Seeing imperial uniforms, the chairman's wife let them in, got towels, and led them to rooms where they could change. When she was dressed again, Varia walked barefoot into the hall, where Cyncaidh waited alone. He put his arms around her, clasping her tightly. "Promise you won't do anything like that again," he whispered, then held her at arms length. "What have I done that you fear me so?"

"Fear you?"

"Enough to try killing yourself."

She shook her head. "I wasn't trying to kill myself."

He gawped. "What, then?"

"I was trying to get back to my husband. I thought I could find a boat. Hoped I could."

He stared, his face slack. His emotion, it seemed to her, was dismay. After a moment he shook his head. "Come," he said tiredly. "There'll be an inn here. The men need to eat."

It didn't rain for several days, and they made good time. Then they turned north again, and a few days later reached the border with the empire itself. Once again the country changed. The main roads all were graveled and ditched now, and frequent mansions showed the existence of a sizeable upper class. With the mansions were compounds, whose cabins could hardly have more than three rooms plus loft, but even they had fruit trees, and small gardens where bean and pea vines climbed frames, while gourd vines climbed the walls.

At the first military post, the quartermaster fitted Varia with a pair of field uniforms. And a female soldier, an ylvin corporal, replaced Hermiss, who'd be sent back to Fort Ternass and the colonel's daughter. Physically, Corporal Keoth could be considered gifted, but personality-wise she was stiff, a stick. She wore her hair in a military bob; its typical ylvin black shone from a good diet and much brushing.

They rested there a day, replaced worn equipment and their whole complement of horses. When the column was ready to leave, Hermiss and Varia embraced. "I don't suppose you'll write to me," Hermiss said.

"Why not?"

"Because-because you're wiser than me, and I'm not ylvin or a Sister or anything."

"I'll write if I can."

"I-hope you'll be happy. You should be. I mean, you ought to be. You deserve to be."

"Everyone deserves to be," Varia answered, then wondered. Do they, really? Does Idri? Sarkia? Corgan? What would it have taken to make Xader happy? Let him hump every good-looking woman he saw, probably, whether she wanted to or not.

"I'll write to you, Varia, I promise. And you won't have to write back unless you feel like it."

"Thank you, Hermy. I'll feel like it, but…" Varia shrugged. "Who knows what will happen when I get where they're taking me?" She paused, feeling that was a poor note to end their goodbye on. "I'll be glad to get your letters," she finished.

They hugged again. Corporal Keoth stood waiting with a scowl of disapproval. Varia couldn't be sure whether it was for the merely human Hermiss or the evil Sister. Both, she decided. She turned, went to her horse, and climbed into the saddle; Cyncaidh gave the command, and the column moved out. As they turned onto the road, Varia looked back. Hermiss still waved, and briefly Varia waved back before looking ahead.

So much for not knowing how to relate, she told herself. And wondered briefly whether she'd ever see either of her remaining children again. Curtis's children. Or know them if she did. Or whether they'd care; they'd probably scorn her for deserting the Sisterhood. Idri would make sure they knew.

Idri. Now she knew who Corporal Keoth reminded her of.

Cyncaidh stayed away from her, but she was aware that he watched her now and then, as if to see how she was doing. Keoth wasn't overtly rude, but clearly she disapproved of Varia. Cyncaidh noticed too. After three days, he left the corporal off at a district seat, at the office of the imperial representative, with a written order to have her returned to her base. And again it was Caerith who rode beside Varia.

They traveled till she was tired of riding and inns and an unchanging countryside. Tired even of Caerith, for they'd run out of things they were willing to talk about. But after ten days the country began to change. Forest increased while farmland diminished. From time to time they passed open bogs, often with a small lake in the middle. Lakes were conspicuous in the landscape, and some of the trees were unfamiliar, evergreens of several kinds, some dark and pointed. The golden-barked birches she'd come to know so well in the mountains, returned, joined by much smaller birches whose bark was white as chalk.

After some days of this, with the forest more and more evergreen, they entered a district of large hills ahead. Not mountains, but hills higher than she'd seen since Cyncaidh had brought her out of the Granite Range.

They spent three days crossing them, then came out on level land again, with forests of a pine taller and more graceful than she'd ever seen. And sometimes of other pines, much smaller and with no blue to their greenness, their stands often very dense, with slender trunks and narrow crowns. She wouldn't have thought to find such level land so beautiful. Here too they passed bogs again, moss bogs, Cyncaidh said, though she could see grasses and sedges growing thickly in them, and often knee-high bushes. Even the bogs were aesthetic in their way, though she might not have thought so if the mosquitoes and horse flies and deer flies could have penetrated the spells that she and the others cast against them.

One of the inns they stopped at faced a lovely lake, with a view framed by exceptional pines, thick-boled as old tuliptrees, and even taller. When she'd finished supper, Varia crossed the trail and sat down on a fallen tree to admire the sight. Shortly, Cyncaidh came and sat by her.

"You like this part of the world, I think," he said smiling.

"I do. It's very beautiful."

"It-suits you nicely. I'm glad I could show you to each other."

She smiled back at him. "You're a nice man, Cyncaidh. If I have to be someone's prisoner, I'm fortunate it's you."

He wanted to smile back, and suppressed it. Guilty conscience, she thought. It occurred to her then that she might have erred, in the stable in the rain storm, erred in thinking he was taking her north simply because he wanted her. That the interrogation he'd spoken of was only an excuse, that he'd never help her to Ferny Cove after she'd been questioned. Perhaps he would. Perhaps.

Half turning, she faced him. "It's true, you know. You are nice. You've never exercised your advantage over me. You were as gentle as you could have been, back in the Rude Lands, even when I attacked you." She paused, looking back in time. "You provided me with Hermiss when I needed someone like her." Again she paused, this time to laugh. "And rid me of Corporal Keoth without my asking."

She lay her hand on his arm. "You even saved my life."

He stood up, and she stood with him. "I couldn't not have," he said, suddenly flustered. "You-are important to me. Personally. You've known since that night in the stable." He paused. "And you've never exercised your advantage over me, either. You're not the only one who's vulnerable, you know."

Then he turned and strode away, straight-backed but embarrassed, Varia watching him go.

Four days brought them to hills again, high and rocky. The forest here was varied, but with none of the familiar, more southerly trees. The large pines were present in scattered groups, among various smaller evergreens and white-barked birches, and other pale-barked trees whose leaves fluttered prettily in the faintest breeze. As they approached a rock outcrop, she saw a jaguar lying on it, gazing fearlessly at them. As far as she could tell, Cyncaidh cast no protective spell, so she withheld her own.