Chapter Two
AMARTA'S EYE was caught by a shimmering shell on a vendor's table. She went to it eagerly, fingertips tracing its bright green curve.
She had seen it before, she was nearly positive. A dream or a vision—a moment ago, a lifetime hence, she wasn't sure. An echo from some possible future? The glinting, rainbow iridescence rippled across a field. Then it was gone: another mysterious glimpse of what might yet be.
"Tell your fortune, foreign miss?"
So much of Amarta's foresight was like this very shell, she reflected. The emerald glint in sunlight befuddled the eye. Did she see this shell before her, true? Or was it to come, and still only possible in the world?
The eye and mind could be confused. Touch was more certain. Her fingers brushed the hard surface again.
"Your future? Good sera? I to tell you?"
Amarta blinked, realizing that these spoken words were now, here, in this busy market. And further, were spoken in her own language. No future vision, this.
She looked for the source, across tables heaped with trays of still-twitching sea creatures, past piles of oddly shaped fruits with fingers like the limbs of lovers entwined—but no—that didn't bear thinking about.
Beyond the seawall, the crashing of waves cut through the market chatter every few moments, the hush of the sea weaving through the high laughter of children, who darted and dodged around haggling adults. Suddenly, a few paces away, a table leg collapsed, skeins of yarn tumbling to the dirt and cobbles. A sharp, outraged yell. Children scattered in all directions.
A young boy ran in front of Amarta and stopped, gaping and pointing at her. A scowling shopkeeper lurched for the child who dashed out of reach and was gone, sliding through a narrow opening of brick and barrels.
"Sera? Your fortune you want?"
Amarta at last thought to look down. On the ground, from under a tattered awning, its fabric faded to colorlessness, an aged hand reached out and up. She leaned into view, the old woman, her face lined, dark skin blotched pale, her white hair a ragged fuzz.
"What did you say, grandmother?" Amarta asked her in the language and dialect of this land.
"Ah, you speak Perripin! And so well," said the old woman, grinning toothlessly. "I would hardly know you for a foreigner, miss, but for your sickly pale skin. Do you wish your fortune, this fine, bright market day? I was trained in the auguring ways by the Monks of Revelation, so I can tell your future true."
Amarta felt a hand close on her arm. A gentle grip, but it might as well have been steel. He leaned in close.
"She can't, Amarta."
The scent of him warred with the mingling smoke of frying fish and the heavy brine of the sea, and won. An ache swirled through her.
"And if you keep walking away from me," he breathed into her ear, "you will seem an Arunkin woman traveling the coast of Perripur alone, rather than a back-country couple, here to shop. In these lands, that is worthy of note."
Amarta brushed back the tail of the long scarf he'd wrapped around her head that morning. The local style, the scarf and blouse. They dressed the part of poor rural inlanders. The scarf tangled, and she tugged at it, frustrated.
"I'll do better," she said.
"Try to seem at ease with me," he said gently. "Or annoyed, if you prefer. Act familiar, in any case, as if we've been together for years. Yes?"
"Yes."
Together for years. Which they had been, in a way. Years in which he had hunted her relentlessly. A lifetime ago. A world away.
"It comes to my eyes," the old woman said, fanning fingers before her face, looking up at Amarta. "Good miss, will you know what I see?"
"Yes," Amarta replied eagerly, pulling her arm from Tayre's light grip. "Give her a coin, won't you—" she searched her mind for some appropriate local slang. "—my starfish?"
He sighed deeply, ending it with a short laugh. "You have persuaded her." His indulgent tone and amused expression told the story of their pretend relationship perfectly. He dropped an octagonal sorin-ga coin into the old woman's outstretched hand.
"So generous, ser," said the old woman, the coin vanishing into her grimy caftan. She brought out a tangle of thick, faded red yarn and shook the bundle in her hands and then over her head.
She chanted a children's rhyme. No invocation of the serpent moon or some other Perripin piety, but a simple litany about collecting precious stones on an island.
