"I would like that very much, Razi."

He nodded and they traded a smile. Then he disappeared into the undergrowth.

Wynter finished laying out the equipment, then she jogged down to the water's edge to help Christopher with the rest of their things. She rounded the bushes and came to an awkward halt. "Oh," she said, "I'm sorry."

Christopher was sitting deep in the shade, his back against a tree, and as she appeared he scrubbed his face in a furious attempt to hide the fact that he had been crying. "Oh, curse it," he said desperately.

Wynter half turned to go, paused, swung back to him and trotted up the rock. "Razi wants us to tickle up some trout," she said. "He seems to think it a great idea to light a fire. I think he's lost his God-cursed mind!" She stepped over Christopher's sprawled legs and dropped lightly to sit beside him, looking out at the river.

"The ..." he started hoarsely, then cleared his throat. "As long as the breeze stays blowing upriver we'll be all right." There was a moment's tense silence. "I quite fancy some fish," he said, turning to look at her. "Do you?"

Wynter knocked her shoulder against his in an affectionate, teasing gesture, and smiled. "Aye," she said. "I do. I can catch it if you like."

Christopher sniffed. "Oh aye?" he said doubtfully, wiping his hand under his eyes again. "You tickle trout do you, lass?"

"Christopher Garron," she admonished with another nudge to his shoulder. "Do you doubt me on foot of my sex?"

He gave her a sideways smile, and looked out at the river again. "Nay, lass," he said softly. "I just didn't think court life would afford much time for dangling your arms in rivers."

"My dad taught me. He was very good at it."

He sighed. "So was mine."

They sat in gentle silence for a little while, watching the sun glitter on the water.

"My dad were a lovely man," whispered Christopher suddenly. "Lorcan would have loved him. And my dad would have loved Lorcan. They were very alike." He breathed out a little laugh. "Though I think my dad's language may well have shocked yours. He were a mite foul-tongued."

Wynter chuckled. It was true, her father had detested foul language. Though in Christopher's case, he hadn't seemed to mind too much. She glanced fondly at him. Dad loved you, she thought.

"What was your father's name, Christopher?"

"Aidan," he said, then repeated it quietly to himself. "Aidan Garron.

She nodded. Aidan Garron and Lorcan Moorehawke. Gone.

All of a sudden the light glittering off the water became a little hard to focus on. Wynter looked down at her hands. They too were blurred. She swiped her eyes angrily.

"It hurts me, girly, that my memories of him are all caught up with those curs." Christopher whispered this, as though he was telling her a shameful secret. "It shames me that every time I think of my dad, I end up thinking of them. It's like I'm letting them steal him twice ..."

"Oh, Christopher. Don't."

They sat rigidly side by side for a moment, both perilously close to tears. Then Christopher shook himself and ran his hands over his face. "Augh!" he snarled. "Good Frith! Pull yourself together, Garron!" He knocked his head back against the tree. "Stupid baby!" he said, and dropped his hands heavily onto his knee.

Without thinking about it, Wynter reached across and pressed gently on Christopher's left hand, splaying the fingers out against his thigh. His hand would not quite flatten, the fingers being clawed slightly and incapable of straightening.

At this contact Christopher grunted and jerked forward, as though to get up. It was the first time he'd ever reacted badly to her touching his scars, but Wynter looked beseechingly at him and kept her hand firmly on top of his. Gradually, he leaned back against the tree, and watched, tense but unprotesting, as Wynter pushed his sleeve back and ran her fingers along the neat white ribbon of scar tissue that ran all the way from his missing finger to the crook of his arm. It must have been a massive infection indeed to have needed so long an incision to drain it.

"I almost lost it," he said quietly. "If it weren't for Razi ..." Christopher bunched his hand into a fist and straightened it again. Wynter felt his muscles move under his skin. She slid her hand along his sinewy forearm and settled her palm against the warm hollow of his elbow. "After I got better, I lay in bed for weeks, just wishing I would die. Marcello thought I'd never recover."

"But you did."

"Aye. I did."

Wynter tried to imagine that. Wondered what kind of strength it took to pick yourself up after something like that. She found it beyond the realms of her imagination.

"One day," he said, "I just got up. I made my way down to the stables and I burnt everything."

She clenched down hard on his arm. "What do you mean? Everything?"

"Everything. My guitars. My violins. All the music we'd collected over the years. My dad's recorders, his mandolin, all our other little bits and pieces. I burnt them all because they'd never be aught but pain to me. Thankfully, Marcello caught me before I could burn my father's trunk. I'm eternally grateful for that; it's all I have left of him." He looked at her. "It weren't originally a dressing case, you see. It was an instrument case. All our gear fitted in it. In neat little compartments. Nice and safe. My dad had it made specially, he designed it." Christopher's voice became very quiet. "They sold it with me," he said. "We were a job lot. Me and the case."

