His thought had been to burst in on the king in the hall, flaunting his escape from treachery, defying him openly before his sons and his other sworn men. But at the moment sleep seemed even better. He tried to remember precisely what he had planned to say.

As he started out the stable door, there was a quick step outside, and then Karin was in his arms.

She pressed her face against his chest, filthy and sweaty as he was, and for a second he felt her shoulders quivering under his hands. But then she lifted her face, cheeks smudged but eyes clear.

“I knew you would escape alive,” she said in a voice that just barely did not tremble. “I went to the Weaver who lives by the cliff and burned an offering. But- But dare you be here? They’ll say you killed the men unprovoked.”

He pulled her back into the stables and kissed her slowly and thoroughly. “I did not kill anyone. Did the king boast to you that I would be dead?”

“Of course not,” she said sharply, as if irritated for a moment. “It was only because he has been acting so oddly this last week that I was watching, and I saw Gizor One-hand and those thugs of his slip away-even Hadros may not have known when they left.”

“The king must have hoped at a minimum I’d be outcast for wounding or killing one of them. Maybe he intended to get rid of Gizor and me at the same time.”

They were talking in low voices, their arms tight around each other. “But are you sure they really meant to kill you?” she murmured. “After all- You escaped.”

He pulled his lips into a thin line. “Are you doubting the strength of my voima when it’s three against one?”

She shook her head hard. She had hair the color of wheat fields in July, gold tinged with russet, and it was undone and tangled as though she had been up all night.