"Yes, no, and possibly later," said his wife. "Have you any idea how angry I am, Rodrigo?"

Bound and bleeding on the earth, Rodrigo Belmonte was able to say, quite truthfully, "Some idea, yes."

His expression must have been diverting, because his wife, for the first time, showed an indication of being amused.

She suppressed it quickly. "Armed men came for us, you uncaring bastard. You left me with children and range hands thirty years past their usefulness."

"That isn't just," he said. "I'm truly sorry you were frightened. You know I am. I didn't think even Garcia de Rada would do anything so stupid as an attack here, and I did think you and the boys were equal to whatever might come. I told you that."

"I told you that," she mimicked. "How thoughtful of you."

"If the boys are going to follow me," he said levelly, "they will have to learn to handle matters of this sort, Miranda. You know it. They'll be marked as my sons the minute they join a company—mine or anyone else's. They'll be pushed, and challenged. I can't do anything about that except help make them equal to those challenges when they come. Unless you want them both to take vows and join the clerics?"

"Twenty-four horsemen attacked us, Rodrigo. What if Diego hadn't seen them?"

He said nothing. The truth was, he'd been having nightmares about that since word of the raid had come to them in Esteren. He didn't want to say it, but there must have been more in his expression than he thought, because Miranda abruptly tossed her arrow aside and knelt on the earth beside him.

"I see," she said quietly. "You were frightened, too. All right. Half a mistake, half testing the boys. I can live with that."

"I'm not sure if I can," he said, after a moment. "If anything had happened ... "

"That's why I shot him. I know you wouldn't have done it. I know it wasn't very honorable, but a man who would do what he did ... He wouldn't have stopped, Rodrigo. He would have come back. Better I killed him than that you had to, after he'd done something to us."

He nodded his head. It wasn't easy, bound as he was. She made no movement to release him.

"I'm sorry you had to kill someone."

She shrugged. "Given who it was, it was easier than I would have thought. The boys had to kill men, too."

"In the world they are growing into, that was bound to happen."

"I would have preferred it not be so soon, Rodrigo."

He said nothing. She settled back a little, looking at him, still making no move to untie his bonds.

"The king called you a frail woman."

She smiled at that. "You didn't disagree?"

"I did, actually. I asked them to pray for me because I had to go home and tell you what has happened."

"We heard. You sent the messenger so I'd have time to calm down, I suppose."

His mouth crooked. "It doesn't seem to have worked very well. Untie me, Miranda. I'm stiff and both my legs are bleeding."

She made no movement. "Two years' exile? It could have been worse, I suppose. Where will you go?"

"Is this the way to discuss such matters?"

"It will do well enough. Where will you go, Rodrigo?"

He sighed. "Not Jalona, obviously, and I still wouldn't be welcome in Ruenda. I could take the company out of the peninsula to Ferrieres or Batiara but I won't. Things might be starting to happen here, and I don't want us to be too far away. South, then. Al-Rassan again."

"Where?" She was concentrating. There seemed to be a rock under the small of his back.

"Ragosa, I think. King Badir can use us. He's hard-pressed between Cartada and Jalona and outlaws raiding from the south. There's money to be made."

"Isn't Ragosa where your doctor went?"

He blinked. "Good for you. She isn't my doctor, but yes, it is where she went. I still want to try to enlist her."

"I'm sure. She's very pretty, didn't you say?"

"I said nothing remotely resembling such a thing. Am I a complete idiot?"

"Yes. Is she?"

"What?"

"Is she pretty?"

Rodrigo drew another careful breath, not easy given his position. "Miranda, I am married to the most beautiful woman I know. I am not a man to fairly judge such things in others. She's comely enough. Blue eyes, rare for a Kindath."

"I see. You noticed them?"

"Miranda."

"Well, you did." Her expression was deceptively mild. He had learned to mistrust that expression. The rock under his back seemed, improbably, to have grown larger.

"I am trained to notice things, Miranda. About men and women. If I had been better trained fifteen years ago I would have noticed you were a cruel and ungenerous woman."

"Perhaps," she said placidly. "Too late now. Tell me, what do I always say when you go away?"

"Oh, Jad! Don't start again. I know what you always—

"Say it. Or I'll find my arrow again. I promised myself I'd put an arrow in you the day I shot Garcia de Rada. Two pinpricks hardly count."

"Yes they do," he said. "And those weren't pinpricks." He stopped at what he read in her expression, then said quietly, "I know what you tell me. That if I bed another woman you'll either bed another man or kill me."

She was smiling, as if encouraging a child's display of memory. "Good. And since I don't want to bed another man ... ?" she prompted.

Rodrigo sighed. "You'll kill me. Miranda, I know this. Will you let me up?"

She seemed to be thinking about it at least, which was a positive development.

"No," she said, at length. "Not yet. I think I like you this way."

"What does that mean?" he asked, alarmed.

But she had shifted forward from where she was, beside him on her knees. She looked appraisingly down at him a moment, then calmly tore open his shirt. His eyes widened. Her hands seemed to be busy with the points and drawstrings of his trousers. It became difficult to breathe.

"Miranda," he said, "there's a rock under my back."

"Oh well," she murmured with exaggerated solicitude, "we can't have that, can we?" But she did reach under to remove what turned out to be a laughably small stone.

"Untie me, love. We'll do better if I'm free."

"No, we won't," said his joy, his torment, his wife, the fierce bright light of his days. "We'll do very well with you exactly as you are."

She had finished with his garments. She began removing her own.

"See what I mean?" she said, smiling down at his sex. As she spoke, she slipped off her black tunic. She was wearing nothing beneath. Her small breasts were smooth and firm in the torchlight.

"You see?" she said again. He did, of course.

Eventually he closed his eyes, but not before an interval had passed during which a number of movements on her part took place, bringing him to a point where he couldn't have judged the passage of time, or anything else for that matter.

The torch had burned out by then, he knew that much. There was nothing to see. Only to feel. Mouth and fingers. Her teeth, in unexpected places. The close, perfect shelter of her sex after so long.

"Shall I let you go?" she asked eventually, a breath in his ear.

"Never," said Rodrigo, eyes still closed.

Still later, the white moon, descending, slanted through a wide chink in the wall boards and a beam of light fell upon them both. He lay with Miranda upon him, her head on his chest, her dark hair loose, cloaking them both. He felt the rise and fall of her breathing, and drew in the scent and the feel of her—intoxicating as unmixed wine.

"Oh, well," she murmured, as if continuing a dialogue. "I suppose we could use a good doctor."

"I certainly could," he said, with feeling.

That made her laugh. At some point, though it was hard to mark the change, the laughter turned to tears. He could feel them falling on his chest.

"Two years is a long time," she said. "Rodrigo, am I being unfair to you?"