Melody, one of the puppeteers, gave a mock shiver. "Brrr. So. Sing us something merry now, to go to sleep on. I've no wish to hear more of your ghost tales before I seek my blankets tonight."

So Starling willingly swept into a love ballad, an old one with a lilting refrain that Madge and Melody joined in singing. I lay in the darkness, pondering all I'd heard. I was uncomfortably aware that Starling had stirred it up intending for me to hear it. I wondered if she thought she was doing me a favor, or if she simply wished to see if any of the others had suspicions of me. One hundred gold coins for my head. That was enough to make a duke greedy, let alone a strolling minstrel. Despite my weariness, it was a long time before I dozed off that night.

The next day's drive was almost comforting in its monotony.

I paced along behind my sheep, and tried not to think. It was not as easy to do as previously. It seemed that whenever I blanked my mind to my worries, I heard Verity's Come to me echoing inside my head. When we made camp that night, it was on the banks of a giant sinkhole with water at its center. The talk about the fire was desultory. I think we were all more than a little weary of our trudging pace and longed to see the shores of Blue Lake. I wished simply to go to sleep, but I had first watch over the flock.

I climbed slightly up the hillside to where I could sit looking down on my woolly charges. The great bowl of the sinkhole cupped our whole caravan, with the small cook fire near the water showing like a star at the bottom of a well. Whatever wind blew passed us by, leaving us sheltered in a great stillness. It was almost peaceful.

Tassin probably thought she was being stealthy. I watched her come silently, her cloak pulled well up over her hair and about her face. She circled widely as if to pass by me. I did not follow her with my eyes, but listened to her as she went above me on the hillside and then came back down behind me. I caught her scent even in the still air and felt an involuntary anticipation. I wondered if I'd have the strength of will to refuse her a second time. Mistake it might be, but my body was all in favor of making it. When I judged her about a dozen steps away, I turned to look at her. She startled back from my gaze.

"Tassin," I greeted her quietly, and then turned to look back at my sheep. After a moment, she came down the slope to stand a few steps away from me. I turned slightly and looked up at her without speaking. She pushed her hood back from her face and confronted me, challenge in her eyes and stance.

"You're him, aren't you?" she demanded breathlessly. There was a very slight edge of fear in her voice.

It was not what I'd expected her to say. I didn't have to pretend surprise. "I'm him? I'm Tom the shepherd if that's the him you mean."

"No, you're him, that Wit-Bastard the King's Guard is seeking. Drew the teamster told me what they were saying in town, after Starling told that tale last night."

"Drew told you I was a Wit-Bastard?" I spoke carefully, as if baffled by her tumbling words. A terrible cold fear was welling up inside me.

"No." A trace of anger mixed with her fear. "Drew told me what the King's Guard said of him. A broken nose and a scar on the cheek and a white streak in his hair. And I saw your hair that night. You've a white streak in it."

"Any man who's been hit on the head can have a white streak in his hair. It's an old scar." I tilted my head and looked at her critically. "I'd say your face is healing well."

"You're him, aren't you?" She sounded even angrier that I'd tried to change the subject.

"Of course not. Look. He's got a sword-slash on his arm, hasn't he? Look at this." I bared my right arm for her inspection. The knife-slash I'd given myself was down the back of my left forearm. I was gambling that she'd know a slash taken defending myself should have been on my sword arm.

She scarcely glanced at my arm. "Do you have any coin?" she asked me suddenly.

"If I'd had any coin, why would I have stayed in camp when the others went to town? Besides, why would you care?"

"I wouldn't. But you would. You could use it to buy my silence. Otherwise, I might go to Madge with what I suspect. Or the teamsters." She lifted her chin defiantly at me.

"Then they could look at my arm, as easily as you've done," I said wearily. I turned away from her to look back over my sheep. "You're being a silly little girl, Tassin, letting Starling's ghost tales get you all stirred up. Go back to bed." I tried to sound disgusted with her.

"You've a scratch on your other arm. I saw it. Some might take it for a sword-slash."

"Probably the same ones that would take you for intelligent," I said derisively.

"Don't make mock of me," she warned me in a voice gone flat with ugliness. "I won't be made fun of."

"Then don't say stupid things. What's the matter with you, anyway? Is this some sort of revenge? Are you angry because I wouldn't bed you? I told you, it's nothing to do with you. You're pretty to look at, and I don't doubt there'd be pleasure in touching you. But not for me."

She spat suddenly on the ground beside me. "As if I'd have let you. I was amusing myself, shepherd. No more than that." She made a small sound in her throat. "Men. How can you look at yourself and think anyone would want you for your own sake? You stink of sheep, you're skinny, and your face looks like you've lost every fight you've ever been in." She turned on her heel, then seemed to abruptly remember why she'd come. "I won't tell any of them. Yet. But when we get to Blue Lake, your master must pay you something. See you bring it to me, or I'll have the whole town seeking you out."

I sighed. "Whatever amuses you, I'm sure you'll do. Create all the fuss you wish. When it comes to naught and folk laugh about it, it will probably give Dell one more reason to beat you."

She turned away from me and went stalking off down the hillside. She lost her footing in the moonlight's uncertainty and nearly took a tumble. But she recovered herself and then glared back at me, as if daring me to laugh. I had no such inclination. Despite my defiance of her, my stomach was clenched up under my throat. A hundred gold coins. Spread a rumor of it, and that much money was enough to start a riot. After I was dead, they'd probably decide they had the wrong man.

I wondered how well I'd do at crossing the rest of the Farrow plains alone. I could leave right after Creece relieved me on watch. I'd go to the wagon and get my things quietly and sneak away into the night. How much farther could it be to Blue Lake anyway? I was pondering that as I watched yet another figure slip away from the campsite and come up the slope toward me.

Starling came quietly, but not stealthily. She lifted a hand to me in greeting before she sat down companionably at my side. "I hope you didn't give her any money," she greeted me affably.

"Umph," I said, letting her take it however she wished.

"Because you're at least the third man who's supposedly got her pregnant on this trip. Your master had the honor of being the first accused. Madge's son was the second. At least I think he was. I don't know how many fathers she's selected for this possible child."

"I haven't been with her, so she could scarcely accuse me of, that," I said defensively.

"Oh? Then you're probably the only man in the caravan who hasn't."

That jolted me a bit. Then I thought about it and wondered if I would ever reach a place in which I ceased finding out how stupid I could be. "So you think she's with child and is looking for a man to buy her out of her apprenticeship?"

Starling snorted. "I doubt she's with child at all. She wasn't asking to be married, only for coin to buy herbs to shake the child loose. I think Madge's boy might have actually given her some. No. I don't think she wants a husband, just some money. So she looks for ways that allow her a bit of a tumble, and a man who might pay her for it afterward." She shifted, tossed aside an offending stone. "So. If you haven't got her pregnant, what have you done to her?"