“Ouch,” she murmured, parting her cloak and revealing herself. “Sorry.”

He looked around for a moment until he spotted her and shook his head. “Don’t be. Well done. What did you think?”

“I had to use Cirrus to track the sound of your movement. I never saw you, not even when I knew where you where.”

“Nor I, you, even tracking you with earthcraft. I’d say the cloaks work then,” Bernard said, his wince of pain broadening into a grin. “Aquitainus Invidia may not have given a crow’s feather about the Realm, but it seems that her fashion sense is going to be of service.”

Amara laughed and shook her head. “When that seamstress heard we wanted her to break those gowns down and refashion them into traveling cloaks, I thought she was going to start foaming at the mouth-the more so when one was to be made for you.”

Bernard made his way quietly through the brush, as always seeming to pass through it with hardly a branch or leaf disturbed by his presence, despite his size. “I’m sure a liberal dosing of silver and gold eased the symptoms.”

“That will be up to Gaius’s accountants,” Amara said smugly. “I had a letter of credit with the Crown’s seal upon it. All she could do was pray that I wasn’t some sort of confidence artist watercrafted into the semblance of Calderonus Amara.”

Bernard paused for a moment, blinking. “My.”

She tilted her head. “What is it?”

“That’s… the name of my House.”

Amara wrinkled up her nose at him and laughed. “Well, yes, my lord. So it would seem. Your letters are all signed His Excellency, Count Calderonus Bernard, remember?”

He didn’t smile in reply. His expression was, instead, very thoughtful. He fell into a pensive silence as they walked back to their camp, after the final tests of their new equipment. Amara walked beside him without saying anything. It never helped Bernard to prod at him while he was forming thoughts. It sometimes took her husband time to properly forge the things in his head into words, but it was-at least usually-worth the wait.

“It’s always been a job,” Bernard said at last. “My rank. The way being a Steadholder was. Something I did for my livelihood.”

“Yes,” Amara said, nodding.

He gestured vaguely toward the northeast, toward Riva, and their home in Calderon. “And it’s been a place. Garrison. The town, the fortress, the people who lived there. The problems to be solved and so on. Do you follow?”

“I think so.”

“Calderonus Bernard was just that fellow who was supposed to make sure everyone had somewhere to go during furystorms,” Bernard rumbled. “And who made sure that men with more time on their hands than sense didn’t bother people trying to work for a living, and who was trying to build up a lasting peace with his neighbors to the east rather than occasionally being eaten by them.”

Amara laughed at that and slipped her fingers between his.

“But Calderonus Amara…” He shook his head. “I’ve… never heard it said aloud. Did you realize that?”

Amara frowned and thought about it. “No. I suppose it’s because for so long we were…” Her cheeks flushed. “Improper.”

“Illicit lovers,” Bernard said, not without a certain amount of satisfaction. “Frequent illicit lovers.”

Amara’s cheeks grew warmer. “Yes. Well. Your people, whom we spent most of our time together among, hardly wished to throw that in your face. So they just called me your lady.”

“Exactly. So now there’s this new person, you see. Calderonus Amara.”

She looked obliquely up at him. “Who is she?” she asked quietly.

“A temptress who seduces married men in their bedrolls in the depths of the night where all the stars can see, apparently.”

She laughed again. “I was cold. As I recall, the rest was your idea.”

“I don’t recall it that way at all,” he said gravely, his eyes shining. His fingers tightened gently in hers. “She is also the wife of that Calderonus fellow. The founder of House Calderonus. Something that… something that could last a good long while. Something that could stand, and grow. That could do a lot of people a lot of good.”

Amara felt herself quail a little inside, but steeled herself against it. “For that to happen, a House needs children, Bernard,” she said quietly. “And I’m not… We haven’t…” She shrugged. “At this point, I’m not sure it’s going to happen.”

“Or it might,” Bernard said. “Some things can’t be hurried along.”

“But what if I can’t?” she asked, without malice or grief in the tone. After a second, she felt startled to realize that she didn’t feel any, either. Or at least, not nearly so much as she had in the past. “I’m not trying to gather sympathy, love. It’s a rational question. If I can’t provide you with an heir, what will you do?”

“We adopt,” Bernard said promptly.

She arched an eyebrow. “Bernard, the laws regarding Citizenship-”

“Oh, to the crows with those codes,” Bernard spat, grinning. “I’ve read them. They’re mostly an excuse for Citizens not to give up their money and status to anyone but their own children. Great furies know, if it was all based upon blood, all those bastard children, like Antillar Maximus, should certainly be inheriting Citizenship.”

“Adopt the bastard of a Citizen,” Amara mused.

“They’d have every bit as much potential for strong furycraft as a child born of us would,” Bernard said. “And crows, there are enough of them, the way some Citizens carry on. Why not provide some kind of positive direction for a few of them? I’d bet every sword in my armory that nearly every one of those mercenary Knights of the Aquitaines is a bastard child of a Citizen.”

“Suppose we manage to get away with it?” she asked him. “Then what?”

He arched an eyebrow at her. “We raise them.”

“Raise them.”

“Yes. You’ll be a good mother.”

“Ah. It’s that simple, is it?”

He laughed, a warm, booming laugh that rolled through the trees. “Raising a child isn’t complicated, love. It isn’t easy, but it isn’t complicated, either.”

She tilted her head, looking up at him. “How’s it done, then?”

He shrugged. “You just love them more than air and water and light. From there, everything else comes naturally.”

He stopped and tugged gently on her hand, turning her to face him. He touched her cheek, very lightly, with the blunt fingertips of one hand.

“Understand me,” he said quietly, his eyes earnest. “I haven’t given up on the idea of your bearing my children, and I never will.”

She smiled quietly. “Depending on what nature has to say,” she replied, “we may have to agree to disagree on that issue.”

“Then let me tell you exactly where I’m drawing the line, Calderonus Amara,” he rumbled. “I’m building a future. You’re going to be in it. And we’re going to be happy. I’m not willing to compromise on that.”

She blinked up at him several times. “Love,” she said in a near whisper, “in the next few days, we’re going to begin a mission for the Crown that, in all probability, will kill us both.”

Bernard snorted. “Heard that before. And so have you.” He leaned down and kissed her mouth, and she was suddenly overwhelmed with the enormous, warm, gentle power behind that kiss, and the touch of his hand. She felt herself melt against him, returning the kiss measure for measure, slow and intent as the light began to change from wan grey to morning gold.

It ended a time later, and she felt a little dizzy.

“I love you,” she said quietly.

“I love you,” he said. “No compromises.”

The last ridgeline between them and their eventual area of operation was at the top of a long slope, and Amara’s horse reached it several moments before Bernard’s. The poor beast labored mightily under Bernard’s sheer size, and over the course of many miles, it had added up to a steep toll in fatigue.

Amara crested the rise and stared down at the broad valley, several miles south of the city of Ceres. The wind was from the north, chill without being unpleasant-even the depths of winter were seldom harsh, there in the sheltered southern reaches of the Realm. She turned her face into the wind and closed her eyes for a moment, enjoying it. Ceres lay several leagues north of their current position, at the end of the furycrafted causeway that ran through the valley below. From there, she and Bernard would be able to wait for the Vord to pass by, then slip among them.