The beginning of their beautiful friendship:

The office of Jebediah Long, private investigator, was just east of the courthouse/town hall complex, deep in the shadow of one of Rhydin?s city walls. The view outside the window was made perpetually gloomy by the wall; today, it was enhanced by a steely drizzle out of a slate sky. The little brownstone hunkered into itself and endured.

Ali was pacing back and forth across a single tiny strip of carpet in the office. The rest of the room was packed to the ceiling with boxes and papers and evidence bags, tapes and transcripts and photos, empty bags that once held doughnuts and empty boxes that once held pizza. There was a stereotypical ashtray on the scarred desk, and it was stereotypically filled to overflowing with ashes. A fresh cigarette was freshly stinking up the air. Somewhere else in the building a phone was ringing a thin, endless tinny drone.

?Okay, you want everything I can get on?Fio Helston. Uh, hey, listen, Helston House is kind of a rough bunch. I get shot at, I charge an extra per diem.? Long looked up from his notepad. Cheap suit, yellowing teeth, grizzly eyebrows and no hair: he was in his fifties, Ali guessed, and judging by the generous troweling of bulk over his frame and the gray cast to his skin, had an ischemic episode or two under his belt.

?I don?t think she?s with them anymore. She lives out in a studio in the West End, but she?s been staying with me and Gem for the last few nights. She made a lot of noise about what a danger she was to us, and I?d like to know why.? Ali paced off the length of the strip, turned, paced again. The phone stopped ringing. ?Just?whatever you can find, please.?

?Yeah, I?ll take care of it. Hey, you think you could stop wearing a hole in my carpet? You look like a goddamned Slinky.? The man stubbed out his ashtray and flapped uselessly at the smoke coating the air.

?Well, if you hadn?t everything but the bloody kitchen sink in here, your clients could have a little more room to move around, don?t you think?? Ali snapped back at him.

The investigator rose and jabbed a nicotine-stained finger at him. ?I am the kitchen sink, bub!?

He walked the naked packed earth of the gaol?s exercise yard, stalking out a slow circle in the shadow of the roof overhang. Coming out of the cells in the morning, the light was always too bright. A man had to adjust. Hidden in his hand, the metal shank slowly warmed in his fingers. It was his best friend, his only love. Couldn?t keep a dog in this hole. Had to take what he could get.

Five years. Five years. He counted every day, marked them on the walls of his cell. Marked them all over again when they came in twice a year to whitewash the walls. An old familiar bile rose hot and boiling acid in his throat, but he choked it down, told it familiar lies. Someday, someday we?re gonna get out of here, we?re gonna get her, we?re gonna get it back. It only ever hurt for him to try to let the bile out, anyway.

Soothed, he made another circuit, passed the shank hidden between his fingers over his forearm. There was a tattoo there: once it had been complicated, beautiful, perfect. One word. Now the ink there was faded, blurry, only the first letter of the word legible. Just one letter left. Soon it would be gone too, and then it wouldn?t matter whether he was in gaol or not. Nothing would matter, then. He kept the hair shaved down around it, tried to remember the word late at night when the arsehole in the cell next to him cried in his sleep. He never could.

He made another circuit of the yard, noticed a con sitting in the dirt doodling on a piece of paper. Keen, that was his name. Never trusted the bastard. Never trusted anybody here, but there was something in the con?s shiny eyes that made him twitch. Still, he was bored, didn?t feel like breaking up any of the other ladyfucker tea parties throwing dice or working out. He walked over to Keen, feeling the shank in his hand like a promise. Keen like a knife, my dear friend, the man had said at the first meeting, and smiled a mouthful of fangs at him. Never trusted him.

The con looked up, his creepy silver eyes mirrors even in the shadow. ?Why, good morrow, D, how does this glorious day find you?? He chuckled a hearty little chuckle. D didn?t know what was funny about it, didn?t laugh with him.

?Morning stroll,? His voice gurgled past the spell they?d put on his throat.

?Ah, yes, taking the morning air,? The man agreed with him. ?Do you have a few minutes to talk, my friend??

?Yeh. What about?? D shifted his hulk from foot to foot, looked over his shoulder. The guards on duty looked bored, looked sleepy, looked someplace else. Good.

?Yes, well. I have a question for you, my good man.? Keen leaned forward, though he didn?t have to?there wasn?t anybody nearby?and asked, ?Why are you in here??

