aYouare insane,a he said.

aYeah?a I said. aBut you keep trying to change me, so what does that f.u.c.king say about you?a Mostly this was my neat and simple way of keeping an eye on him, even when I wasnat trapping him in a box of his own making, giving him the idea that maybe this time Iad actually give him a little piece of me that would solve the puzzle and let him in, then s.n.a.t.c.hing it back. I could feel him watching me all the time, careful and measured like he was trying to size me up and measure my actions against what I should be telling him, but he didnat want me to catch him at it. One day he was doing it in front of a couple of the boys, Ivory and Magoughin and Merritt and Luvander, and I lost it with him afterward, just lost it.

aWhat the f.u.c.k do you think youare doing,a I snarled, close to his ear, my breath gusting hot back up against my own face. aI donat want you f.u.c.king looking at me.a He didnat stop, but at least he was smart enough to be more careful about it.

So I guess that took care of the professor for the time being. I saw Balfour worrying after him a couple of times when he caught the professor sneaking out of my room late one nighta"since after all, that was the kind of thing I liked to do, just to keep him on edge all the time, keep him tired and careless, not paying attention to anything else but converting me or whatever it was he thought he was going to do. I guess it upset Balfour something special, seeing as how they were two bleeding hearts and he thought he was losing the one person who actually cared what he had to say. But for all his worrying, Balfour didnat know what I knew, that the professor mightave been a rat.

I wasnat too concerned about it.

Other than that, there was the war to think about. Even though wead been led to believe it would be over in a week, things played out just like Iad figured they might, and pretty much right after the ball, all the magicians that thaEsarad called back from disreputable exile were deployed quick as that, and the air-raid siren was still ringing out every night so not a man jack of us was getting enough sleep. Most of the time we caught winks during the day, long catnaps I liked to think of them, while at night we kept the Ke-Han busy even as the magicians made their way to the Cobalts, then through aem, then right up to the front.

Something didnat smell right about it; it smelled like lying. A couple of the boys were thinking the same thing, but our job was to go where we were told when wead signed our names for the week earlier, so whether we thought something of it or not it didnat seem to make much difference. I signed up for a couple of extra shifts, and it was the funniest thing Iad ever seen, coming back one night to find the professor waiting up for me, holding his own elbows, his knuckles real white.

I wiped some of the soot off my forehead and c.o.c.ked my head to the side, giving him a look like he was the crazy one, not me.

aDo you know,a he said faintly, ayou can sometimes hear the sound of the explosions, even here? The ground shakes.a It didnat. Or, at least, it never had before, since Thremedon was nestled real cozy against the hillside and the water, miles away from the Cobalts. Most of the fighting since the creation of the dragons took place on the Ke-Hanas side of the mountains.

aYouare making things up,a I said. aItas pretty f.u.c.king far away.a He didnat say anything, just sort of rocking in his place for a moment or two, then he surged off the couch all at once, like the tide.

aYouare bleeding,a he said.

Havead got me a swish-flick with her wing. Nothing crazy like thatad ever happened beforea"we knew where the other one was down to the barest hairbreadth of a centimetera"and itad spooked us both pretty bad. It p.i.s.sed me off that the professorad zeroed right in on it, like he knew, or was just a d.a.m.n good guesser.

Then, because he was out of his right mind and straight into his wrong one, he started dabbing at the cut on my temple with the edge of his sleeve.

I was tired and I was still a little biting mad, but for some reason instead of breaking his jaw I let him do it. It was stupid of him to get so close to me after a fight and I could see he knew it, breathing unsteadily, waiting for me to lash out at him or bite him or something.

I figured not doing any of those things would freak him more than actually doing what he expected me to. When he led me over to his couch and went to get me a gla.s.s of water I stayed put like a little kid. f.u.c.k, I even drank some of it.

aWas it . . . very rough tonight?a he asked, like he thought I was in the mood for discussing it with him.