"Christopher," she whispered. His eyes were wide and bright. He was looking right at her, but she was not sure what it was he saw.

"It was desire for revenge that got me out of that bed, girly. I were a black seething pit of it. I worked daily to get my strength back, so that one day I'd be able to go and kill the bastards that had stolen my family, and stole my hands and ..." He scrubbed his mouth, his eyes wide over the top of his hand. "They still had my girls, you see. My girls-the rest of my troupe." He absently touched his cheek, just under his eye. "They had gone on ahead of me. To our new master. Already branded. Already out of my grasp. Beyond even Razi's considerable power to save." His eyes grew impossibly wide. "They might still be there for all I know, in that bloody place."

"What place, Christopher?"

"The compound. Andre Le Garou's compound."

"Andre Le Garou?" asked Wynter. "The man that these Wolves call their father?" Christopher did not answer. He was very far away now, seeing things she could not. She persisted with her question, squeezing his arm gently.

"That is what they call their leaders... Father? And they are all considered his sons? Christopher?" She moved her head into his direct line of sight. "Chris?"

"They say that Andre's compound is filled with music," he said distantly. "All day and all night, musicians play there. Because Andre Le Garou, he loves his music." He sneered at that. "Aye, he loves his music and he loves his... he loves his women." He swallowed, his anger falling away to despair. "Women and music," he repeated softly. "His harem... his bloody brothel... is just crammed full of artists, captured from all around the world."

Christopher looked out blindly into the daylight. He was so very, very far away that Wynter wanted to grab him and hold him very tightly and say, stop. Stop now. Come back. This is too much. But he went on talking in his flat, dull voice and she went on listening, her hand on his arm.

"We were a gift for him, you see, the famous Garron troupe. As soon as the Wolves set eyes on us, they knew that their father would want us. And so they took us to him, or what were left of us after that bloody journey. More little monkeys for Andre's zoo."

He looked at Wynter then, really focused on her, really seeing her face instead of the memory pictures that had been there before. "Razi explained to me later how Andre has no right to call it a harem, how it's nothing like a harem. He told me the very word harem implies protection and respect. Andre's palace is nothing like that. The poor women... bullied and abused and shared amongst the Wolves. My poor girls," he whispered desperately. "My poor ..."

"Why did they sell you, Christopher? And not your girls? Were you not-?"

"I weren't ever meant to be sold, girly. I should have gone straight in with them. Only for I'm a man, you see, a male slave. There was no way that Andre would have allowed me to mingle with his women."

He looked at her closely, hoping he wouldn't have to spell it out. But he must have seen that Wynter didn't really understand. "They would have to... I would have to be gelded first, you see." He ignored her gasp of shock and went on, "Andre insists on doing that job himself. He don't trust no one else to do it, for fear they damage the goods. He's very good at it, apparently. No matter how old the slave, they very rarely die, very rarely even catch an infection." Christopher smiled a bitter twisted smile at that. Wynter reached for his hands and squeezed them hard, but he couldn't seem to feel her touch.

"No doubt he would have done a very neat job," he murmured. "Had he ever got the chance. But Le Garou was away in Fez, and his sons had urgent business outside of town, so I was left in the care of Sadaqah al-'Abbas, one of their brokers. He agreed to hold me in his pens till Le Garou returned." Christopher went very quiet. He seemed to have lost the energy to tell any more and just sat with his hands clasped in Wynter's, his chin almost on his chest.

When nothing more was forthcoming, Wynter gently shook his hands and Christopher went on talking as if he were a clockwork toy. "Sadaqah decided to make a little money on the side," he said. "So he rented me out to Hadil for the length of the wedding celebrations, strictly on the sly, of course. And that's how I met Razi. That's how Razi saved my life."

Good God, thought Wynter, the randomness of it all. She could not get past the tenuous circumstances that had brought her two friends together. Had even one small thing been different, some element of time, or of place, then they would never have met. Razi would never have been able to help him, and she would never have found this man who had come to mean so much to her. She tightened her grip on him, as if afraid he'd slip away.

"I wouldn't have been able to live like that, girly," he whispered. "I'd never have let myself live, not like that." Christopher lifted one of his hands and made a delicate pressing motion in the air, as if lightly touching something only he could see. His lips curved into a smile. "In my father's trunk there's a secret drawer. It hides all my knives. I had a plan, you see. Once Le Garou had... had cut me, and once they'd brought me inside the compound, I planned to take those knives and kill my girls. Then I would have killed myself. It would have been our only chance of release. It would have ..."