D?s hair stood up. You didn?t ask that question here. You didn?t ask it. People who bragged turned up dead. He hissed at the man, thought about shanking him. But Keen had to know the rules. To break them on purpose like that? It had to be important. And Keen was looking at him down that long nose, with those creepy silver eyes, and it was all of a sudden the most important thing in the world that he give it up.

?Cut a bitch,? he heard the words rattle in his throat as if it belonged to someone else. Maybe it did. ?Two bitches. Spit on one. Gypsies, nobody cares about them anyway. The one put a curse on my name and stole it from me. The other got me caught.?

?Oh, yes,? Keen whispered. ?Praise Eris, you?ll be perfect.?

?What?? D blinked, looked around. The man at his feet registered. Keen, that bastard. Never trusted him. ?You drawing me a pretty picture??

Keen turned the piece of paper in his hand. It looked like a ?script from the infirmary. D leaned in, looked closer. It looked exactly like a ?script. How did he do it? Had he stolen it?? No, there was a smudge on the end of that line. He forged it. He forged it.

Keen smiled up at him, showing too many pointy teeth. ?I have decided, my wicked friend, to get you out of here. To spring you from the joint, so to speak. Allow the rooster to fly the coop.?

?What??? he gargled. He couldn?t breathe. The infirmary was low security. His skull filled up with black water. ?Now??

?Oh, no,? Keen said, and beamed. ?I?m afraid you?ll have to suffer for a little while yet.?

?Now,? D snarled at him, and swiped at the paper. Keen snatched it out of the way. ?Give it to me now!?

From too close came the guard?s voice, ?Joe, that half-dragon John Doe son of a bitch is getting riled up again??

D roared and dived at him, only to be yanked up short by a hand on his arm. He slashed with the shank, but someone caught his other wrist before he could connect with Keen?s smirking face. ?No!? So close, so close! The bile rose up; he tried to spit at the con and strangled on it.

?Soon, soon,? whispered Keen, and flapped the piece of paper at him.

The nearer guard barked, ?Inside, Doe! Joe, grab his legs!?

?That?s not my name,? D howled, thrashing and writhing as they piled onto him. ?That?s not my name!?

Reynard watched with sublime unconcern as the daemon devoured his cutthroat corpse (they had called the monster ?jester? and ?Skiddles? as if he were a harlequin made to entertain children, how astonishing, how amusing.) He had been drawn along behind the daemon, bobbing like a balloon on an invisible string, tied to his body until the last bite of it was consumed. Then the string was cut, and he was set adrift.

He drifted endlessly in a boundless, tenebrous fog punctured only by faint hints of strong emotion. How long he was lost, he could not say. Only the most piercing screams of agony broke through to him, only the highest pinnacles of bliss. He cared for none of it, too caught up in contemplations of his newfound divinely granted destiny. Minutes or eons could have passed as he floated along, dreaming of absolution through atrocity. He had barely had time for the briefest consideration of implementations of his newfound will when the caliginosity parted. He focused his attention outward, and with a vague sense of amazement discovered that he was once more within the confines of the Red Dragon Inn.

It was a familiar place. He had been inside it before, sitting in a corner with his cheap ale, sneering at the shining throng of Rhydin?s talented and elite as they walked on the backs of the downtrodden masses to play at their games of omnipotence. He had gone in more than once as a Seeker, a dirty dog hunting the truth to give to his clean-handed masters. He had even pronged a chambermaid in the downstairs broom closet. He knew the place as he had known his own soul. But like his soul, it had changed in some indefinable way. Something of the murk remained, figures blurring and indistinct as if underwater. Their voices were muffled, the sounds those of people speaking in hushed tones in another room. He was standing in a gloomy corner of the commons. The business of Rhydin went on unabated before him: he watched the high and mighty say so much in every loaded glance to one another, every pregnant pause in what seemed magnificently trivial conversations.

No one appeared to notice him. Well enough?he would make them notice him. It was time to spread his new gospel. He approached a woman sitting on the bar whose face he could not quite apprehend, and tried to take her arm to explain the truth to her. When he did, his fingers sank into her, filling his entire being with a hideous sense of wrongness and denial. He saw the gooseflesh ripple into life on her arm, saw her rub over it, heard smothered words that seemed a complaint, and realized that she had not the slightest inkling of his existence.

He stumbled away from her, his hand buzzing and stinging with a sensation more horrible than pain, and swung about in a full circle. Not one person looked at him. Not one person reacted to his paroxysms of fury, his knotted fists flailing at the impenetrable, untouchable separation between himself and his goal. Not?

