I dressed as warmly as I could and went out. Snowflakes spun on a trickle of wind. With clouds overhead, the air wasn’t nearly as frigid. In summer this shoreline would be marshy and plagued by bugs, but it was breathtaking in the winter evening with the snow shining and the water sparkling with the reflection of the magic he casually unleashed in cascades of bursting rainbows. He was throwing the illusion of light around in gouts of color that fell in waterfalls, spilling from image to image. A magnificent stag lost its antlers to become a horse pulling an elaborate chaise that became a Kena’ani ship with its prow cutting through the waves in the shape of a leaping horse. There was no reason or purpose for it. He was just doing it because he could.

He walked to meet me.

“It’s so beautiful, Vai.”

“Mmm,” he agreed as he kissed me with unexpectedly warm lips.

“I missed you.”

“Of course you did, love.” He put an arm around me as we stared south toward an unknown shore. Snow winked where it dissolved into the water. “We need to find a mage House or inn, or we won’t last long in this cold. Even with a fur blanket.”

“I feel like a thief taking the blanket with us. A fine beaver pelt blanket like that costs a year’s wages in Adurnam.”

“I’m taking no chances with you and the cold, love. Now go in. You’re shivering.”

We set out at dawn, glad to be moving. It took all morning to row across the sound. The water was so formidably calm that I was able to take several turns at the oars. By sighting on an unusually tall tree, we came in fairly close to straight across from where we had started, working back against a placid current. There we found a pier and cabin very like the one we had just left, except it had a shed for drying fish.

A path led south through woodland of stunted pine and scrub birch. We stowed the boat and started walking. When a freezing mixture of snow and sleet began to fall on the wings of a stiff east wind, we were forced to turn back and shelter indoors for the rest of the day and night. To be snuggled together with the fur blanket wrapped around us was no hardship, but in winter we could not survive long on love alone.

Thank Tanit, the next morning dawned clear. We walked all morning. I was hungry, and he actually looked tired, although I was not about to tell him so.

Instead I talked. “Kofi said you would be the net that Expedition’s radicals threw across the ocean to Europa.”

“If the charter the Assembly is writing in Expedition can be displayed in towns here, that may encourage people to demand that communities should have a say in ruling themselves.”