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“I would like to see those.”

Her smile softens. She lays her head against me again, and for a while we listen to the music.

When the air cools, I raise the warmth in the stones behind us. Vai gives a pleased little sigh. I settle my hand over hers beneath the water.

We stay until we are hungry, and then a little longer.

VAI

Asha’s answer arrives four days later.

The innkeeper says she has a bed big enough. Tovi says she hasn’t measured properly. Come anyway. I have ordered extra flour.

I read it twice, then take it to Daurek. He is in the courtyard with Reivaka, looking at a broken wheel somebody has brought him. He leaves the wheel as soon as he sees my face.

“She says come.”

“Then we will.”

We leave the next morning. Reivaka has the household and the roads well in hand; she tells Daurek this without being asked. Ziku offers to escort us as far as the trade station until I point out that he is supposed to be taking the eastbound post.

“I could begin west.”

“You could,” Reivaka says. “Once.”

He goes east.

On the third morning of the journey, I am standing at the mouth of the lane where I grew up, holding a hand that makes several people stop carrying things.

The morning awnings are going up.

Wood rattles above the stalls. Canvas snaps, someone complains about the price of oil, and a woman I have known since I was six shouts at a boy who has put his thumb through one of her best cakes. He eats the damaged part before she can take it away.

I start laughing.

Daurek looks at me. “What?”

“I missed it.”

“All of it?”

“Most.”

He bends under the first awning. A little rainwater runs off its edge onto his shoulder. He looks up at the cloth, considering it, and I catch his arm.

“Leave it. She only just got that straight.”

The woman at the cake stall looks from me to him.

“Vai?”

“Good morning.”

She opens her mouth. I smile at her and keep walking while she is still deciding which question deserves to come first.

Our stall is third from the corner. The blue shutters have faded a little more. Asha stands behind the board, pressing the edge of a loaf with two floury fingers. She looks up when the cake seller calls my name again.

She does nothing.