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and left them heaped at the foot. He set her down in the very middle and whispered, “I’ll be right back.”
    He hadn’t changed as many things in here as in the living room. The picture on the wall was still of her home station, and the clothes she’d left behind still hung in the closet. She remembered coming in here full of anger and hatred and pulling out three outfits, her favorite slate, and her makeup and toiletries. She had only carried enough away to fill a small rucksack.
    Maybe she had known even then that she would come back.
    Water ran in the bathroom.
    She stripped, leaving her boots close to the bed in case she needed them and folding her uniform neatly and stacking it on the bedside table. She sat on the bed, cross-legged and naked except for the beads and bones braided into her hair.
    When he came out, he was naked. He had unbraided his hair and it flowed around him, falling in dark waves to his waist.
    She was the only one who ever saw him this way. She brushed his cheek with her lips and crawled up from the bed and went into the bathroom, where she found her spare toothbrush right where she’d left it in the third drawer down.
    Before she went out she hesitated, looking at her own long tight braid in the mirror. If she took it out she would match him in vulnerability. She hadn’t yet settled her thoughts about her lessons with the robot, and so she left her hair braided and walked out. She pushed him back on the bed and straddled him, leaning down to cover his face with kisses.
    He lay still under her at first, and then reached a hand up and used the braid to hold her head, staring at her. He said nothing, but she saw the pain she had caused him in his eyes. She lowered herself onto him, nuzzling at his neck.
    After a time he turned her over and took her, his hair falling across them both in a great curtain so that they might have been the only two people in the world, the force of his lovemaking more than she remembered, his need and his demands both as deep as she had ever seen them.
    When they stopped to take a break and lie together, to breathe together, he clutched her close.
    â€œYou are my heart, my strength, my courage,” he said.
    â€œAnd you are mine.” She rolled him over again and sat on top of him, a connected position rather than a sexual or dominant one, a statement of duality. “We are one.” She gazed into his eyes until they softened and allowed her in, until she was him and he was her, until they were both male and female, both warrior, both greater than either had ever been alone.

CHAPTER NINE
    CHARLIE
    Charlie clutched Amfi close to him. She smelled of water and fir, of fresh air and the cold bite of autumn. “I was so afraid you’d been killed.”
    She laughed, the sound genuine and laced with anger at once. “The bastards.”
    â€œWhat happened to your leg?”
    â€œI twisted it running away. Right after you called. My ankle’s so big I can’t tighten my shoe.”
    He echoed her. “Bastards.”
    Amfi glanced back toward the skimmer. “The woman with you. That’s Nona Hall, right? Chrystal’s friend?”
    It amused him that Amfi identified Nona that way instead of as rich or associated with Satyana the entertainment mogul or as the daughter of the colonists from The Creative Fire . “Yes. Chrystal’s friend.” Nona had bent over and was fiddling with the laces on her shoes, surrounded by dead robots. Yi and Jean Paul stood away from everyone else, talking in low tones. Forest crowded up the edge of the ravine behind them, the long spear-shaped shadows of trees obscuring their faces.
    Charlie took Amfi’s hand. “Come on. I’ll introduce you.”
    Even though people from the Glittering seldom saw old age, Nona didn’t flinch at Amfi’s wrinkles, but simply smiled warmly. “I’m glad to see you’re safe.”
    Amfi took Nona’s hand in