"Yer teeth are fine," he said.
A pause. He sensed it before it turned into words, the nature of her silence as she decided what to do with something he had said.
"Was that," she said slowly, "a compliment?"
"It was an observation."
"It was the closest thing to a compliment ye've produced in me presence in the entire duration of our acquaintance. I'm goin' to mark the day."
"Daenae."
"I already have."
The clouds were thickening over the peaks. Fergus looked at them and did not like what he saw. The mist had been sitting on the high ridge since morning, the heavy, patient kind that didn'tburn off with the sun because there was no sun to burn it. By midday, it had come down.
It came down the way it always did in the Highlands, not all at once but in slow, rolling walls of grey that swallowed the path ahead in stages. First, the far ridge. Then the tree line. Then the road ahead of them. The temperature dropped with it, the air turning close and damp, the kind of cold that was not sharp but was thorough.
Fergus slowed his horse. He heard the river before seeing it through the mist—a low, rolling sound that grew steadily until it became a proper roar, the voice of water fed by three days of rain and still not done.
"Stop," he called to the driver. "Daenae get out."
He dismounted. His boots sank into the softened earth. He walked along the path, the sound of water growing louder with each step, until the mist thinned enough to reveal the crossing.
It was dangerous. Not impossible, not for a horse and a man who knew what he was doing, but still risky. The river had widened and was flowing with the dull, deceptively calm pace of water that had somewhere to go. The usual ford stones were hidden beneath a foot of grey, swiftly moving current. He stood at the edge, watched it, and calculated.
The carriage door opened behind him.
"I said, daenae get out," he called at her, without turning.
"I wasnae askin' permission."
She appeared at his shoulder. She had her cloak pulled tight, her eyes already on the water, and she looked at it the way he had.
"The carriage willnae make it," he said. "The current will catch the wheels."
"Aye." She studied the far bank. "How deep at the center?"
"Stirrup-height. Maybe more."
"So we ride."
"Ye ride with me."
Her chin came up. He had learned to read that movement. "I have a horse, it's part of the ones riding the carriage."
"Yer horse isnae trained for crossings like this. Mine is."
"Neither am I," she said, "and yet here we are." She turned and walked back toward the carriage before he could answer, spoke briefly to the driver in a low, clear voice, and then went to her horse. She mounted with a competence that was, he noted without pleasure, entirely inconvenient for his argument.
"I'm ridin'," she said from the saddle. "Unless ye'd like to spend more time tellin' me I cannae."
He mounted, then looked at her. She looked back with the expression of someone who had already won and was patiently waiting for it.
"Stay at me shoulder," he said. "If the horse goes, go with it willingly. Daenae fight it."
"Understood."
They entered the river.