aNot particularly,a I said, rolling out the tension in my shoulders. I needed a shower pretty bad, but now all of a sudden here we were, sitting and talking like it was afternoon tea. aIvory almost took it chin-f.u.c.king-on, but Have and I got him out. What the f.u.c.k do you care about it?a aYou can almost hear the explosions from here,a he repeated, like it meant something I just wasnat picking up on. He colored, just a little, high on his cheeks. For a moment he even looked kind of familiar, but I couldnat place it. aThe couch is going to smell like grease,a he said. aThere will be no getting it out, no matter how many times itas cleaned.a aYouare the one who wanted me to sit down so bad,a I pointed out. aI gotta clean up.a aIf thereas anything I coulda"a he began, then cut off short, like he thought now was the time to start being coy with me. That was what came of letting him come close even for a second, really. I had him in a bad place, cornered nice and good. aIf you want to talk,a he finished finally, and winced, because even he mustave known how pathetic it sounded.

aThink Iave been handling this for a long time on my own, professor,a I said. aDonat f.u.c.king worry about it.a aI do,a the professor replied, almost fiercely.

It was a pretty stupid thing to say, and I wasnat predisposed toward excusing him for any slip-ups anyway, but he had a strange kind of courage, and it made me hesitate, which gave him some kind of idea, Iam sure, about how close wead grown.

Once that happened, the professor stopped trying to pretend he wasnat over-the-moon distracted after something or other. He didnat break the rules, though, no matter how many times the boys caught him at his notes, muttering to himself or looking after me the morning after a raid, asking me if I wanted breakfast, that sort of thing. The only thing that gave me some kind of amus.e.m.e.nt was Balfour, whose look of bitter disappointment that the professor had no time for him at all kept me laughing for hours after I saw it.

Then things with Have started to get messy, and I wasnat laughing at anything for a good long while.

It wasnat anything big at first, just the little things, like the first time when her wing had grazed my head. Only it didnat stop there, like it shouldave. Have and I were the best because we flew like one being, metal and magic, flesh and blood, without a heart between us. Some days, when it all went right, I could barely tell who it was that did the flying, her or me. It wasnat that the line was blurred; there was no f.u.c.king line at all. But that was before.

Like I said, it wasnat anything big. Leastways it wasnat so big that I could mention it to any of the others. Iad tried sneaking it into a question about something else to Ace, Thoushalt being the closest thing to Have in all the world, but head only given me a strange look with those sleepy eyes of his, like he didnat have a clue what I was on about and could he shower now?

So it was only me, then, or whatever was off wasnat so much that the othersad noticed yet. I wasnat any kind of egomaniac, despite what certain people and professors chose to believe. And even if I was the best, I knew that if there was something wronga"really wronga"with our girls, then there wouldnat have been a man of us not up in arms about it. I mightave told myself it was all in my imagination even, only it wasnat, acause Have was real enough and things on her werenat working like they used to. We were flying like separate creatures, Havemercy and me, with no regard for where anyone put their hand or their tail. The sc.r.a.pe with her wing was the first, but it sure as s.h.i.t wasnat the last, and when I gave her trouble for it, she seemed real surprised and about as concerned as something that canat feel concern could be. She wasnat even talking like she had before, only the muck-headed Handlers didnat notice it, said I was making s.h.i.t up or gone mad with signing up for too many raids.

One of them even tried to say it was my fault for signing up for so many raids, and that Have was probably just out of sorts on account of being overworked.

I broke his jaw.

I thought for sure thatad get me in some kind of trouble with Adamo, but even our grand Chief Sergeant seemed distracted like head never been before, spending all his time locked up in command like some real war general and us too distracting or not good enough to strategize with him. aCourse I knew it wasnat that, and that Adamo had been real good to me when he did hear about the fight, didnat put me on tight rations or nothing.

Instead of making it better, though, it just p.i.s.sed me off even more. Nothing was acting like it was d.a.m.n well supposed to.

With all that anger in my head it might have been a good idea to stay away from the professor for a spell, but I got the uncomfortable feeling that head start following me around like some kind of dog that didnat have another home if I stayed away too long.

Then he started hanging around me anyway, not anything like the rest of the guys did on downtime, but more like a real persistent shadow in the back of my head, reading in the back of the room or writing his notes down or even just eating his lunch while I was eating my breakfast.

With things going on with Have the way they were, and me coming back scratched or cut up or something most nights, it was like head forgot the rules. He was cleverer about it than he couldave been, but not near as clever as he thought he was, like he thought he could look at me just because I had a bandage on my f.u.c.king face.

I didnat much care whether he was doing it on purpose or not, only it seemed worse if he wasnat, acause just what kind of a weak-willed son-of-a didnat even do the things he wanted to on purpose?

