“Fellow name of Buel Hitch,” Tiber went on. “He was before your time at the Academy. You wouldn’t have known him there. He was ‘invited to leave’ when I was just a first year, for pretty much the same reasons I was invited to go be a scout, somewhere else. The man couldn’t tolerate bullies. Hitch wasn’t meant to be a standard-issue officer, but he was a man’s man when things got tough. Knew who his friends were. He saved me from a couple of bad mistakes when I first got to Gettys. And stories! The fellow could tell stories all day, craziest tales you ever heard, mostly about the Specks and their magic. He’d make them seem real. Too bad he’s gone now. I think you’d have liked him. I know he’d have liked you.”

The children had fallen silent. Dia and Kara both crept closer to their mother. Amzil put her arms around them. Sem was in the wagon, unobtrusively looking for something. When he stood up, my sling dangled from his hand and he was breathing carefully through his open mouth.

I was still and silent, the mouse frozen by the watchful cat’s stare. Tiber drank off the last of his tea and set the mug down with a regretful sigh. “Well, folks, I have to be on my way. Thanks for a pleasant pause, but I’ve got a job to do. You watch out for those highwaymen, Burvelle. Oh, and I should warn you. When I left town, there was a rumor about some escaped criminal. Said to be dangerous. I’m supposed to be looking for her right now.”

“Really?” I managed to say.

“Really.” He stood up slowly. “So far, not a sign of her. But you be careful.” He lifted his arms over his head, stretched, and then said, “Oh, pardon me, ma’am. Sometimes a scout just gets used to doing things his own way so much that he forgets how people expect him to behave. But that’s what Hitch said he liked best about this duty. Making his own decisions.” He swung his gaze slowly to Sem. “You a good shot with that thing? There’s a place, just down the hill from here, where it opens out into a little meadow. Bet you could get a nice summer rabbit there. But use a smaller rock than the one you’ve got there. That’s big enough to knock a man cold.” He smiled at the boy in a friendly way, and Sem returned him a sickly grin. I thought to myself that Buel had taught Tiber well. Tiber gave the boy a slow wink and then turned to me. “Well, you take care, Nevare. Nice little family you got here.”

“Thank you,” I said reflexively.

“Good evening, ma’am,” he said to Amzil, and doffed his hat briefly, a courtesy that surprised her. He turned and walked away as softly as he had come. Uphill of us, I heard his horse give a soft nicker. Just before he vanished into the surrounding brush, he turned back. “Funny thing, Nevare!” he called back. “I still can’t stand a bully.” Then he turned and walked away.

We stared after him for a time in silence. Sem hopped down off the wagon and came toward me, sling in one hand, stone in the other. “I thought—” he began quietly.

“I know. I’m glad you didn’t.”

“Oh, thank the good god you didn’t,” Amzil said fervently.

In the bush, the croaker bird suddenly rattled all its pinions. I stared at him. He cawed raucously and then cocked his head at me. “I think that balances nicely,” he said. In a smirking voice he added, “And it was interesting to be the good god for a change. Farewell, Nevare.” He lifted his wings wide, launched awkwardly, caught himself, and then ponderously flapped his way to a higher altitude. He circled overhead once and then flew east.

“Save your stone, Sem,” Amzil advised her son. “That’s a carrion bird. We don’t eat them.”

“He was out of my range anyway. What an ugly bird.”

I’d been the only one to hear his words.

That was the last time a god ever spoke to me. And I haven’t felt the touch of the magic since then. But being freed of the unnatural didn’t mean that life became suddenly easy for us. In fact, the next month was very hard. The weather stayed mild, but food was short and the journey uncomfortable. When we went through Dead Town, it was late in the evening. Not a light showed anywhere. Amzil was very quiet for a time. Dia didn’t seem to recognize the place. As we went past the collapse of their old cabin, Kara asked quietly, “Is this where we’re going?”

“No,” Amzil replied. “Anywhere but here.”

And we did not stop.

I lost count of how many ways I found to keep the cart from falling apart. As time went by and we left Gettys farther and farther behind, we began to stop earlier in the evening. Sem and I hunted meat for the pot or caught fish in the river when we came to it. We did not eat well, but we didn’t starve. I told Amzil my tale, in bits, as we sat by the fire in the evenings after the children were asleep. Much of it was not easy for her to hear. But she listened and she accepted it as truth. Then she told me her own tale and it was enlightening to me to hear of the young seamstress who had married the daring and handsome thief. She’d never liked her husband’s trade, but he was what his father had been before him, just as the good god decreed. And they had been happy there, in their own way, in Old Thares before the city guard caught him one night. And I felt a bit ashamed that it was hard for me to hear of her happy times. But I listened and accepted that that was who she had been.

We married in a small town named Darth. The priest was a young one who had vowed himself to a year of wandering and service. We wed in the courtyard of an inn. Amzil wore wildflowers in her hair. The proprietor of the inn was a widower and a romantic who spread a wedding meal for us and offered us two free rooms. His daughter sang for us and all the inn patrons enjoyed the festivities and wished us well. They backed up their good wishes with a wedding basket full of coins, two chickens, and a kitten. Kara observed that we now had everything we could possibly need.

And much later that night, as I was dozing with Amzil in my arms, she asked me softly, “Is this how you imagined your wedding night?”

I thought of the protracted torture of Rosse’s wedding, the endless preparations and fuss, and said, “No. This is much better. This has been perfect.”

And that, we both felt, truly began our lives together. We left the town as an established household, with Kara holding the kitten in her lap and the two tethered chickens clucking to themselves in one corner of the cart’s bed. We went north, and without quite knowing how we decided it, ended up in a very small town named Thicket, not far from the citadel at Mendy. Unlike Gettys, Thicket’s population had settled there willingly, attracted by gentle land and rich soil. The small farms looked prosperous. Thicket had lost some population to the gold rush to the Midlands, but most of the well-established folk had stayed.

The town was actually glad to see a new family arrive. Amzil quickly found work as a seamstress, and worked longer hours and brought in more money than I did. A local stockman who raised cattle to supply Mendy with meat and leather was glad to let me exchange labor for rent on a cottage. In the evenings, Sem and I walked to a nearby creek to hunt or fish. As often as not, we took Dia with us, for while Kara was old enough to help her mother with the simpler sewing, Dia was still a thread-tangler.

At night, when our candles were too dim a light for good workmanship with her needle, Amzil and I sat near our hearth and talked. In many ways, we scarcely knew each other, but I never doubted our compatibility. I played simple games with the children and tried to continue the education that Epiny had begun with them. Sem did not like his letters, but quickly saw the use of numbers. Kara read and did her sums but spent most of her time learning embroidery stitches from her mother. Beyond those basics, I told them stories from the history of Gernia, and the boy loved those, especially the ones about famous battles, the bloodier the better. The night that he rose from listening to tales to go off to bed and exclaimed, “When I am old enough, I shall be a soldier, and win fame and fortune on the battlefield,” my heart suddenly smote me.