Legs set the pot on the floor, then felt his way to Sugar’s position. Only then did Talen brush past. He picked up the pot with great distaste and went outside.

“Please stay here,” River said to Sugar. “Talen will be all right. You just sit down and enjoy your meal.”

It felt so good to stand straight and see sunlight. Perhaps she could stay up here for just a little while.

“I can understand his reluctance,” said Sugar.

“He’s not the only one that’s reluctant,” said Nettle.

They ate in relative silence, River asking Sugar questions that would make any normal guest feel comfortable. But these were not normal circumstances, and they only made the meal more strained.

Toward the end, River turned to Talen and said, “Because of last night, Ke and I now must find Sugar and Legs another place. So we’ll be hunting one up today. That means you’re going to stay here to finish the chores and to keep an eye out. Sugar and Legs are your charge until we return.”

Talen just looked into his bowl.

“Look at me, Talen. Do you think Da and I are stupid people? I know Ke, of course, is suspect.” She grinned.

It was a good effort to break the tension, but Talen did not accept it. “Yes, given the facts, I do think you’re stupid. But then I know you’re not stupid, so that means you’re hiding some of the facts.”

River glanced at Ke, then back to Talen.

“And you’ve been hiding them for quite some time,” said Talen.

“It wasn’t supposed to happen this way,” she said. “Da knows these people. They’re good, Talen. And there’s more to this than you realize. So much more. But now’s not the time or place to explain. All you have to do is finish the chores and keep an eye out. I want you to give Sugar and Legs some time up here. And that means you’ll have to stay in the house. Because you won’t be able to warn them or cover their retreat if you’re outside.”

“Then how do I do the chores?”

Both River and Ke looked at Nettle.

“Right,” said Nettle. “I’ll be out in the fields.”

“Oh, no you don’t,” said Talen. “You’re not leaving me alone with these two.”

“Chores have got to be done,” said Ke. “It will look odd, a fine day like today and nobody working. Besides, a man shoulders his own burdens.”

“Sure,” said Talen. “And when these two eat me, I guess you’ll be the one cleaning up what’s left.”

“Look at them, Talen,” River said. “They are not dangerous.”

“Just the presence of them,” Talen said, “is enough to put a noose around every one of our necks.”

While River had been there, Sugar, for the first time since the awful events, felt a lightening in her mood. There were some people that possessed such great quantities of openness and hope that it spilled over to others. River was one of these people.

Of course, when River closed the door behind her, Sugar and Legs were left with Talen.

He threw the bar on the door then turned to her. He shook his head as if he still couldn’t believe his predicament, then he picked up his bow and withdrew two arrows from one of the three tall baskets that hung on the wall. Each basket held arrows that were ringed with a different color just below the fletching. She assumed the colors distinguished a different spine strength and weight, matched to the strength of the bow. He nocked one of the arrows marked with an ochre ring. The other he kept in the hand that held the bow. Both had gray goose feathers. Both were plain, but they had clearly been heated and straightened and would fly true to deliver the iron tips that shone with grease to keep the rust off.

“Here’s the first thing we’re going to get straight,” said Talen. “Me and my immortal parts are off-limits. You see that smudge on the lintel of the doorway to the loft?”

Sugar turned to look where he pointed. But before she had fully turned her head, she heard the bow hum. The second shaft flew almost as the first hit a dark coloration on the pale whitewashed lintel.

She turned back to him. He held another two more of the ochre-ringed arrows, one nocked just as before.

Legs sat at the table eating the last scraps of his food. He put down his spoon and held very still.

“I’ve been thinking all morning,” Talen said. “I don’t know what game my father is playing, but I do know this: you cross me, I won’t hesitate. In fact, by all rights, I should shoot you down now.”

Sugar knew the look in his eyes. She knew he was considering it. Her father had taught her to never show fear in a fight. Never show pain. Never give an opponent any reason for courage unless you wanted to lure them into a trap. What kind of a fighter was Talen? Was he one that only respected force? Or was he one that was more interested in avoiding a fight?

“Why does my father harbor a hatchling?” he asked.

“I’m not a hatchling,” she said.

“Whatever you call it.”

“I practice no dark art,” she said.

“No, you wouldn’t think it dark, would you?”

“I don’t know any lore,” she said.

“But your parents do.”

She had no response to that.

“Right,” he said. “So what’s been done to my father? Or is some threat being hung over us?”

“Nothing has been done,” she said. “There are no threats.”

He was agitated. Angry. Scared. She could read it all in his face. And she would have the same reaction in his situation, was having the same reaction to what her mother had done.

“How do I know River and Ke aren’t already under the spell of some foul master?” he asked. “How do I know they’ll even return?”

He raised his bow to the verge of drawing it. “Nettle said to wait. But I can’t see how that will help.”

He was serious: he did want to slay her. He truly believed she was Sleth, and prevarication would only confirm that assessment. She and Legs would not survive the afternoon with him in this state. That much was clear. “I will not lie to you,” she said. “My mother did things that-”

She didn’t want to say it. Legs sat as motionless as a heron at the table, his wild hair sticking up. She didn’t want for him to hear it this way. But that wasn’t the reason she’d stopped. She didn’t want to name Mother aloud. There were other explanations for what she’d seen. Maybe what she saw her mother do had been distorted by her fears. Maybe Cotton had indeed been stolen and magicked by woodikin. Maybe a dark soul rode in the body of the stork they’d found. There were a dozen maybes.

But the easiest explanation would not go away. She had to face the truth. There was no salvation in lies. “I saw my mother charge an army. I saw her cleave a man’s head in two. I saw her move with a dark grace that horrified me. And I saw the Sleth signs on the dead body of my little brother.”

The words dropped from her lips like heavy stones.

“I know you have no reason to believe me,” she said. “But I found out about this only a day before you.”

He had not raised his bow, but he hadn’t lowered it either.

“I am not associated with any murder of Sleth. I have nothing to do with any art, unless my mother has done something to me like she did to my brother. But I don’t know what that would be. I’m as confused as you are, Talen.

“Think on this as well,” she added. “If we were so wicked, wouldn’t we have risen from the cellar early this morning and worked our mischief on you when you were all asleep?”

“I didn’t sleep,” he said.

“Even so,” she said. “If that’s what we were, it would have been the perfect time, would it not?”

He said nothing, but she could see the wheels of his mind turning, see him weighing her, weighing the situation.

At last, he said, “That’s the line,” and pointed at the edge of the table where Legs sat. “Come across, and my arrows fly.”

She exhaled and realized she’d been holding her breath. But his decision didn’t mean they were safe. She needed to have another plan to neutralize that bow. He might be quick with it. But a bow was a hard weapon to wield in close spaces. A knife was much better in this situation.