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had meant at all. But how could she retrace her steps now without sounding ridiculous?
    “Is there something you would particularly care to talk about?” she invited.
    “I forget things,” Serafina said very softly. “Sometimes lots of things.”
    “So do I,” Vespasia assured her gently. “Most of them don’t matter.”
    “Sometimes I muddle the past and the present,” Serafina went on. Now she was watching Vespasia as if from the edge of an abyss in which some horror waited to consume her.
    Vespasia tried to think of a reply, but nothing seemed appropriate for what was clearly, at least to Serafina, a matter of intense importance. This was no mere apology for being a little incoherent. She seemed frightened. Perhaps the terror of losing one’s grip on one’s mind was deeper and far more real than most people took time or care to appreciate.
    Vespasia put her hand on Serafina’s and felt the thin bones, the flesh far softer than it ever used to be. This was a woman who had ridden horses at a gallop few men dared equal; who had held a sword and fought with it, light flashing on steel as she moved quickly, lethally, and with beautiful grace. It was a hand that so swiftly coordinated with her eye that she was a superb shot with both pistol and rifle.
    Now it was slack in Vespasia’s grip.
    “We all forget,” Vespasia said softly. “The young, less so, perhaps. They have so much less to remember, some of them barely anything at all.” She smiled fleetingly. “You and I have seen incredible things: butchers, bakers, and housewives manning the barricades; sunset flaming across the Alps till the snow looked like blood. We’ve danced with emperors and been kissed by princes. I, at least, have been sworn at by a cardinal …”
    She saw Serafina smile and move her head in a slight nod of agreement.
    “We have fought for what we believed in,” Vespasia went on. “We have both won and lost more than the young today have dreamed of. But I daresay their turn will come.”
    Serafina’s eyes were clear for a moment. “We have, haven’t we? That’s what I’m afraid of.”
    “What frightens you, my dear?”
    “I forget who is real and who is just memory,” Serafina replied. “Sometimes the past seems so vivid that I mistake the trivia of today for the great issues that used to be—and the people we knew.”
    “Does that matter?” Vespasia asked her. “Perhaps the past is more interesting?”
    The smile touched Serafina’s eyes again. “Infinitely—at least to me.” Then the fear returned, huge and engulfing. Her voice shook. “But I’m so afraid I might mistake some person now for someone else I knew and trusted, and let slip what I shouldn’t! I know terrible things, dangerous things about murder and betrayal. Do you understand?”
    Frankly, Vespasia did not. She was aware that Serafina had been an adventurer all her life. She had never let her causes die from her mind. She had married twice, but neither time had been particularly happy, and she had no children. But then she could outride and out-shoot so many men, she was not an easy woman to be comfortable with. She had never learned to keep her own counsel about her political opinions, nor to temper the exercise of her more dangerous skills.
    But this was the first time Vespasia had seen fear in her, and that was a shock. It touched her with a pity she could not have imagined feeling for such a proud and fierce woman.
    “Are any of those secrets still dangerous now?” she asked doubtfully. It was hard to sound reassuring without also sounding as though she was patronizing Serafina, implying that her knowledge was outdated and no one would still be interested. It was a judgment so easy to mishandle. Vespasia herself would hate to be relegated to the past, as if currently not worth bothering about, even though one day that would assuredly be true. She refused to think of it.
    “Of course they are!” Serafina told her, her voice husky with