Christopher lifted his eyes to the horizon, his hand still poised in the air, his expression wondering. "I couldn't believe it when he came and bought me. I still don't know how he persuaded Sadaqah to fall in with it. Razi must have threatened him something wicked, or bribed him something wicked. Either way, the broker took a huge risk, backing al-Sayyid against Andre Le Garou. They faked a clerical error, made it look as though I'd been auctioned by mistake. Razi came and bid for me. I couldn't... I couldn't believe that he'd kept his promise. It was just too incredible. This brand new life." Christopher's eyes widened in sudden horror and he curled in on himself, his wonder swallowed by darkness. "Oh, but my poor girls," he moaned. "I left them. I left them there." He released a groan of physical pain, and bent double, clutching his stomach.

"Christopher!" Wynter tried to put her arms around him, but he slipped forward and crawled out of her embrace.

He held his hand out to stop her approaching, and knelt there for a moment, his hand hard on his stomach, trying to push everything back down into the place it had been before. "It's all right!" he gasped. "It's all... Just ..." He glanced at her, nearly lost himself at the expression on her face, and looked quickly away again. "You know," he said. "I think I'll take you up on that offer to catch the fish. Would you mind?"

"No," she whispered. "I wouldn't mind."

"I think," he said, rising swiftly to his feet and pulling off his tunic, "I'll go for a swim." He kicked off his boots halfway down the rock and discarded his undershirt at the river's edge. He dived headfirst into the water without removing his britches and disappeared from her sight for an alarming amount of time.

Wynter shot to her feet, then saw him break the surface about forty feet out, his dark head, sleek as an otter, almost invisible against the glittering reflection of the sun. He did not look back and she watched him swim steadily away from her, until the dancing water-glare had so blinded her that she saw nothing but white.

"Ahhh, Raz! I swear you could take a handful of mud and a pocketful of stones and make a meal to bring back the dead." Christopher stretched and wriggled his toes and arched his back with a happy sigh.

Razi smiled at him across the flames of their little fire and returned his attention to cleaning his fingernails. Christopher settled lower against the stones, and Wynter smiled at his cat-like contentment.

The three of them were damp, sandy and tingling, dressed only in their britches and undershirts, their water-chilled bodies soaking the heat from the sun-warmed stones. The sky was a scarlet blaze above them, the river a crumpled copper ribbon, edged in purple shadows. Razi had done incredible things with half a dozen fish, a hat-full of lingin berries and a pocket of wild garlics. They were full and warm, and serene.

Earlier in the day, Christopher had padded his way from the river, smiling and easy. He had sneaked up behind Razi who had been hunched over, preparing the fish, and had shoved his freezing hand down the back of his tunic. Razi had roared with shock and Christopher had skittered away, cackling wickedly and shaking drops of water from his hair like a dog.

Razi had flung a stick at him and called him a bloody menace. Then had watched in tolerant forbearance as Christopher grabbed Wynter, treated her to a lingering, icy kiss, and threw her into the river.

It had been easy, after that, to pretend that everything was all right.

Now they lay together around the fire and looked up at the purple twilight as it blotted the sunset from the sky. One after another the stars began to shine, and little black bats appeared, flittering about in the branches above their heads.

Razi lay back against his saddle, his hands behind his head, his dark eyes roaming the sky. Wynter watched him through the dancing flames and thought about the Wolves and what they might be doing here. It made no sense. Why would they travel through Jonathon's kingdom, when they could simply hop across the Spanish Rock and trot up through the Castilian provinces? The lawlessness and banditry there would be of no consequence to them. Unlike the merchants and diplomats that courted the use of Jonathon's Port Road, Wolves had no need for an orderly, well policed route to and from the Moroccos.

Why did you let them go? she thought. After what they did to him? What possible reason caused you to let them go? As she watched him, Razi frowned in puzzlement as though something had just occurred to him.

"Wynter," he murmured in amazement, still looking at the stars.

"Aye?"

"What date is it?"

"Summer," answered Christopher sleepily, as if that were as accurate as anyone need ever be.

Razi chuckled, and Wynter twisted her mind around the puzzle. "Let me see," she mused. " 'Twas Angel's Sunday when father and I came down through Lindenston. That was two days before ..." she bit her lip and counted backwards and forwards for a moment, her forehead creased. Then her face cleared and she leapt a little at the realisation of what day it was. "Oh, Razi!" she said and he turned his head to grin at her through the flames. "Happy birthday!"

"Thank you! I am twenty years old today!"

