“Good advice too late,” I grumbled. “Not that I ever had the money to do much drinking with the boys. I’m all but banished now. I nearly got stoned to death today.”

“What?” Ebrooks demanded, horrified.

They listened to my tale, nodding gravely. When I described the man who had come toward me out of the mob, Ebrooks nodded and said, “That’ll be Dale Hardy. He’s new. Give him a month in Gettys and he won’t be so piss and vinegar. He’ll get ground down like the rest of us.”

We talked for some time longer, and then they left, promising to bring me supplies from the mess hall the next day. That was small comfort. I’d had next to nothing to eat all day, and the hunger inside me now was not to be ignored. An equation nudged into my awareness. I’d used the magic last night to keep myself warm. And today my hunger was proportionately strong. Magic, it seemed, demanded more food than physical effort. I wondered idly if I could work enough magic to shed the wall of fat from my body. I decided that the appetite it would create would probably drive me insane before I succeeded. I went out into the gathering evening to see if I could find anything to eat. I carried my gun with me, even as I told myself I was worrying needlessly. If the mob were going to hunt me down and hang me, they’d have done it by now. Wouldn’t they?

As yet, my vegetable garden wasn’t yielding. I went to Clove’s stall and abashedly took a measure of his grain. It was coarse and hard and none too clean, but I rinsed it and put it to soak in a pot near my fire. My water cask was nearly empty; I took my bucket and headed down to the spring.

As I had that very first day, I had the strong feeling that someone was watching me. I heard a shuffle of feathers overhead and looked up hastily to find that a croaker bird had just settled in a tree at the edge of the woods. The silhouette of the trees and the bird were black against the day’s fading sky. He croaked suddenly. A shiver ran up my spine. I lurched to my feet, and my brimming bucket sloshed a little cold water down my leg.

“Nevare.” A voice spoke softly from the woods. It seemed to come from the trees just below the bird’s perch. Although it was a woman’s voice and I recognized Olikea’s tone, my first thought was that death had called my name. On the fleeting heels of that thought, however, was the heated flush of my memory of Olikea. All my senses came to sudden quivering attention. I stared into the shadowy woods and saw no one and nothing, until she moved. Then I could not understand how I had not seen her before. She stepped clear of the sheltering trees, but did not venture out of the forest.