If he wanted someone to follow around, I told him one night when itad especially worn on me seeing him there, calm as you please, then he could go and get himself some kind of a Cindy boyfriend. He got quiet after thata"only the professor was always quiet latelya"just clamped right down on his tongue and didnat let anything past that didnat force itself free.

I could almost see him questioning himself after that, and I swallowed my pride for a moment.

aTired,a I ground out.

aOh, of course,a he said, like that made all the difference. aTheyare riding you very hard these days, arenat they?a It was like he thought he was getting everything he wanted just by sitting next to me and agreeing with me, making exceptions until the moment I saw the light, had my epiphany, and changed my ways. What he didnat know was that I made the rules and I was holding all the cards. Neither of these things was liable to change soon, and head just have to get used to it.

That night when I left, after dragging him along like a puppy on a string, I signed up for the next nightas crush shift that Niall had been complaining no one wanted, knowing it was probably his turn. Have and I just needed to get back into the groove of things, I thought, and it wouldnat do no good ignoring the problem.

Paying attention to the problem didnat seem to be working any better, though.

Things came to a head the night I was out with Compagnon and Raphael, though it didnat happen for more than a flash and neither one of them noticed it, but I f.u.c.king lost control of Havemercy for all the time it took a man to sneeze.

Someone once told me that when you sneeze your heart just stops, not long enough to kill you, not so long that youare even aware of it, but it stops.

Feeling Have streaking underneath me in the sky while knowing I wasnat having a thing to do with it was a lot like a sneeze in that respect.

Anyway, losing control like that, for even a split second, was long enough for the magicians to hit me with whatever flying f.u.c.king debris on fire theyad caught up in the wind; trust the Ke-Han to fight with their own buildings. I got hit bad in the left side, knocking all the feeling out of my shoulder and burning me like Iad just been blindsided by a d.a.m.n enormous coal, which I guess I had.

Through some kind or another of luck, Compagnon did notice and had the gall to act like we should retreat or something just acause my whole left side was on fire and I was riding a dragon who wasnat my girl except when she was.

aI think you should go with the retreat,a she said, sounding enough like her old self that I could almost forget whatad happened. Excepting the searing pain, of course. aYou stubborn jacka.s.s.a She was right enough about that, I thought, because by the time we landed in the hangar I felt all sharp and miserable the way I did when something was either going to make me pa.s.s out or sick up.

When we were really in the thick of it, the Airman had its own meds, but either thaEsar had cut their funding or head decided things werenat hot enough yet, acause we hadnat seen hide nor hair of anyone looking remotely doctory or useful or nothing, and the rooms they normally filled for this sort of thing were cold, clean steel and white walls.

Completely f.u.c.king empty.

I sat on the examination table before my legs got too shaky and I didnat have any choice in the matter. I closed my eyes and leaned back against the wall, grinding my teeth against the insistent throbbing in my shoulder and smack over my ribs.

The Rittenhouse was nearest, was what Compagnon said, and with Raphael still running point on recon, Iad just have to wait there by myself while he got the meds out of their nice restful sleeps. Compagnon had a terrible sense of humor, though, and when the door opened a minute later, him saying head run into someone in the hall who could keep watch over me, I didnat need to open my eyes to know who he was talking about.

I couldnat even smell the professor over the stench on my own flesha"cooked meat and charred coat and silver b.u.t.tons sizzling where theyad hit my skina"but I knew.

The door swung shut with a quiet snick, and the professor breathed in deep.

aMight not want to use your nose there,a I said idly, voice dull with the effort of controlling the pain. aBurnt flesh ainat so pretty.a He made a soft, useless sort of sound in the back of his throat, and I cracked open an eye.

aYou just going to stand there?a I asked.

Even laid up as I was, functioning on only the most basic levels, it really amused me how the professor could go on looking so shocked after so long.

That galvanized him into moving forward, at least. There was something strange in his eyesa"not pity, else I would have hit him and pain be d.a.m.neda"but something for certain. It stayed there, green and strange and bothering me when he sat down on my good side, even when he reached out to touch me, maybe to pat my hand, then seemed to think better of it. Some people just like to feel useful, especially the most useless of them all.

There wasnat anything the professor could do here and, for once, even he knew it.

aWhat happened?a he asked at last. His voice wasnat rough or dream-slurred or nothing, so I knew he hadnat been sleeping again. He didnat sleep much lately. The raid sirens and I saw to that pretty well.

