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“Please be careful, my love. Promise me you’ll be careful.”

“As careful as I can be. I promise.” Gently yet firmly he pried himself free of her arms. “Here, I’ll have my own men with me, and Rhodry ap Devaberiel as well, and if somewhat happens to me in the middle of all of them, well, then, it’s my Wyrd and there’s not one blasted thing anyone can do about it.”

“I know.” She forced the tears back and made herself smile. “Then kill a lot of bandits, will you? I keep thinking about that poor woman.”

“I’ll promise you twice for that, my love. Farewell, and I’ll see you the moment we ride home.”

In the brightening dawn he strode off, his men trailing after, while she waved farewell and kept the smile on her face by sheer force of will as long as he might turn back and see. Otho cleared his throat, then blew out the candle in his lantern with a thrifty puff.

“We’d best be getting in. Town’s waking up.”

“Just so,” Jill said. “Very well, and, Carra, try not to worry. I’ll be traveling with the warband, you know.”

“I didn’t, and truly, that does gladden my heart.”

Jill strode off uphill, her tattered brown cloak swirling about her, and turned once to wave before she disappeared among the houses. Something drifted free of the cloth, a thing as pale as a moonbeam, and floated up in the rising wind. Without thinking Carra darted forward and snatched it: a silver-gray feather, about a foot long. She gaped at it while Otho muttered under his breath and Lightning whined, as if agreeing with the dwarf.

“My lady, we really must get in off this street.”

“Of course, Otho, my apologies. But this feather! It’s really true, isn’t it? She really can turn herself into a bird.”

“Well, so she can. You didn’t realize that? Humph, what are they teaching you young folk these days, anyway? Now let’s get inside where it’s safe.”

Carra tucked the feather into her kirtle, then hurried after him through the wooden door.

“Inside” turned out to be a tunnel, made of beautifully worked stone blocks, that led deep into the hill. Here and there on small ledges, about six feet from the ground, heaps of fungus in baskets gave off a bluish glow and lit their way. The air, startlingly cool, blew around them in fresh drafts. After a couple of hundred yards, they came at last to a round chamber, some fifty feet across, scattered with low tables and tiny benches round a central open hearth, where a low fire burned and a huge kettle hung from a pair of andirons and a crossbar. Automatically Carra glanced up and saw the smoke rising to a stone flue set in the ceiling, and there were a number of other vents up there, too, that seemed to be the sources of the fresh air. Three doorways in the walls opened to other tunnels leading deeper into the inn. At one of the tables, two men, a little shorter than Otho but younger, muscle-bound, and heavily armed, sat yawning and nodding over metal cups of some sort of drink.

“Everyone else is abed,” Otho said. “But I was tired enough when I finally got here yesterday to sleep the night away.”

He turned and spoke to the two men in still another language that Carra had never heard before. Both jumped up and bowed to her, then spoke in turn.

“They’re the guards for this watch, my lady. Just finishing their breakfast and all. Now, you have a seat over here by the wall. I’ll fetch you somewhat to eat.”

Next to a wooden chest, Carra found a wooden chair with a cushioned seat and a proper back, a low piece, but comfortable. With a canine sigh Lightning flopped down at her feet and laid his head on his front paws. Otho bustled at the hearth, came back with a bowl of porridge, laced with butter, and a hunk of bread, then bustled off again to fetch a tankard of milk sweetened with a little honey.

“Jill says you should be having plenty of milk, for the child, you see,” he said.

While Carra ate, Otho opened the chest beside her and pawed through it, finally bringing out a miscellaneous clutch of things—two oblong wooden trays, a sack that seemed