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“Bastard!” My first coherent word before I re and murderous he was

“I couldn’t have you cohed and steered back out into the current, thetrailing its fingers over us in regret “And how can a man not kno to swim? Madness!”

EIGHT

The river took us to the sea A journey of two days We slept by the banks, far enough back to escape the worst of the hed at my complaints “In the northern summer the biters are so thick in the air they cast a shadow”

“Probably why you’re all so pale,” I said “No tan and blood loss”

I found sleep elusive The hard ground didn’t help, nor did the itchiness of anything I used to soften it The whole business ren two summers earlier It’s true I wasn’t thereto be feted as the hero of the Aral Pass and to nurse , strained in co away from one combat into another In any event, I lay on the too-hard and too-scratchy ground looking at the stars, with the river whispering in the dark and the bushes alive with things that chirruped and rustled and creaked I thought then of Lisa DeVeer and suspected that few nights would pass between now and my return to the palace when I wouldn’t find occasion to ask myself how I ended up in such straits And in the s deeply sorry for ain if Lisa and her sisters ht have survived the opera Perhaps Alain had convinced his father to keep the

“Why don’t you sleep, Red March?” Snorri spoke from the darkness

“We’re in Red March, Norseman It only in when you’re a long way froh this”

“And the sleeping?”

“Women on my mind”

“Ah” Enough silence that I thought he’d dropped off, then, “One in particular?”

“Mostly all of them, and their absence from this riverbank”