Chapter Four
AMARTA'S STOMACH seemed to heave with the motion of the ship. Up, down. Forward, back.
She pushed herself through the narrow, tilting passage up onto the open deck, where she lurched for the railing and gripped hard. She drew full breaths, focusing on the crisp blue line of the landless horizon, the only thing not moving.
She regretted leaving the cabin and the interesting conversation that was forming between Tayre and Olessio. She had stayed until the moment vision and her stomach told her that she was about to vomit on the floor between where the two men sat, possibly right on the dice Olessio had just set down.
"A simple game," Olessio had said, picking up the dice.
"Stakes?" asked Tayre.
"Let's play for..." Olessio rattled the dice in his palm. "Histories."
Tadesh lifted a head from where she was, curled on one of the three bunks lining the walls of the small room.
"Stories with a—how to say it?" Olessio asked. "A hard bite of truth to them. Your histories. Perhaps even mine."
Amarta could not wait. She lurched for the door. "Need some air," she managed.
Here on the deck, the boat in constant motion in all directions, she prayed to whatever spirits might care that this dizzy wretchedness pass quickly.
"Hoi!"
A thickly built woman with light brown skin stood on the deck, not holding onto anything, as easily as if she were on solid ground. She stepped toward Amarta, holding out a long, thin roll.
"No, thank you," Amarta said reflectively. Whatever it might be—jerked beef, hardtack, dried seaweed, some kind of intoxicant—her stomach roiled at the mere thought.
For a flash, she recalled another ship, another woman, another offering. Amarta felt the pang of loss of all those she had left behind. Maris. Dirina and Pas. So many others.
"Helps with the pain," the woman said over the wind, her accent a heavy Zaneke one.
Hope poked through Amarta's haze of agony and she scanned the myriad of moments going forward, selecting the trails in which she put the sticky wad into her mouth.
Relief.
"Yes, thank you." Amarta said quickly, reaching forward toward the woman without letting go of the railing.
The woman laughed a little, but not unkindly, and closed the distance to give Amarta the roll, then a mock salute as she turned and strolled off. Amarta watched her graceful retreat with a mix of envy and gratitude, as the spicy-sweet, gingery something filled her mouth and began to settle her stomach.
The nausea receded at last and she hastened back to the cabin. Olessio had been right: the horses would not have liked this at all.
Tadesh lifted her head as Amarta entered, then stretched, showing off her underbelly of pale spots. She yawned and reclined again. Amarta sat next to her. She stroked her gently and was rewarded with a tiny, chuffing sound that she could feel through the furred chest.
Both men shook their own die, then clattered them across the floor. Tayre's was higher, and he tapped the floor softly.
"Why do you travel alone, Farliosan?" Tayre asked.
"Tadesh is easily made jealous."
"A bite of truth, you said."
Olessio tilted his head. "I find most people a tad annoying and generally avoid them. Present company excepted, of course."
Tayre smiled in a way that made it clear that he didn't believe him. They both rolled again.
Olessio tapped, grinning. "How did you learn to fight so well? Knives and clubs against you in that alleyway, but you barely broke a sweat."
Amarta learned forward, also curious.
"Diligent study," Tayre replied.
"What? You call that an answer?"
"Can three play?" Amarta asked.
Olessio looked at her sideways as he shook his die in a loose fist. "My dear, I think you may have an unfair edge."
"I wouldn't use it."
"Just so," Olessio responded, agreeing. "And yet. Surely you understand my hesitation?"
Amarta gave him an incredulous look, recalling the trouble she had taken to prove her ability to him, only to now earn a greater suspicion. Must she always choose between telling people what she was and having them trust her?
She was tempted to tell him how fickle dice were, how easily influenced by the twitch of a hand, or the rocking of the floor below, that to predict one here and now would be true work.
Would it do any good to explain that her stomach, sour as it was, made foreseeing the outcome of a rolling cube of bone the last thing she wanted to do?
She met Tayre's look. "And you?" she asked, struggling to keep bitterness from her tone. "Do you also hesitate?"
Tayre shook his head. "I have different priorities than he does."
The contract, he meant. Her contract. A sudden wash of gratitude toward him came over her. Whatever game he was playing, it was not as simple as dice and answers, and he was not afraid to say so.
Olessio looked between them, back and forth, like a dog sniffing a trail.