Amarta watched, fascinated. She had never chanted while foreseeing. Perhaps the monks who had trained the woman knew something that Amarta did not?
Or, Tayre might say, the woman didn't expect Amarta's grasp of the language to be so good and was intending to enhance her performance with what came readily to mind.
Amarta watched Tayre while he scanned the crowd in seemingly idle boredom. What a knack he had for appearing to be doing something other than he really was: watching. Always watching.
Where did he keep it, Amarta wondered, the cheap nals coin she had given him? In a hidden pocket? In one of his many stashes, across who knew how many lands?
Or maybe he'd already spent it. For a moment she imagined him purchasing something practical, that small nals among a handful of coins, casually tossed in as an afterthought.
But no—somehow she knew that wherever it was, Tayre still owned the four-part copper coin that had sealed the contract between them, that marked the moment in which he would never hunt her again.
His gaze came to her. Before looking on, he smiled at her, an expression so fond and familiar that her stomach dropped.
Pretense. All pretense.
The old woman stopped chanting. She threw the tangled yarn to the dusty ground, peering at it closely. It was intended to resemble intestines, Amarta realized, her hope sinking.
"Fame and fortune!" the old woman cried, as if surprised, her smile stretching and going slack by turns as she watched Amarta for a response. "The adoration of many!" She looked at Tayre. Then, with less certainty: "Children and family?"
"What about my sister?" Amarta found herself asking.
Tayre's hand was firm on Amarta's shoulder, his touch both reassuring and unnerving. "Never mind that, grandmother. What about her father? He's been terribly sick. We need him back at the mill. Will he be restored to health?"
His tone, the ache in his eyes—it was a riveting performance. Amarta herself was nearly convinced that Tayre cared deeply for her father, a man dead nearly twenty years, whom Tayre had never met.
The old woman's gaze flickered between them. "Most treasured, is it not, that which is gone? He will be strong again, your father, come the delinquent sun returned to the northern lands."
Amarta puzzled over these words. She had learned so much of the language with Tayre, but as he had pointed out many times, it was one thing to understand a language, and another to understand the speaker. Was the old woman saying Amarta's dead father would recover in the Spring?
"I see your confusion, foreign lady," said the old woman. "With another coin, more might be revealed. You have questions. I have answers."
"Enough answers," Tayre said, taking Amarta's arm. "The market closes soon, darling, and we have much to do." He tapped Amarta's shoulder in a silent signal: We go.
Amarta let him draw her along the street. As they passed tents and tables, buckets of crabs and boxes of orange and magenta fruit, she stifled annoyance. "I wanted to hear that. What if she is true?"
"She's a fraud, Amarta."
"You don't know that."
"The Monks of Revelation are a men's-only order," he said. "Make of that what you will. Also, know this: a sailor at the dock pointed at you, then turned to speak to a man at his side. Best we move on."
Protecting her, she realized with mild surprise. So unnecessary. Amarta could not count the hunters she had evaded across the years. If someone truly threatened her, vision would warn. It always did.
Perhaps she should remind him of the years he himself had not been able to catch her.
No, perhaps not that.
Was his protection part of this contract? Help you learn about yourself and the world. Months with him, and yet she still did not know what was between them.
She did know what he thought of the old woman on the ground behind them, that such a ragged, poor creature, sitting on the street of a small seaside town, could not be offering true fortunes.
Amarta's own past taught her otherwise: she and her sister Dirina had been just this poor and desperate, begging small coins from strangers in exchange for Amarta's answers. It was too easy to imagine herself, years hence, as that old woman.
With that thought, vision flickered at the edges of her mind, trying to answer the half-asked question. Murky flashes. Cobwebs of maybe. The smell of a rank, open sewer. Hard cobblestones beneath her.
And it was gone.
Unique beyond reckoning, Maris had said of Amarta.
