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Ronica stood in her open doorway and watched Caolwn walk off into the darkness.

A Rain Wild man shambled out from the shadows to join her.

He took the wooden casket of gold and tucked it effortlessly under his arm.

They both lifted a hand in farewell to her.

She waved in return. She knew that on the beach there would be a small boat awaiting them, and farther out in the harbour a ship that bore but a single light.

She wished them well, and hoped they would have a good journey.

And she prayed fervently to Sa that she would never stand thus and watch one of her own walk off into darkness with them.

In the darkness, Keffria tried once again. ‘Kyle?’

‘Um?’ His voice was warm and deep, sweet with satiation.

She fitted her body closely to his. Her flesh was warm where they touched, chilled to delicious goosebumps where the summer breeze from the open window flowed over them.

He smelled good, of sex and maleness, and the solid reality of his muscle and strength were a bulwark against all night fears.

Why, she demanded silently of Sa, why couldn’t it all be this simple and good?

He had come home this evening to say farewell to her, they had dined well and enjoyed wine together and then come together in both passion and love here.

Tomorrow he would sail and be gone for however long it took him to make a trade circuit.

Why did she have to spoil it with yet another discussion of Malta?

Because, she told herself firmly, it had to be settled.

She had to make him agree with her before he left.

She would not go behind his back while he was gone.

To do so would chip away the trust that had always bonded them.

So she took a deep breath and spoke the words they were both tired of hearing. ‘About Malta…’ she began.

He groaned. ‘No. Please, Keffria, no. In but a few hours I will have to rise and go. Let us have these last few hours together in peace.’

‘We haven’t that luxury. Malta knows we are at odds about this. She will use that as a lever on me the whole time you are gone. Whatever she wants that I forbid, she will reply, “But Papa said I am a woman now…” It will be torture for me.’

With a long-suffering sigh, he rolled away from her.

The bed was suddenly a cooler place than it had been, uncomfortably cool.

‘So. I should take back my promise to her simply so you won’t be squabbling with her?

Keffria. What will she think of me? Is this really so great a difficulty as you are making it out to be?

Let her go to the one gathering in a pretty dress. That’s all it is.’

‘No.’ It took all her courage to contradict him directly.

But he didn’t know what he was talking about, she told herself frantically.

He didn’t understand, and she’d left it too late to explain it all to him tonight.

She had to make him give in to her, just this once.

‘It’s far more than dancing with a man in a pretty dress.

She’s having dance lessons from Rache. I want to tell her that she must be content with that for now, that she must spend at least a year preparing to be seen as a woman in Bingtown society before she can go out as one.

And I want to tell her that you and I are united in this.

That you thought it over and changed your mind about letting her go. ’

‘But I didn’t,’ Kyle pointed out stubbornly.

He was on his back now, staring up at the ceiling.

He had lifted his hands and laced the fingers behind his head.

Were he standing up, she thought, he’d have his arms crossed on his chest. ‘I think you are making much of a small thing. And… I don’t say this to hurt you, but because I see it more and more in you…

I think you simply do not wish to give up any control of Malta, that you wish to keep her a little girl at your side.

I sense it almost as a jealousy in you, dear.

That she vies for my attention, as well as the attentions of young men.

I’ve seen it before; no mother wishes to be eclipsed by her daughter.

A grown daughter must always be a reminder to a woman that she is not young anymore.

But I think it is unworthy of you, Keffria.

Let your daughter grow up and be both an ornament and a credit to you.

You cannot keep her in short skirts and plaited hair for ever. ’

Perhaps he took her furious and affronted silence for something else, for he turned slightly toward her as he said, ‘We should be grateful she is so unlike Wintrow. Look at him. He not only looks and sounds like a boy, but longs to continue being one. Just the other day, aboard the ship, I came upon him working shirtless in the sun. His back was red as a lobster and he was sulking as furiously as a five year old. Some of the men, as a bit of a jest, had taken his shirts and pegged them up at the top of the rigging. And he feared to go up to get them back. I called him to my chamber and tried to explain to him, privately, that if he did not go up after them, the rest of the crew would think him a coward. He claimed it was not fear that kept him from going after his shirt but dignity. Standing there like a righteous little prig of a preacher! And he tried to make some moral point of it, that it was neither courage nor cowardice, but that he would not risk himself for their amusement. I told him there was very little risk to it, did he but heed what he’d been taught, and again he came back at me with some cant about no man should put another man even to a small risk simply for his own amusement.

Finally, I lost patience with him and called Torg and told him to see the boy up the mast and back to get his shirt.

I fear he lost a great deal of the crew’s respect over that… ’

‘Why do you allow your crew to play boy’s pranks when they ought to be about their work?

’ Keffria demanded. Her heart bled for Wintrow even as she fervently wished her son had simply gone after his own shirt.

If he’d but risen to their challenge, they would have seen him as one of their own.

Now they would see him as an outsider to torment.

She knew it instinctively, and wondered that he had not.

‘You’ve fair ruined the lad by sending him off to the priests.’ Kyle sounded almost satisfied as he said this, and she suddenly realized how completely he had changed the topic.

‘We were discussing, not Wintrow, but Malta.’ A new tack suddenly occurred to her. ‘As you have insisted that only you know the correct way to raise our son in the ways of men, perhaps you should concede that only a woman can know the best way to guide Malta into womanhood.’

Even in the darkness, she could see the surprise that crossed his face at the tartness of her tone.

It was, she suddenly knew, the wrong way to approach him if she wanted to win him to her side.

But the words had been said and she was suddenly too angry to take them back.

Too angry to try to cajole and coax him to her way of thinking.

‘If you were a different type of woman, I might concede the right of that,’ he said coldly.

‘But I recall you as you were when you were a girl. And your own mother kept you tethered to her skirts much as you seek to restrain Malta. Consider how long it took me to awaken you to a woman’s feelings.

Not all men have that patience. I would not see Malta grow up as backward and shy as you were. ’

The cruelty of his words took her breath away.

Their slow courtship, her deliciously gradual hope and then certainty of Kyle’s interest in her were some of her sweetest memories.

He had snatched that away in a moment, turned her months of shy anticipation into some exercise of bored patience on his part, made his awakening of her feelings an educational service he had performed for her.

She turned her head and stared at this sudden stranger in her bed.

She wanted to deny that he had ever spoken such words, wanted to pretend that they did not truly reflect his feelings but had been said out of some kind of spite.

Coldness welled up from within her now. Spite words or true, did not it come to the same thing?

He was not the man she had always believed him to be.

All these years, she had been married to a fantasy, not a real person.

She had imagined a husband to herself, a tender, loving, laughing man who only stayed away so many months because he must, and she had put Kyle’s face on her creation.

Easy enough to ignore or excuse a few flaws or even a dozen when he made one of his brief stops at home.

She had always been able to pretend he was tired, that the voyage had been both long and hard, that they were simply getting readjusted to one another.

Despite all the things he had said and done in the weeks since her father’s death, she had continued to treat him and react to him as if he were the man she had created in her mind.

The truth was that he had never been the romantic figure her fancies had made him.

He was just a man, like any other man. No. He was stupider than most.

He was stupid enough to think she had to obey him. Even when she knew better, even when he was not around to oppose her. Realizing this was like opening her eyes to the sun’s rising. How had it never occurred to her before?