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to think alike.” He shook his head. “Though, weary as she looks, I would expect her to have accepted my invitation. Though I have a kinsman or so there who may be a bit difficult—most particularly one kinswoman, of whom the least said the best—she would have companions and help at Battlefox.”

    “She’s the only girl behind the p’natti,” whispered Mavin, so moved by this intelligence that she forgot to be wary of telling anyone, and him a stranger man for that. “Until she tells them about me.” So Plandybast Ogbone looked at her, and she at him, sharing a wordless kind of sympathy which she had not felt from any of the Danderbats.

    “So that’s the way of it. And when they are told about you, all the oldsters will be at your bedroom door night on night, won’t they? Ah, surely Danderbat keep may be the oldest and the original, but it has fallen into a nasty sort of decay. We do not so treat our she-children at Battlefox and would have you welcome there. Or are you too convinced that the keep walls are Xhindi gold?”

    “No,” she whispered. “I want out.”

    “Ah. Well. There’s young Mertyn. He’d miss you no doubt.”

    “Bring him with me,” she said. “I would. Couldn’t leave him here. To hear unkind things. About me, as I have heard about mother.”

    “What is it they say about my sister Abrara?”

    “That she shifted forbiddens while she carried Mertyn, and died from it.”

    “Oh, Gamelords, what nonsense. I’ve known many who shifted before and during and didn’t die of it, though the Healers do say the child does best which isn’t shifted in the womb. This all reminds me of my other sister, Itter, going on and on about Abrara whom she never knew and knows little enough about. There are some who must find fault somewhere, among the dead if they cannot find enough among the living. Abrara died because she was never strong, shifter or no. That’s the truth. They should have had a Healer for her when she was young, as they did for me, but they didn’t, for the Danderbat Xhindi set themselves above Healing. Lucky I was the Battlefoxes are no such reactionary old persons, or like I’d have died, too. She should have been let alone, not made to have childer, but the Danderbats are so short of females these two generations, and she had had daughters. She should have been let alone.”

    “At the Old Shuffle, we are not let alone.”

    He looked at her seriously, walked around in a circle, as though he circled in his thoughts. “You know, child, if I took you away from Danderbat with me, there’d be fits and consternation by the Elders. Particularly since Danderbat is so short of females just now. There’d be hearings and meetings and no doubt unpleasant things for me and you both. That’s if I took you. Stole you, so they’d say, like a sack of grain or a basket of ripe thrilps. If you came to me, however, at Battlefox the Bright Day, you might have a few nasty words from Itter, but I’d not send you away empty-handed or hungry. You’ve seen maps of the place? You know where it is?”

    She stared at him, but he did not meet her eyes, merely seeking the sky with a thoughtful face as though he had said nothing at all of importance.

    “Yes,” she said finally in a voice as casual as his own. “I know where it is. It lies high upon the Shadowmarches, northwest of Pfarb Durim. If I came to visit you some day, you’d be glad to see me?” she offered. “More or less.”

    “Oh. Surely. More or less. I would be very glad to see you. And Mertyn.”

    “Ah,” she said. “I’ll remember that, my thalan, and I thank you.” She turned to leave him, full of dignity, then turned to hug him briefly, smearing his face with unregarded tears. “Thank you for telling me about my mother.” Her gait as she left was perfectly controlled, and he looked after her, aware of a kind of envy at her composure. It was better done than he had seen from many twice her age.

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