Tayre was right, she decided: the old woman was a fraud. Someday Amarta might find someone like herself, from whom she could learn more about what she was.
But not today.
Disappointment settled on her like a heavy shawl.
Tayre led them along the hot, dusty Perripin street, past the final stalls of market row. Dark-skinned Perripin faces turned to watch them go. Suspicion? Curiosity? She could not tell.
They were heading toward the inn, she realized.
"Do you mean us to leave Mutarka?" she asked.
"Yes."
From within stacked wicker cages, small hens clucked, their heads tilted as they eyed baskets out of reach, piled high with multicolored eggs.
"Because one man pointed at me?"
"It was not idle curiosity."
"No. He wouldn't come after me." No need to name him, the Lord Commander of Arunkel, the man who had hired the hunters Amarta and her sister and nephew had evaded these many years. "He released me from the contract. He let me go. Willingly."
"Minds have been known to change."
She shook her head. "But he gave me a horse. A horse!"
A beautiful bay mare who responded so easily to every touch that Amarta felt comforted just putting her hand on the golden animal's hide. She had named her Souver, after the golden coin of her homeland, because the mare was a treasure, and Amarta felt rich every time she rode her.
"An expensive horse, making you even easier to find."
"We were to stay the night," Amarta said, hearing the whine in her own voice.
Not on the ground and separate pallets. At an inn. Together. In one room. One bed.
He glanced sidelong at her, appeared to consider. "All right. Tell me, Seer: if we stay the night, what might happen?"
Exactly what she had been wondering. She held the question within, letting images form.
He slept. She watched him, caught in indecision. Thinking to move closer. If she brought her lips to his, might he turn to her and respond in kind?
You're a fool, she would tell herself. He'll say no, again, is what.
She blinked herself back to the present, puzzling at this—what?—vision of vision? Vision of speculation?
Regardless, it was not what he meant, and she knew it.
She held the question again, drawing it wide. Possibilities splayed before her by the tens, by the hundreds, by the uncountable many. With her intention she reached inside, as if pawing through a huge bag of thread, fumbling for the twine of the most likely outcomes.
A quiet night at an inn. One without his touch, but also without intrusion.
Back in the present she found herself staring at her feet, at the worn turnshoes, the dirt, the cobblestones.
"Nothing happens," she said, struggling to keep bitterness from her tone, turning her head so that he might not see the disappointment. On a side street, laughing children drew adults to some late-day entertainment. She envied them.
"Spoken fast for certainty," he said. "No danger? It is not even possible?"
If anyone else had asked—but no, it was him. She looked again, this time at the edges of the possible, the thinnest strands.
A spreading fire in the inn's kitchens. An improbable windstorm that tore off shutters and battered down doors. A drunken couple mistaking the room for their own, pounding on the door.
Pressure in her head bordered on pain. She groped for spider-silk trails of what might be.
The door slammed open. Four hulking shapes. Tayre moving fast. A shout. A pained cry. Down went one, then another. A quick exchange with the third. Tayre swept to the floor. Amarta gasped, but a moment later, he was standing. Alone.
So remote. So unlikely. Hardly worth mentioning.
"Nothing," she repeated, head down, throbbing. Could she convincingly end the prediction there? Probably not. "Most likely," she amended. "A small chance." her voice dropped to a bare whisper. "Four men. Hardly possible."
"Not worth the risk. We go back."
Back to the gentle prison of the mage's land, where Amarta had foreseen the mage soon returning from Arunkel.
Overhead, seagulls screeched. Ahead, a sheep bleated. Somewhere, a dog barked. It all seemed too loud.
"But you and Maris," Amarta said.
"I'll stay off the mage's land and out of her path."
He no longer referred to Maris by name, not since the four of them—Amarta, Tayre, Maris, and her new apprentice Samnt—had ridden south from Arunkel to Perripur, where Maris had made it clear that Tayre was not welcome. Then she'd left. He'd better not be here when I return, Amarta.
