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reprimand, Juhrnus stiffened and hung his head. Reisil startled herself with an unexpected surge of defensiveness for the bully who’d made her childhood so miserable. The question deserved an answer.
    “No, of course not. I—But I don’t understand,” Jurhnus said, uneasy fingers stroking his sisalik’s gray-and-green head. The lizard bumped his head encouragingly under Jurhnus’s hand, eyes half-closed.
    “And you don’t need to. The Lady would inform you if you did,” Upsakes said.
    Despite her sudden and alien feeling of protectiveness for Juhrnus against Upsakes’s pomposity, seeing his expression, Reisil had to bite her lips to keep from chortling. How she wished she could be the one to put that look of consternation on his face!
    Sodur frowned at Upsakes, and then turned to Felias and Juhrnus.
    “Come on, both of you. It’s time we announced ourselves. We’ll need a good pile of wood, and you might have to search a ways out. Everything close by was burned on the Lady Day fire.”
    Felias and Juhrnus departed in opposite directions, Juhrnus red-necked and stiff-legged. Luckily neither approached Reisil’s hollow, and she gathered herself to sneak away as soon as chance provided. She did not want to be discovered eavesdropping on the ahaladkaaslane, even accidentally.
    “What was that about?” Sodur asked his companion as he sat cross-legged on the ground, drawing out a small knife and a chunk of wood.
    Upsakes turned a sharp look on Sodur and then gave a gusty sigh, lifting his weirmart down to the ground.
    “Those two are enough to send the Demonlord screaming for mercy. Must they bicker all the time?”
    Sodur chuckled. “Apparently. But did you really mean to hide the wizards’ inability to practice magic in Kodu Riik from them?”
    “No. But I don’t want new ahalad-kaaslane to count on it either. What happened at Mysane Kosk shouldn’t have been possible. And maybe if we hadn’t been so busy congratulating ourselves on our invulnerability, we might have done something to prevent the massacre. All those people, women and children, the weak and the sick, all dead.”
    The bitterness and pain in his voice was raw and hard to witness. Reisil felt her throat tighten, knowing this was too private a moment for her to be intruding on. But neither could she escape without calling attention to herself.
    Sodur’s hands dropped into his lap and he gave Upsakes a steady look. “It wasn’t your fault. You had no idea the wizards could attack like that when you sent those people there. None of us did. We all would have done the same thing.”
    Though deeply sincere, the words sounded worn and thin, as if repeated too often.
    “But it was the wrong thing, and everyone in Mysane Kosk paid the price. Because I sent all those refugees there to be safe .”
    The self-recrimination in his voice struck deep in Reisil’s heart and tears rose in her eyes. Pity for him, pity for those who had fled to Mysane Kosk, thinking they’d be safe. Whole families had been slaughtered there.
    “There isn’t anything that says the Wizard Guild couldn’t do something like that again. We can’t just assume the Lady is strong enough to hold against their attack. She wasn’t last time. We can’t have new ahaladkaaslane wandering about thinking we’re safe from the Patversemese wizards when it isn’t true!” Upsakes strode up and down, chopping the air with his hands, while Sodur looked on from his seat on the ground. At last Upsakes paused and hunkered down on the ground facing his friend. He pulled a small bottle from the pouch at his waist and took a swallow, making a face at the taste. Sodur watched him return the bottle to its pouch and lean back against a spreading maple tree, eyes closed.
    Rustling green silence drifted between them for a long minute. Bees buzzed in the clover and robins twittered overhead. Sodur bent over his wood, scraping his knife over the pale wood in his hand.
    “A treaty might be