I decide to find out why she likes that spot so much and pick my way carefully around the scree slope. The cave is just a few feet tall and half as deep, and I have to crawl on my hands and knees to position myself beside her. She looks at me sidelong, then sighs, and it occurs to me that perhaps she wants to be alone.

Too late, I’m already here. Bellara tolerates my presence, turning her attention to the scree slope below her. I sit in silence for several minutes, trying to follow her gaze, and am about to ask what she’s looking for when a ground squirrel pops its head out of the rocks below us.

It is soon joined by another. They chase each other through the stones, sure-footed, unworried by the occasional shift of the scree. They chatter at each other, one catching the other by the toe, the other nipping at the nose, running and playing. I realize that, despite a cold morning wind blowing across the plain, this cave shelters us both from the wind. It catches the morning sun, warming the rock, and in short time I almost want to take off my old canvas jacket. It is the warmest I’ve been in weeks.

“Don’t tell the others,” Bellara says.

“Eh?” I ask.

Bellara nods at the squirrels playing in the scree. “Aleta will want to make them into a stew. She’ll set traps, and I’d rather she not.”

“They’d be good eating,” I suggest cautiously, trying not to let on that the same thought had been going through my mind.

“But they don’t deserve to be eaten.”

“Does anything?” I ask, laughing.

“Maybe not,” Bellara says seriously. “But they’re happy. They don’t know there’s a war on. They don’t give a shit about the bombers. I like that. So please don’t tell Aleta.”

It’s the “please” that gets me. Bellara may be just sixteen, but she’s been fighting since she was old enough to hold an illusion. She knows her place in the world. Giado is deferential to her. Bombs do not scare her. I don’t even scare her, and it took the others several months before they would get close to me. Some of them still keep their distance.

“Okay,” I say. “I promise.”

Bellara squeezes my hand. “Thank you.”

“It’s very warm up here,” I comment.

“I know. I like that, too.”

We listen to the distant bombers for the next half hour. I can hear both our stomachs rumbling, and wonder if it’s worth venturing out on the plains to hunt llamas tomorrow. Giado will object, because he’s been very cautious since we got word of his hometown. But we could use the meat.

“They say,” Bellara broke the silence, “that before the war we were used for entertainment.”

“We?” I ask, though I know what she means.