the person, past the lameness. He slowed as he approached so they could pass safely on the narrow path. The figure was a young woman dressed in black, who raised her head as he approached. He nodded to her and looked away, not because the birthmark and scars revolted him; they did not, but he thought she might be sensitized to stares.
As he tried to pass, she grabbed him, clamping her fingers around his arm with great strength. Startled, he stopped, and this time did not avert his gaze when she looked at him. Her face was grim and strong beneath the scars.
'You're Mischa's friend,' she said. 'From the Palace.' She spoke with an undercurrent of urgency.
Jan did not feel a need for evasion. 'Yes.'
'Is Chris still alive?' Her voice was steady, but her hand tightened on his arm.
'I'm going for help for him.'
She released him and extended her other hand, in which lay a small opaque black bauble. 'This is what you're looking for.'
'Mischa asked me to find someone—'
'I've seen her. She won't come. She sent this.'
Jan glanced out at the hills, where he had been sent. The woman took his arm again, shaking him. 'You won't find her.'
'But—'
She pointed at the crowd. 'Do you see them? When they come this way, they'll be looking for you.'
Jan still hesitated, seeking the truth in her face, finding that, and desperation.
'If I could run,' she said, 'I'd gladly let you go on and get caught. But there isn't time to waste. Mischa needs this.'
'All right,' Jan said. She tipped the dark sphere into his hand. It was vaguely soft, warm, reflective, spreading shapes across its surface.
'She'll know what it is.'
'Thank you,' he said. Holding the bauble as gently as he would a winged insect, Jan began to climb the hill again, leaving the crippled woman behind. He glanced back once. Half-obscured in dim light, she followed slowly.
Mischa sat with her face buried against her knees, as though shielding her eyes from the claws of dark demons. In the dull blue light, they could easily be fluttering unseen above her. Jan laid his hand on her shoulder and was surprised when she started.
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I thought you'd heard me.'
'Chris was hallucinating. It—I hoped you'd get back, but—where is she? How did you get back so soon?'
Jan held out the black bauble. 'She gave this to a woman with a birthmark and scars on her face. It's for you.'
Mischa stared at it silently. The hope ran out of her face with the blood, leaving pallor.
'She's not coming?' Her voice was totally emotionless.
'This seemed important. To get it to you. But I can—'
Mischa was shaking her head, staring at the black sphere as though she and it were alone and Jan was speaking to them from a great distance. Worried, he closed his fingers around it. Mischa grabbed for it, but Jan drew back. 'What is it, Mischa? What will it do?'
'Give it to me, Jan.'
He simply looked at her.
'It will help him die,' Mischa finally said.
Shaken, he let her take it from his hand.
Mischa pulled back the blankets. Chris murmured a quiet, unconscious imprecation. She was glad he was not awake and could not see what she was doing. She did not want him to know he was dying. She could feel his dreams fading and dissolving as he weakened; the drug had pushed him back to the state he had sought, but still would not let him rest. She pulled the charred and fused edge of his shirt away from the bandage, cutting the material with Chris's knife until his chest was bare. The black sphere she placed in the hollow of his breastbone, next to the edge of the wound. It shivered as it touched him, and suddenly shattered with a sharp high sound. Even expecting it, Mischa flinched, throwing up her hand, but nothing touched her; whatever the sphere had done, it had not exploded. The black fluid spread slowly across Chris's chest, flowing first over the wound and then beneath the bandages, which curled away and disintegrated.
'Good gods,' Jan whispered. The spreading shell reached Chris's throat and paused, crept across his stomach, beneath his pants to his groin. The material flaked away into ashes, and finally his shirt crumbled.
'What is it?'
'It. drains away the pain,' Mischa said. 'I've never seen it before, I've only heard about it.'
'I've never seen anything like it before.'
Mischa reached out and touched the slowly expanding layer of shiny plastic. It was very cold, and her fingers came away damp with condensation. The black shell closed around Chris's chest, and rippled slowly with his breathing. 'In the Sphere,' she said, 'in the Sphere, could they have saved him?'
She could not tell why he hesitated. He might not know if they could have helped her brother; he might not want to tell her that anywhere else, he need not have died.
'I don't know,' he said. 'Maybe, if someone had been right there.'
'I can feel him getting numb. It hurt him before, but he doesn't feel it now.' Her voice trailed off as she felt Chris begin a slow searching-out of consciousness, and she became resonant to his echoes, as though she were hollow. She put her hand to his face, to shield his eyes, to comfort him.
'Mischa?'
'Yes, Chris.'
He started to reach for her with his right hand, but the muscles were deadened. He relaxed and lay still, spending all his energy for breath. Then he reached up left-handed and drew Mischa's hand away, holding her gently, not letting go. Raising his head, he looked down at himself and saw the blackness. The pinpoint pupils of his brilliant eyes dilated slightly, then closed back down. 'Oh, gods.' Pink foam was collecting on his lips. 'What's going to happen?'
'I don't know,' Mischa said. 'I was never close enough before.'
'It scares Gemmi.'
'. Yes.'
Chris did not respond, and Mischa searched for some way to reassure him. 'Everything different scares her. She can't tell good from bad.'
Chris tried to smile, but his smile was gone; Mischa saw both their fronts of bravery crumbling. 'That's right,' Chris said. 'I. I know that.'
'Try to sleep,' Mischa said, a rote line to dam up the thousand things she would rather have said.
'Mischa—' His hand clenched around hers with some of his old strength. 'I wanted to go with you.' He closed his eyes, exhausted again. 'Nothing worked the way it was supposed to.' He looked at her again. 'I'm sor—'
'Don't.' They had had arguments, but never recriminations; disagreements, but never blame. That was the honor between them, that they were, finally, responsible only for themselves.
Chris nodded, lay back, and let himself rest.
Mischa felt tears slipping down her cheeks and realized Jan was still
there, still quiet, still watching. 'Damn,' she said. 'I never cry.'
He put his hands on her shoulders. She stiffened.
'No one can use it to hurt you.'
She did not believe that. She had kept herself to herself for so long, in self-defense, that she could not believe it. And she had thought that she trusted Jan, but the trust was not quite strong enough. She felt her control slipping away as Chris's visions whirled around her. His exhaustion wrapped her; she wanted to sleep for him, to enter his dreams. His mind opened to her more deeply than it ever had before; she glimpsed his torments and his pride, his hopes, his weaknesses, his shames, his love, slipping through the synapses of his brain, slowing with the cold and the cessation of his pain. The black shell grew, sucking warmth from him, from the air, from Mischa. She shuddered, and Jan pressed her shoulders, looking down at her, frowning.
