“The mijloc is not mine to give. Take it if you can, go elsewhere if you wish. Nothing changes.” The Indweller spoke through a janja gone smoky again. The wildness was flaring, weighed down a little by a compassion as cold as the stone they sat on.
“To the end, then,” he said.
“To the end.” She bent over the board and began setting her figures in place.
I. The Janja’s Player’s Move
Kingfisher
Hern woke disoriented; coming out of dreams not quite harrowing enough for nightmare. He reached out for Serroi, not wanting to wake her but needing to be sure she hadn’t evaporated as had his dream. His hand moved over cold sheets, a dented pillow. He jerked up, looked wildly around, the not-quite-fear of the not-quite-nightmare squeezing his gut.
She was curled up on the padded ledge of the window Coyote had melted through the stone for her comfort, moonlight and starlight soft on the russet hair that had a tarnished pewter sheen in the color-denying light. Relief washed over him, then anger at her for frightening him, then mockery at his dependence on her. He sat watching her, speculating about what it was that drove her night after night to stare out at stars that never saw the mijloc. What was she thinking of? He felt a second flash of anger because he thought he knew, then a painful helplessness because there was nothing he could do to spare her-or himself-that distress. Not so long ago he’d shared dreams with her and learned in deep nonverbal ways the painful convolutions of her relationship with Ser Noris. Love and hate, fear and pleasure-the Noris had branded himself deep in her soul. If he could have managed it, he’d have strangled the creature. Not a man, not in the many senses of that word. Creature.
He got out of the bed and went to her, touched her shoulder, drew his finger down along the side of her face. “Worried?”