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the servants.
    She stepped behind the screen and began stripping rapidly out of her travel-stained clothing. Perhaps it would be best if she answered his question; it would give him a graceful way out of answering hers. Now, what had he asked?
    “It seemed best,” she said with playful obscurity, stepping into the tub.
    “What seemed best?” From the sound of his voice, Wolf had moved from where she’d last seen him, curled before the fire with his eyes closed—a pose that seemed to reassure the servants, who had eyed him uneasily.
    “That I leave here and not come back.”
    “Best for whom?” He is closer now, she thought, smiling to herself.
    Sinking farther down in the luxuriously large bathing tub, she rested her head on the wide rim. Should she give him the short answer or the long one? She laughed soundlessly, then schooled her voice to a bland tone. “Let me tell you a story.”
    “Of course,” he replied dryly.
    This time Aralorn laughed aloud, a great deal of her usual equanimity restored by the hot water and the macabre voice of her love. She chose to forget, if only for a while, the reason that she was here, in her old bedchamber. “Once,” she began in her best storyteller manner, “and not so long ago, there was a lord’s son who, for all that he was still but a young man, had already won a reputation for unusual cunning in war. Additional notoriety came to him from a source no one had reckoned upon.”
    She waited.
    At last, with a bare touch of amusement, he said, “Which was?”
    “’Twas a night in midwinter with a full moon in the air when a servant heard a thunderous knocking on the keep door. A man clothed in a close-woven wool cloak stood before him, carrying a covered basket. ‘Take this to the lord’s son,’ he said, thrusting the basket at the servant. As the servant closed his hand on the handle, the man in the cloak stepped away from the door and leapt into the air, shaping himself into a hawk.” She splashed her toes, enjoying the feeling of the water washing away dried sweat. Bathing in a tub wasn’t quite as good as the Sianim bath-houses, but it was a lot more private. “The servant took it to the lord’s son and described the unusual messenger who had delivered it. The young man removed the cover from the basket, revealing a girl-child with the peculiar gray-green eyes common to the race of shapeshifters. Next to her, tucked between a blanket and the rough weave of the basket, was a note. He read it, then threw it into the fire.
    “Taking the baby into his own hands, he held her up until she was at a height with him. ‘This,’ he announced, ‘is my daughter.’
    “He introduced the baby to her three-year-old brother and her grandfather. Her grandfather was not pleased to find out his son had been meeting a woman in the woods; but then, her grandfather was not best pleased with anything and, as it happened, died of apoplexy when he was served watered wine at a neighbor’s banquet only a few months later, and so had little influence in his granddaughter’s life.
    “The young man, now lord, decided he needed a wife to care for his children and to bear heirs for the estate. Presently, he found one, several years younger than himself. She looked at the trembling waifs and promptly took them under her wing. The children were delighted, and so was the lord—so much so that in due time there were twelve additional siblings to play with.”
    Aralorn ignored Wolf’s choked-off laugh and explained blandly, “In most households, the life of a bastard child is miserable at best. I can’t remember not knowing that I was illegitimate, but I never minded it much. As for being half shapeshifter . . . I’ve already told you that my father did his best to make sure that I was aware of my mother’s people. Other than that, it was no more than an unusual talent I had. The people in the Rethian mountains are used to magic—most of them can work at least some of the simpler