tomorrow morning.” In a way, she was glad, for being kept confined in his presence was more unnerving than she wanted to admit, even to herself. She was so susceptible to him, though she couldn’t imagine why.
“Don’t you think it would be best? We’ll make the most of the daylight, and provide us the best chance of getting far from this place, don’t you think?” he asked, wiping his bowl out with a cloth charged with a cleaning-spell. He handed it to her when he was done and sat down again. “Drouches usually don’t start hunting until late afternoon, do they, so we needn’t worry about them, assuming we get an early start. We can be at Gnocarnaz by mid-afternoon if we are on our way within an hour of sunrise and the road is fairly clear.” He regarded her in silence while she rubbed her bowl clean. “Good food, a soft bed, decent feed for the animals.”
“I know, I know,” she said testily as she turned the small cauldron upside down to drain. She had never been to Gnocarnaz, but was fairly sure he had, for how else would he be familiar with the road they were traveling? “The oil in the lamps is getting low, along with all the rest,” she added, although he didn’t seem to hear. “Another reason to le – “
Then he reached out and fingered one corkscrew tendril of her russet hair. “The first thing I noticed about you was your hair.”
“It was windblown and no better groomed than a hayrick.” She lowered her head, pulling the tendril from his hand. She hated to acknowledge that she remembered their first meeting.
“More as if you had inner lightning – a force inside you that you damped down so that it only came out in your hair,” he said, and poked at the fire with a long stick, watching the sparks fly. “There you were with your father, on the Duzine Wharf in Valdihovee, the wind off the Mautsarej Ocean. You were all in bronze and deep green-blue, shivering and trying to smile.”
Suddenly she giggled, because when she was a child, she had thought the same thing about her hair, something she didn’t dare tell him. “Inner lightning – and that wasn’t enough to scare you?”
“Quite the contrary,” he said before he kissed the corner of her mouth. “Ninianee,” he whispered.
Caught unaware, she didn’t draw back, but instead rested her head on his shoulder. “What have I got you into?” She pulled away a little.
“A chance to be with you,” he said at once.
“But you could . . . This isn’t your seeking, Doms, it’s mine. I have to do this for my father.”
“Then I do it for you,” he said quietly. “To be with you.”
“Is that why you followed me? Were you with me then?” The amount of excitement Doms generated in her was frightening – she wished he didn’t have that much impact upon her, but she couldn’t summon up the determination to insist he stop talking to her.
“I was as near as you would want me to be – if you had known.” His habitual underlying amusement was gone and all that was left was an expression revealing how deeply he cherished her.
Now her throat tightened. “You don’t have to come with me, Doms.”
“Fine official suitor I’d be if I didn’t,” he said, not moving from his place beside her. He resisted the urge to take her hand. “Don’t you understand yet that I prefer to be with you than anyone else? That if you were going from Haverartbow to Fah, I’d want to go with you.”
“I may still do that – go from Haverartbow to Fah. And Pomig, and Ymiljesai. And the Drowned World.” Her attempt to make light of this failed utterly. She felt her eyes fill. “Oh, Doms – what if I don’t find him?”
He put his arm around her. “If he can be found, Ninianee, you’ll do it.”
“The Oracle said I would keep searching,” she said dreamily. “But there’s Vildecaz, and my Changing, and both need my attention, too.”
“Your sister will be back at Vildecaz Castle in six weeks or so,” Doms reminded her.