Well, she thought irritably, if the Farliosan wanted a truth that could bite as hard as the past that she and Tayre shared, let him track it himself. She gestured for them to continue.
Another roll. Olessio won, but only by a point.
"Ha!" Olessio cried, tapping the floor. He turned his mismatched eyes on each of them. "What's between you two?"
"Years and miles," Tayre said.
"'Years and miles?' What kind of answer is that?"
"All you'll get for that roll."
Olessio scowled lightly, rolled again. Tayre followed. Olessio tapped.
"Where were you before Senta?"
"Shentaret Mountains," Tayre answered, describing, in two words, a mountain range that was hundreds of miles long.
With such meager answers, Amarta thought, this could be a long game. Well, they had little else to do during the crossing.
She considered the long night she'd spent at the Sun and Moon, earning the money that now sped them on their way. She thought of the cards, the coins, the people. The conversation.
Opulent outfits. Glittering jewels. Subtle and overt manipulations. Games within games.
Perhaps everything between people was like a deck of Rochi cards in a messy pile, all facing every direction—a collection of overlapping meanings. She wondered what Tayre, such a good judge of people, was reading in Olessio now.
And Olessio, traveling by himself but for the odd Tadesh—what was his story?
Tayre tapped, winning the roll by many points. "Same question, Farliosan, but I want three prior locations."
"Pah." Olessio glared at the dice, then sighed. "Erakat. Munasee. Kelerre."
Amarta envisioned the map. Major cities, those, and the ordering described a path of travel that led south.
"Why did you skip Garaya?" Tayre asked.
A short shrug. "A confused city. Can't seem to make up its mind if it wants independence from Arunkel, Perripur, or itself. Not worth my precious neck to find out."
Another roll. Tayre tapped. "How did you lose your pony?"
A flicker of surprise passed over Olessio's face, then vanished in a studied curiosity.
"What pony?"
"The one that previously pulled your cart."
Olessio cocked his head. "I pull it myself."
"You haven't always."
Olessio blinked. "Maybe it was a donkey. Or a mule. A llama."
"A pony."
"You can't know that." Then, at Tayre's implacable expression, "How can you know that?"
Tayre gave a small smile.
"He's like that," Amarta said, enjoying Olessio's discomfort.
Olessio scowled, then made an amenable, amused sound, and leaned back against the bunk.
"A tragic tale. More a farce. Some fifty miles short of Senta, my pony diligently attempted to drink a watering hole dry. His greedy little eye stuck on a tiny island at the center where a patch of seductive green grew. Making an attempt for it, he twisted his leg. I managed to pull him out of the muck, which took me long enough to curse his ancestors many generations back.
"We both limped to a nearby village. By then he'd managed to convince me he was quite lame, though I still think he was faking it, cunning little twit. Finding myself tight on funds, I had to make the hard choice between getting to Senta to stake my bit of show-dirt or waiting him out." Olessio gave a wry smile. "Sold him to a gentle drayer and half my possessions—at a stunning loss, I'm ashamed to say—to lighten the wagon, determining that it would polish my fine character to pull it myself."
"Did it?" Amarta asked curiously.
He looked at her, mock-surprised, and made a flourish at himself. "Well, yes. Obviously." Then, with a wide-eyed innocence mixed with self-effacing humor: "Do I not shine and sparkle?"
Amarta laughed in spite of herself.
They two men rolled again. Tayre tapped. "Where is home, Farliosan?"
Olessio threw his hands wide. "How is it that you keep winning?"
"My die shows higher numbers than yours," Tayre said with a straight face.
Olessio's eyes narrowed. "I think you're cheating."
"With your dice?" Tayre's eyebrows raised. "A good trick, that. Where?"
"Everywhere. Nowhere."
"The Lady's Bowl, perhaps?" Tayre asked.
"No," Olessio said quickly, then scowled, realizing that his answer revealed something. "Never heard of it."
"Where is that?" Amarta asked Tayre.
"East of the Rift," Tayre said. "And he's been there. You've come a long way to perform tricks for strangers you don't like, Vagras. Tell us about your family."
Vagras. Amarta looked at Olessio to see if he'd be offended at the rude term, but no—he only grinned. "Not for that roll, Guard-dog."
"There's an east to the Rift?" she asked.
"There certainly is," Olessio said, with a spark of pride.