?wait. Her. Her. On the couch, there, sitting alone, the rest of the patrons separating themselves from her in a primitive expression of herd instinct, protecting themselves from the dementation that came off her in waves. He saw her and realized three things immediately: first, she was the woman Fre Pietr had set him to Seek, the one whose past was inextricably intertwined with Bishop Whitestone?s murder; second, her face was clear as scrying crystal in direct opposition to those muddling through the wisps of atrament around him; third, she was looking right at him.

The wheels of the motorcycle spun under Ali as he navigated the last switchback on the trail south of town, fishtailing under him. It was a bike he?d borrowed from one of his friends among the Watchmen and it was a fine machine, but he hadn?t quite got the feel of it yet. He put a boot down to steady himself, eased back on the throttle, rounded the curve and rode up to the plateau south of the city. Rhydin had been under near-drought conditions that spring, with rain fitful and sparse as the season wore on; looking back, he could see the long plume of dust he?d kicked up winding along the curves of the road to the city gate in the far distance. Even the thick hardwood trees lining either side of the gap of the road looked washed out by the lack of rain.

When he turned back, his first view of the caravanserai reminded him almost of the Kabaa in the months leading up to the hajj. The building itself was a cube, a construction of gray stone and broad wood beams. A great wide mouth funneled people and animals into the open stables beyond: men and elves, dwarves and stranger beings shuffled past horses, oxen, mules, creatures he had no name for. Dust boiled around the building, painting a dirty brown haze in the air. The noise even at this distance was incredible: a babble of tongues shouting instructions, bleating goats, braying asses, lowing cattle, shouted curses. How, exactly, was he to find a band of Gypsies in all the commotion?

He rolled the motorcycle warily forward, to a point as near the entrance as he could possibly get without running anyone over. Thirty minutes? waiting in line brought him close enough to the guards waiting at the entrance to speak to them?hell and blast, they weren?t city Watchmen, and so he had no automatic connection to trade on. Filling his hand with silver coins, he walked the bike over to the nearer one.

When he stopped in front of one of them and propped the bike against his hip, the half-orc looked down at him from a two-meter height and rumbled in an exceedingly bored bass-drum backbeat of a voice, ?Before entering Rhydin, please to declare any unusual goods such as out-realm produce or animals; spell components that pose a physical or metaphysical hazard to humans, elves, dwarves, Ferengi, neko, Vulcans, hobbits, Orionists, or others; items that violate the laws of momentum or causality; substances that could poison or imbue children or adults with superpowers; collections of fleas larger than three that may harbor such plagues as Yuletide Fever, bubonic, Twelve Day; apples in any color other than red or green??

?Apples? Really?? Ali interrupted her, roused out of a sort of astonished stupor by the incongruity. He had to shout to be overheard.

She blinked at him. ?Yes. Apples.?

?But?but why?? he shouted.

?Doppelganger influx.? Her muddy eyes narrowed, looked past his shoulder to the case strapped to his back. ?Why? Do you have apples??

?I?no! No, no apples, I just?? am never going to understand this place, not in a million years? ?I?m not a trader or caravaner of any sort. I?m just here to talk to the Rom. Can you tell me where they are??

Those muddy eyes dipped to the silver he?d been casually trickling from hand to hand, then rose to his face again. ?I might.?

?I?ve got to park this somewhere and find them,? he bellowed up at her. ?Will you help me??

She could, for the right price.

He leaned into the log with his violin and bow in the space between his crossed legs, and stretched to ease a cramp in his lower back. His right hand was aching from holding the bow; he flexed his fingers, rubbed the throbbing fingertips of his left hand. The Romnichal around the fire paused in a moment?s silence to stare at him, then returned to their quiet mealtime conversations.

It was well after dark. He?d been playing, his watch told him, for over three hours. The Gypsies had given him a wide berth at first, as he?d settled in at the fire and begun to perform for them. Over time they?d grown to accept his presence. Then one or two of them had asked him to play specific pieces. He?d done his best to fulfill their wishes, though none of them had explained why they wanted those specific dirges played. Beyond that, he?d played everything he could think of: every half-remembered classical sonata, every country rondo, a few Indian ragas, his best approximation of a ra? singer?s voice, slow blues tunes and improvisational jazz. Sweet Bast, he was tired. He rubbed at his eyes, tried to think of something else.