I shrugged, only I couldnat shrug and Iad forgotten. Instead I swore until I ran out of things to curse, and body parts to curse them with, then leaned back against the wall again, breathing none too easily. I thought Iad give thaEsar a piece of my mind on moving out our resident meds, but then I remembered the professor and that, if he really was a rat and I played my cards right, he might be able to do it for me.

Except when I tried to focus on what might be the best way to go about it, my thoughts shifted, refused to come together like the mismatched pieces of the jigsaw puzzles that Evariste did in the common room when no one else was around to entertain him.

I gave up in exasperation, as apparently Iad got the ability to be clever knocked out of me along with the air when Iad been hit by bits of burning Ke-Han building.

I sighed loud and frustrated, then felt a cool hand against mine.

I opened both eyes.

aAll right,a I said. aHereas the thing. I could tear down the bastion all on my lonesome, amount of pain Iam in right now, so I donat want you asking any dumb-a.s.s questions about how Iam feeling or what happened or anything like that, okay?a He nodded, pale concern and a willingness in his face like he didnat know what head done wrong or what he could do to make it right. aAll right.a aIf youare going to be here, then you talk to me, distract me from pulling your head off, acause youare closer than the bastion by a long shot.a aOh,a he said, and I could practically hear him thinking, even when I closed my eyes again and I couldnat see it. aWell, Luvander won the game of darts in the common room today.a aLuvander cheats,a I answered. aEveryone knows it.a aWell, then, they must have let him win,a the professor amended. aAnd there was some commotion over who had used the gas burners in Raphaelas room to make grilled cheese.a If this was the kind of information he was feeding thaEsar, I thought, then we wouldnat have any kind of a problem on our hands anytime soon.

aI think it was Magoughin and Merritt,a he finished, going all quiet at the end like head finally realized he was babbling on about nonsense no one in their right mind would have anything to do with caring about.

I let the silence fester, shifting infinitesimally against the wall acause I couldnat just sit still with all this fire and metal in me. I smelled like the burnt-out hull of a building, everything scorched beyond recognition. I smelled like death.

as.h.i.t,a I said into the quiet, and the professoras hand went tight where Iad forgotten it was on mine. He had big hands, but I knew that from before, when I took him up with me on Have. He was hurting me. I wanted to go to sleep, and I wanted the medics from the Rittenhouse to get themselves into gear. aI hate fire.a aIa"Oh,a he said, pretty d.a.m.n stupidly. aSo do I.a I wondered why head ever let me take him up into the air without putting up more of a fight if he hated it that much, but head won something out of me for not asking the f.u.c.king stupid question Iad been expecting: What sort of airman hates fire, that kind of s.h.i.t, and I just wasnat in the mood.

aIt spreads very quickly from house to house, on the Mollyedge and in Molly especially,a he continued.

aYeah,a I said, and I donat know what Iad got into my head, whether it was the burn, or my coat melting into my shoulder, or the fact that I hadnat got more than catnaps for longeran I could remember, but I didnat stop talking there like I shouldave. aMy brother died in a fire like that. Guess it was abouta"well, a long f.u.c.king time ago, thatas for sure. I mean, I mustave lost track of how long it was.a That was a pretty lie, and no mistake. aHis name was Hilary. He was goina on four and he used to eat fireflies. I donat know. I think he thought theyad make him glow.a I felt him go very still, like even though he didnat have any special skills toward reading me, he could still sense he was on real thin ice here. Maybe he knew me better than I thought, or maybe he just understood that men like me didnat talk about this kind of thing to just anyone.

He was right, any which way he was thinking. I hadnat said a word about Hilary since Hilaryad died.

I opened my eyes again, and slid down the wall a little so our faces were nice and close. aYou tell anyone what I just said, I donat care if they wear a crown, Iall kill you first.a aOh,a he said, looking real white and a little sick, like Iad figured out his biggest secret. aOh, no, of course not, I wouldnat dreama"Iall forget you ever mentioned it.a He swallowed hard.

The professor looked a little shaky, the way he had when head clambered on down off Havemercyas back, only there was that same electricity in his eyes that had given me the idea in the first place.

aGood,a I said. aJust so long as weare clear.a By the time the meds got there, I was half-out, the professor breathing slow and steady by my side. My eyes were closed and, what with burnt flesh and the rest of my skin too hot for thinking, I donat know if he stayed with me the whole rest of the night. Knowing him, he probably did.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

ROYSTON.

