“Who? Sorcha?” She piled both poles on one shoulder. “If I didn’t like him, I wouldn’t have agreed to travel with him. Come on, we have to water the cows, too.”

We walked back to the well slowly. I felt her watching me for some time before she spoke again. “You’re not so green anymore, professor. You don’t seem so young now.”

“I wasn’t that young before. It’s only been two years.”

“You seem older.”

“Funny, you seem younger. Caravanning suits you.”

She grinned. I blushed, and she grinned wider. “You think so?”

“Yes. You seem…loose now? More comfortable.”

“I am.” She nodded, mostly to herself. “I am. May I ask you a personal question, Ariah?”

My head swung over. My heart pounded against my ribs. “Yes?”

She laughed. She clucked her tongue at me, and I stumbled on a patch of grass in my haste to look away again. She caught me by the arm and steadied me. “You came to Vilahna for training, right?”

“I did, yes.”

“Was it worth it?”

“It was. I shouldn’t have avoided it so long.”

“Is your plan still the same?” she asked. “You’ve got your training, and now you’ll slip back into the ghettos and no one will be the wiser? A secret shaper?”

I realized I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I had assumed for some time I wouldn’t return to the Empire. I left for Rabatha without ever having considered what a return really meant, what it would ask of me and how I would have to adjust. “I…yes, I guess so. I think so.”

There was a twinge of something in her when I spoke, a nascent pull between us that made me look over. She smiled and sped up her pace. “Well, your secret’s safe with me.”

When the work was done, the compounders flocked to the lodge to eat and drink and sleep. Shayat, Tamir, Sorcha, and I sat together, surrounded on all sides by red elves. Sorcha’s shepherd friend sat with us, along with the man who had the mysterious debt to Tamir and a handful of curious children and young men and women. They served us ale, which only Sorcha drank. They served us a meat stew, which only Sorcha ate. Tamir, Shayat, and I made do with bread and boiled potatoes. They passed a pipe, which I smoked right in front of Shayat. Tamir looked on in barely-concealed disgust, but Shayat seemed at first surprised, and then curious. The herb was freshly prepared. It was the best I’ve ever had. I would have been a fool to pass it up. I was thoroughly, irredeemably stoned three hits into it.