As he was cudgeling his brain, a parti-colored skirt appeared in his peripheral vision. The woman wearing it?he looked up?was young for his taste, but sweet-faced and smiling, dimpling down at him. In her hands was a tin bowl full of the game stew the others had had for dinner, and a mug full of water. She offered them to him without a word.

?Thank you,? he told her over the growling of his stomach, and took them gratefully from her. ?Are you Laila??

She tossed her curly head back and laughed at that, brown eyes flashing. ?No, no,? she said, and her accent was even thicker than the Rom guard?s had been. ?Laila, she bey along later. You goan eat now.? Her bare feet skipped off into the dark as he focused on dinner.

It was a good stew, rich and meaty. His Bubasti nature took over, and for the next few minutes he immersed himself in it to the exclusion of the rest of the camp. That was his best explanation, anyway, for missing the woman?s approach. He only became aware of her once he?d drunk off the last of the water; when he lowered the cup she was sitting beside him, tucking the edges of her shawl into her belt.

She was, he realized at a glance, very old. No?no?she was positively ancient, revealed a second, longer look. Her hair was white and wispy thin, with a mottled scalp showing through; her dark wrinkled face was caved in on itself from a lack of teeth. He had no idea how she?d sat herself down so quickly. The hands working at the little business of the shawl were knotted and bent with arthritis. Even seated, he was head and shoulders taller than her. She was a tiny delicate bird of a woman. Her eyes?her eyes were birdlike, too, black and twice as sharp. Not getting anything past this old bird, no, he thought. This had to be Laila.

?Fine fiddling,? she told him. Her voice was a high winter wind, thin and creaky.

?Thank you, madam.? He set the empty cup and bowl on the ground in front of him.

?You beyn?t a bard come along to fiddle for supper, pal,? she informed him calmly, and folded her twisted hands together in her lap.

?You?re right, I?m not.? He leaned over, dragged the case closer, and deposited the violin and bow inside.

?So? What you wanting??

?Information, as it happens.? He sat back and examined her face.

Her eyes were almost lost in their creases, as if she were laughing at him. ?Townies mark us liars, cheats, and thieves, Mister Calls-Himself-Ali. Who are you, that we bey saying you true, and not malarkey??

Well. Honesty? Some mishmash of truth? He was still watching her, and found not a flicker of calculation or conniving in her face. She?d made up her mind?about him, or about what she was going to tell him, he couldn?t quite decide?and no fast footwork on his part was going to shake her certainties regarding the situation. If she meant to turn him away, then it didn?t matter what he said. If she meant to assist him, then it was better to be honest and receive all the aid he could thereby.

So he gambled. ?I?m someone who?s looking for whatever information you can give me on Reynard Morrow. He?s dead, and I need to lay his ghost to rest.?

?Who bey that?? She didn?t so much as blink at him.

Damnation. What had Sink said about the bastard? ?He?his mother was one of you. She married a man from Rhydin, one of the Old Towners, and died young.?

The woman?s reaction?indeed, the reactions of everyone around the fire?was electric. Conversations ceased. As one, they fixed on him. Laila was actually clutching his nearer arm in a pinch-tight grip.

?Dead, you say?? she demanded of him.

?Yes,? he managed not to stammer, ?quite dead. His throat was cut a month or two ago. You mustn?t tell anyone, please?it was done in self-defense, and the?the person responsible is?is dead,? so much for not stammering, ?but I would rather not bring that trouble on you or anyone else.?

?We keep our secrets. Welladay?welladay.? She sighed in visible relief, released him to make some complicated sign with her hands that he interpreted as a warding-off gesture, and raised her voice to address the rest of the enclave. ?Ophelia?s son is dead, and one doom averted.? A collective sigh issued forth from the assembled, and they echoed her gesture. ?That bey one problem done and over.?

?You have other problems?? He was momentarily diverted from his fishing expedition by the statement.

?In a trice. We deal not with spirits save placating them. The good Romnichal stay dead, when we put them in the ground.? She cocked her head, considering him. ?What you bey wanting to know about him??

?Well?his wraith?his spirit, as you say?is out in the world. I?ve got to banish him. Send him back to Death, before he can do any harm.?

?We deal not with spirits,? she repeated.

?I need to know anything you can tell me about him.?

?He lived not with us.? Her tone was very firm on that point.

?Then?how you treat your dead? Anything you can tell me. Please,? he said, as she began to shake her head again. Something of his desperation must have gotten through to her, because she paused.