It gave Amarta a sick feeling, that the two people she trusted most in the world were at odds with each other. There must be a way to reconcile them.
"Be sure of the timing, Seer. You should be there when the mage arrives."
A large envelope. Pale red linen. A message carrying grief.
"I will."
He glanced at her. "You foresee something. What?"
Amarta's head ached. From the side street, a flute began to play, trilling and high.
"Make way for the Arunkel queen! Make way!" someone yelled in Perripin.
Amarta dashed to the edge of the crowd, craning her neck to see. Around her, townspeople nudged each other, pointing at her, at Tayre who had followed. They whispered to each other, laughed in surprise, and in a rippling fashion, moved aside to make a pathway for them to the center.
"Your queen, Arunkin," one said, laughing. "Go on."
At the center of the crowd was a puppet theater, purple curtains pulled aside. Two dark-skinned wooden puppets, breathtakingly lifelike, peered across the stage to where a light-skinned puppet lurched from side to side, her huge belly protruding from long red and black robes, a crown on her head.
"Cern esse Arunkel!" shouted one of the puppets, waving at her. "Welcome to Mutarka's market day. Is that a baby in your tummy?"
"Or a bag of pineapples?" called out the second puppet to the crowd.
The crowd chuckled.
"I am joyful!" the Cern puppet said, throwing her arms wide. "But I am despondent!" She closed her arms over her belly, looking down in sorrow.
"What? Surely all rejoice at the birth of the Arunkin heir! What is wrong, oh queen?"
"I think there is only one inside me."
"You can have more!" shouted the second puppet.
The Cern puppet's head tilted in confusion. "Are they not all born together?"
The two Perripin puppets gawked at each other, then at the audience, then back at the Cern puppet.
"No, queen. You are thinking of puppies."
The crowd tittered.
"I love my dogs!"
"Yes, but babies..." began one puppet.
"Are born one at a time," continued the other. "After the first, if you want another, you simply...ah... how to explain?" He looked at the first puppet, who made a crude thrusting motion with his hips.
The audience laughed and cheered, gazes going back and forth, from the stage to Amarta.
His hand was on Amarta's shoulder, his mouth to her ear. "Compose yourself."
Amarta had not realized she was scowling. She swallowed, ignoring the looks, attempting a neutral expression.
The Cern puppet danced around the stage, singing an off-key Arunkin lullaby.
Tayre leaned close to whisper. "Notice what is not being said. They don't know the truth of the matter, or we would see it played out here."
Amarta nodded. Were it known that a Perripin mage had gone to aid the Arunkel queen, that would be huge news. No Perripin would pass up a chance to mock Arunkel's attitudes about magic.
"Should we remind her who the father is?" asked the first puppet.
"You mean Innel, The Mutt? No no—she might become confused again."
"But if she doesn't understand how babies are made," said the first, "We must—"
"—send her a Perripin anknapa!" finished the second.
Anknapas were teachers who ministered to the powerful and wealthy, preparing young elites for adult life. Cern would have been done with such instruction long ago.
Laughter, shouts of agreement. "La la la!" "Yes! Send two!" "Three!" "She can have mine!"
"Sorin coins, fellow Perripin," said one puppet. "It will take many sorins to send a good Perripin anknapa to the queen, to teach her how babies are made!"
Coins flew, thunked, and spun into the trough before the puppet theater.
Amarta clenched her mouth on the words she wanted to say.
"By the Dragon Sun, I'm hungry!" shouted the Cern puppet. "I could eat a city!"
"Oh, no!" cried one of the puppets. "Feed her quick, lest she gnaw our borders again. Someone hand me a mountain!"
From the side of the stage came a huge cutout of a snow-topped mountain. The two puppets, grunting and groaning, dragged it onto the stage where they dropped it with a bang in front of the Cern puppet, who began to chew loudly at the edges.
