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could be other . . .” He waved his hand, indicating the ruined house and the trees around us and the mountains looming in the dark. “Other whole worlds? With people and everything?”
“It’s a theory,” I said. “I don’t find it terribly likely myself.”
“Oh.” He seemed a little disappointed.
“I don’t know everything.”
“You don’t?” Bright, bright mischief in his eyes, and I couldn’t keep a straight face well enough to glare at him.
“No, twit.” He ducked his head, and although he didn’t smile, never smiled, he looked absurdly pleased. “And I’m not an astrologist. Just because I don’t think it’s likely doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”
“Huh,” he said, and then his breath caught, and he slowly eased his right leg straight, bending his head over it so I couldn’t see his face.
After a moment, when his shoulders hadn’t relaxed from that tight defensive hunch, I said, “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Fine.” He didn’t raise his head.
“Just tired, then?” That got his head up, and I smiled at him to let him know he hadn’t fooled me.
He gave me a one- shouldered, unhappy shrug. “Little bit of a muscle knot, that’s all.”
“And you prefer to suffer nobly in silence rather than letting me do something about it?”
“It’s no big deal,” he said with another unhappy shrug, as if I’d put my hand on his shoulder and he was trying to dislodge it.
“It will be a big deal if it turns into a cramp,” I said. That had happened a couple of times since we’d left Mélusine, and both times, he’d been sick and sweating with pain by the time he’d confessed to me anything was wrong. I realized now, shamefully, that his reticence had been partly caused by my own deplorable behavior— although I could at least say for myself that, both times, I had helped him, not savaging him when he was already hurt. “Mildmay. Don’t be stupid about this. Let me help.”
He held my gaze for a moment, though I couldn’t tell what he was looking for. Then he sighed and said, “Yeah. You’re right,” and began carefully maneuvering out of his trousers so that I could massage the scarred mess of his right thigh.
He wouldn’t look at me as I worked, his head tilted back as if he were staring at the stars. It irritated me, and I finally said, “What is it, exactly, that you’re embarrassed about here?”
He twitched, but didn’t move his head. Or give me an answer.
And then I thought I knew. “You know this isn’t your fault.”
That got a snort.
“ How is this your fault?” I dug into the knotted, damaged muscles of his thigh harder than I’d meant to— which at least got a reaction out of him, a faint yelp, although he still wouldn’t look at me.
“Should’ve been more careful,” he said. “Like Rinaldo said.”
“That’s a little easier to do when you’re not saving your idiot brother from drowning,” I said reasonably.
“Well, yeah.” And he sighed and relaxed, and I was able to feel as if I was actually doing him some good.
Kay
    I was taught as a child that forgetfulness was one of the Lady’s darker mercies; I had not understood then, but I came to in the wake of Gerrard’s death, for I woke in perfect blackness and had no memory of falling asleep, much less any idea of how I had come to be where I was— wherever that might be.
    My first, confused thought was that I had been taken prisoner by the Usara, for their prisons, deep in the caverns beneath the Perblanches, were lightless: oubliettes in truth, for one both forgot and was forgotten while one lay there. I was aching with cold, which I also remembered, but I could not remember riding against the Usara since the summer of four indictions back, and I knew I had returned thence to Rothmarlin, for I had found waiting for me . . .
    Ah, Lady, dost hate me so? If forgetfulness was but a dubious blessing, memory was most certainly a curse.
It had been Gerrard’s cousin waiting for me, Dominic Hume, who had