"Yeah, but the rest of us live the lives the G.o.ddess gave us. Ask the carrion eater how many lives he's lived."

"Bannon wants to know how many lives you've lived."

"Bannon wants to know?"

She shrugged.

Gyhard considered the question. It felt strange to be talking about it. Strange, but not unpleasant. "Counting the life I was born into, and not counting this borrowed one, six."

"So five people have died for you to live."

When Vree repeated Bannon's words, Gyhard threw back his head and laughed.

"Oh, more than that. Many more than that."

"He meant innocents," Vree snapped.

"I beg your pardon," Gyhard graciously inclined his head. "Can I a.s.sume by this

condemnation that a pair of military a.s.sa.s.sins have never taken an innocent life?

What of poor old Governor Aralt? He was no threat to you." He lifted a hand to cut short his protest. "Oh, wait, I forget, he had to die for the sake of the Empire. Well, I consider myself to be of at least as much worth as your Empire."

"Worth as much as the Empire? You're a worthless piece of s.h.i.t!"Vree ignored Bannon's protest. "So you died five times..."Gyhard sighed. "You've missed the point, Vree. I don't die."She turned to face him, trusting-or not caring-that the horse would continue to follow the road. "You've left behind five lives, that's the same as dying. How

did you do it?"He got lost for a moment in the intensity of her gaze. Because it looked very much as though she needed to know the answer, he heard himself say, "Except for the first one, I left by choice. That made it easier."

"Choice," she repeated, and her tone cut with the same precision her dagger had.

There was no point in misunderstanding or in pointing out that she could have

chosen not to save her brother. "You could have chosen to let that courier live.

Chosen to die."

"No one chooses to die."

"My point exactly."

She stared at him for a moment longer, then whatever need it was in her eyes

vanished and, her expression carefully neutral once again, she turned back to face the road, the moment when something could have been shared between them gone.

In a hundred and twenty-two years, Gyhard mused, trying unsuccessfully to push away a rising memory, everything reminds you of something else.

"Why, Kars?" Because he couldn't look at the other man, he stared at his own reflection in the polished goblet, dark eyes wide with betrayal.

Kars smiled sadly. "I love you. If I kill you, you'll never leave me."

"I wasn't going to leave you." But even with the taste of poison on his lips, his protest sounded weak.

"You were. I saw your face when I Sang Ora back to into her body."

"She was dead, Kars, it isn't right."

"You've had three lives. Why shouldn't she have two? It wasn't right for her to die. It isn't right for you to leave me. I'll kill you, then I'll Sing you back to your body."

Kars, his beautiful tragic Kars, gifted with the ability to Sing all four quarters but born in Cemandia where bards were seen as demon-kin. His life had been one of torture and torment before he'd finally escaped to hide in the mountains, no longer entirely sane. Gyhard could no longer ignore that insanity. He should never have told him how he'd moved his kigh from body to body. Should never have given him the idea of turning his incredible twisted power to Singing a fifth kigh.

"I didn't drink the wine, Kars. I tasted the poison before I swallowed."

Full lips trembled. "I thought you loved me."

"I did. I do."

"Then stay with me, my heart. Please, stay with me."

He remembered how Ora, neck broken in the fall that had killed her, had

struggled to her feet, head lolling to one side. Perhaps they might still have a chance. "Free Ora."

"No. The dead won't leave me."

"Then the living will. Choose."

Tears welled up in deep blue eyes. "The dead won't leave me."

Gyhard stared down at the young hands that held the reins, seeing for a moment the hands that had guided his horse down out of the mountains, away from a crazy bard and his dead companion. He'd gotten rid of that body as soon as he could because every moment in it reminded him of the life he'd left behind. Of Kars.

Old choices. He'd lived almost a hundred years since then. Kars was long dead.

Chapter Six.

"Gyhard i'Stevana isn't an Imperial name."

"Very true."

