The first thing Iruga was aware of was stone. Cold, uneven, pressing against his cheek in a way that made it clear he had been lying on it for some time. The second thing was the inside of his own skull, which felt like it had been introduced to a boulder at some point while he was unconscious and had not yet forgiven him for it.

  He pushed himself upright slowly, blinking. A cave. Low ceiling, rough walls, a fire burning somewhere behind him that gave the space a dim, orange warmth. He looked at his hands. The nick on his finger had dried. He looked around and noticed, in the way a man notices things when his head is still catching up, that the cave was not empty. There were things arranged in it — small arrangements, lived-in things. Someone was here, or had been.

  "Good morning," said a voice.

  It was cheerful. Unreasonably so.

  Iruga turned around.

  The person standing at the mouth of the cave was small — small in the way that demanded a second look, then a third. A male, nude without any apparent concern about it, with long hair that fell past his shoulders, past his waist, all the way down to the cave floor where it pooled slightly at his feet. Iruga's eyes moved downward once, involuntarily, and then he made a deliberate decision to look at the man's face and keep looking at it.

  "Who are you?" Iruga said. It came out less like a question and more like a man trying to establish something solid to stand on.

  "Chiyo," the small man said, still cheerful.

  "What is happening to me?"

  "That is a bigger question. We can get to it."

  Chiyo sat down cross-legged on the cave floor, his hair settling around him in a loose ring, and began to talk with the ease of someone who had been waiting to explain things for a while and was glad the moment had finally arrived.

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  He was from somewhere far to the South East, outside of Eustad, and he was lost. He had sent his homing pigeon out to tell his brother where he had ended up — that he was alive, that he was in Eustad, that he should not worry, though he suspected he already was. The bird had not made it. The Elite Archers stationed at the gate wall on the outskirts of Syvarius had shot it down. He said this the way a man reports an inconvenience he had half expected.

  "The bird was made of glass," Iruga said.

  Chiyo nodded as though this were obvious.

  Iruga stared at him. "A glass bird."

  "A glass pigeon, yes."

  "That flies."

  "That flew," Chiyo corrected. "Past tense now, unfortunately."

  Iruga looked down at the dried nick on his finger and then back up at Chiyo. None of it was connecting into anything that made sense. A glass bird that flew, shot down by archers, and somehow a shard of it had ended up in the dung of his cattle in Smardoh, and touching it had put him here. He turned this over and found no side of it that felt reasonable.

  "How did any part of your glass pigeon end up in my cattle dung?" Iruga said.

  Chiyo opened his mouth, paused, and then closed it. "That," he said, "is actually a fair question."

  Iruga let that sit for a moment. "Why did I pass out," he said. "From a nick."

  Chiyo shrugged. "You are not meant to touch them. So that's on you."

  Iruga looked at him. "That is not an explanation."

  "It is, actually. Just not a satisfying one."

  Iruga decided to move on. "Fine," he said. "Fair enough. Why am I here. In this cave."

  "That one is obvious." Chiyo straightened up slightly. "I brought you here. I thought you were my slave." He paused. "Turns out that slowpoke is already dead. He fell from a cliff."

  Iruga stared at him for a long moment.

  "So I am not your slave." he said.

  "Correct."

  "And the person who was your slave is dead."

  "Fell from a cliff, yes."

  "And you brought me here anyway."

  Chiyo considered this. "You were already unconscious. It seemed practical."

  Chiyo looked at him for a moment with the expression of someone deciding whether the other person was ready.

  "Do you not know who I am?" he said.

  The fire crackled behind them. Outside the cave, somewhere distant, the morning was continuing without Iruga in it.