?There bey a girl,? she said finally, slowly. ?Lives up cemetery way, north of Town. You follow the north road, then left at the fork. She writes it all down. Our dying, everyone?s dying. We and I, we live for now and the future, we do what we do. She bey not one of us, and she lives for the past.? She gestured to one of the women around the fire, muttered something into her ear; the woman went away, returned a moment later with a cupful of water that the old woman sipped at.

?All right?all right.? He ran a hand over his face. One more thread to chase down. This was becoming nearly as complicated as one of his Infinity City cases. ?What did you mean, when you said ?a doom averted???

?When his mam started goan with that townie, she came to me. Asked me to look for a blessing in her future with this man. I read the leaves, her palms, her eyes, her heart. I shared what I read with the clan, and we cast her out.?

?Cast her out?? He tried to imagine the scene: a girl no older than the one who?d served him earlier, sent out into an uncertain future with a man she might have hardly known, based on the evidence of one woman?s fortunetelling. ?But?why??

?Her babe,? Laila said in her thin dry voice. ?The child she was to bear that townie would ruin us all. I saw it. I did what I could to put it aside. Seems it worked.?

He concentrated on the feel of his own breath sighing in and out through his nostrils. If Laila had not ostracized the woman?would Reynard not have become a Seeker to begin with? Gem wouldn?t have had to cut his throat to protect herself, Fio would not have had to bear his madness after death?he might have been a totally different person. All this could have been avoided. But it was nearly thirty years in the past, and what good would it do to rail at this woman now?

?You said,? he continued with an earlier thought to further divert himself, ?that you had other problems.?

?One of our get was attacked six months past,? she told him. ?Keeps happening. Used to it was safe in these parts. Five year ago, though, a man came and cut up one of our girls, burned her face and raped her. She put a curse on him before she died?told him someone would eat his heart someday.? She sounded queerly proud of that. ?But it weren?t just him. They keep coming for us. So the men bey watching for us now.?

?Well. I?m very sorry to hear that. I don?t know that the Watch can do anything, since you don?t live in town, but I?ll ask.?

?Thank you.? She finished the cup of water, refolded her hands. ?What else bey you wanting??

?Only one more thing.?

?Aye??

?Can I have my knife back??

Keen had told him that morning in the exercise yard what to do, how to act, how to play the part. ?Imagine it thusly, my dear fellow,? he?d said. ?You cannot breathe. You can hardly speak. Your very soul is being constricted by the terrible efforts of the plague within you. Your eyes,? he?d gestured toward D?s face, ?they glitter as with a terrible rage or fever. Your cheeks will show red, as if the heat in your body were becoming unbearable.?

?So??

?So,? the man said, and rolled his mirrored eyes, ?think about how very angry you are to be trapped in here. Whisper and wheeze when you must speak at all. Pinch or slap your cheeks when no one?s looking. Is it really so very difficult??

?Keen??

?What is it, my good man?? The con put the finishing touches on the forgery with an ink brush, passed it over to him in the roof?s shadow.

D made the effort to speak clearly past the spell on his throat. ?Why are you doing this for me??

?Oh, I have my reasons, never you fear.? The con showed off his razor teeth in a beatific smile.

And his reasons were?what? Had he pissed the con off? Was this just a more complicated way to get him dead? ?You don?t have any bills to pay on me?? He watched Keen?s face closely. Hard to see past those creepy eyes and get a feel for whether he was lying, but he tried.

?Hmm? Oh, no, not at all, I assure you.? Keen shook his head. ?My reasons have nothing at all to do with you, and I hope most devoutly that you escape and go on to wreak the havoc you so passionately desire.?

It looked like the truth. Keen passed the piece of paper over to him. They went their separate ways. Later in the morning, he waited for the confusion of the shift change. Then he called a fresh guard over and showed him the piece of paper before the old guard could turn over the shift notes and contradict his story that the doctor had been on rounds and found him infected with the plague.

It worked. The guard hailed another. They read the paper and debated, then hauled him out of his cell and took him to the infirmary. The scared one didn?t even bother to pat him down.

Nearly a week passed before Ali could follow the lead Laila provided. The directions the Rom matriarch gave him led north of the city, up the other side of Rhydin?s river valley and into the heights above. On this side of Rhydin?s hills the trees were redcedar, tall stately duchesses with scaly needles and bark that fell into ragged ribbons. He turned off the paved main highway that traveled to Wescourt Townshippe and points north, leaving the caravans and wanderers behind, and steered the bike up a hill. When he found the unmarked granite monolith he turned left onto a dirt track that soon was utterly lost under a matted carpet of gently decaying needles. The sky hid between their branches, and the air became cooler, an intoxicating mix of evergreens and the sea.