Another roll. Olessio tapped. "Where are your people, Guard-dog?" he asked Tayre.
Tayre had people? Family? She stared at him, trying to see him as Olessio must, beyond the tiny streaks of white color he applied to his hair and beard, the subtle lines on his face that he touched up regularly to make himself look older.
"Dead," Tayre answered flatly.
"Not all of them, surely?" Olessio asked, his voice quiet.
Tayre didn't answer, but shook his dice. They both rolled. Olessio snorted in disbelief.
"Do you see that?" This to Amarta. "Gets his way rather a lot of the time, if I'm not mistaken, does he?"
"He does," Amarta agreed, amused, watching Tayre.
He turned a look on her. "Have you been keeping score?"
"What? No."
"Our wins are just about even, though he's implying that they're not. Why do you suppose he's doing that?"
Amarta turned her attention to Olessio.
"I'm losing," he said with affronted dignity. "Obviously."
"To make us more sympathetic to him?" Amarta suggested.
Tayre gave a short nod. "Perhaps. Perhaps to seem on your side in particular, against possible future need, gathering that I am not as easily swayed."
"I can hear you just fine, you know," Olessio said, looking uncomfortable. A moment of silence later, Olessio took a deep breath. "Yes, you're right. Habit, I'm afraid, my friends. I'm not used to such clever company."
"I forgive you," Amarta said.
"Gracious of you, my dear."
Amarta met Tayre's look. In that moment she realized that he had broken the game he was playing with Olessio. To show her another layer of the game? Or was there another layer to his game as well?
One thing was coming clear: it was seductive to become so engaged in one level of a game that you forgot to look for the others. Games within games.
Tayre held out his hand toward her, palm up, offering her his die. At this, Olessio raised a bushy eyebrow.
Amarta took the die.
"When you asked me what I was," she said to Olessio, "I didn't just answer you. I showed you, again and again, until you were convinced." Amarta looked at Tadesh, who yawned and made a small noise as she showed a pink tongue. Amarta met Olessio's gaze. "I think I have already given you a story with a bite of truth as sharp as any you could roll for this entire crossing. I asked nothing in return."
Olessio inhaled, his gold-green eye intently upon her. He nodded slowly, his smile warm. "You are quite right, Amarta, and there is no need to roll further. What question may I answer for you?"
She blinked, surprised at his sudden and unexpected concession. Tadesh lifted her head enough to groom a paw.
"Tadesh. How is it that you come to travel with her?"
"Ah!" His eyes widened in delight. "A tale of danger and daring!" He smiled at Tadesh fondly and reached out to stroke her head. "I was traveling a stretch of badlands when I happened upon the remains of some unfortunate outpost. Ruins. Huge stones. Scrub and vines snaked through the rock, grass clawing from between cracks. As I began to pass, I heard a mewling."
Olessio traced the stripes on Tadesh's head. "The stones shifted under my feet as I searched. Despite my personal peril, I located the source of the sound: a small opening in the rocks. This one. When she heard my voice, she howled piteously. Try as I might, the great stones would not budge. Loath to abandon the mysterious creature, I dropped bits of food into the hole and dribbled in my own precious water."
He tugged Tadesh's ear gently. She pulled it free, the ear twitching.
"I realized that I must engage my ingenuity and charm before I ran out of provisions. I found a stick to use as a lever and moved the first stones to see within. She was trapped there, a paw caught under a rock deep below. A puzzle, how to free her. It would take three sticks in combination, to move all the rocks at once.
"So young! So small! She poked her tiny nose out, took a look at me and went back inside. Not, perhaps, our best moment. Fortunately, I was able to demonstrate that the food and water were not entirely distinct from my good self. She decided to give me a chance. I bandaged the hurt paw and have been feeding and watering her ever since."
Apparently unable to sleep through Olessio's renewed attention to her ears, Tadesh heaved a great sigh and stood, stretching from head to shuddering tail, then climbed down off the bunk to curl into Olessio's lap. His expression went quite tender.
He looked at Amarta. "Are you well-answered, now, sera?"
Amarta sniffled a little. "Yes."
Olessio gave them both a lopsided smile. "I've lost my appetite for this game, but I do believe we have some very serviceable wine, delivered to us just yesterday by the fine sailors tending to our comfort. You don't drink, do you, Guard-dog."
"I do not."
