Salkin clasped my hand and I felt passion drumming beneath the warm slickness of sweat. “No?” His disappointment was evident.

“We’ll be moving on soon,” I said slowly. “I don’t want to leave unfinished business between us, so better not to start it, don’t you agree?”

Despite some of my girlhood escapades, Halcarion graciously decided not to drop a star on my head for that lie, so I smiled winningly at Salkin. “For the present, can we just be friends?”

Hearing myself sound like one of Niello’s less convincing heroines was almost too much. I was glad of the handy shadows hiding my smile. Men of sound character accept being turned down, be it with good or ill grace, but very few, even of the best, will take being laughed at.

Salkin heaved a sigh. “Then I’ll see you back to your threshold,” he said with a glumness that betrayed his youth.

“I can see the settlement fires from here.” I shook my head. “You go back and enjoy yourself. I’m sure Yefri will be glad to see you,” I couldn’t resist adding.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.” He kissed me with an intent that promised further pursuit and retraced his path to the yew grove.

I walked toward the ring of roundhouses, my spirits absurdly buoyed, but when I arrived back at our sura, there was no one there to share the joke. Where had the wizard gone? Expecting to be disturbed before long, I claimed the softest and prettiest of the blankets and wrapped myself up. But by the time the camp had fallen silent, none of the others had returned and I was feeling a little piqued. No, curiosity and passing fancy are not sufficient reason to take a young man to your bed, even one as tempting as Salkin, I told myself firmly. If I had been irresponsible in the past, no harm had come of it, not to me anyway, but things had changed. Besides, Ryshad had spoiled me for anyone else. Getting a tune out of a second-rate fiddler would only leave me missing him more. I’d found myself better suited with him than any previous bedmate and I had more basis for comparison than most girls would consider respectable, I privately acknowledged. But no amount of moping would shorten the leagues between us, so there was no profit in that.

What about Rusia’s little patter-game? But it wasn’t a patter-game, was it? She certainly believed in what she was saying and so did the others. Was there any significance to that? Was there any significance to the few things she’d said that were close enough to the truth to make me increasingly uncomfortable? Curse ’Gren and Sorgrad both; where were they? Making some girl’s eyes sparkle with a pretty trinket no doubt. I resolutely forced long-shunned memories of childhood, parents and everything else behind me. I was looking to the future, to new opportunities and hopefully sharing them with Ryshad. This was why I was failing to get to sleep in this uncomfortable, drafty, smoke-laden hole after all.

I nearly had myself convinced when unexpected slumber claimed me.

Teyvasoke,

17th of Aft-Spring, Late Afternoon

“What under the sun is that?” demanded Jeirran, astonished.

Keisyl squinted into the sun. “Carts, lowlanders, smoke…” A sound of hammering echoed around the smooth slopes of the valley.

“How dare they!” Teiriol looked around for agreement.

Eirys bent down from her rough-coated gray pony. “Don’t let’s get involved,” she pleaded. “Let’s get to the fess. They’ll be sorting it out, won’t they?”

“If they’ve any mettle in their bones.” Doubt shaded Jeirran’s words.

“Come on.” Keisyl pulled on the bridle of the pack mule he led. It followed him placidly, a string of others coming on behind. Jeirran and Teiriol were a little slower, glaring angrily at the activity they could now see clearly in a fold of land down by a stream. A handful of wagons were drawn up, awnings slung between them. Small figures were busy around a stack of fresh-felled trees, drifts of dust rising from a sawpit and one solitary man astride a massive log stripping bark and branches with an axe. Others were marking the unmistakable lines of a house with pegs and line in the muddied grass.

“Ho, you there!” The hail turned all their heads. A man in rough homespun came over a rise in the ground on a tall bay horse. “Where are you bound?” His tone was courteous but rang with unconscious authority that set Jeirran’s beard bristling.

“Teyvafess,” said Keisyl shortly.

The man shook his head. “What?”

“The fess,” repeated Jeirran with annoyance. “The stronghold, you would say.”

The rider nodded, absently wheeling his horse around. A bow was slung at his shoulder and a full quiver of arrows hung from his saddle. “You’ve no dogs with you?”

“No,” said Keisyl slowly. “Why?”

“We’re running sheep up by the river,” explained the horseman. “I’ll bid you good day.”

“Wait!” Jeirran dropped his lead mule’s reins and stepped forward. “What do you mean, you’re running sheep? On whose authority and what are you building? How dare you fell in these woods?”

The lowlander rode away without answering, cresting the rise and disappearing from view.

“The thrice-cursed sister-whelped—” Jeirran gaped after him.

“Don’t let’s get involved,” repeated Eirys. “The Teyvakin can tell us what is going on.”

“Could they have sold a grazing term to some lowlanders?” asked Keisyl doubtfully.

“With a grant to fell and build?” scoffed Jeirran.

Keisyl yanked on his mule’s halter. “Let’s see what the Teyvakin say.”

Their pace slowed as the long rise of the valley swelled up toward distant peaks. Bare rock crowned with shrinking snows split the forested glens, two long ridges enclosing a smaller shallow valley in watchful arms. A sturdy stone bridge spanned a rushing river foaming high over a stony bed, guarded by a solitary figure sitting kicking his heels against the parapet.

“Seric!” Jeirran tossed reins to Teiriol without a backward look and hurried forward. “What on earth is going on in the lower valley?”

The elderly Mountain Man looked dourly back down the slope and leaned on the shaft of the billhook he held. “Lowlanders, up from the Gap.” He spat his contempt in a wadded lump of chewing leaf. “Turned up maybe a few days after you headed down. Reckon they’re claiming all the land up to this bridge seeing as no one lives there!”

“But that’s your winter grazing,” protested Teiriol.

The bridge guard glared beneath bushy, snowy brows. “So you go and tell them that, youngling. Maybe they’ll pay heed to you instead of ignoring us!”

“Why are you here, at the bridge,” Keisyl nodded at Seric’s billhook, “with that?”

The man heaved a sigh. “There’s been trouble.”

“Bad?” Jeirran looked belligerent.

“Bad as it can be,” replied Seric morosely. “Gedres and his boy were coming back from the far woods when he finds all these sheep eating up the hay meadows. This Gap man, he tells Gedres to clear right out, curt as you like, get off his land. Gedres tells him to go tup his own ewes! Well, lowlander tries to fetch him a smack in the mouth so Gedres drops him. They’d been coursing, so he tells the lad to set the hounds on the misbegot and his sheep, see how he likes that. Lowlander whistles up a pack of thieves to help him.” Seric shook his head. “The lad’s none too clear on what happened after that but the long and the short of it, Gedres ends up dead with knife in his back.”

“Oh,” Eirys cried, distressed. “Poor Yevrein! Is there anything I can do—?”

Seric looked up at her, wrinkled face softening. “She’ll be glad to see you, I’ll warrant. Sheltya arrived this morning and they laid him out at noon so it’ll be a hard day for her.”

“How’s the lad?” asked Keisyl.

Seric shook his head. “Taking it hard but no one blames him. How could he take them all on, barely two-thirds grown? Bastards took a whip to him!”