He almost missed the rusting iron fence with its small square gate; there was no contrast between it and the shed redcedar needles. Absolute silence descended when he cut the motorcycle?s engine. He inhaled, exhaled, and sounds began to bleed in once more: the salt wind coming in off the sea sighed with him through the boughs above, and gradually the smaller birds acclimated to his presence and returned to their endless chirping tales of love and war.

When he reached the gate he looked up. A chance twisting of the branches in the wind blinded him in a shaft of hot spring sunlight. Somewhere ahead of him a seagull shrieked; behind him and higher up, a hawk gave its own fierce response.

?Well,? he murmured to it all, to himself. ?Nothing ventured?? And he stepped through the gate, brushing flakes of rust from his palms as he started down a barely-defined path between the trees. It meandered unpredictably, wending south until he began to think he could see the city walls; then it cut abruptly westward and opened up into a vista that left him standing stock still, blinking and amazed.

It was?a meadow, a field that stretched a hundred, two hundred meters in either direction, and as far before him. There was the occasional planted tree, the redcedars here, a spreading oak over there, but for the most part it was open to the sunlight. Through the fence on the far side he saw open space, and beyond a swell of grass, the sea; the cemetery had to be perched on a cliff to give the sense of hazy, limitless distances the view implied.

And it was unequivocally a cemetery. There were tombstones, stele, urns, mausoleums; weeping angels and stranger creatures abounded, telling unfathomable stories of those buried there. Stone in every imaginable shade from the most brilliant alabaster to the blackest marble was visible in just a glance. Brick-lined paths through the close-shorn grass provided a sense of direction between the groups of graves, but with the size of the place and the dizzying diversity of death on display, Ali soon found himself hopelessly lost.

He discovered, much to his surprise, that he didn?t mind. There was a quality of absolute peace to the place that he?d never known before. All of his experiences with death had been violent, harrowing, emotionally exhausting. He?d slain vampires: felt their last screaming horror dissolve into blood and ashes as they realized they?d finally met their end at his hands. He?d killed as a soldier: just doing his job, he?d told himself, and endured the nightmares afterward. He?d survived his father?s funeral: the ferocious tension of being surrounded by his family, compounded by the dawning realization of just what he?d lost after so many years of estrangement, all set to the cries of hired mourners. He?d gone on living, when Gem hadn?t, with all his guilt and anger.

This was none of those things. He couldn?t know how the people around him had met their individual ends. But the death was done, the immediacy of mourning was over; and there was only the slow collapse into oblivion underfoot and the scents and sounds of springtime and the sea all around him. He would happily have laid himself down with the dead and slept a million years, just then. But it would, he decided, not be proper; it would not be respectful to walk over them either, he thought, and kept himself to the paths, peering at the monuments from afar.

And so it was that he spent a restful hour in the necropolis, wandering through the twists and turns of the paths, sunlight beating down on his head, before he saw her.

He caught a glimpse of red among the graves, and realized that the angle was wrong for flowers left at a graveside; when it vanished, he pursued it. Another glimpse showed him a flutter of fabric and a sleek, dark head. A minute later he got a good look at her. She was short and fine-boned, perhaps half a meter shorter than he was. All the visual clues said southern Indian, from one of the Earths, or a migrant: her black waving hair was knotted in a casual tail at the nape of her neck, and the skin below it was nearly as dark; the red fabric he?d seen proved to be a choli, sari, and salwar kameez. With her back to him, he had no idea what she looked like, but some primitive recognition stirred in him. Had he seen her before??

He made no attempt to conceal his approach; she heard him while he was still meters away. The sari flared as she pivoted, fell around her ankles as she stopped at right angles to him. With her head down, he could only see part of her profile. Full lips, a gently curved nose, a sweetly rounded face. When she showed him brilliantly white teeth, it was not a smile. He stopped well out of reach. Her stance, clutching a pen and clipboard in both hands like that, what he could see of her expression; they told him more clearly than words that he was not welcome. He hadn?t the faintest idea why.

Black eyes shifted toward him. She kept her head down. ?What do you want?? Her voice was strongly accented: Tamil, he thought. Something Dravidian. Her tone was as mistrustful as her expression, full of an ill-concealed fear.

