Which she did, and then, with his arm slung across her shoulders, they hobbled together like a strange two-headed, four-legged creature back to New Dawn. The clearing was empty when they stumbled into it, but then Perfidy spotted Mirac sitting in his usual spot in the shade. She froze because he was looking right at them. But then he made a motion like he was sealing his lips and waved her forward. She didn’t need to be told twice, especially when voices murmured through the walls of one of the structures and the door to the male sleeping quarters began to open.

A form appeared, that of Jereb, but he was facing away, talking to someone else within the structure. Perfidy felt a swell of relief at seeing him awake and on his feet again, an emotion that was quickly squashed as it morphed into an acute fear of being discovered. “You’ve missed too much training already,” he was saying, which meant he was most likely speaking to Gruff, as Julio never seemed to miss a day and Gruff preferred wandering the woods to practicing his Ability. “You’re never going to progress if you don’t nurture Narcissi’s Gift.”

“And if I don’t want to progress? If I don’t want to nurture my Ability?” came the dwarf’s barked retort.

“I’ll let you inform Sinna when she returns from her trip, how about that?”

“Sounds good to me!”

“Good!”

“Good!”

The whole time they’d been arguing, Perfidy and Cainan had been hustling (well, ‘hustling’ was probably the wrong word as their progress was slower than watching a toenail grow) across the clearing toward the old hut. Just as Jereb was turning away from Gruff, she shoved Cainan inside and drew the door closed as silently as her haste would allow before, in a moment of inspiration, throwing herself off the small porch at the ground.

Where she crash-landed and rolled several times before coming to rest, her head flopping in Jereb’s direction, who stood just outside the sleeping quarters with an eyebrow raised.

“Never too early to git a start on trainin’, is it?” she said brightly, propping her head on one hand. “Also, I’m glad yer alright, sorry ’bout that knock I gave ye yesterday. But in fairness ye did tell me to chuck rocks at ye an’ mebbe I took that a bit too spirited, but ye were havin’ yer bloody eagles attack me sumthin’ fierce so it was only fair I’d defend myself an’ yer skull jest happened to git in the way, though it was a pretty damned good throw, ye hafta admit.” She realized that in her nervousness and guilt she was rambling a blue streak, so she cut herself off, though her tongue desperately wanted to keep on flapping to fill the void of silence that followed.