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assured her he would be there as long as he was needed.
    She wished he was here now. He could be so maddening, yet she always felt better when she talked with him. He always seemed to ease her fears, and often in his seemingly innocent tales and allegorical stories, she found an answer she hadn’t even been aware of seeking.
    But she could find no answer now. Nor could she physically go after Kane. Nor did she know what she would do or say to a man who looked like the walking dead.
    She had to assume he would return. Whatever she’d said or done, she simply could not believe that a single woman had, with no effort at all, driven away a warrior with Kane’s reputation. He would come back.
    He had to come back.
    “I’VE SEEN MORE cheerful faces at burials.”
    Kane stopped walking. It was his only reaction to the voice that came from above him; he seemed beyond anything else. He was almost sorry it was Tal. Had it been one of the men from the warlord who hunted him, he could have brought this miserable existence to an end once and for all.
    He heard a rush of sound, and Tal dropped down beside him, from whatever tree limb he’d been perched on, no doubt looking at the world with that faintly amused smile.
    “Forgive me, my friend, but you do seem a bit grim this fine morning.”
    “If you want to beg forgiveness, it should be for disappearing like the wizard I’m half convinced you are.”
    Kane had tried for the bantering tone they usually adopted, but it fell short. He avoided looking at his friend, but sensed Tal’s eyes narrowing, knew they were taking on that piercing intensity that made Kane think he was seeing through to his soul. It usually made him uncomfortable; his soul wasn’t one that could stand up to the kind of scrutiny Tal seemed able to perform. But today he felt nothing.
    “What has she done?” Tal asked softly.
    Once Kane would have parried the question with a denial, or a question in turn, asking the man what made him think the only “she” he could be referring to had anything to do with it. But he’d learned in short order that when fixed on something, Tal would not be gainsaid, and dissembling was useless; he saw everything with those fierce, changeable eyes. And often saw patterns where Kane saw only chaos.
    “Nothing. Yet,” he said, his voice a dead-sounding thing even to himself.
    “Yet?”
    He looked at Tal then, knowing the man would see, knowing it would save him much in the way of explanation.
    “She’s come to ask me to kill for her.”
    Tal’s dark brows lowered. Kane withstood his gaze like a man on a rack, his jaw set, his eyes never wavering as the other man’s searched, probed.
    “Are you certain?” Tal asked, his voice low.
    “You know as well as I there are only two reasons people search me out. I do not believe she is a murderess.”
    “She is not,” Tal agreed, with that certainty that Kane usually found irritating; this time it was strangely comforting. “But are you assured that is her aim?” he asked again. “Perhaps she wishes something else from you.”
    Kane smiled, a smile he knew was humorless and cold. “What else have I to offer anyone?”
    Tal’s eyes shifted, from the fierce gold of a predator to the misty green of the forest around them. “More than you know or would ever believe,” he said in an oddly distant, quiet voice. Then, before Kane could react, he added in normal tones, “What will you do with her? Send her away without listening to her?”
    Kane took in a breath. The coldness was, to his surprise, receding. Or perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised; Tal often had a most unsettling effect. It was difficult to describe, but he’d encountered it often enough to have given up trying to deny that it happened.
    “It’s what I would like to do,” he admitted.
    “But?”
    Kane sighed. “She’s come a long way from her home. Further than anyone ever has. She’s endured much, she who looks too fragile to have ever withstood such