Her hands travel with him as he moves nearer, palms flattening across his front and the fingers of one hand anchoring the edge of that amulet otherwise half hidden by and swaying against the tunic's lacings.

"That's a shame," she says, characteristically graveled and low. In that narrowing space, Fitcher's eyes are very dark and her examination keen. Her hands are warm through his clothes. The ivory colored pipe remains tucked behind her ear and about them, the long dry grass rasps under the influence of the breeze cutting up off the Waking Sea.

"But say you do. What then?"