"More for me and you, my dear. Shall we? Ah..." He looked down at Tadesh in his lap, then back at Tayre with a helpless expression. "Would you mind fetching it for us?"
The port town of Mibrin rippled with color. Ships' flags and rooftops shimmered in brilliant purples, blues, and greens. Streamers flew from tall, thin spires whose tips glinted with prismatic tones of pure light.
The crew navigated the ship around two harbor rocks into which had been planted yellow flags, the fabric edges glinting with tiny yellow stones.
"Mibrin is famous for glass," Tayre answered when she asked. "Lenses, prisms, and more. This is not Arunkel, where Greater and Lesser Houses own production charters. In Perripur, anyone can make or sell anything they like."
"That sounds confusing," Amarta said.
Olessio laughed. "You should see how we Farliosan bargain, how we exchange food, favors, and friends. Makes the Perripin method seem downright tidy by comparison."
"We'll need to be able to present ourselves convincingly," Tayre said. "A married couple visiting Taluk, now returning home."
At this, Amarta's delight at the colorful port city was abruptly doused.
Tayre tilted his head toward Olessio. "And you?"
Olessio smiled wryly. "House servant, sent by the Dominus, your father, to bring you home from your indulgent adventures in the decadent lands to the north. Needs your help with the family bookbinding business." He shook his head slowly, disapprovingly. "Time to abandon your adventuring and settle down, ser. The Dominus-your-father would like to see your lovely wife get busy with the important work of making babies."
"What?" Amarta craned her head around Tayre to give Olessio an outraged glare.
"Only for show, my dear," Olessio assured, pulling his head back to avoid her look. He gestured to the port city. "See that circular glass roof? The crew recommends it. Expensive, they say, but entirely in keeping with our story, Dominus's son, eh?"
"We'll arrange a spot in the stables for you," Tayre replied.
"Don't think the Dominus would like that. Always said I was nearly family."
"Not to me, he didn't."
Olessio grinned at the shore, his eyes shining. "I've always wanted to see southern Perripur. It's good to have guides."
Amarta slowly frowned. Olessio glanced at her, then at Tayre for a longer moment, then began to laugh, and laugh, finally pounding the railing in mirth before he paused for breath. "Truly? Not one of the three of us has been here before?"
A shrug from Tayre. "A second time requires a first."
As the ship neared the docks, sailors called back and forth, ropes held ready to toss to the crew.
"Ah, adventure," Olessio said, still chuckling. "It's a fine thing. I hope we have maps."
The inn was indeed expensive, if Amarta understood the numbers being rattled off in heavily accented Perripin by the woman who met them there.
Olessio stepped out in front of the two of them and began a complicated negotiation of rooms and meals. He picked up their bags, in one of which was Tadesh.
The dining hall's tables were brass-edged glass, small lamps at the center casting splinters of rainbow light across the walls. Afternoon sun came through slats in the high, circling walkways, cleverly angled into prisms that fanned out onto pale walls and the ceilings, casting shadow and light in the shape of plants, birds, feathers.
The hall was loud and full of well-dressed patrons chatting, laughing, drinking. A foursome of musicians played a tune, a handful of dancing couples putting it to motion. They drew together and apart, then traded partners, then turned and did it all again. Amarta watched, fascinated.
Olessio led servers from the kitchen who filled the table with glass dishes arrayed with rainbow shades of foods and bowls of colorful soups and breads. Olessio hovered, as if confirming the quality of each one, then nodded imperiously at the servers to go.
Tayre gestured him over. Olessio came close, his posture and inclination painting him entirely to be an attentive, proud servant.
"Subtle," Tayre said quietly. A direction, Amarta realized, not a compliment.
"Subtle performances are wasted on unsubtle audiences," Olessio said, with a subservient smile and bow quite at odds with the tone of his words.
Then he turned away, standing ready, looking about the room with a snotty look on his face. A small drama for whoever might be watching. Amarta had to drag her gaze from him back to the food.
The music picked up speed. The dancers spun, clapped. More joined, seamlessly inserting themselves into the pattern.
As they ate, dishes were cleared, others brought. Tayre gestured again to Olessio.
"We're being watched by four men at the far end. Amarta, don't look."
"Watching her," Olessio suggested. "A strange woman, strangely attractive..."
"No. Trained fighters, with focus and intent. Settle our bill directly. Hire that mule wagoner we talked to earlier, and bring him around back. Amarta, look ahead and see if we'll have any trouble, if we leave soon, out the front door, without our bags."
