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which lay beyond human perception. It was the world of the gods, and he would be awed by it to the end of his days.
    Nonian turned to Isolda. “Shall I prevent conception?”
    “Conception?” She seemed shocked by the question. “No...I mean...it doesn’t matter.”
    “Are you married?” asked Nonian.
    Marius fussed with Rory’s blanket, trying to look busy as he listened keenly to this conversation.
    She hesitated before replying. “No.”
    “If you are unmarried, I must prevent conception. That is the law.” Nonian’s fingers moved over Isolda.
    Marius pulled a few quintetrals from his pocket to pay Nonian, and the Warder departed.
    Rory yawned.
    “How is he?” asked Isolda.
    “Better,” said Marius. “But his body has played host to an evil spirit, and he needs rest. He’ll have to stay here overnight.”
    Anxiety clouded her eyes. “Here in the surgery?”
    “The villa is more comfortable. I’ve got a spare room. You could stay with him.”
    The worry in her eyes did not abate, and he felt a little guilty for keeping her here unnecessarily. Why did it bother her to stay? Perhaps he could draw the reason out of her tomorrow. He felt that getting a good meal into these two, preferably several days’ worth of good meals, and some rest as well, would do them a world of good. And for public health reasons, he’d like to find out where the fever had come from. But he doubted he could contrive to keep either of them much past breakfast, if his experience four years ago was any guide.
    Poor Rory was trying to keep his eyes open, but his lids were drooping. His body swayed on the cot.
    “Drusus,” prompted Marius, and his bodyguard swept the boy into his arms. Marius opened the door for Isolda and gestured her through.
     
    ∞
     
    Isolda rested her chin on her hands as she watched Rory eat breakfast. Her son was packing his cheeks like a squirrel storing nuts. Then the food disappeared down his gullet, to be replaced by more. The boy was completely recovered from his fever. She had never seen such an astonishing turnabout in fortune, from unconscious and burning up last night, to hale and upright and stuffing his face with fish cakes this morning. The cook Marius employed could hardly fry them quickly enough, but whenever Isolda admonished Rory to stop eating so much, Marius intervened and informed her that after a fever like the one he’d had, Rory needed to eat as part of his treatment.
    Isolda knew better.
    She had known few kind Kjallans, but Marius was one of them, and he was kind to a fault. He’d seen Rory’s thin body, and he meant to fatten him up. He was trying to do the same with her, shoving fish cakes in her direction—they were delicious, yes—but he could not employ the same excuse in her case. She had not been sick. And she knew this was charity.
    She hated charity.
    Marius had taken such scrupulous care of her four years ago, and she felt the debt. She had walked by his villa many a time since then, surreptitiously, and disregarding the very real danger—poor Tanla had been beaten half to death in this neighborhood last spring. But it gave her such a warm feeling in her breast to know that here lived a man who cared. Not about her specifically, but about people in general. And unlike many Kjallans, Marius thought of her and her fellow Sardossians as people rather than as sewer rats or piss-heads.
    Because she had nothing of value to offer him, and she knew he was too decent a man to turn her away, she had resolved never again to come to his door. She was in his debt already, and to ask more would be to take advantage. She would not do that.
    For years, she’d only been able to guess at the happenings in his life. Was he married? Did he have children? She saw no one except his man Drusus, who seemed to be a sort of high-class servant, but her visits were rare enough that she could easily have missed a wife.
    She took notice when Marius bought the building next door and turned it