Ser John nodded. “Yes—but no. They take no mate at all.”

“I have heard of this,” said the old bear. “But assumed it was just one of those rumours of hate that young people concoct. You mean some humans choose not to mate at all? What do they do in spring? Hibernate?”

Ser John took another careful breath. “You speak the tongue of the west very well, for a bear.”

“Some of us meet with men,” the bear admitted. “At N’Pana, or even Ticondaga.” The bear growled. “We do not work with fire, but a steel axe is a fearsome thing indeed.”

“Then—if there is trade, you must know something about us?” the man asked.

The bear growled. “More than I’d like. Can you give us passage west? On the road, and safe from your people?”

Ser John sank back onto the bole. “Where are you going?” he asked. “Will you tell me what you know of the sorcerer?”

The bear got up on all fours. “I will tell you much. How badly hurt are you? Your outer shell is unbroken.”

“I am hurt,” Ser John admitted.

Jamie the Hoek came back out of the near darkness. “I thought you might like this,” he said, handing the bear a pot.

The bear sat, much like a stuffed bear in a toy shop, legs again splayed. It put the pot between its paws and pulled off the top.

“Wild honey?” it said in a tone of pure greed.

Jamie, the perfect squire, smiled, and his teeth shone in the dark. “I thought you’d like that,” he said again.

The bear lifted a sticky snout from an empty pot a little later, and growled.

Ser John was losing his ability to remain awake, but he tried to be courteous. “Lord Wimarc can escort you,” he said. “We have an army on the road to Lissen Carak. Lord Wimarc will see you get safe passage. You may want to go through the woods though…”

The bear licked its obvious teeth and nodded at Jamie the Hoek. “I may have to change my opinion of men,” it said.

Liviapolis—Morgon Mortirmir

Morgon Mortirmir had moved up in the world—far enough to be trusted with real research.

Unfortunately, he’d only exchanged one set of irritable magisters for another.

Still, life was better. He stroked his fashionable short beard, thinking of Tancreda Comnena, who still sometimes called him “plague.”

Who was no longer planning to become a nun. They had an understanding, although her side of the understanding seemed mostly to have an unlimited licence to tease him.

Then he realized with annoyance that he was rubbing his short, pointed beard with the ink-stained fingers of his writing hand.

“Son of a bitch,” he swore. He was tempted to drama—to hurl something—but his left hand was resting on a recently recovered thousand-year-old manuscript from somewhere east of Rhum and his right hand held an artifactualy-charged ivory pen, and he could spare neither.