It was specific enough. She looked down into her folded hands, ignoring the room. "We'll be fine," she said.
A few minutes after Olessio left, Tayre stood, pulled her to her feet, muttered loudly about wanting to test the sturdiness of the bed, and gave her a narrow-eyed grin that held far more intent than she'd seen in the faces of the men watching them, who, with great effort, she still wasn't looking at.
Unsettling, this pretense. Which no doubt suited the drama, or he wouldn't have done it. Sometimes she felt a bit too much like a Rochi deck.
As they left, he leaned on her as if for balance, until they were back in their expensive room, whose bed, it seemed, she would not get a chance to try after all.
Tayre made fast work gathering their things and ferrying them out the back stairs, then returned to escort her out the front, visible to all. As they went, he launched into an odd, drunken-seeming rant in three languages, about the rainbow city and its specialty anknapas.
As Amarta had predicted, they exited safely. Before sunset they rode inside a canvas-covered wagon, jostling along the road and out of the port city.
"An expensive caution, this," Olessio complained when they were away, shifting himself around their bags and the rolls of hay that lined the inside of the wagon. "You could have taken those four, if it had come to that. You disposed of more than that in Senta and easily. Your devoted servant never even got to taste the soup."
"In Senta, I had no choice. Here I did."
"I didn't think," Amarta said, "that this far south, across the Mundaran, they would follow."
"No?" Tayre asked. "Coin easily overcomes distance."
Amarta sighed, looking out through a side flap in the canvas into the fading light. Would someone always be after her? Before vision managed even a flash of an answer, she changed the question:
What would it take to make them stop?
Black helmets shimmered in the sunlight, by the hundreds. By the thousands.
Olessio cleared his throat. The glimpse vanished.
"It occurs to me," he said, "that it might be safer, were I to travel independently."
Tayre gave him a sharp look. "Safer for whom?"
"Well—you. Of course! We Vagras..." A wave of his hand. "We can attract the wrong sort of, ah, admirers."
"Admirers? Who do you mean?" Amarta asked.
"Who can say?" Olessio responded.
"Did you steal something?" Tayre asked.
A short laugh, a shrug. "Who can say?"
"Well, you could, I would think," Amarta said, annoyed. "Don't you know if you've stolen something or you haven't?"
"Pah. What does it really mean, to own a thing?" Olessio asked, giving each of them an earnest look.
"Did it belong to you or did it not?" Amarta asked slowly, feeling as if she were speaking to a child.
"It's not stealing," Olessio insisted, "if it's not being used well. To leave a thing with people who don't understand and honor it is itself a sort of theft—a theft of the commons. Really, taking such a thing would be—" he waved a hand. "Returning it home. Tools should be used properly, and animals should be treated like family."
"How you got the pony," Tayre said.
"Possibly," Olessio admitted judiciously, looking out at the dark lands passing.
"Possibly?" Amarta asked.
"They were not caring for him properly. And besides, I had true need, where they did not. I share everything I have with those who require it and can appreciate it. Case in point..." He dug into his pack and pulled out something wrapped in wax paper. He unwrapped it to reveal a smooth flat of something dark. He broke off a small piece, offered it to Tayre, then another to Amarta.
Tayre put a quick hand on her arm. "What is it?"
"A gift from the kitchen staff," Olessio replied.
"Not stolen?"
"Certainly not! I'm charming."
Tayre brought his piece to his nose, rubbed it between finger and thumb. "Nothing more than cacao and inert spices, Vagras? The kitchen staff might not be our friends, even if you are."
"Even if...?" Olessio snorted offense. "I've already eaten some and I'm fine." He frowned. "Wait, I don't seem odd, do I?"
"No more than usual," Tayre answered.
Amarta held her bit to her nose to smell it, as Tayre had. She wondered how it would taste.
Earthy, sweet, gritty, and spiced. It settled the discomfort in her stomach from the motion of the wagon. In a few hours, she would ask him if there was more. "Alas, no, my dear, we've eaten it all. Good, though, wasn't it?"
"Yes it was," she breathed, smiling.
"What?" Olessio asked.
"She's foreseeing," Tayre said.
"Quite good," she said to Olessio, answering a question that he had never asked, and, now, probably never would.
