Gleb walked as long as he could every day. By the end of the week, he was back in the city, heading back to his little nest. He was no longer the beggar he left as, but nor was he the entrepreneur he usually portrayed. Instead, he was a working man, and while it would have been very difficult for him to pass as anything so far from his truth back home in Indalla, here all the dark-skinned men looked the same to the city. They could all be brothers or equally aimless drifters if one were to ask any random citizen or visitor.

He was nearly home to consider the meanings of his dreams. He was nearly home to do penance and cleanse his mind, cleanse his soul. He was nearly home.

As he walked the streets, he heard the yipping of dogs, so close in sound to the memories of the wolves in his dreams that he felt a cold shudder run down his spine. He turned to glance towards the sound and felt eyes on him.

He turned towards the eyes and found pale grey eyes glaring out from around a crowd of heads. They belonged to a lithe man of copper hair and golden hoop-and-feather earrings, all of which shined brightly in the midday sun. The man turned for a moment to speak words to his shorter companion, who nodded salt-and-pepper curls. In that moment, Gleb sought to disappear into the crowds and crannies of the city.

He hurried back the way he'd come, pulling a hood up over his long braided hair to hide the flashes of pewter and silver that would give him away. He cut down streets and back alleys, trying to remember the city well enough to get to his nest, trying to pace his way through the streets without alerting the rest of the city to his flight.

He ducked into a crowd, moving with the people in it, milling around towards the marketplace. He dared a glance over his shoulder, saw a flash of copper hair, heard a jangle of rings over the voices of the people around him.

His head started running through possible explinations for this man. As far as he knew, he'd had clean hits, no one had seen him come or go, there were no survivors from raids on the road...

He ducked down an alley and tucked himself into a niche. He saw the man coming straight for him, and he bolted towards the far end of the alley. He could feel those pale grey eyes boring into him, from waking and from dreams, and that was all the more reason to avoid this man.

The dreams were something to heed.

He felt his heart slamming in his chest, demanding to know just why he thought he had to listen to something that was clearly going to lead him to his grave.

He swung up a series of wooden guides for climbing plants, scrambling like the primates of his native islands, keeping his soft-soled shoes scrambling. Higher ground made him nearly inaccessible except by archers.

Or so he thought.

Glancing down to smirk victoriously, he found that the copper-haired man was struggling on his way up and after him. The thin man was in no ways built to keep up a climb like this, though, and Gleb scrambled the rest of his way up to the roof. There, winded, he watched the copper-haired man and wished for something to hurl down on him to cause him to lose his grip and fall.

Gleb himself was four stories up. Surely a fall from that height would kill this pursuer.

But casting about proved such chances unlikely for him. Not only was there nothing to hurl down on this man, there was no nearby roof to make the desperate leap to.

He was trapped with just the hope that this man would fall.

And somehow, the closer he came, the more Gleb doubted such would be the case.

Feivel woke with a start to the shrill screams and hysterical sobbing errupting from Janice, who lay beside him. Her back arched spasmadically, and tears streamed down her face.

"Janice!" he yelped, jumping to his feet and trying to calm her. "Janice, it's okay! It's all right! It's okay! Janice!"

At that moment, three young girls burst into the surgery, trying to hold her down, trying to brace her, trying to keep her from falling. The more they held her down, the more she bucked, until she had kicked the poultice free of her leg and she was scratching deep red welts with her short, clean fingernails into her bare skin.

She didn't stop sobbing, even after the girls managed to hold her down, and her words, though broken and garbeled and choked with sobs, started to become slightly more coherant. "I didn't know," she sobbed. "I didn't know, and I thought they were the same."

One of the girls recoiled as if burned, and the other two glared at her as Janice lapsed into a second fit, eyes clenched shut.

"Get Marley!" one of the elder girls shouted as a fourth peeked her head around the corner. Feivel reached over to try to help hold her down. At just that moment, something crashed against the window.

He turned, just in time to see a wave of pebbles and scree smack into the window pane, clattering like hail into the side of the house. In the middle of it, he could hear a disgruntled yelling and see the little Saa'Shiyovi fluttering there, scratching her claw-like webbed paws onto the glass.

The girls turned towards it, and in their shock, let Janice buck free.

Feivel threw himself down on the woman, pinning her hands to her sides. "Open the door!" he shouted at them. "Open the door!"

One of them let her stupor fall just long enough to do as she was told, and the stones flew through the opening, pelting them sharply before the little Saa fluttered in and hovered above her bondmate's body.

~Janice!~ she snapped, her voice indignant and frustrated. ~Open up! Open up, Janice!~

And at that moment, the door opened, and the midwife, Marley, swaggered into the surgery. "Holy hounds of hell!" she swore, staring first at the flying mongrel and then at the stones and then at the chaos of her surgery.

"What is this?" she snapped as she started pointing to the girls, directing them to tasks nonverbally before helping Feivel hold Janice down.

~She won't open up! I can't find her!~ Kendra sobbed. ~Fix this! Fix it! FIX! IT!~

Her little paws clawed through the air, and she twisted and turned in mid-air displays of temper tantrums and frustration. Feivel shook his head at the desperate look of the midwife.

"She woke like this," he insisted. "I was sleeping. What did you give her?"

Marley's hand went to Janice's neck to find a pulse, timing it against a pocket watch.

"One-sixty over eighty..." Janice gasped, eyes of her twin snapping open as her back arched again. "At least he's stable..."

Marley stared at her. More so as the oracle continued.

"Danke! Fetch the blairswort. He's going into convulsions!"

The girls all stopped cleaning at that moment, and Marley looked sharply at him. "I think you need to leave," she breathed. "Both of you and that..." She waved her hand dismissively at Kendra. "That. You need to leave."

"You can't just let her die," he snarled.

"Her staying here isn't about her death. It's about hers and yours and mine and theirs," she said, nodding around to the girls. "Do you want that much blood on your hands?"

Feivel glared at her. "Do you mean to say 'that much more'?" he breathed. "Fix her. Now."

"Death by your hand or death by theirs, it's not much choice, is it?"

Feivel gritted his teeth and lay a hand on his knife, only to have his wrist grabbed sharply by a soft, strong hand. He glanced down to see Janice's huge black eyes open, but trembling with pain.

"Feivel," she managed, and his heart broke seeing her like this. He grabbed her hand and kissed it gently.

"I'm here. I'm here."

Her eyes clouded for a moment, and she drew in a shuddering gasp. "Sheets," she breathed. "Clean sheets."

He stared at her, but Marley evidently understood something in that statement. "You heard the girl. Clean sheets!" she snapped and sent one of the girls out of the surgery. By this time, it was packed with bystanders, and Marley snapped to each of them, calling for herbs and poultices and breakfast. She directed them clearly, cleanly, efficiently, even as the pebbles were swept back out the door and the latch thrown securely.

Kendra landed on Janice's chest as the sheets were arriving. Marley and Feivel lifted her, while the girls spread out clean sheets beneath her, and she blinked and shook her way back to complete sanity.

~Janice?~ Kendra chirped softly, crawling across her bondmate's stomach and chest, wings buzzing quietly.

"I'm sorry," she breathed. "I didn't mean to scare you."

Kendra touched her nose to the oracle's before curling up possessively on her chest, rather like a cat. This touch did not send her into hysterics or flash-overs, and Feivel wasn't sure whether this was because they were parts of a greater whole, or because she was burnt out from whatever that was. There wasn't a speck of earth or dirt in sight, and he couldn't imagine what had set her off in such a way. What she was channeling, who she had found in a single piece of grit, he couldn't guess.

Until she turned towards Marley and whispered, "We need to talk."