The smile disappeared. "Unless the web disintegrates com- pletely. Khy, no, it won't work. You must go. They'll arrest you. Ruin you, one way or the other. And if she can't get you out"

"What do they plan to arrest me for?" he asked, inter- rupting her.

She biinked, then looked away. "S-seducing a radical competitor."

It was the same nonsense that had buzzed about the room after she'd left. Comments on the dress only a Rho- mandi could afford, the tiara, the flaunting of tradition, and that she wouldn't get away with it if she weren't warming his bed.

He turned away from her, and paced the room, feeling caged already. "This is ridiculous." And, dammit, unfair.

"When I think of how often I've wanted to do precisely what they" He bit his lip and sent a despairing glance across to the shadows where her pale eyes echoed his di- lemma. "Tern, I'm sorry. I never meant"

Her eyes vanished, whatever feelings she might be having hidden behind long-lashed lids. She moved to the chair, and silently held out the pile she'd brought with her.

"What are those?"

"Hill clothes. From the Belisii Valley. They are . . .

Mother says they are like what my parents wore. I . . . I'd like you toto wear them tomorrow."

"I'd be proud to."

"M-more than that. If you leave with your men, they'll follow you." Her eyes came up, hard and sure. "They mean to have you, Khy, make no doubt of it. There's a Belisii trade caravan camped outside Khoratum. They're leaving during the competition tomorrow. I've arranged for you to accompany them."

"I don't"

"You'll be safe. Far safer than ever you've been here.

They'll have a head start, but Ganfrion can get you to them. They're poor folk who've pooled their assets and their products hoping to find a market in Rhomatum. I . . .

told them you'd help, in exchange for safe passage."

"I won't go unless you go with me." The declaration escaped before he realized he'd thought it. "If I'm in dan- ger, so are you. Ganfrion says you're playing Rhyys' game, that you and Thyerri have been all along. Well, I don't believe you are now, and if you've double-crossed Rhyys to this extent, it's possible not even Mother could save you."

"She'll protect me."

"She's been just a bit unreliable! It's one thing for me.

Time will not exactly be of the essence. But if the rings go down, if the web collapses again, while you're dancing who's to say what you'll be facing?"

"Now who's being unfair? Trying to frighten me into making your life simpler, dunMheric? I'll not be manipu- latednot by Rhyys, not by Mother, and certainly not by you. You want to diefine. Wait until tomorrow night, go leisurely to your carriage, and see how long you last in Rhyys' tender care. But don't expect me to give up what I've finally gotten. The dance is mine, to win or lose. No matter what Rhyys says, I will know. The rings will whisper the truth to me. Rakshi will. And if I am meant to die, let it be on my rings, not on some foreign city street."

"You can dance Rhomatum's Rings!" The thought was said before he realized its ramifications. "Rings! Of course!

Temorii, that's it! Come with me. Tern, they'll love you.

They've never seen anything like"

"Shut up!" She sank to her knees, her hands clenched on the clothing. "Gods, you're stupid sometimes! I can't dance just any rings."

She was shaking with anger and fear and frustrationall of it his doing. She was going to dance tomorrow, one way or another, and in this state, it would surely mean her death.

They were both talking nonsense. They'd made one plan and never seen beyond it. If she could have been talked into leaving, the time to convince her was long past.

"I'm sorry. Tern. I'm truly, truly sorry." He crossed to her side, waited until she, very reluctantly, met his gaze.

He cupped her chin in one hand, brushed the shaded hair back with the other.

"I should have known. I'm still learning. Gan . . . Gan- frion says they'll kill you, win or lose, after they have me.

Or if they lose me. After the dance, your dance, will you come with me? You'll have your answer. You'll know . . ."

She was shaking her head slowly. "I . . . I can't live anywhere else, Khy. Khoratum . . . Mother . . . I'm"

He laid a finger on her lips. "All right, I'll go with your caravan. Without" Despite his determination, his voice broke. "you. My brothers and I will deal with this little problem. I'll live, but I don't promise to be happy. These days with you . . . Ringfire, I've tried so hard not to feel . . .

what I'm feeling. You caught me by surprise, my brave, beautiful dancer."

She jumped within his hold, and her startled gaze searched his face rather frantically.

"Are you all right?"

"Why did you call me that?" she whispered past trembling lips.

"It's what your name means, isn't it? It's what Mother called you. Ifs-it's what you are." His control broke and he pulled her fiercely up and into his arms. "Sometimes I hate the rings and everything about them." She hissed like an angry snake, but before she could pull away, he tight- ened his hold and whispered: "But without the dance, you wouldn't be you, and I might never would have known you."

"Maybe you'd be happier if you hadn't. You told Mother"

"Never." He leaned away to see her face. "I love you, Tern. And that's something I never thought I'd be able to say to any womanno man, other than my brothers."

"You do mean that, don't you Khy?"

"You can doubt it?"

"And yet you feared for me on the rings."

"That's contradictory?"

"Mother says if you love a dancer, you never fear for them while they are on the rings. If you love a dancer, you know that the rings won't hurt them, and if they die on the rings, they die happy, and if you love them, you won't be frightened for them, because that might make the dancer frightened."

"I was startled. You didn't warn me you were going to perform without the harness."

"Dancers don't perform, Khy."

"I stand corrected. But I didn't know, Tern. There's so much I don't know."

"We can none of us know everything, Khy."

They remained motionless for no little time. Then Mi- khyel released her reluctantly and picked up the costume.

"When will you join Mother?"

"When I leave here. The competitors are led in at first light. She'll need to leythiate me in before they get there."