She was still smiling as she put the aromatic shard into her mouth.
Sometimes they rode, tucked into the back of a trade wagon, tight among boxes and sacks, Tadesh exploring the corners. More often, they walked. Either way, disguise and misdirection became their work.
On the road, they would cycle through hats and scarves. Outside a town, they might change bags, shoes, and tales. At one town, a series of midnight transactions left Amarta as utterly confused as she knew Tayre intended to make their potential pursuers. If someone were still on their trail after that, she decided, they were formidable trackers.
Road by road, village by village, the four of them approached the foothills of the Xanmelkie Mountains. Every market they passed offered monkstones in various colors and styles. At every town, the price rose. Each time, Amarta reached into her pocket to be sure that hers was there.
This morning, Tadesh rode Olessio's shoulder, sniffing the predawn air.
"What is our tale today?" Olessio asked.
"On our way to the Tree of Revelation," Tayre said. "Humble supplicants, hoping for answers to whatever it is that troubles our lives."
Not far from the truth.
"I'll have plenty of questions, then," Olessio said brightly.
"You'll be disappointed," Tayre replied, "unless you have a monkstone."
"What, those expensive rocks? Always a catch. Pah, who needs answers, anyway?"
"You don't want answers," Amarta said.
"I don't?" asked Olessio.
She shook her head. "Answers make bigger problems. When I give them, anyway. No matter how I answer, the person who asked is more miserable, not less."
"Why?"
"Knowing what might yet be changes everything." She shook her head. "Just live. Let the future take care of itself."
"Ah," Olessio said. "Wise words. Is that what you do?"
"No," she said flatly. She'd tried to purge her vision once and had almost died as a consequence, her sister and nephew along with her.
Again, the stomach-dropping recollection that Tayre had then been the one coming after her.
Olessio, seeing her expression, launched gamely into another story, one about Farliosan elders consulting a lunatic, and how she led them to a hidden treasure.
By midday, they found themselves walking through a meadow, thick with tall, long-petaled flowers of yellow that somehow put Amarta's mind on Dirina. The wedding. Guilt and affection chased each other around inside her.
Vision snapped a quick, sharp warning, and Amarta slowed her steps, letting Olessio stride by to take the lead. What had it been?
A moment later, Olessio swore and slapped at something on his leg, then dropped to a knee to examine it. A red welt was forming. He'd been stung.
"I'm sorry," Amarta said quickly.
Pulling a stinger from his shin, Olessio tossed it into the grass. "Bit of a poke, is all. Give it an hour, and I'll be right as sky." He grinned reassuringly as he limped forward.
A queasy feeling came over her. How many times would she let someone else take the sting meant for her?
Another day and another. In a small tavern at the foot of the rugged, rising hills, they sat around a table, Tayre fingering the remains of oily bread crumbs on a plate, as if casually fiddling.
For a moment Amarta was both charmed and amused. Then she reminded herself that he did nothing casually or without reason.
"We're here," Tayre said, pointing to a line he'd made in what she now realized was a crumb-sketch map of the area. "We'll take this road through the pass, and either this one or that one, depending on what Amarta foresees when we get there. They both lead to the Xanmelkie Valley."
"The Tree of Revelation." Amarta felt her excitement rise.
Olessio pursed his lips, looking unsettled.
"Do you object?" Tayre asked him.
Olessio's eyes flickered to each of them, then down to Tadesh in his lap. "We can go our own way from here. No offense would be taken by either of us. One last chance to be rid of me," he added with a smile and levity that didn't seem entirely sincere.
Tayre bent his head down slightly, tilting it to keep an eye on the few people scattered across the room.
"No one is chasing you across the Temani Gulf for a lame pony, Vagras," Tayre said, "and I don't believe you're simple enough to think so, though apparently you think we are. Do you want to tell us the real reason someone might be after you, or shall we all continue to pretend?"
Olessio's expression went fixed, and Amarta thought she saw fear behind his eyes.
Then it was gone, replaced by a too-wide grin. He gave a breathy laugh, leaned back, laced his hands behind his head.
"More than happy for the company, Guard-dog. On to the Tree of Revelation, I say. If you'll have me. Hmm? Amarta?"
Amarta felt into various futures, finding Olessio in most of them along with Tadesh's smooth coat under her fingers, the thrumming of a contented chuffing in the animal's chest.
"Come with us," she said.