As he left it at that, Vree searched desperately for a way to keep him talking.

"You stink at this. You sound like you're going to shove hot metal under his

fingernails if he doesn't answer."

"Look, I said exactly what you told me to!"

"It's not what you're saying, sister-mine, it's your own unique way of saying it.

Ask him where he's from and try to sound like you care."

"Slaughter it, Bannon," she growled. "Wouldn't it be easier just to rip off my clothes and impale myself on him?" "Not on horseback. Should've tried it last night." I told you so, was implicit in his tone.

Vree took a deep breath and forced unwilling lips up into a smile. "So where are you from?" Gyhard tore his gaze away from a plump young woman spreading manure in a field by the road and glanced over at his companion. "Why do you want to know?"

"Well, Bannon? Why?"

"You're just... curious." He layered heated meaning onto the final word. Vree had no idea how he did it. Her own response fell sadly flat. "How odd." Gyhard's smile suggested he knew how Vree's answer should've sounded. "I'm rather curious myself."

"He's patronizing me, Bannon."

"Shut up and listen to him, or we'll never get on with this."

"I was wondering," he continued, "how someone so beautiful could allow her

entire youth to be eaten up by the army."

"We didn't have a choice."

A morning spent trying to echo Bannon's words and Bannon's tone in what was

essentially Bannon's seduction betrayed her. This time, she got the tone right. The bitterness surprised her.

"You didn't have a choice?" Gyhard repeated. "We were raised in the garrison." She wasn't sure why she was answering. She wasn't sure who. "Our mother was in the army. We weren't very old when she was killed. The army raised us; fed us, clothed us, housed us, trained us. We owed them everything."

"Did they raise all their orphans as a.s.sa.s.sins."

Her shoulders straightened and her chin rose. "No, only the best."

"Did they often tell you that, that you were the best?"

She swiveled in the saddle so she could stare full into his face, not understanding either the question or the almost gentle way he asked it. What right did he have, sitting there in her brother's body without a life of his own, to pity her? A flick of the wrist and she could kill him as they rode. He'd be dead before he even saw the blade.

"Why are we talking about us? You're supposed to get him to talk about himself."

"Bannon..."

"Get him out of my body, Vree."

"You never said where you were from." She turned her attention back to the road, all at once very busy with reins and riding.

Why not? Gyhard, fully aware that this delving for information most likely had ulterior motives involving his removal from Bannon's body, frankly didn't care. Whatever she... they were planning wouldn't work anyway. And whatever he told her could hardly be called secret compared to what she'd known right from the beginning. It was, in a way, very freeing. "I was born and raised in Shkoder. Do you know where that is?"

Vree smashed a bug against her thigh and wondered if he thought she was stupid. "Shkoder's on the other side of the mountain range that guards the Empire's north border. They have no standing army, a well-trained militia, and usually base rank on birth rather than ability." His flummoxed expression drew a scornful laugh. "If an army's to keep the Empire, it has to know about the surrounding countries."

"For defense?"

"Or attack." Everything kept coming back to the army. She supposed it was like losing a limb but having the pain go on in parts long rotted and food for worms.

"Or attack," Gyhard agreed. "Although I doubt that Shkoder would even consider something so innately suicidal given the respective sizes of the two countries. Also, Her Imperial Majesty, the Empress Irenka is a younger sister of King Theron of Shkoder."

Lifting her face to the heat of the sun, Vree sighed.

They'd-she and Bannon-once removed an old army commander who'd gathered a group of veterans around her and attempted to set up a private little fief inside the Empire. "Allies change."

"Very true."

Something in his voice pulled her head around again. Something in his eyes drove her heels in hard against her horse's sides.

"Vree, what are you doing? He's supposed to get interested in you." How to explain that she wasn't running from his reaction but hers. That she was in danger of responding to the face Gyhard wore and not the enemy who wore it. Slitting her eyes against a heated wind, she thought of nothing at all save staying in the saddle.