When the shaman’s eyes opened they met Regbi’s with a bemused light shining behind them. It looked as if he were trying to decide to be more affronted or embarrassed that he had been knocked senseless by a wooden spoon. She flattered herself by thinking she had treated him to a new experience in doing so. A person who was used to being attacked with kitchen instruments wouldn’t need so much time to decide how they felt about it. She eyed him warily from her post by the fire, wooden ladle ready for combat in case he decided to take undue offense. Even the tamest of creatures could turn feral when trapped in a corner. Not that Regbi considered herself particularly tame of course.

“You know there are worse people than me in these parts,” Regbi said in greeting. Her voice was made breathier than it already was by her nervousness. Higher too. “Some might have seen fit to finish the job.”

“I should be grateful then that you only concussed me. And gave me a pillow too: a considerate touch,” Khadan said, grazing the bruise with his fingers. He winced. “Would it be too much to ask for a cup of water on top of it?”

“I made tea.”

“May I have some?”

She nodded curtly in response. Seeing no reason to spend the evening in distress, Regbi had made herself comfortable in the time it took the shaman to come back to his senses. She had arranged his tea service on the little table by the fire and found cups enough for two people; there was food set out as well, some honeyed nuts and dried fruit she found stashed away in tortoiseshell box. If he was going to turn her to dust anyway when he came to, she saw no reason not to go ahead and eat it. The whole scene might have been homey if not for the fact that she was kept prisoner.

Regbi handed him an overfull cup of buttery tea. Khadan took a tentative sip. He winced the second it touched his tongue. Too much salt for him maybe. Regbi often found that was the case. He drank it anyway.

“Thank you,” he murmured.

“For the tea? Or for letting you live?”

“Both I suppose.” He touched a long fingered hand to the bump on his head and grimaced.

“I’m not a murderer even if I am a thief,” Regbi said with a shrug. “Though it doesn’t make me any more happy than I was before to be here…maybe this will make you rethink keeping me?”

“After you did such a nice job preparing the tea? I don’t know how I’d manage without you now.” Khadan pushed himself up from the ground. Regbi’s body tensed like a cat doused with water. She only relaxed once Khadan helped himself to some of the fruit she had laid out for them. He offered her one of the little bowls, but she shook her head. “Already ate your fill?”

She detected irony in his tone. “Yes. And I’ll eat as much as I please too without any shame for it so long as you’re keeping me here.”

“Good. I was hoping you’d make yourself at home eventually,” he said with a blithe smile. Regbi snatched the bowl from his hand and dumped the entire thing into her mouth. “Have as much as you like. If we were back among my people I’m sure they would tell you to eat more.”

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

Her mouth too full to manage a retort, she chewed defiantly in response.

“And where are your people from?” Khadan asked her. His eyes trailed along the outline of her face, as if he might trace it back to a particular people.

Her looks, however, spoke to more than one. She had the round face and puggish nose of a lake person, but the dark looks of someone else. Her skin was the same color as oversteeped tea mixed with milk and her hair was coarse and bushy, impossible to manage. Not the fine sort that fell in waves of silk like her mother’s people’s did. For all she knew her father had come from the same desert as Khadan, but somehow she doubted it; she was too slight, too impish a creature to have come from the same people as he even if her hair was just as wild. She was all bulbous eyes and heavy brows, and when she spoke a small hiss of wind escaped from between the gap in her front teeth. Her father had probably been some forest bumpkin her mother had come across on a train one night and not a desert nomad shrouded in mystery.

“Nowhere. I sprang from the dirt one day and that was that,” Regbi told him.

“Dirt people then. Are they the sort that live by a lake?”

The flush of her cheeks said yes. “Why does it matter?”

“I’m just curious how you got here. You don’t look like a steppe girl.”

“No?”

Khadan shook his head. “You’re not sturdy enough to be, though the two that were with you certainly were. How did you fall in with them?”

“I’m a hardened criminal. I run with all sorts of bad people.” She popped a honeyed nut into her mouth and crunched it. “They’ll be coming back for me, you know. Once the others realize I’m missing more of them will come.”

“No they won’t,” Khadan said with an indulgent smile. It rankled Regbi to the core. “They’ll think I let my spirits gobble you up and be too frightened to come back.”

Her smile mirrored his own. “Well, if not for me then certainly for you.”

“Oh?”

“At least for your things. Now that they’ve seen what you’ve got in here they won’t be so quick to let you go. Any one of those knives you have sitting over there could fetch a fat price, not to mention the masks and carvings. And if you have any shamanic instruments—a headdress, a drum—those would go for even more.”

“Is that what you were here to steal?”

She had the decency to blush. “Yes,” she said in a small voice. “I am sorry for it…”

“You must have had your reasons for it then.”

She wrapped the thin coat she was wearing more tightly around her shoulders. “I meant what I said though: there are people who would pay a lot of money for the things you have in here. You’d be better off moving somewhere else.”

The ghost of a smile tugged at his lips. “Are you concerned for my safety?”

“For yours? Bah! How about for mine? If you’re going to keep me captive then you might at well do it somewhere nicer than this. There are bad people in these parts, you know.”

“Worse than a hardened criminal like you?”

“Yes.” Her eyes darkened a shade as they flicked to the door. “Isn’t there any way to lock that?”

“There’s no need to,” Khadan assured her. Regbi’s brows shot skyward with incredulity. He shook his head and chuckled. “I still don’t know how you got in. But even so it doesn’t make me doubt the magic of this place.

“It’s an old sort of magic,” he explained. “Sacred really, one that even I can’t affect though it feeds off of my own magic. I suppose the best way to explain it to you would be to say that a shaman’s ger is his sanctuary—for him and for anyone who he takes under his protection. No one who means me or anyone inside of it harm can enter—or do anything to destroy it from the outside either. I suppose another shaman might be able to if he was very powerful, but even then it wouldn’t be an easy thing to do. You’re safer here than behind any walls because of that.”

“I’d still feel better fastening the latch.”

“If it makes you sleep better.”