Amarta's face went hot as the audience trilled and laughed and threw more coins.
We go, Tayre tapped on her shoulder, very clearly. When Amarta didn't respond, he turned her away from the stage and pressed her to walk through the crowd. A gentle but firm suggestion.
The crowd let them pass, but the faces laughed and pointed, some cheering, as if Amarta and Tayre were part of the show.
"How many children will I have?" asked the Cern puppet from behind.
"Ask a fortune teller!"
Amarta slowed, and Tayre's arm slid around her shoulders.
"Yes!" cried the Cern puppet. "I have a collection of them in the kennels. With the dogs. All my precious pets together!"
"No, she doesn't—" Amarta began, starting to turn, to tell them how absurd they were, but Tayre's hold on her shoulders was solid, and he kept her moving forward, past the jeering crowd.
It was nothing like a suggestion.
Silence, he tapped with a hand on her shoulders, the arm still holding her tight, forcing her forward.
She held her tongue until they reached the inn. Then up the stairs and into the room, the door closing behind.
"They insult her!" Amarta spat, no longer containing her outrage. "Make her seem foolish. A child. How dare they?"
Tayre set down the bags he'd been carrying. She watched while he began to repack produce and dried goods into saddlebags.
She took a breath, trying to still her storm of emotion. "Why?"
"Because Arunkel has a history of crossing borders and claiming lands," he answered. "Cern and the number and status of her children matter here." He looked at Amarta. "And it is Perripin to laugh at what is feared."
"Let them laugh at their own leaders, then."
"They do. Watch some more puppet shows. Why do you care? Is the queen such a good friend?"
"You know she is not."
"I do?" He looked at her again. "I was not the only one curious to know what you and the queen talked about that one afternoon, behind closed doors."
Amarta gaped. "How do you even know that much?"
"Information travels. I make sure it travels to me. I also know the answer: you rolled dice for her, to prove your ability."
Amarta nodded slowly, still stunned. There had been only three people in that room that day: Amarta, the queen, and Sachare, the queen's chamberlain.
Well, maybe a guard or two.
Of course Tayre would somehow know.
He pulled up a pants cuff, adjusted a knife sheath tight against his leg. "That you were held prisoner in the palace, many would be aware, but questions would remain. Whether you were the seer of rumor, or the Lord Commander's wayward cousin, as he claimed, it was clear that you were important. Where are you now? What stories might you have to tell, if the right questions were asked?"
The right questions. In memory, a candle lit a dark room. Amarta's heart and breath sped. Her gaze skittered across the room to find something to look at besides him. The fingers of her left hand ached.
"There is no reason to believe that there is not still a price on your head, Amarta, whoever is paying the bill. As there was before."
When he was her hunter, he meant.
Her gaze seemed stuck on the empty, unused bed.
"But I have you now," she whispered.
The softest of laughs. "I am only one man."
She thought of the years in which she had barely escaped his grasp, and the futures she had just witnessed in which he had laid out four attackers in fewer moments than it would take to tell him. The hundreds and thousands of futures in which four large men could not best him.
"No, you are..." She trailed off, her mouth moving, unable to find the words. "But we already paid for the room."
"Coin is cheaper than blood." He adjusted a buckle, tightened a strap, then stood, hefting the packs. "Ready?"
She wasn't. Not ready to go back to Maris's land. Not ready to open the red linen envelope.
Not ready to give up on her hopes.
He had been her first time. Her only time, thus far. She remembered it keenly. She wanted it again.
At last she nodded, slung her own pack over her shoulder, and followed him to the door. She paused a moment to look back at the lone bed and the two untouched feather pillows.
Then to the stables outside the inn where Amarta helped him set and attach saddlebags on her mare, Souver, and his chestnut-brown gelding, who met her look with a sweet brown-eyed stare. He nosed her, as if to see if she were all right.
For a moment her eyes stung. He was beautiful, Tayre's horse.
"You need a new name," she told him.
