“I thought abaht sendin’ a lad on ahead,” Wrenmarsh said, as they rolled out onto the road. “But then, I thought that’d be sendin’ a signal on ahead thet we ’ad somethin’ worth takin’.”

“Good thinking,” Perry agreed. “But we’re not without our own bag of tricks, are we, Larral?”

“Righ!” Larral agreed, sounding smug. And sure enough, they had just about made the halfway mark back to Haven when four Guardsmen cantered up, much to the relief of Wrenmarsh’s two sons, who stopped clutching their cudgels so hard that their knuckles were white.

After that, the rest of the trip was anticlimactic.

•   •   •

“So how much was in there, anyway?” asked Kat, after Abi had finished her story.

The two of them were lounging on Abi’s bed, which she was very glad to see once again. The cots had been all right at first, but the longer you lay on them, the more hard spots you seemed to find.

“More than enough to completely rebuild and refurnish the manor and the outbuildings, hire more people, plow up all the arable land, get all the herb seeds Sussena could possibly plant, and enough left over for any emergency.” Abi felt very smug now that it was all over. And . . . maybe a little stupid, too. “Wrenmarsh has three Master Thatchers and their helpers on the manor and it should be finished before the snow falls. Sussena is finally going to get to sleep in a real bed in her own bedroom for the first winter in her life. In fact, she’s getting one of the bedrooms that has the chimney coming up through it, and her own fireplace. I just can’t believe I didn’t even consider the chimney as a hiding place.”

“But you did. Just not in the kitchen,” Kat pointed out. “And why would the lord of the manor ever be found in the kitchen anyway?”

“That’s a good point. It just proves how clever he was, I suppose.” She considered that.

“Well, that’s the problem with being clever,” Kat replied with a laugh, lying back on Abi’s bed. “Being clever gets you in trouble. Being smart gets you out of trouble. You do know what this means for you, though, don’t you?”

“That my Gift works really well?” she hazarded.