I wanted to reach out and touch it, to feel the silk. But it felt good just to lie here unmoving, letting the night bathe me.

Ohbascha, I don't want to die in ten or twelve years. I don't want to lose you. I want to be with you, to see you grow old even as I do.

Nayyib slept on the other side of the fire. I knew he was attracted to Del; I wondered if he thought he might win her from me. If maybe he considered me too old for her, wondering what she saw in a forty-year-old man. He was her age: young, strong, athletic, undeniably attractive. He had a gentleness about him coupled with strength of mind, a quiet confidence that set him apart from other young men. Maybe it came from working with horses, from understanding their needs and fears, their moments of inexplicable recalcitrance. Or maybe it was just him.

What would Del do when I was gone? Find another?

Find Neesha?

I had no way of knowing what to expect when my time approached. Nihko and Sahdri had said nothing of that, merely that a Skandi-born mage went mad if he didn't learn to control his magic, and that the magic would eventually burn him out merely by its presence. If I refused to use it, I might die that much sooner.

Well, I had used it. With Oziri, learning to dream-walk; spell-ing Umir's book; dividing the sandstorm; reading the bones of the woman who was my mother.

Had used it even in childhood, conjuring the living sandtiger out of a carved one, in order to find freedom.

I wanted none of it.

It appeared to want me.

I sat up, suppressing a groan. Everything ached, even my skin. I didn't feel forty; I felt sixty. An age I would never reach.

Slowly I pushed myself to my feet, wavered a moment, steadied, then picked my way across the sand to the dozing horses. The stud roused as I touched him, whickering softly. I felt his warm breath against my hand. Then I turned, went a few steps away and attended to my business, aware of a clenching deep in my kidneys. Maybe mages died early because they used themselves up, aging their organs ahead of time.

I turned, took three steps, found Del waiting at the stud's head. Maybe she'd heard my joints grinding as I walked across the sand.

I saw the question in her eyes. Smiling faintly, I hooked an arm around her neck and stood next to her. "I'm fine."

I heard the pent breath expelled. For a moment we just stood there side by side, staring across the Punja glowing faintly in moon– and starlight.

She spoke very quietly. "I don't want to lose you."

I kept my voice as low, not wanting to wake Nayyib. "What? You mean Neesha hasn't won you from me with a glance of those eloquent eyes?"

"Neesha's eyes may indeed work wonders on other women, but not on me."

"Are you immune?"

"Oh, no. He is a beautiful young man."

"Beautiful?"

"As a man may be," she clarified. "Not like a woman. He isn't pretty. But the bones of his face are well suited to one another, and he moves very well. He understands his body."

I hadn't really asked for that much explanation. But I'd never thought about how women view men, other than appreciating that many of them seemed to view me with favor. "What do you look at in a man? Women, I mean. Not just you."

Del's breath of laughter was a quiet expulsion of air. "We don't all necessarily see or want the same thing. There are pretty men, and handsome men, and men who lack the features that most would name attractive but claim a sense of presence that makes looks unimportant. There is no describing that. It simply is. Tall, short, heavy, thin … it doesn't matter."

I thought of brutal Ajani, long dead. Handsome, huge, filled with undeniable presence. Yet he had used the power to rape and kill, to alter forever the life of the woman next to me. "But there are handsome men who have it."

"Yes. And those are the men that turn a woman's knees to water and her brain to mush."

"I, of course, exude it."

"There are also men who are too confident, too certain of themselves and their appeal, and who believe they may blind women to their faults."

"Thanks very much for that."

"But I, however, am not so easily blinded."

"I sort of figured that."

"Some men may begin that way but are trainable when in the hands of the right woman. Other men are hopeless."

I wasn't certain either of those attributes was something I aspired to.

"And age doesn't matter," Del said. "Not when a woman meets the right man."

"Even if she's young enough to be his daughter?"

"Lo, even then."

I had been curious a long time. Now I asked her. "When did you know you wanted to sleep with me?"

"Oh, within days. But you were such a pig-headed, insufferably male Southroner that I was appalled by my response."

"Thank you very much!"

"I argued with myself for weeks."

"As I recall, it was months before we finally did the deed." Months and months, in fact; it had been very hard on me.

"I intended it to be never. But one day I realized that ignorance could be changed, even in a Southroner. Besides, by then you knew I would never be the kind of women Southron men prefer: soft, quiet, deferential little mice who keep their houses and bear their children."

"We don't have a house to keep and you can't, well …" I realized belatedly that blurting out her inability to have children was not perhaps the most tactful thing. Del loved children. Enough to give her daughter to good people who could care for her when Del, consumed with vengeance, couldn't. "Sorry, bascha."

She shied away from it, not even acknowledging my apology. "I am not like most Southron women," she went on, "but more of them could be like me if they let themselves be free."

"Maybe they're happy the way they are."

"Or maybe they don't know any better because they are trained from birth to be blind to their own ambitions."

"Maybe their ambitions are to keep house and raise children. Lena seems to be happy."

"Lena is happy. But then, Alric is a Northerner; he expects her to be free to express herself. I have no objection to women keeping house and bearing children, Tiger, if that is what they truly wish in their hearts, and not because their men demand it of them. I only object when men won't allow the women who wish to be more to acheive it. To even imagine it."

I thought of Del, Northern born and raised, allowed to learn the sword even before she went to Staal-Ysta to become a sword-singer. I thought of my grandmother, the matriarch of a powerful family, conducting business with ruthless brilliance. I thought of my mother, who willingly left behind that wealth and power to go with the man she loved to a distant land known for its harshness and died because of it.

I sighed. "Maybe I was trainable because I'm actually Skandic, not a Southroner."

"Or maybe you have more flexibility of mind."

"Is that a good thing? If one's mind is too flexible, one never has an opinion of one's own."

"Tiger, you would never let anyone change your opinion until you were certain they were right."

"So, am I inflexibly flexible, or flexibly inflexible?"

She elbowed me in the ribs. "What you are is incorrigible."

"Is that a good thing?"

"Only when I'm in the mood."

I turned to her, wrapped her up in my arms. Lightly rested my chin on her head. "I'm a little too tired, bascha."

"Not that kind of mood."

I smiled into the darkness. "I know."

"He is attractive, Tiger, and not without charm and that sense of presence I mentioned before. But he is not you."

"Next best thing?"

"Well, I suppose if you got yourself killed in a sword-dance tomorrow, I might consider it."

"So as long as I'm alive, you're satisfied?"

"Unless you decided to revert to the Tiger I met in that dusty cantina four years ago. Then I'd have to kill you myself."