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another piece of bread. And some thin-sliced beef to layer on it. The food did help. He felt more solid and grounded every moment. The clarity of his thoughts showed him how vague and blurred he had been earlier. He thought he might need all the acuity he could own, soon. He went back to the mirror, chewing.
    It was a lady’s mirror, as the graceful table and pretty curtains were clearly the appointments of a lady’s room. He wondered whose bed he had awoken in. And whose clothing had been provided for him. Someone big: The shirt was only a little too tight across the shoulders, the sleeves only a little too short. It was a good shirt. All the clothing was good. Better than anything Gereint had worn for a long time.
    There were boots. And cloth to bind around the
geas
rings so they would not chafe. Gereint put on the boots and went back again to the mirror. The man that looked back at him could have been any man. Could walk through any town and never collect a second glance, save for his size.
    Gereint went to find Amnachudran. It wasn’t difficult. A servant, clearly posted in the hallway to wait, led him down the hall. The servant wore good clothing. Brown and pale yellow. Livery, by the look of it. Yes, hadn’t Amnachudran said that his wife was nobly born? Gereint thoughtfully followed the man.
    Eben Amnachudran was waiting in a room that seemed both an office and a music room. A delicate, graceful ladies’ spinet stood in pride of place; a tall floor harp occupied one corner. But a desk cluttered with papers sat at the other end of the room, and books as well as scrolls of musical scores were shelved along the walls. Amnachudran stood by the desk, sorting the fine books he’d brought back from the desert. The collection was even more impressive spread out like that.
    A woman, not beautiful, but plump and comfortable, sat at the spinet. She was not facing the instrument, but one of her hands rested on the keys. She had struck a note: just one. The sound lingered in the air, clean and clear and beautiful.
    Amnachudran turned as Gereint came in. He did not speak. His wife—or so Gereint surmised—turned her head and smiled: a surprisingly warm, unconstrained smile.
    Gereint nodded to her, faced Amnachudran, and lifted one hand to sketch the brand that wasn’t there. “I know thanks are inadequate. But I do thank you, sir. Most earnestly.”
    Amnachudran looked uncomfortable. “You still bear the
geas
—”
    Gereint held up a hand to stop him. “You’ve made it possible for me to walk unrecognized anywhere among men. As long as I wear boots, no one will covet me or guess he ought to. No one will know I was condemned; no one will wonder what crime I committed. You’ve given me back a kind of privacy I never—” His voice failed. He did not let himself look away, but met the other man’s eyes and said quietly, “And you know you have. You meant to do this. Don’t make little of it. I would kiss your feet for what you have done. Willingly. Except you wouldn’t like it.”
    Amnachudran shook his head. “You saved my life. Should I not even have noticed?”
    “I’m
geas
bound,” Gereint reminded him.
    But Amnachudran surprised him again. “The
geas
can force a man to do a great many things, I’m sure. But it can’t force him to leap instantly into a river to drag out a drowning fool, when he hasn’t been ordered to do anything of the sort. Andreikan Warichteier spends three entire chapters detailing the uses and limitations of the
geas.
”
    “He gets most of it right,” Gereint admitted. “As one would expect from Warichteier. But you’d already saved my life.”
    Amnachudran replied patiently, “You didn’t value your life. I valued mine very much.”
    The woman’s mouth crooked. She leaned an elbow on the spinet, cupping her chin in her hand and regarding her husband with affection and humor.
    Gereint glanced at her, bowed his head respectfully.
    Amnachudran followed that glance. He said