"What's his name?" she had asked Tayre, some months ago.
"That depends," Tayre had answered. "When I'm in Arunkel, I call him 'Faithful'. In the back country, 'Whiskey' works better. In Perripur he's 'Coffee Bean' or 'Mouse.'"
She absorbed this and what it told her about the respective cultures.
"But what's his real name?"
Tayre laughed softly, then made a clicking sound with his tongue. The chestnut-brown animal walked to him, eagerly lipping from his hand the honeyball Tayre offered.
"He has many names," Amarta said, watching this moment between them, and feeling oddly moved. "Like you. But what was his first one?" And what was yours?
"Horse."
"Horse? That's it?"
"Yes."
"That's no name at all."
Tayre gave her an amused look. "Rename him, then. I doubt he'll object."
They rode Horse and Souver out of Mutarka, past the tumbled-down walls that marked the town's edge. At a crossroads, one way led up into hills of thick inland forests, the other along the coast. Behind them, the sun set, dusting the tops of the inland trees with gold.
Back. They were going back. Amarta to the mage's house to await her return. Tayre to his camp. Frustration gnawed at her.
"Let's take the coastal road," she said suddenly. "A few days more will make no difference."
Another town, another inn, another bed. Another chance?
Half-images flickered, jittered, refused to resolve. She tried again, tightening her focus, narrowing the question.
"Be certain, Seer. If the mage returns home and you're not there, she'll assume I've abducted you. I see no wisdom in angering an already annoyed mage."
Amarta nodded, not really listening. She had found a faint trail. His fingers slowly stroked her cheek. Then she lost it, found it again, taking hold of the slippery line. Almost. She almost had it. In the moonlight his expression said maybe. He reached over to her, opening his mouth to speak. He said—
"We're being followed." His tone was quiet but sharp. "One rider, two on foot."
Amarta blinked back into the present, following his gaze to a gully of trees back the way they'd come. She squinted into the sun and saw nothing.
She was about to ask him how he could be so certain, either of the count of followers, or the number of horses, when she herself could see nothing, when foresight exploded in warning.
A searing pain through her shoulder.
Amarta twitched and curled, rolling her shoulder just so.
A hiss—the sound of a huge, flying insect—mere inches away. She gasped.
Tayre was turning, Horse bunching under him, readying a sprint. He reached over to slap Souver's rump.
"Ride!"
Under her, Souver's neck gathered and stretched, a small toss to shift weight. With a powerful motion, she launched herself forward and uphill.
Again, foresight gave alarm. Amarta hunched.
A fast line grazed her back, like the faintest brush of a whip's tail.
Souver was now climbing the hill with an eager stride that quickly turned into a gallop. Tayre rode down in the other direction. Everything shook as Souver pounded upwards. Amarta grasped for the reins. Unable to find them, she instead took tight hold of Souver's mane, her mind nearly blank with shock at the future pain that vision was serving up as warning.
It came again: a piercing cut across her cheek.
Amarta whimpered, dropping to wrap arms around Souver's neck.
Another arrow hissed by her, slicing only air.
She passed trees and fields as Souver pounded up the incline, her hooves consuming the road as if it were flat. An expensive horse, Tayre had said. Now Amarta understood why.
Numbly, Amarta wondered how far was far enough. In the many months of Tayre's tutelage, he had somehow failed to teach her about the range of an arrow shot at a moving target in the confusing light of sunset.
But it didn't matter: Amarta only needed to know what to do in the next moment. That, vision would provide.
Souver reached the top of the rise. At last Amarta found reins and sense, slowing Souver, turning them both to face the way they'd come. She gulped air as she looked down and across the shadowy trees and gullies below, the half-lit fields and dark tangles of brush.
Nothing moved.
Vision assured her that she was safe. Her mind knew, but her body still felt the attack, the cuts and piercings that had never happened. She shuddered, her galloping heart taking a long time to come to rest.
