Beko's hand brushed across her stomach and stole down between her thighs, pressing there gently, weakening her legs and making her gasp.

“Beko . . .” she said, turning to him at last. She could hear his breathing now, fast and shallow. He was looking at her as though he could see her soul.

Timal never looked at me like that, she thought, and with her ex-lover's name in her mind, things fell apart. The pleasant coolness beneath the trees turned cold. Beko sensed it and moved away, looking down at the lizard swinging from his hand.

“It's me,” Nomi said. “It feels wrong.”

“It doesn't feel wrong to me,” the soldier said, and there was something so vulnerable in his voice that Nomi almost went to him. She looked at his scarred face and remembered how awkward he had seemed when he first spoke free poetry to her, sitting alone in a Ventgorian stilt house. He had loved and lost, and only someone with such experience could recite like that.

“We've a long way to go,” Nomi said. And as if that could explain everything, she turned and started walking back uphill.

“Nomi,” Beko said. She smiled at him, because he was already grinning again. “I can be very persistent. I should tell you, in case you see a problem in that.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Then persist.” She turned away again, scolding herself as she walked, grinning, wondering what doors had been opened and which hidden places they would reveal.

BY THE TIME they returned to the camp, the others had lit a fire and started pitching tents. The horses were tethered loosely in the trees, saddles lay ready around the fire and Rhiana was foraging across the marshy ground by the stream. She eyed the green tree lizard appreciatively, then glanced quickly at Nomi.

“Good hunting?” she asked.

“I look forward to seeing how you feed us that and keep us all alive,” Nomi said, only half joking.

Rhiana opened her hand and showed Nomi a mixture of berries, leaves and dirt-encrusted root. “Magic,” she said.

Nomi was glad to see that the Serians had also erected her tent. She slipped inside and pulled the flap closed. She sat down and sighed, wiping her hands across her face and feeling the grit and grime on her skin. The heat of her arousal was fading but the memory was still there, an imprint of Beko's brazen and confident touch. A stroke against her stomach, soft as a butterfly's wings, and then the firm pressure of his hand between her legs. He was a warrior and a poet, and she could not help but wonder which one had touched her. She was excited, but also slightly unnerved. She was not like some other Voyagers, setting themselves above their hired help. Yet she could conceive of nothing but trouble if she and Beko . . .

“There's nothing wrong with a hump,” she whispered.