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"Past tihteen!"

"As if you’re so much older," he retorted, and at once hated himself for the way it sounded

"A world older!" she said with that laugh that always ht as well be your aunt"

"But you’re not," he added recklessly, and blushed at his boldness

The rest of the coreeted the other er and folded him into their ranks, and waited while four men lit torches

"Well met, Captain," she called

The captain of Fulk’s co a little

What man would not!

As they rode back, she chatted easily with thehis retinue, soldiers she had spentThe new men looked at her askance because she had not the look of his own lineage, which they had becohter of the Hidden One, yet in her the blood of the utterled in equal portions with the blood of the west

"How long have you been back with the queen’s progress?" she asked him as they reached the road and she abandoned the soldiers to side hiress, then, right after--"

"I don’t want to talk about it, I pray you I was there when it happened"

She shrugged For a while they rode in silence, serenaded by the steady clop of hooves Twotorches, and two a few ranks behind The road wound away into the trees, slipping in and out of drifts of rising old-work shimmer around her face Her expression lapsed into a blank absence, as if she were thinking of a lost lover or so mathematical problem, but after ato his right

"Who is this? We haven’t met"

"This is my best companion, Henry"