"Starling!" I felt an irrational flash of anger that she could have believed me so heartless. Then I thought back. I had seen the bruises on her face. Why had not I guessed? I had never even spoken to her of how Burl had broken her fingers. I had assumed she had known how that had sickened me, that she knew it was Burl's threat of greater damage to her that had kept me leashed. I had thought that she withdrew friendship from me because of my wolf. What had she believed of my distance?

"I have brought much pain into your life," I confessed. "Do not think I do not know the value of a minstrel's hands. Or that I discount the violation of your body. If you wish to speak of it, I am ready to listen. Sometimes, talking helps."

"Sometimes it does not," she countered. Her grip on me suddenly tightened. "The day you stood before us all, and spoke in detail of what Regal had done to you. I bled for you that day. It did not undo anything that was done to you. No. I do not want to talk about it, or think about it."

I lifted her hand and softly kissed the fingers that had been broken on my account. "I do not confuse what was done to you with who you are," I offered. "When I look at you, I see Starling Birdsong the minstrel."

She nodded her face against me, and I knew it was as I surmised. She and I shared that fear. We would not live as victims.

I said no more than that, but only sat there. It came to me again that even if we found Verity, even if by some miracle his return would shift the tides of war and make us victors, for some the victory would come far too late. Mine had been a long and weary road, but I still dared to believe that at the end of it there might be a life of my own choosing. Starling had not even that. No matter how far inland she might flee, she would never escape the war. I held her closer and felt her pain bleed over into me. After a time, her trembling stilled.

"It's full dark," I said at last. "We had best go back to the camp."

She sighed, but she straightened up. She took my hand. I started to lead her back to camp, but she tugged back on my hand. "Be with me," she said simply. "Just for here and just for now. With gentleness and friendship. To take the… other away. Give me that much of yourself."

I wanted her. I wanted her with a desperation that had nothing to do with love, and even, I believe, little to do with lust. She was warm and alive and it would have been sweet and simple human comfort. If I could have been with her, and somehow arisen from it unchanged in how I thought of myself and what I felt for Molly, I would have done so. But what I felt for Molly was not something that was only for when we were together. I had given Molly that claim to me; I could not rescind it simply because we were apart for a time. I did not think there were words that could make Starling understand that in choosing Molly I was not rejecting her. So instead I said, "Nighteyes comes. He has a rabbit."

Starling stepped close to me. She ran a hand up my chest to the side of my neck. Her fingers traced the line of my jaw and caressed my mouth. "Send him away," she said quietly.

"I could not send him far enough that he would not know everything of what we shared," I told her truthfully.

Her hand on my face was suddenly still. "Everything?" she asked. Her voice was full of dismay.

Everything. He came and sat down beside us. Another rabbit dangled in his jaws.

"We are Wit-bonded. We share everything."

She took her hand from my face and stood clear of me. She stared down at the dark shape of the wolf. "Then all I just told you…"

"He understands it in his own way. Not as another human would, but…"

"How did Molly feel about that?" she abruptly demanded.

I took a sharp breath. I had not expected our conversation to take this turn. "She never knew," I told her. Nighteyes started back to the camp. I followed him more slowly. Behind me came Starling.

"And when she does know?" Starling pressed. "She will just accept this… sharing?"

"Probably not," I muttered unwillingly. Why did Starling always make me think of things I had avoided considering?

"What if she forces you to choose between her and the wolf?"

I halted in my tracks for an instant. Then I started walking again, a bit faster. The question hung around me, but I refused to think about it. It could not be, it could never come to that. Yet a voice whispered inside me, "If you tell Molly the truth, it will come to that. It must."

"You are going to tell her, aren't you?" Starling relentlessly asked me the one question I was hiding from.

"I don't know," I said grimly.

"Oh," she said. Then after a time, she added, "When a man says that, it usually means, 'No, I won't, but from time to time, I'll toy with the idea, so I can pretend I eventually intend to do it.'"

"Would you please shut up?" There was no strength in my words.

Starling followed me silently. After a time, she observed, "I don't know who to pity. You, or her."

"Both of us, perhaps," I suggested stonily. I wanted no more words about it.

The Fool was on watch when we got back to camp. Kettle and Kettricken were asleep. "Good hunting?" he asked in a comradely way as we approached.

I shrugged. Nighteyes was already gnawing his way through the rabbit he had carried. He sprawled contentedly by the Fool's feet. "Good enough." I held up the other rabbit. The Fool took it from me and casually hung it from the tent pole.

"Breakfast," he told me calmly. His eyes darted to Starling's face, but if he could tell she had been weeping, he made no jest of it. I don't know what he read in my face, for he made no comment on it. She followed me into the tent. I pulled off my boots and sank gratefully into my bedding. When I felt her settle herself against my back a few moments later, I was not very surprised. I decided it meant she had forgiven me. It did not make it easy to fall asleep.

But eventually I did. I had set up my walls, but somehow I managed a dream of my very own. I dreamed that I sat by Molly's bed and watched over her as she and Nettle slept. The wolf was at my feet, while in the chimney corner the Fool sat on a stool and nodded to himself well pleased. Kettle's gamecloth was spread on the table, but instead of stones, it had tiny statues of different dragons in white and black. The red stones were ships, and it was my move. I had the piece in my hand that could win the game, but I only wished to watch Molly sleep. It was almost a peaceful dream.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Elfbark

Early the next morning, as we ate toasted bits of rabbit meat, Kettricken and I consulted her map again. We scarcely needed it anymore, we both knew it so well. But it was a thing to set between us and point at as we discussed things. Kettricken traced a fading line on the battered scroll. "We shall have to return to the column in the stone circle, and then follow the Skill road for some little way beyond it. Right up to our final destination, I believe."

"I have no great wish to walk upon that road again," I told her honestly. "Even walking beside it strains me. But I suppose there is no help for it."