Where was Tayre? What was he doing? Her near futures held him beside her, a quiet, intense presence. But what he was doing now, she could not even guess.
As always, some part of her worried that he might not come back, contract or no. Then the nightmares would return. By her side, his hunter's face was well-lit, even if the contract was balanced on the edge of a single nals coin.
Overhead, the stars brightened. The night came on.
Amarta waited.
Amarta sat atop Souver, watching. Through high, distant trees behind her, the moon was a bright luminescence. It slowly freed itself of the dark tangle of silhouetted branches and crawled up into the night sky.
Despite everything—despite knowing that he would return, and then knowing it would be soon—he arrived quietly, behind her, from the other side of the rise. Souver knew it before Amarta did, and was already turning to meet her equine companion.
How anyone could train a full-sized horse to walk so silently, Amarta had no idea.
Now at her side, Tayre scanned the moonlit forest and fields below, then looked her over.
"Are you all right?"
His concern touched her more deeply than any of the times he'd laid hands on her today.
"I'm fine."
"Well done, then," he said, turning Horse and leading them forward along the road that went into the mountains.
Not the coastal road, as she had hoped. She clung instead to the praise. Well done.
"What happened?" she asked.
"Every appearance of being a simple, poorly executed pillage," he answered. "But I have doubts—they aimed too well, and knew that coin was being offered for reports of an Arunkin woman."
"Me?"
He shrugged. "It was a vague description."
"Will they report?"
"No. They've been discouraged from that action."
Despite still feeling shaken, Amarta laughed a little. She had seen this before, how compelling Tayre could be. When he told a story, as he had done to teach her language, history, and politics, he could make the tales come alive.
"A good time for you to vanish again," he said, "into the mage's protected lands. Another season, two—even three—and those hunting you may look elsewhere."
"Another season?" She gave him an incredulous look. "I have waited long enough to see the world. I—" Amarta's eye caught on something: a long bundle, tied alongside Horse's saddlebags. It had not been there before, when they left Mutarka. "What is that?"
"Bows. knives. Whatever was of value."
It took her a moment to understand. Tayre had robbed the thieves in return. Well, good: that seemed just.
As they rode, she thought about it some more, and realized that she hadn't understood at all. As she tensed, Souver glanced back at her.
Tayre would not have taken the time to persuade the attackers. There would be no clever story. No convincing words to get them to go their way without speaking of the Arunkin woman they had found. He would simply have ended them.
No, not simply. First he would have forced them to tell him everything they knew. A dark room. A single candle.
A small, wordless sound emerged from her throat. "If I had not stepped away from you in the market...if I had not shown anger at the puppet show..."
"Does foresight tell you what might have been?"
He knew it did not. She shook her head.
"Then we can only speculate. They were thieves, Amarta, not slaves. They chose their course freely."
As did you.
Even now, his tone was so pleasant and reasonable that she found herself reconsidering. Maybe he had only frightened them. Wounded them, perhaps, but then let them go.
She opened her mouth to ask, and for a long moment it stayed that way.
Then she closed it again. To ask a question was to invite an answer.
For a long while they rode in silence. Overhead, the moon lent the road before them a silvery glow.
At last she spoke. "Maris is coming home. That must mean that Cern and her child are well."
"Or dead," he replied. "All we can be sure of is that the situation is resolved beyond the mage's ability to affect, whatever has happened."
It had not even occurred to Amarta that Maris might fail to save Cern and the child. A stab of grief went through her at the thought.
Tayre glanced at her. "In time, the news of the Arunkel queen and child will reach us from all quarters. But if you want to know sooner, could you not look for a future in which you speak with the mage? Surely the matter would come up in conversation."
Of course it would. But then Amarta would also know what was in the red envelope, and that grief she could wait for.
She considered the many, many moments that led from here into the future, but did not contain his unpretended touch.
"I see no point," she said tightly, "in knowing a future that can't be changed."