Christopher huffed in amusement. "I can just hear your mother now!" Suddenly his voice was very soft and very proper, an uncanny imitation of Hadil's unswervingly quiet, unrelentingly disapproving tone. "One would think now, that al-Sayyid Razi ibn-Jon Malik al-fadl would take it in his mind to acquire himself a wife. It's not for me, his humble mother, to suggest that al-Sayyid does not know his own mind ..." (here Wynter pictured the usual raising of the graceful hands, the meek tipping of the darkly elegant head) "but it does seem a little undignified that Omar ibn-Omar, seventeen years old and just a lowly spice merchant, would already have two wives and a son and two daughters to honour the family's name." Across the flames Razi's handsome face creased into a wide grin, his teeth gleaming white in the dancing light. "After all, my precious son," Christopher's voice perfectly took on that sly cutting edge that Hadil always managed to make sound so utterly feminine, "You are getting soooooo old. So very, veeeerrrrrrryyy old."

"Shut up, mother," grinned Razi.

Christopher tutted. "Ungrateful viper-child," he sighed.

Wynter tipped her head back to look up at his face. His eyes were closed and he was half asleep. She stretched her arm comfortably over her head and laid the backs of her fingers against his cheek. He put his hand lightly on her collarbone. The flames blurred and softened and filled her mind as she slipped into a doze.

Something woke Wynter, some strange rhythmic sound, and she opened her eyes in bleary confusion. She still lay facing the fire, but she had slid down to lie on her belly, one hand under her cheek, her other arm thrown loosely across Christopher's chest. The flames had died down to hotly glowing coals, and across the fire she saw Razi staring fixedly at her, his face unhappy and tense.

There seemed to be a big dog prowling the camp. Wynter could hear it panting, its breath coming hard and fast, as if it had run a long way or was very hot. It was hard to listen to because the poor animal was in such obvious distress. It's such a warm night, she thought absently. Someone should give that poor creature a bowl of water.

Razi's face came into focus as Wynter woke completely, and his misery increased as she lifted her head to look at him. "Razi?" she asked softly.

His eyes lifted to look behind her and Wynter turned to see.

"Do not wake him," Razi whispered and Wynter got to her knees, carefully lifting her arm from Christopher's heaving chest. He was the source of the ragged, animal panting that had woken her.

"It's so much worse if you wake him," said Razi.

"Oh, Razi," she said. "We must! It's too cruel!"

Anyone who looked at him would want to wake him. Christopher lay on his back, his hands clenched at his waist, his chest rising and falling in rapid, terrified breaths. His eyes were wide open, staring blindly at God knew what.

Wynter moved to touch him.

"Sis!" She looked around at Razi's insistent face. "Believe me!" he hissed. "It's better to leave him. It will be over in a few minutes, then he will sleep peacefully. If you try to wake him, the dream will cling, he won't be able to wake up and he won't be able to fall back asleep. It will be very bad. He will end up frightened and embarrassed." Razi blinked at her, his eyes bright. "Just leave him, Wyn," he begged. "Please."

Christopher's eyes were moving slightly from side to side, but apart from that and the rapid, shallow movement of his chest, he was perfectly still. He looked like a fox caught in a snare. Wynter gently placed her hand over his heart. It was beating wildly, dangerous and fevered, frightening. She turned horrified eyes to Razi and he pleaded with her silently not to do anything more.

But it wasn't in her to let Christopher suffer. She had no doubt that Razi's experience of these nightmares was as awful as he implied, but Wynter just couldn't stand by and wait for this to pass. "Christopher?" she murmured, leaning over him, her hand still on his chest. "Will you wake up?"

Christopher's breathing sped up and his eyes began to roll.

"Sweetheart?" she said, hovering over him.

His heart hammered frantically beneath her palm and he bared his teeth. Wynter brought her face close to his. A long tendril of her hair fell down between them, flaring red in the firelight. She looked into his eyes.

"Christopher," she said firmly. "It is over! Wake up!"

His breathing hitched. His hand flew to hers. He looked into her face.

Wynter smiled. "How do," she said.

Christopher held her gaze intently for a moment, then he relaxed and his eyes slid to the side. He lifted his hand to touch her hair and sighed. "Polished chestnut," he said.

"Aye." She pushed her fingers through the fine black locks at his temple. "Go to sleep." His eyes drifted shut and his hand floated down to lie against his chest.

His breathing evened out and he slid under into peaceful sleep.

Wynter turned glittering eyes to Razi and they looked at each other, Razi shaken and dazed, Wynter drained. Then she lay back down, her arm thrown protectively across Christopher's calmly breathing chest, her eyes fixed on the dying embers of the fire. She curled her fist under her cheek and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

On the Wolves' Tail.

Razi unsheathed his falchion sword and held the long blade down by his left thigh. The shadows of the forest dappled his dark clothes and swaddled face, blending him into the background of the trees. Behind him, Christopher, his right hand encased in the ornate metal cup of his belt-knife, gazed intently through the foliage. He was calm and sharp, despite the incessant tinkling of little silver bells that floated across the evening air. He glanced back at Wynter. She nodded gravely and adjusted her grip on her knife.