personal Healer. Third rank he is, and aiming for fourth already, but there's no airs about him. He's a good lad, gentle-spoken as you could wish, though he's so powerful so young."

I summoned the strength to smile at her. "How do you know he was third rank?"

"Asked him, didn't I? For now, though, my girl, Marik's left me in charge of you. He said I was to call him when you woke, but first—" She went to the table and brought over a small bowl. "—you've to eat this."

Even in my weakened state, I had enough strength to doubt. It was too strange seeing Rella here in what must be my prison. "You first," I muttered, trying to make it seem a jest.

Rella grinned. "Well, better late than never," she said. "Dear Lady knows I could use this after last night." She speared a piece of the orange flesh with her knife and ate it with obvious relish. ''And so I become the first of my family ever to dine on lan fruit," she said, and shivered. "Blessed Shia, that's wonderful! But I reckon you could use it more than me."

I have never tasted anything in my life so glorious. Imagine the sweetest peach, the tartest pear, the lushest berry you have ever tasted, and combine with them a rush of strength to a wounded body. I could feel the virtue of the fruit as it flowed down my arms, healing, renewing. She fed me a quarter of the fruit—she told me I had had the first quarter the night before, I mourned not tasting it—then, looking at the rest as it lay in the bowl, said quite calmly, "Hmm. Seems to be going brown at the edges. You'd better finish it before it spoils. I'll help you if it's too much."

She barely had two more tiny pieces for herself. And where a quarter, for all its vigor, had restored some of my lost strength and started the blood moving around my slowly healing injuries, the added half Rella stole for me danced wildly through my arms to my very fingers' ends. I could feel the knitting of skin and muscle beneath the bandages even as I ate.

For all that, it did not really satisfy hunger. I found, as health and strength flowed back into my body, that I was ravenous. I counted back and discovered I hadn't eaten in two days. Rella had prepared a stew with roots and dried meat, assuming I'd need food, bless her, but even she was surprised by the amount I put away. She would not let me feed myself, but insisted that I leave on the bandages and let her feed me.

Between the first and second bowls of stew I took the chance to ask her something that had been nagging at me.

"Rella, why are you being so kind to me? You're the only soul I've seen here who cares whether another human being lives or dies. Please don't think me ungrateful, but why?"

She stared at me for a minute, and somehow I was made more aware than usual of her crooked stance. "Child, I told you, I have come to this place to make my fortune, and with what I have gathered already my old age will be spent in ease. I have had a hard enough life thus far, and I have seen every kind of rogue there is over the years, and there are more than a few of them on this voyage. You were like a breath of clear air on that ship. I remember you

asked my name, you brought me soup one night when I was tired so I needn't stir. You probably don't even remember, kindness is natural to you as breathing, but I do." She stared into the bowl she carried and her voice dropped. "Besides, I had a daughter once. She'd have been about your age." When she looked back at me her eyes were alight with a dancing admiration. "And I hope she might have been something like you, too, brave as brass and tell

'em all where to go." She grinned. "There's even rumours Marik tried it on with you and you knocked him silly! He spent a while closeted away with his Healer, but not afore some'd seen his bruises. That was well done."

She started feeding me again, but for some reason simply looking at me seemed to catch her just so and she started laughing. "Ah, girl, never mind me—but dear Goddess, will I ever forget the sight of you, half dead and carried here by a Dragon! Or the look on Marik's face, or the squeak he made when that Dragon told him to do well by you or he'd know of it! Marik would've killed the two of you for a pin if he could have, but he had to put a bold face on it.

Ah, dear girl, you've made this a voyage to remember!" I had never heard her laugh before. It sounded a bit rusty, but it was a good laugh.

"Besides," she added, calming down, "you'll find there's another interested in your well-being now, even if his life didn't depend on it. It's not your kind soul has got you inside the only real walls on this forsaken island and a night in a real bed treated by his own Healer! Nay, there's a price owing to Marik; and make no mistake, Merchants collect on then-debts."

I was instantly sober. In my pain I had forgotten just what Marik thought he was owed. And now here I was, in his power again, even in his debt. Why had he healed me, when surely he and his pet Caderan could have simply offered me to the demons? My heart sank. Of course. I was to be handed over to the Rakshasa whole. In any practice, sacrifices are better received if they are perfect before they are killed.