"Just a little kiss to start with," he said, and pushed his stubbly face in hers. She grabbed him rather as she had Xader, though much less strongly. The electric charge she gave him wasn't as strong, either, but he screamed, leaping backward with a force that astonished everyone but Varia, to lay curled on the floor mewling.

"Come on, Hermiss," Varia said, "let's get out of here."

No one got in their way, and outside, they stood under the entryway roof, watching rain pour down. Lightning struck nearby with a tremendous snap! BLAM! that shook the porch and almost knocked them down.

A minute later Cyncaidh came loping longlegged through the deluge and stopped near the two girls, grinning like a boy. "We made it just in time! I'm not sure what the possibilities are for lodging though." With his head he gestured toward the stable. "There were barely stalls enough for our saddle mounts. The remounts and pack animals are tied in a shelter without walls." He looked at the two women more closely now, examining their auras, especially Hermiss's. "What's wrong?"

"I said something stupid," Varia told him.

He peered at her a moment, then went in, leaving them outside. Two of the soldiers loped up, also drenched and grinning, nodded to the girls and followed their commander.

"What's going to happen?" Hermiss said timidly.

"Nothing." I hope. "Wait here."

Varia went back in, her senses turned high. The air was a mixture of resentment and caution, but gratefully she sensed no impending violence. The man she'd grabbed had made it to hands and knees, to puke out his supper and ale on the plank floor. There wasn't one whistle or cat yowl. She stood behind Cyncaidh, who was waiting to arrange for seating and beds, and murmured: "I'm afraid I caused some trouble."

"I've noticed." His tone was dry, acid.

"I didn't intend to."

"I'll take your word for it."

The innkeeper came out then, and recognizing Cyncaidh as an ylf, nodded deeply, almost a shallow bow. Food, he said, was no problem. But as for rooms…

When his troops had gathered at the table, Cyncaid told them they'd bed in the hayloft that evening. And no doubt pay for it, Varia thought. She wondered if she was to blame, and decided she probably wasn't; the place was simply full. Then Cyncaidh turned to her and told her a bed of hay was being made for Hermiss and herself in a box stall normally used for storage.

The meal proved barely edible, perhaps as repayment for what the innkeeper considered ylvin troublemaking. The soldiers endured it glumly. The Cyncaidh, by contrast, was grim, not glum. From his aura, Varia surmised that he was irked with her for putting the ylver in a bad light.

The rain still poured thick and cold when they left the building, but as the two girls ran through it, Hermiss laughed in a sort of high glee. She'd eaten little but the bread and cheese, trimming the mold off, and had had a single mug of ale. Varia decided the girl's mood was more an aftereffect of the initial excitement than of drink.

The storm-dimmed daylight had graded through dusk into twilight. Someone, probably a stable boy, had hung a lantern inside the stable's front entrance. A clutter of old single-trees, eveners, pack saddles and the like was piled outside a box stall, cleared from it to make room for the two of them.

A soldier entered the stable carrying a stack of large coarse blankets provided by the innkeeper. He took off the piece of canvas protecting them, then came over and handed a pair to Varia. She looked at them with more than her cat vision, then began to pass her hands over them.

"What are you doing?" Hermiss asked.

"Killing the vermin."

"Really?"

"Certainly."

"What kind of vermin?"

Varia paused, concentrating. "Let's see. There are lice-and fleas. No bedbugs."

Hermiss giggled. "You're fooling."

Varia shrugged and made her final passes, then spread the blankets side by side on the thick hay. The air was pungent, but not unpleasant, with horse urine and manure blending with the smell of hay-clover and timothy. From their cubby she could hear the low easy talking of the half-ylvin soldiers, the sound somehow comforting as they climbed the ladder into the hayloft. There are worse places than this to be, she told herself.

Earlier a soldier had brought their oiled leather bags from a horse pack and hung them on harness pegs. She pulled dry clothes from hers and changed into them, draping her wet breeches and socks on the edge of the manger, and her tunic over a horse collar still hanging on its peg. Her wet boots she stood near the stall's entrance. Hermiss followed her example.

Then they lay down on their blankets. Varia willed the girl to be quiet and go to sleep, and lay quiet herself, her eyes closed, waiting for the drumming rain to still her mind, a mind beset by unwanted thoughts. Of Idri. Of Liiset, who'd abandoned her. Of what Tomm had said about Sarkia's plans for her. Of how far they were now from where she wanted to be. Interrupted by the sound of a man running in through the stable door-a man alone-bringing her out of herself. Cyncaidh, she decided. He'd probably been talking with the innkeeper. She closed her eyes again.

"Were you fooling about killing vermin?" Hermiss murmured. The question almost made Varia jump; she'd thought the girl was sleeping. Looking at her, she shook her head.

"I really wasn't. Fooling, that is."

Somehow this brought giggles from Hermiss, followed by a question in, for whatever reason, a conspiratorial tone: "What did you do to that man who tried to kiss you? Really do."

"Our term for it is shock fingers. I gave him shock fingers in his crotch."

Hermiss almost burst, trying to control the giggles bubbling out of her. When she'd calmed again, she murmured, "He had it coming."

"True. But I shouldn't have said what I did. Then he might not have."

"They were all whistling and saying things before you ever said anything."

"True again. But I still shouldn't have. Especially when they were whistling and yowling like that."

There was a moment's silence. Varia lay back and closed her eyes again.

"What do you think would have happened if you didn't know how to do shock fingers? And the soldiers hadn't come in?"

Varia sighed, answering without opening her eyes. "Nothing. Because I'd have turned around and gone back out as soon as the whistling started."

"Do you think they'd have raped us?"

Hermiss, you're a blockhead, Varia thought, but said nothing. Hermiss interpreted her silence, and this time her words were soft, quiet.

"Were you ever raped, Varia?"

Varia said nothing.

"I wonder what it would be like."

"It's ugly. Painful. You feel like shit." Time after time. Night after night.

Silence again for a moment. Then, contritely: "I'm sorry I asked, Varia. I really am."

Varia opened her eyes. Her voice was wooden, a monotone. "It's all right. You're young. Just be careful in a situation like we walked into. Turn around and walk out." If you can. Varia discovered her guts were tied in knots.

"Are you young?" Hermiss asked. "I'd forgotten you're like the ylver; that you can look young for a long time. I thought you might be-twenty."

Varia looked at the earnest face on the blanket beside hers, and felt a sudden pang of-something. Loss. "I have daughters about your age," she said. Had, she corrected herself.

The face looked troubled again, and this time Varia broke the silence. "Tell me what it's like to be a girl growing up in Ternass."

Hermiss told of school and parties. And about the colonel's daughter, who sounded a bit full of herself but pleasant enough. And especially about the young men of Ternass, and the ylvin soldiers stationed there. Of flirtations, stories of occasional love affairs and briefly broken hearts. The ylver, Hermiss said, were especially exciting because they were supposed to be better lovers, and being relatively infertile, were less likely to get a girl pregnant. But the imperial army had rules against "slipping it to" local girls, and other rules against marrying them without official sanction, which involved a lot of time and trouble.