All of those dozen, pressing questions find something to approve of in that answer. Good. It would be a problem if he were to return to the Gallows with an easy lead on her in his company. Not that she's so pessimistic as to think what is true today won't be true tomorrow (to the contrary—she finds it best to trust these simple things; one might risk becoming overly paranoid otherwise), but accidents happen. And of all places in the world, that little fortress in the Kirkwall harbor seems especially prone to them.

What is slightly less satisfied with that answer is her leg under his wandering hand or the grit at the back of her neck, or the thing in her that would like to give him a short series of instructions for when he returns to Kirkwall. Give Bastien her best, be extra rude to Barrow, see that her weekly card game doesn't die out simply because she isn't there to conduct it.

There is a thing which happens and she has lots of practice with, which is going to places and finding herself fond. And then, when the work is finished, simply levering up that up like a stone out of the road and flinging it off into the adjacent field or wood or stream. She has expected prying this one up to be work given the length of time it's laid there.

"That's too bad," she decides, which is simultaneously an assessment of his cat's preternatural limitations, and plenty else.

Ah well. It was a pleasant thought.