We traveled only the first day on horseback. The rest of the trip was made on foot, and it took a little more than a week and a halfa"nearly two by the time wead met with our commanding officers and our garrison of Redsa"to arrive at our side of the Cobalts. The path we took was a necessary one, looping back through the foothills and twisting around, until we were well shot of Thremedon herself. If we hadnat been forced to take such a meandering route, we might have made it in five days, but it wasnat speed that was of the essence. It was our own victory.

I had some recollections from a few years back, when Iad been on the front just the same as now, but it was always such a shock to be reminded that the Cobalts were so aptly named. They were high and jagged and faded off into the clouds, and they were indeed very blue, at least until the ice caps made them very white. If I hadnat been about to be killing the men who lurked just on the other side of the range, I would have taken the time to drink in the sight of them. The first time Iad come here Iad been too young and too nervous to make proper note of them at all.

The way we were deployed was quite clever. It was a strategy developed after too many years spent fightinga"well over a hundred by nowa"and one that had been only slightly modified by the advent of the Dragon Corps, whose service was invaluable but also limited to the night, because of what enormously obvious targets theyad have been in the daylight. Because they were so deadly and so precise and caused such destruction on so ma.s.sive a scale, we avoided skirmishes in the nighttime. And so it was that we were able to engage the Ke-Han on two fronts: the more common form of warfare, between garrisons of Reds and Blues augmented by the particular specialties of magicians during battle days, then the more recent form, which took place only at night and was signaled by the howling, shrieking wind that had once worked against Volstovas air force, and the subsequent explosions that meant it no longer did.

The captain in charge of my Reds was a man whoad been no more than a common foot soldier when last Iad been to the Cobalts. I was always pleased to be able to recognize a face. It meant that a man Iad once known, however brief our period of acquaintance, had managed to keep himself alive and well for as long as I had, and it fostered a certain heartening camaraderie. The captainas surname was Achille, and as he explained it, head risen very suddenly in the ranks after a disastrous rout in which half of our generals had been killed and head proved himself quite the master at rallying half-starved men with no magician at all behind them.

aYouad be surprised what starving men and starving dogs are capable of,a he said, over our first dinner.

aHardly,a I said, remembering the disasters in which I myself had been involved. aShall we do our best not to arrive at such dire straits?a aIndeed,a Achille said, aIave been doing my best these days to accomplish just that.a We reminisced together for only a short period before it grew dark and Achille quiet.

aThe dragons come sometime past midnight,a he said, with a faraway look. I wondered what sort of man he might have been if the war hadnat claimed his quick mind and ample imagination and, I acknowledged privately, ample stubbornness. aIf you listen, you can hear them from miles away.a Our garrison was marked in midrange territory and housed by one of the old mountain forts. As far as any of us knew, the entire trouble with the Ke-Han, which by now spanned the course of several life-times, hadnat arisen out of thin air but rather from an age-old border dispute. Since before most could remember, there had been mountain forts on our side and the Ke-Hana"originally a nomadic people before they built their city of lapis stonea"patrolled the Cobalt border during the summertime. Each country was eager to stake its claim to certain lands just beyond the mountains, but since the range proved such an excellent natural barrier, it was generally considered that east of the Cobalts began Ke-Han land and west of it was Volstovas.

Stories varied as to whether it was the Ke-Han who broke the entente by building their tunnels. One popular legend in Thremedon ran that a captain of a midrange mountain fort heard with his unbelievably keen ears the echoing sound of stone being blasted away by the ancient Ke-Han nature workers and immediately began drill work of his own to meet them in the middle. Another story had it that a group of overexuberant Volstovic patrolmen accidentally killed two Ke-Han warriors in a moment of zealotry or, perhaps, confusion. What Ramanthine history books Iad managed to gather over the years stated that the Ke-Han were always seeking to expand their empire, and the Ramanthines had been their next great conquest. Volstov had inherited their war with the Ke-Han: an unexpected parting gift from our conquered Ramanthines. Then, if a man truly wanted to drive himself mad, there was the matter of the Kiril Islands, which the Ke-Han had taken from Volstovic control while the Esar had been occupying himself with the conquest of the Ramanthines.