As he had with the Rom, he spread his hands, showed them open and empty. As her black eye moved from one hand to the other, and from there to his face, he said, ?My name is Ali. Laila sent me. I wanted to talk to you about Romnichal burial practices, and whatever you can tell me of their history.? After a tensely silent few seconds he added, ?I won?t hurt you, I promise. If you like, I won?t come any closer.?

She watched him for a moment longer, then straightened slowly. The changed perspective gave him the answer to the nagging question of where he?d seen her before. He?d held the door for her as she?d left Elessaria?s perfume shop, when he?d gone to order a scent for Gem as a gift. So far as he knew, she?d never had the chance to wear it before she died.

Perhaps she heard something in his indrawn breath. Perhaps she simply decided to trust him. Whatever the cause, she squared her shoulders and turned to face him as if it were an act of will to do so, and that was when he got his first good look at her face.

?Our lives are in many ways a metaphor.? Persis appealed to him with one small dark hand. ?We define our interactions with one another and with the world through ritual.? The other hand held one of Ali?s sandwiches, scavenged from his saddlebags. They?d traded half their lunches to one another once they were certain that his would not offend her Hindu dietary sensibilities. Now they sat in the shade of a grand, reaching cypress tree: he on the grass with his back to a tall narrow granite tombstone, and she atop an alabaster sarcophagus.

He nodded for her to continue, his mouth full of masala dosa. He was quite happy to sit and listen to her talk, eat her food, sit comfortably in the grass. The potatoes and onions mashed together in the dosa pleased his palate. The air was warm, scented with flowers, green growing things and the sea. She was a shock of color, red cotton and dark skin against the white stone, green and brown cedar, and blue sky.

?Think of it,? she went on, her strongly accented voice making music of the words. ?Even in modern times, the points we feel are important as we pass through life are bounded by ritual, conducted as a society. Whether it is secular or religious in nature, we celebrate and we mourn together. The commencement ceremonies following the completion of one?s education, birth, the maturation of the body into its reproductive capacity, marriage, the end of one?s working years. And death, of course.? The cheek without scars dimpled.

?Which is your area of study,? he said after washing the next mouthful down with a swallow of coffee from his thermos cup. ?What drew you to this??

?Mm. My family has always been drawn to the healing arts. My parents are both doctors in Chennai. They were?very confused when I chose to study anthropology. They were concerned that I turned toward death, that what I wanted was the opposite of what they sought to preserve.?

?But you?re here. Did you persuade them, or did you go regardless of their wishes??

?I reminded them of a passage in the Bhagavad Gita. Lord Krishna himself said to Arjuna on the battlefield, ?The learned neither laments for the dead or the living.? They thought on it, and they gave me their blessing.? The untouched side of her face dimpled. ?I go to see them when I can. I am nearly finished with the research for my dissertation. When my studies are complete, I will go home.?

Ali considered her words though the remainder of his lunch. They walked through the cemetery afterward, he with his head bent to keep her within the frame of his vision and his hands clasped behind his back as a gesture of goodwill; she with her clipboard tucked against her side, black braid swinging and her sari hushing against the paving stones. When he glanced at her, he saw half a smile lingering on her face, her dark eyes focused on infinite distances. ?Your world is not my world,? he said. ?On my Earth, the Mughal Kingdoms are part of the Unified Caliphate, and cross-Nexial travel is common. From what you?ve told me, you?re several hundred years behind us in time. How did you get here??

Her smile turned inward, secretive. ?Every world has its hidden knowledge, if one knows where to look. My country?s cultural and religious traditions have endured for thousands of years. Who is to say that we are ignorant, simply because we are not open??

Who indeed, he thought. ?Point taken. My apologies.?

?Accepted.? That dimple reappeared.

His idler curiosities aside, he?d come to speak to her for a specific reason, and it was better that he returned to it. ?You were speaking of ritual.?

?Yes. Some of the strongest and most entrenched rituals within a society surround death. Within a community, within a society, we form attachments to one another. Ties of romance, of friendship, politics, economics, kinship. In death, those ties are sundered. The community must reestablish itself after the loss. Healing is required.?

Which was, in its way, not so different from the course her family chose, after all, he thought; only that she chose to record it at a remove, rather than involve herself in it personally, intimately. But she was still talking. He refocused his attentions on her. She spoke with her hands, he?d noticed. They fluttered through the shape of the hole she described.

