Through an arrow loop in the wall she saw a familiar horse and rider tearing across the camp toward the healing rooms. Brigan pulled up at Nash's feet and dropped from the saddle. The two brothers threw their arms around each other and embraced hard. Shortly thereafter he stepped into the healing rooms and leaned in the doorway, looking across at her quietly. Brocker's son with the gentle gray eyes. She abandoned all pretense of decorum and ran at him.

Lady Queen," he said, "You've given me all I want. You're the queen a librarian dreams of.

I'm afraid of plenty of things," he said. "I just do them anyway.

She glanced up at him, and in that moment he pulled his wet shirt over his head. She forced her mind blank. Blank as a new sheet of paper, blank as a starless sky. He came to the fire and crouched before it. He rubbed the water from his bare arms and flicked it in the flames. She stared at the goose and sliced his drumstick carefully and thought of the blankest expression on the blankest face she could possibly imagine. It was a chilly evening; she thought about that. The goose would be delicious, they must eat as much of it as possible, they must not waste it; she thought about that.

I was doing science," Giddon said. "He threw a bean." "I was testing the impact of a bean upon water," Bann said. "That's not even a real thing." "Perhaps I'll test the impact of a bean upon your beautiful white shirt.

She looked at him then, but his image blurred behind tears that swelled into her eyes. She must leave. She must leave this room, because she wanted to hit him, as she had sworn she never would do. She wanted to cause him pain for taking a place in her heart that she wouldn't have given him if she'd known the truth. "You lied to me," she said. She turned and ran from the room.

It seems better to me for a child to have these skills and never use them, than not have them and one day need them," she said.