"Leythiate. Is that what you call it?"

"It's how I interpret Mother's thought."

"I see," he said, though none of it meant anything.

Words, noises, anything to take his mind off her.

He spread the shirt over his arm, admiring the intricate cut and pulled work on the neck and sleeves. Black, with an iridescent leythium-dipped thread, on black. "I've seen Mirym do this. I'd swear it's even the same pattern."

"Mirym?"

"Anheliaa's servant. You'd like her, I think." He didn't mention she carried his child, but a caught breath told him Temorii had picked that image from him. "Tern, I"

"I th-think, probably, I would," she whispered, and he murmured back: "She's always stitching something."

"A valuable accomplishment for a mother."

"For a mother, yes," Mikhyel said. Words. Just words.

But he thought then of that final interview with Mirym, of her disinclination to be his wife.

"But the child was conceived in love?" Temorii' whisper demanded assurance.

"Yes, in that love is compassion for specific individuals."

"And it will be raised in love?"

"Yes." Without qualification. Of that, he was certain.

Mirym would not allow it to be otherwise. He would not.

"That's good, Khy. I'm glad you have a child. And you will be a good father, I think."

"Rings, I hope so. I certainly intend to try." He smoothed the patterned sleeve, and said, because he thought she deserved to know he wasn't ashamed of the fact: "I wish it were yours."

Her hand covered his, and that internal sense entreated him to meet her eyes. He was relieved to find them dry.

Utterly at peace.

{Put them on, Khy, please. I want to see you in them, and this might well be my only opportunity.} Hating the sense of urgency, worse, of conclusion, he removed his coat. She went and stood beside the window, looking out, while he changed. Careful of his modesty for once, as he had always been of hers.

Drawstring pants, wide-sleeved, voluminous tunic, open down the front, those were simple. Unfortunately, regard- less how he wrapped it, the simple strip cummerbund in- sisted on falling off at his first deep breath. He cursed softly, and a soft chuckle happened behind him, arms wrapped around his waist to pull the strip of cloth free.

"Turn around."

He did, quickly, unthinking. The tunic fell open. The smile on her face faded as her eyes traveled slowly down- ward, and the cummerbund fell, unnoticed, to the floor.

One trembling hand reached tentatively, brushed his bare chest. His whole body tingled, and he grasped her wrist firmly to stop any further exploration.

"Tern, please. I'm not some curiosity you can"

"Mother says the traditions are foolish."

He closed his eyes as her callused fingertips made an- other circuit around his hardening nipple.

"Mother says, loving should only improve the dance, if the lover truly understands and loves the dance as I do."

"And you call me unfair!" He swallowed hard. "Dammit, Tern, your needs have kept me from touching you for what seems ten lifetimes, and nowwhen I'm leaving, when I'll likely never see you again"

"Does the when matter? Does the how many times?"

Another slow circuit. "I'll not have my life dictated. Mother says I should. Rhyys says I should. But I don't do this for Rhyys. I don't do it for Mother. I do it for me."

"And what about me, Dancer?"

She smiled. And that smile cut to his heart like no blow Mheric had ever deal him.

"I don't find this the least humorous. Neither do I care to participate in youract of independence."

"Is that what you think this is?" And her voice caught.

Her wrist jerked from his hold. But she didn't run away.

Her arms circled him, under the shirt, and her head pressed his shoulder, burrowing past the collar. Without asking his preference, his arms enfolded her. And her gown, like the robe Mother had materialized around him in the cavern, caressed his skin like living flesh.

"Perhaps you are right," she whispered. "Perhaps it is independence I seek, but not from Mother, not from Rhyys.

Not even, my sweet Khy, from you. Do you think you alone have felt the need rising within you? Mother made me part of your pattern long ago. I don't believe she intended this, but it has happened. I've tried to resist it, to ignore it, but to dance in this condition isunthinkable. And there's only one cure I know."

Her hands began a tingling journey across his bare skin, her lips and tongue following the course her fingers charted, tasting him. He staggered a wobble-kneed step backward, setting his shoulders against the door. He buried his hands in her luxuriant hair, unable at that moment, to think of anything but the wonder of her touch on his body.

Sensations that, until now, had been reserved for dreams.

And dreams were all he had to guide him, when it came to touching a woman. Dreams and a seventeenth birthday with a prostitute and that tangled vision of his night with Mirym.

Beyond that handful of dreams, his experiences were the stuff of nightmares. The last thing he wanted was to con- taminate this moment with some nightmare-driven mistake, and that fear of frightening her, of hurting her, ofin any wayruining this moment for her, held him helpless in a cloud of uncertainty, as her callused fingers brushed his shoulders and down his arms, sliding the tunic free.

The tunic, like the cummerbund before it, fell to the floor. Unkind, he thought in a dizzy haze, to the hard- working seamstress who had created such Her mouth on his chest eliminated all thoughts of that seamstress.

"I used to lie beside you in the meadow, watching while you slept," she whispered, and her shoulder lifted as with a deep breath, then slowly relaxed. "And sometimes I'd wake up with my head pillowed on you, and all I could think was how good you smelled, and when you held me, and my lips brushed your skin, how good you tasted."

Her hand crept past the simple placket-fly of the loose pants, and touched him, gently, sweetly, a touch not too light, not painfully tight. Not shy, nor inhibited, though she lacked a prostitute's obvious expertise.

His mind reeling, he frantically sought some healthy par- adigm, some guideline for what he should and shouldn't do, and as he fought to keep his knees from buckling, his body remembered another fight for balance. An under- ground passage, and shadows, and a red-haired temptress.