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feet.
    Rowan’s gown was crumpled on the pool’s rim. She shivered in her shift. Stupid— she had remembered the lamp, even the flint and steel, but forgotten the belt she always wore in the day, and the little knife that hung from it.
    A shadow moved apart from the rest. Rowan’s eyes darted. Door—if she could get as far as that, and if it, he, whatever it was, did not know the baths as well as she—
    The moon gave the shadow a face. Black mane of hair, black pits of eyes, sharp hawk-curve of nose.
    â€œKerrec!” Rowan’s fear was gone all at once, in white rage. “What in the name of all the angels and saints are you doing here?”
    â€œWho is that,” he asked as if he had not heard her, “standing behind you?”
    She whipped about. No one. Nothing. Only moonlight and darkness. She spun back, more furious than ever.
    â€œShe’s beautiful,” said Kerrec. “Strong, too. She looks like you. Your mother?”
    Chill ran down Rowan’s spine, even through her temper. It was the way he said it: so calm; so strange in that light, with his face bleached pale and his eyes all the darker for it, fixed on a form that she could not see.
    â€œThere’s nothing there,” she said, loud and angry. “Nothing and no one.”
    â€œYou know there is,” he said. “You don’t have the sight, I can see that. But you feel it. That’s better than eyes, some ways. Less distracting.”
    â€œYou’re mad.”
    He smiled. “Moon-mad?”
    He looked completely different when he smiled. All the sulkiness went away, and the tightness that made his whole face seem a backdrop for his beak of a nose.
    â€œDid you follow me?” Rowan demanded, the sharper for that she had almost weakened and found him worth liking.
    â€œI came where the moon was,” he said.
    Touched, definitely touched. “The moon is in the sky,” said Rowan with elaborate patience.
    â€œIt’s in the water,” said Kerrec. “You feel the magic here. This is water that comes from the womb of the earth, heated in her fires. Moon touches it—that’s air, and sky. All the elements in a single place.”
    â€œYou are a witch,” Rowan said. She thought about backing away, but failed to see the use in it. If he was going to bespell her, he would do it wherever she fled.
    â€œYes,” he said, “I am a witch and the son of a witch. She was a great lady of the Bretons, a princess of the old people. My father was a Frank.”
    â€œOf the House of Roland, I suppose,” Rowan muttered.
    Something of the mooncalf madness went out of his face, and the old bitter twist came back. “He was the great Count’s kin. He had honor enough, until it was taken from him.”
    â€œThat’s how it always is in stories,” Rowan said. “One’s father is never a stableman or an honest tanner. He has to be a nobleman. Dishonored, of course. Or—”
    â€œSometimes the stories are true,” said Kerrec. “Though what would you know of that? You’ve never had a moment’s pain. Your father is lord of the world. Mine is dead. He died because of a coward and a fool. And that coward, that fool—he took my father’s honor and claimed it for himself, and gave my father his own dishonor, because my father was dead and could say nothing.”
    â€œThen how do you know?” Rowan demanded.
    He looked at her with those black eyes, the eyes he must have had from his mother. “How do you think I know?”
    â€œYou couldn’t save him, then, you and your mother?”
    He stepped back shaking, and dropped to his knees. His fists struck the tiles of the floor as he must have wanted to strike Rowan. “He was all the way across the empire in the Saxons’ country. We could only watch. We saw him lead his men in glory. We saw the coward turn tail and run, and my father spur after