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just going to throw them away. If you can’t show me that you’ll take care of them properly, I can’t give them to you.”

    “It isn’t like I’d be keeping them long.”

    “Perhaps not. It’s the principle of the thing, lad. Nothing comes free.”

    “But Uncle ,” Tavi protested. “It’s my only chance to make something of myself.”

    Bernard grunted. “Then you probably shouldn’t have chosen to…” He frowned. “Tavi, what did you need to do that was more important than the flocks?”

    Tavi’s face grew warmer yet. “Um.”

    Bernard arched an eyebrow and said, “Oh, I see.”

    “See what?”

    “There’s a girl.”

    Tavi knelt and tightened the straps on his boots to hide his scowl and said, “Why would you say that?”

    “You’re a fifteen-year-old boy, Tavi. There’s always a girl.”

    “No, there isn’t,” Tavi insisted.

    Bernard mused over that for a moment and shrugged. “When you want to talk about it, let me know.” He pushed himself off the wall with one shoulder and strung his bow with one leg and the pressure of an arm. “We’ll discuss your gifting later. Where do you think we should pick up Dodger’s trail?”

    Tavi drew his leather sling from his pouch and put a couple of smooth stones into the pocket of his tunic. “Won’t Brutus be able to find him?”

    Bernard smiled. “I thought you said you could do this on your own.”

    Tavi frowned at his uncle and scrunched up his nose, thinking. “Cold’s coming on, and they know it. They’ll want evergreens for shelter and for food. But the gargants were turned out to forage on the southern slope of the valley, and they won’t go anywhere near gargants if they can help it.” Tavi nodded. “North. Dodger has taken them into the pine hollows over the causeway.”

    Bernard nodded in approval. “Good. Remember that fury-crafting is no substitute for intelligence, Tavi.”

    “And intelligence is no substitute for a fury,” Tavi muttered sourly. He kicked at the ground, scuffing up a small cloud of dust and dried, dead grasses.

    Bernard laid a heavy hand on Tavi’s shoulder, squeezed, and then started walking north, down the old lane worn by the passage of carts and draft animals and feet. “It’s not as bad as you think, Tavi. Furies aren’t everything.”

    “Says the man with two of them,” Tavi said, following him. “Aunt Isana says you could challenge for full Citizenship if you wanted to.”

    Bernard shrugged. “If I wanted to, perhaps. But I didn’t come into my furies until I was almost your age.”

    “But you were a slow bloomer,” Tavi said. “I’m way past that. No one’s ever been my age and furyless.”

    Bernard sighed. “You don’t know that, Tavi. Relax, boy. It will come to you in time.”

    “That’s what you’ve told me since I was ten. If I’d had furies of my own, I could have stopped Dodger and still…” He choked down his anger before he could blurt out the words.

    Uncle Bernard glanced back at Tavi, smiling with only his eyes. “Come on, lad. Let’s pick up the pace. I need to be back before the other Stead-holders arrive.”

    Tavi nodded, and they broke into a mile-eating lope down the winding lane. The sky began to lighten as they passed the apple orchards, the beehives, and then the northern fields laid fallow for a season. The lane wound through a forest of mostly oak and maple, where most of the trees were so ancient that only the most meager grass and brush could grow beneath them. By the time the predawn pale blue had given way to the first tints of orange and yellow, they had reached the last stretch of woods before leaving the lands of Bernard-holt. There the forest was not so old, and smaller trees and brush, some of it still living despite the lateness of the season, stood thick and heavy. Golden and scarlet leaves covered the dried skeletons of the smaller brush, and the naked, sleeping trees swayed in a chorus of gentle creaking.

    And then