"There wasn't any need to tell Urza anything. He's got his visions, his future. Nothing I'd tell him would make any difference, just like you said. We're going to be busy until the Glimmer Moon goes high. I am, at least. He's got a pile of spiders for me to plant and great plans for that crystal I broke. Watch and see, by tomorrow Urza will have decided that it was his idea for us to get stuck in the Sea of Laments."
Ratepe stood behind her, rubbing her neck and shoulders. It had taken only a year, after more than three thousand, to become dependent on the touch of living fingers. She'd miss him.
"I should've stayed?" he asked. "I hoped if I took the blame-if I made Mishra take it-he'd calm down quicker. Guess I was wrong."
"Not entirely. You had a good idea, and you handled it well." She shrugged off his hands and stood. "Has Urza ever told you that he thinks you're the first of many Mishras who're going to walk back into his life?"
"Never in those words, but, sometimes I know he's frustrated with me. Scares me sometimes, because if he decided he didn't want me around, there'd be nothing I could do about it. But I've gotten used to not having
charge of my own life. I've forgotten Ratepe. I'm just Rat, trying to live another day and not always sure why ... except for you."
Xantcha studied her hands, not Ratepe's face. "Maybe you should think about taking charge of your life again."
"He's decided it's time for a new Mishra? Do I get to help find my replacement?"
"No." That didn't sound right. "I mean, I'm not going to look for another Mishra." She took a deep breath. "And I won't be here if another Mishra comes walking over the Ridge."
Ratepe pushed air through his teeth. "He's sending us both away because we went to Koilos?"
She shook her head. "Because my plan worked. Urza's not thinking about the past anymore, and you and I, we're part of his past."
"I'll go back to Efuan Pincar, to Pincar City," Ratepe spoke aloud, but mostly to himself. "After we expose the sleepers and all, Tabarna's going to need good men. If Tabarna's not a sleeper himself. If he is, I don't know who'll become king, and we'll need good men even more. What about you? We could work together for Efuan Pincar. You're smarter than you think you are. You leap sometimes, when you should think, as if a part of you is as young as you look. But you know things that never got written down."
Xantcha walked to the window. "I am part of the past, Ratepe, and I'm tired. I never realized just how tired."
"It's been a too-long day and the worst always falls on you." He was behind her again, rubbing her shoulders and guiding her toward the bed.
Xantcha's weariness wasn't anything that sleep or Ratepe's passion could cure, but she wasn't about to discuss the point.
Urza 'walked her to Morvern shortly after dawn. He left her with two sacks of improved spiders, explicit instructions for where they should be placed, and a plain- looking crystal he promised wouldn't break her teeth. Four days later Xantcha took no chances and crushed the crystal between two stones. Una 'walked her to Baszerat, then to other sleeper-ridden city-states on Gulmany's southern and eastern coasts. There wasn't time, he said, for side trips to the cottage. They had eighteen days until the Glimmer Moon struck its zenith.
"What about Efuan Pincar?" she asked before he left her and a sack of spiders in the hills beyond another southern town. "Will there be time to put the new ones there?"
"You and him!" Urza complained. "Yes, I've taken care of that myself. When the night comes, that's where you'll be, in the plaza outside the palace in Pincar City. I wouldn't dare suggest any place else! Now, you understand what has to be done here? The spiders in that sack, they're for open spaces, for plazas, markets, and temple precincts. You've got to put them where there are at least twenty paces all around. Less and the vibrations will start to cancel each other out. And make sure you put them where they won't attract attention or be trampled. You understand, that's important. They mustn't be trampled. They might break, or worse, they'll trigger prematurely."
They'd come a long way from screaming spiders. Xantcha supposed she'd find out exactly how far in Pincar City.
Until then, "Twenty paces all around, no attention, no big feet. How long?"
"Two days, less, if you can. There are some places in the west that we've missed, and it wouldn't hurt to put a few across the sea in Argivia-"
"Urza, we've never even looked for Phyrexians there!"
"It couldn't hurt, if there's time."
With that, Urza 'walked away.
Seventeen days later, the eastern city of Narjabul in which Xantcha was planting spiders had begun to fill with revelers for the coming mid-summer festival. Finding the privacy she needed to plant them was becoming more difficult by the hour. At last a tall, blond-haired man stepped out of the crowd and said, "I think there's nothing more to be done. Let's 'walk home."
The man was Urza, looking like a man in his mid- twenties and dressed in a rich merchant's silks that felt as real as they looked.
Xantcha hadn't expected to see him for another day. She hadn't felt she could break the crystal before then. "I'm nowhere near finished," she confessed. "There aren't enough rooms. The crowds just stay on the streets. It's been difficult, and it's getting worse. They sleep in the plazas where I'm trying to plant the spiders."
"No matter," Urza assured her. "One spider more or less won't win the day, or the night. There's always next month, next year."
He was in one of his benign and generous moods. Xantcha found herself instantly suspicious.
"Has something gone wrong?" she asked. "With the spiders? At the cottage?" She hesitated to say Ratepe's name.
"No, no ... I thought you and he might want to celebrate. I thought I'd 'walk you both to Pincar City and leave you there tonight."
Urza had his arm draped across Xantcha's shoulder and was steering her through the crowd when they were accosted by three rowdy youths, considerably worse for the wine and ale that flowed freely in the guild tents pitched across plaza. The soberest of the trio complimented Urza's wide- cuffed boots while one of his companions grabbed Xantcha from behind and the third tried to steal Urza's coin pouch. Xantcha stomped her boot heel on her attacker's instep and rammed her elbow against his ribs to free herself.
The youth, remarkably sobered by his pain, immediately shouted, "Help! Thief! He's taken my purse and my father's sack! Help! Stop him before he gets away!"
Xantcha had no intention of running or of surrendering the spider-filled sack. She had a fighting knife and could have put a swift end to her attacker, but they'd drawn attention, and the middle of a mob was a dangerous place to make a defensive stand, even with Urza's armor. If she'd been alone, Xantcha would have used her sphere and made a spectacular exit. She wasn't alone, though, Urza was a few steps away in the midst of his own fracas, so she yawned out her armor instead and hoped he'd get them free before too many revelers got hurt.
Justice was swift and presumptive. A bystander grabbed her from behind again and put a knife against her throat. He'd probably guessed that something wasn't quite right before she stomped and elbowed him as she'd done with her first attacker, but everyone knew she was more than she seemed when they saw that the knife hadn't drawn blood. Most folk retreated, making ward-signs as they went, but a few rose to the challenge. One of challengers, a thick-set man in long robes and pounding a silver-banded ebony staff against the cobblestones, was also a sorcerer.