He nodded wordlessly, keeping pace at her side, his lean face grave. “Well, you might want to start.”

“Where have you been, anyway?”

“Shadowing you.”

She decided not to ask how he had managed this, but simply to accept that he had. She looked over at him. “You followed me after I left the Council chambers?”

“Isn’t that my job?”

“Did you hear what was said?”

He shrugged. “I don’t need to eavesdrop to protect you.”

“You can’t come with me.”

“You keep saying that.”

“I have to do something, and I have to do it alone. No one else can be present.”

He smiled, shrugged. “Where will you go to do this secret something?” He saw her hesitation. “Not so I can eavesdrop, but so I can make a reasonable effort to protect you. I need to be close enough to reach you if there’s trouble.”

She gave him a look. “I don’t think anything is going to happen, Cymrian.”

“It won’t if I’m close enough to prevent it.”

She almost told him what nonsense it was to insist on this, but it would have involved an argument she did not care to engage in. “Very well. I will go to the south end of the Carolan, where the big oaks grow and it is sheltered enough for me to have privacy. Fair enough?”

He bowed his head, pursed his lips, and nodded silently.

“So you can leave me now and let me go on alone. And do not let me catch you spying on me.”

He moved away from her and disappeared soundlessly. She walked on, using her heightened senses to track him, to make sure he hadn’t lied. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him; it was that she understood how great the temptation would be to watch. He was good at moving unseen and unheard, but she would not allow it this time.

When she was certain she was alone she stepped off the path into the trees and crept away.

She did not go to the Carolan. She had never intended to go there in the first place, but it was best if he thought otherwise. She went instead to the north edge of the city where the wildness crept close to the bluff edge and the forest was dark and deep. She worked her way through the trees to the small clearing to which she had gone to be alone when she was a child. It had been years since she had visited her secret hiding place, but she remembered well enough how to find it. The years fell away as she threaded her way through deep undergrowth and ancient trees, finding familiar memories all along the way, some in the form of recognizable terrain, some in the ephemeral form of abandoned dreams and lost hopes.