“Greft is a pompous ass who thinks he can speak for everyone,” Tats said after a profound silence. Just as she was ready to dismiss her experience with Greft as an aberration, he added, “But I’d like it if you said to everyone that you had chosen me. He’s right about that; it would make things simpler.”

“What ‘things’ would it make simpler?”

He gave her a sideways glance. They both knew he was treading on shaky ground now. “Well. One thing is that it would give me an answer. One that I’d like to have. And another is—”

“You’ve never even asked me a question,” she broke in. She spoke hastily and was appalled to realize that she’d just pushed them deeper into the quagmire.

She wanted to run away, to get away from this stupidity that stupid Greft had triggered with his stupid lecture. Tats seemed to know that. He put his calloused hand over hers. She could feel the softness of his palm against the scaled back of her hand. The warmth from that touch flooded through her, and for a moment her breath caught. Her mind flashed to Jerd and Greft, entwined and moving together. No. She forbade the thought and reminded herself that her hand under his was probably cold, slick with scales, like a fish. He did not look down at the hand he had captured. He took a breath and puffed it out. “It’s not a question. Not a specific question. It’s, well, I’d like to have what Greft and Jerd have.”

So would she.

No! Of course she didn’t. She denied the thought.

“What Jerd and Greft have? You mean mating?” She didn’t completely succeed in keeping accusation out of her voice.

“No. Well, yes. But they also have a certainty of each other. That’s what I want.” He looked away from her and spoke more gently as if she were fragile. “I know Rapskal has not been gone that long, but—”

“How can anyone seriously think that Rapskal and I were anything more than friends?” she burst out indignantly. She jerked her hand out from under his and used it to push back the hair from her face.

He looked surprised. “You were always with him, all the time. Ever since we left Cassarick. Always sharing a boat, always sleeping together…”

“He always lay down to sleep next to me. And no one else ever offered to share a boat with me. I liked him, when he wasn’t making me cross or annoying me or saying strange things.” Suddenly her diatribe against him seemed disloyal. She halted her words and admitted in a whisper, “I liked him a lot. But I never imagined I was in love with him, and I don’t think he ever thought of me that way. In fact, I’m certain of it. He was just my peculiar friend who always looked on the bright side of things and who was always in a good temper. He always sought me out. I didn’t have to work to be his friend.”

“He was that,” Tats agreed quietly. For a moment, that mourning silence held, and during it she felt closer to Tats than she had for a long time. Thymara broke the silence at last. “What was the other reason?”

“What?”

“You started to say and I interrupted you. What was the other reason you thought it would be best if I declared that I was—that I was with you.” She tried to find a better euphemism, couldn’t, and gave up on it. She looked at him directly and waited.

“It would settle things. Put an end to speculation. There is, um, some bad feelings. From the others. Nortel has made a few comments—”

“Such as?” she asked him roughly.

He became blunt. “That I’m not one of you, and that you belong with someone of your own kind, someone who can really understand you.”

“That sounds like Greft stirring the pot again.”

“Probably. He says lots of things like that. Late at night, around the fire. Usually after the girls have gone to sleep. He talks about how things are going to be, when we reach Kelsingra. According to Greft, we’ll build our own city there. Well, it won’t be a city at first, of course. But we’ll settle there and make homes. Eventually others will come to join us there, but we keepers will be the founders. We’ll make the rules.

“And when he talks like that, he unfolds things so logically that it does start to seem like it must be the way he says it’s going to be. And usually, it comes out like he says it will. When we found out that Jerd was, well, going to have a baby, he said someone would have to be responsible, even if she didn’t know whose it was. And he said he’d set the example, and he did. And then, later, he said that Sylve was too young to have to make decisions for herself. He picked out Harrikin for her, because he was older and would have more self-control. He told him to start out by being her protector. And he did, and it worked out that Sylve chose him.”