"Will! Thee can't know it!"
He looked surprised, then laughed. "Sure I can. He walks with one foot turned in a little - the left foot. And here it is." He stirred the air over the tracks with the tip of his finger, then laughed again at the way she was looking at him. " 'Tisn't sorcery, Susan daughter of Patrick; only trailcraft."
"How do ye know so much, so young?" she asked. "Who are ye, Will?"
He stood up and looked down into her eyes. He didn't have to look far; she was tall for a girl. "My name's not Will but Roland," he said. "And now I've put my life in your hands. That I don't mind, but mayhap I've put your own life at risk, as well. You must keep it a dead secret."
"Roland," she said wonderingly. Tasting it.
"Aye. Which do you like better?"
"Your real one," she said at once. " 'Tis a noble name, so it is."
He grinned, relieved, and this was the grin that made him look young again.
She raised herself on her toes and put her lips on his. The kiss, which was chaste and close-mouthed to begin with, bloomed like a flower: became open and slow and humid. She felt his tongue touch her lower lip and met it, shyly at first, with her own. His hands covered her back, then slipped around to her front. He touched her br**sts, also shy to begin with, then slid his palms up their lower slopes to their tips. He uttered a small, moaning sigh directly into her mouth. And as he drew her closer and began to trail kisses down her neck, she felt the stone hardness of him below the buckle of his belt, a slim, warm length which exactly matched the melting she felt in the same place; those two places were meant for each other, as she was for him and he for her. It was ka, after all - ka like the wind, and she would go with it willingly, leaving all honor and promises behind.
She opened her mouth to tell him so, and then a queer but utterly persuasive sensation enfolded her: they were being watched. It was ridiculous, but it was there; she even felt she knew who was watching. She stepped back from Roland, her booted heels rocking unsteadily on the half-eroded oxen tracks. "Get out, ye old bitch," she breathed. "If ye be spying on us in some way, I know not how, get thee gone!"
15
On the hill of the Coos, Rhea drew back from the glass, spitting curses in a voice so low and harsh that she sounded like her own snake. She didn't know what Susan had said - no sound came through the glass, only sight - but she knew that the girl had sensed her. And when she did, all sight had been wiped out. The glass had flashed a brilliant pink, then had gone dark, and none of the passes she made over it would serve to brighten it again.
"Aye, fine, let it be so," she said at last, giving up. She remembered the wretched, prissy girl (not so prissy with the young man, though, was she?) standing hypnotized in her doorway, remembered what she had told the girl to do after she had lost her maidenhead, and began to grin, all her good humor restored. For if she lost her maidenhead to this wandering boy instead of to Hart Thorin, Lord High Mayor of Mejis, the comedy would be even greater, would it not?
Rhea sat in the shadows of her stinking hut and began to cackle.
16
Roland stared at her, wide-eyed, and as Susan explained about Rhea a little more fully (she left out the humiliating final examinations which lay at the heart of "proving honesty"), his desire cooled just enough for him to reassert control. It had nothing to do with jeopardizing the position he and his friends were trying to maintain in Hambry (or so he told himself) and everything to do with maintaining Susan's - her position was important, her honor even more so.
"I imagine it was your imagination," he said when she had finished.
"I think not." With a touch of coolness.
"Or conscience, even?"
At that she lowered her eyes and said nothing.
"Susan, I would not hurt you for the world."
"And ye love me?" Still without looking up.
"Aye, I do."
"Then it's best you kiss and touch me no more - not tonight. I can't stand it if ye do."
He nodded without speaking and held out his hand. She took it, and they walked on in the direction they had been going when they had been so sweetly distracted.
While they were still ten yards from the hem of the forest, both saw the glimmer of metal despite the dense foliage - too dense, she thought. Too dense by far.
It was the pine-boughs, of course; the ones which had been whacked from the trees on the slope. What they had been interlaced to camouflage were the big silver cans now missing from the paved area. The silver storage containers had been dragged over here - by the oxen, presumably - and then concealed. But why?