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she was capable of dealing with. More, she suspected, than the Healers' Hall could deal with. Karlene has a greater perception than I gave her credit for. This child is so tied in knots she's no danger to anyone but herself.
    She'd intended to ask a lot of other whys, but they were no longer necessary.
    " I don't want to see death when I look at him ." It was a love song with enough tragic potential to rip out hearts and tear them into tiny, bleeding pieces. Teeth clenched, Liene wished she'd sent Kovar to the docks so that she could've received these first impressions filtered through his recall.
    Gyhard felt Vree tremble and silently cursed his inability to hold her, to comfort her. He hated the Bardic Captain for what she'd done and his anger sizzled around the parameters of his existence. If only he had hands…
    *Don't.*
    He forced himself to withdraw although he knew at that moment she couldn't have stopped him from taking control.
    The moment passed.
    *Are you all right?* he demanded, fighting to suppress the anger for both their sakes.
    Don't leave me.
    If he'd still had a body, that quiet plea would've left him struggling to breathe.
    This was the first time, since the initial impulse that had gathered up his kigh, that Vree had shown him her heart. If confronted, she probably wouldn't admit to the thought but he'd heard it—felt it—and nothing, not hatred, not anger, was worth hanging onto in the face of it. Don't leave me . Catching hold of them before they could fade, Gyhard gathered the words up and locked them away in his memory.
    Then he waited.
    He felt her chin rise. *I'm fine,* she told him, lengthening her stride to draw even with the Bardic Captain again. Her tone implied she didn't care if he believed her or not.
    "I half expected that you'd be carried off the Fancy on the shoulders of her crew," Liene observed, stepping aside to allow a tailor's apprentice, arms loaded with a bolt of sea-green fabric, to pass. It suddenly seemed important she find a subject with a little distance.
    Vree shrugged. "They were happy to come home. They made me a hero in the Broken Islands. That was enough."
    "From what Tomas told me, I imagine it must've been." The image of a row of hastily-constructed gallows, filled as quickly as they were built, rose in Liene's mind. The crowd of dead behind the young assassin grew. "You speak Shkoden very well," she said, searching for yet a safer topic.
    "Gyhard taught me."
    The older woman stifled a sigh. It appeared there were no safer topics. "Well, he did a good job. I assume he translates for you, too?"
    "Less now."
    Liene grinned at Vree's tone. "Don't like depending on other people, do you? I can appreciate that." Then she frowned. "Gyhard hears through your ears? Sees through your eyes?"
    "Yes."
    "Then we shouldn't talk about him as though he isn't here." She turned that over, examined it from all sides. When she spoke again, they'd moved some distance up the hill. "From what Karlene has told me, I think you and he and your brother have proved that the body is merely meat worn by the kigh and that what we all consider the person, is the kigh. So." She took a tighter grip on her cane, forcing herself to give credit where credit was due. "Gyhard, thank you. Although a number of the bards speak Imperial, none of the healers do. You've made all our lives less complicated." Sweeping a piece of trash into the gutter, she snorted.
    "Well, less complicated as regards language, at least."
    *I'm not sure that granting me any kind of individuality is such a good idea.*
    Gyhard lightly touched the place where he ended and Vree began, felt her recoil, and drew back. *If I'm given a little, I may be tempted to take the rest.*
    *You can try.*
    *Vree, I'm serious.*

    *Then we'll deal with it ourselves because I'm not going to tell her. It's obvious she thinks I'm, we're, unstable. We don't need to prove her right.* Conscious of Liene's gaze, Vree added aloud, "He says, you're welcome."
    The