??ties must be reforged across the void in the community that the person?s loss has created,? she was saying. ?The community develops a communally acceptable means to acknowledge the loss, whether it is through an extremity of mourning or a deliberate forgetting. They create a method to reaffirm the interpersonal connections within the community. Though the person is dead, the greater community or society must continue. And they develop a rubric for the disposal of the person?s mortal remains. All of these things are intertwined, and all of them occur within the context of the culture, religion and available resources of the larger society.?

?This all seems??

??fairly self-evident?? She was smiling again as she turned a corner and led him down a double row of graves, the level ground laid vivid with grass over the bones long slumbering beneath.

?Yes.? He awarded her a faintly sheepish look. ?Not meaning to offend.?

?It does, doesn?t it?? She grinned at him, her scarred mouth pulling tight with it. ?But you must understand, this is all relatively new in my field. These understandings are?well, on my world they are?less than fifty years old. Before that there was only archaeology to explain the dead, and the theories developed around what was dug up were fanciful at best and absurd otherwise. The inter-systematization and integration of anthropology and archaeology gave meaning to nonsense.?

Hm. Interesting. ?So we stand here in a cemetery. What do you see?? He gestured at the graves around them.

?The explication of societies in their treatment of their dead,? she said simply. When Ali merely looked at her, waiting, she explained. ?Look there,? she said, and pointed with her pen. ?Do you see those stelae??

There was a long row of them, nearly his height and relatively narrow. He approached the nearest, examined it, and turned to her. ?Black marble, inscribed with what appear to be rendered constellations. I don?t recognize them, though. What does it mean??

?The person interred there is a follower of the Black Mother. The constellations are a form of identification. They believe that the dead are given to their goddess, enshrouded in the greater darkness welcoming them in the afterlife, and that to inscribe names on the stelae would prevent the spirit?s journey with and into the Mother. The patterns of stars are remembered by their sannyasin for later recall, should members of the community wish to visit the gravesite to leave offerings of well-wishes.?

Her ruined face had begun to shine with enthusiasm. He had no doubt that somewhere on the notes inscribed on the clipboard she had those names, and a relationship between constellations and naming conventions.

He ran his fingers over the stone, feeling the small cruxes carved into it, the arcs of lines between. ?I told you that Laila sent me.? When she nodded, he went on. ?I?m interested in the funerary rites of the Romnichal in Rhydin.? That seemed safe to say.

?Well.? She folded her lips in, let them go with a soundless pop. The clipboard and pen were tucked behind her folded arms as she focused in on him, tipping her head back to look at him squarely. ?What did she tell you??

?Not much, really. Just that you were the person to go to, and that they, ah, ?didn?t deal with the dead,? I think was the way she put it.?

?Do you remember what I said earlier, about communally acceptable means to mourn losses??

He nodded.

?They are at the ?forgetting? end of the scale. Their lifestyle requires that they travel, often into communities that are traditionally hostile to them. Their religion is ostensibly Christian, but it is overlaid with a patois of older animist beliefs. Economically, they live at a subsistence level, and invest their wealth into portable forms.?

Ali thought about that. ?So investing time, effort and funds into a funeral in a specific place??

??is antithetical to everything about their culture. They grieve the loss of the person, often very dramatically, I?ve been told. But the corpse is just a corpse, and their developed beliefs have made it anathema to pay more attention to it than is required to heap stones over the body and go on. They have a few gravesites here, if you?d care to see them. They?re effectively cairns.?

He blew out a sigh. So much for the idea of using the Romnichal?s own rites to force Morrow?s return. He was back to the beginning, on that front. He hadn?t even the corpse to work with; it had been eaten.

?May I inquire into the nature of your interest?? she asked him, as she led him toward the small group of unmarked, rounded river-stone cairns.

?One of them needs to be laid to rest,? he replied, which was true as far as the words went. ?I?m doing it as a favor to someone else. I had hoped that there would be rites that the Romnichal used so that I could do it properly, but?? he shrugged, smiled when she shook her head, ??it seems I?m out of luck. I?ll have to cobble together something on my own.?

She hesitated before returning his smile. ?I am sorry I could not be more help,? she said with genuine regret, ?and it was very kind of you to listen to my babbling through the afternoon. If you have more questions, I do keep a house in town.?

Genuine regret, he gauged, but not so much so that she was willing to invite a near-stranger back for more time alone, far from the city. He understood. ?I?ll look you up,? he promised, rather than pressing for more. It was time to go home.