I had no opinion as to which of these stories approached the truth more closely than the other. Likely it was none and things had escalated more gradually, until some misunderstanding or even accident brought things to a head and brought us all to such an interminable length of fighting.

It was madness, and neither side would step down until the other had been annihilated.

I wrapped my coat closer around mea"the sort of coat all magicians wore when they were sent to Cobalt deployment: a burnished wine red with ermine lining and an abundance of white fur around the throat and wrists. It was comfortable, at least, and very warm, for mountainside temperatures had the unreliable habit of dropping quite suddenly once the sun set.

As I understood it, and as Achille had confirmed for me as we went over our approved plans for battle, the emperor in his lapis city was all but crushed. Achille himself had been leading a garrison of Reds when the wall was torn down, half by magician work and half by the tail of two crushing dragonsa"Compa.s.sus and another whose name I could not remember. It was the farthest that any dragon had ever made it into the city before, and the men seemed to take this as a sign. In fact, it was commonly held among the soldiers, who were farther removed from the troublesome goings-on at court than even I had been during my stay at Nevers, that our next battle might even be the one in which we claimed final victory as our own. Whether or not I could join them in this antic.i.p.ation, I wasnat yet convinced.

All I knew for certain was that, after the dragons. .h.i.t the lapis city this night, all the Esaras forces were to come down on the city at once.

Our plana"the Esaras plana"was that we should take this city for our own. If all went according to plan, we would be able to take the Ke-Han emperor as our prisoner of war, toppling his throne and bringing an entire people to their knees.

Admittedly, there was a certain excitement buzzing with the cold in the air. I couldnat help but allow it access to my own blood, for we all wanted this war to be over. And I knew that, if nothing else, we were doubtless on the verge of something colossala"though I couldnat be sure if it was our own victory or something as yet unforeseen.

Be prepared for all eventualities.

I repeated this phrase to myself every time I threatened to get ahead of myself, and wished that those around me would attempt to be as circ.u.mspect as I was struggling to be.

I sat with Achille in his captainas quartersa"the highest room in the mountainside fort, reserved for captains and magicians alonea"waiting to hear the sound of the dragons sleeking through the distant air. I thought for a brief moment of Hal, for I was always stealing such private moments to think of him, and wondered how I might have told this story to him if we were together in the warm room at Castle Nevers, with William on my knee and Halas eyes bright with firelight as he sat at my feet. I longed to have him at my side for a brief and impossibly selfish moment, until I remembered just how Hal would have suffered here. No; this was the sort of tale Iad bring back to him, and then I could allow myself to tangle my fingers with his and glean all my comfort from being so close.

Yet I would never have been able to do the moment justice with mere words. There was no describing the Dragon Corps.

It was true that we heard them before we saw them, and Achille and I went quickly together to the window, throwing it open. The evening was cloudy and dark, perfect conditions for flying, and almost half an hour pa.s.sed, the wind changing constantly, before we saw anything.

We heard them more than saw them when they were at last overhead, the forceful boom of their bodies pounding too quickly through the air for us to see anything more than a momentary flash of silver dark in the filmy moonlight. They always rode in threes.

The wind they left in their wake shook the very building to its core. I almost imagined the Cobalts themselves being sent crumbling because of the disturbance in the air. Our side gave a great whoop of national pride to hear them pa.s.s overhead, and I could feel that pride replace the excitement, the air now stirred to a fever by the beating of the dragonsa mammoth metal wings.

af.u.c.k,a said Achille reverently. af.u.c.k me if they arenat the most beautiful things in all of Volstov.a aI agree with you,a I said, with the faint offerings of a smile, aand thus Iam afraid I must decline your suggestion as to the rest of it.a He laughed and clapped me on the back and called me, somewhat affectionately, the greatest Cindy this side of the ocean.

I managed little sleep for myself that night, and what rest I did manage was laced through with nervous antic.i.p.ation, the sound of the dragons in the air, and the explosions that shortly followed their arrival. Iad forgotten how reverberant such things sounded through the long, complicated system of tunnels the Ke-Han had twice used to overpower us; Iad forgotten how loud it could get, how bright, how nightmarish. I was losing my touch, I told myself wryly, and had best reacquaint myself with the peculiar sensation of having the ground shake like an earthquake beneath my feet by the time I was thrust into the thick of things long before this hour on the morrow.