One more thing: Linda, can you get to Canterbury and take over my Chaucerian Society? They're at Dovecote Hostelry in the old city. We're visiting all the scenes of the great murders. Tomorrow they want to see where Becket was killed. They're a bloodthirsty lot, it seems.

It was a peculiar marriage of interests- Lord Averill and Captain Byrne and Lord Bayar and Han Alister agreeing on anything was as rare as gold in Ragmarket.

Both Averill and Bayar were like actors speaking lines for their audience and not to each other.

But maybe it's better to go after something, and not get it, than to not even try.

She padded toward Han, barefoot, like a faerie startled out of a forest bower, bewitching mix of clan and flatland beauty.

And they always slept better with blades beneath their beds.

I live in the present because the future is always chancy. When it comes to being with you, I'm willing to take the risk.