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image of the empty bodies upon the dark ground stayed with me, and I was out of sorts and angry with myself for being so disturbed by things that existed only in the mind—whether dream or memory.
    I wish now I had seen that nightmare as an omen and heeded its warning.

Chapter Two
     
     
    I WOKE without the usual tangle of warm limbs I was accustomed to. The bed was cold, but I could see Aleksey across the small room, sitting at the makeshift desk I had fashioned in the corner. He was surrounded by his memories. They were prettier than mine. When I had freed a young king from his tomb, I had inadvertently liberated a large portion of his country’s crown jewels as well: he’d been wearing them for his lying in state, and they had not yet been removed from his body before the sealing of his tomb. In all the agonies of that awful flight from Hesse-Davia, we had only been aware of them really many days later, and then he had been too busy helping me in my wounded state to do much more than wrap them in a cloth and push them to the bottom of his pack. So we had a coronet, made, Aleksey assured me, of solid gold studded with emeralds (the Hesse-Davian color, green being prominent on their flag). We had seven rings (originally eight), as each of his fingers had been dressed so in death. These bore a variety of gems also set in gold. He had a vast necklace, more a chain of office, I suppose, which consisted of heavy gold coins on twisted gold ropes. He had his medals—twelve in all and all in solid gold or silver—and a sword, ceremonial, to bear the king to the next life in the ancient halls of his fathers, and so this was gem studded too.
    On arrival in the New World, we traded one ring for things we needed to survive: some tools, seedlings, household goods. Now we made what we needed, but then we could not have withstood that first winter without that initial trade. I was not well enough to hunt or build a cabin without the weapons and tools we bought. But we had traded this remarkable gem only in a large colony at the seaport and then traveled far away to this remoter spot. I saw the jewels as nothing but deadweight and would have thrown them into the deepest part of the lake had I been allowed. But Aleksey seemed to need them. When he was sad or upset about something, he got them out and studied them, as if trying to trace in their flawless beauty the path that had brought him from where he had once been to where he was now. Which is probably why I disliked them so much.
    But that morning as I lay sprawled on my belly watching him, a very unpleasant suspicion crept into my mind. Despite his reassurances of the previous night—because of them, I suppose, as it was not like him to say such specific things about the soldiers and possession of his body—I had an immediate and horrible suspicion that he had indeed met someone in the colony, only did not know how to break this news to me. He was reviewing the paths of his life once more, because his had now taken a new direction—one he had not the heart or the words to tell to me.
    I rose and went out into the crisp autumn morning naked, explaining this by saying I was going for a swim to wake up, which was not that unusual for me. It gave me time to think as I padded across the frosty ground to the unpleasantly cold water.
    All the signs had been there, after all. His visits to the town had become more and more frequent and now stretched up to two weeks at a time. He talked incessantly about one officer or another, relaying activities they enjoyed, his favorites changing daily.
    Aleksey and I had met at opposite ends of a journey for men like us. He had been right at the beginning of his, with all his experiences—good and bad—ahead of him. I had been through more experiences (and men, come to that) than I needed or wanted. I had been his first man. I intended him to be my final one. How could I blame him, therefore, for wanting to explore all there was to find on this