Page 96 of Bought By the Green Man

Daurek takes mine, and we leave them there.

The path is dry beneath the trees. I lift my face to the light coming through the canopy. Somewhere ahead, Ziku has begun telling the first people we meet what happened. His version includes considerably more of himself than I remember.

“Should we correct him?” I ask.

“Reivaka will reach him.”

“That is a comforting thought.”

Daurek smiles. I slip my arm around his and walk so that I brush him with every step.

At the Heartwood, someone has brought a table into the courtyard. There are bowls of fruit, a jar of spiced liquor and a loaf so large that it has been carried out on a board. The woman who held the blue wool yesterday waves me over.

“You’ll want a piece before they find the honey.”

She puts one into my hand, still warm. I look back for Daurek and find him being drawn into an argument about where to put another bench. He points to a shaded place. The men move the bench there and immediately sit on it, leaving him standing.

He catches me watching and lifts one shoulder.

I take him some bread.

“Your reward,” I say.

He breaks off a piece and offers it to me.

“I have my own.”

“I know.”

I eat his anyway. He watches my mouth while I do it. The grain at his cheek has caught the afternoon light, and I remember kissing that exact place last night.

Around us, people sit down to eat. Harl calls for someone to bring Senna a chair. She tells him she can find one without his help, then takes the one he has fetched. Edrin arrives with Reivaka and accepts a cup of liquor. His witnesses have already found the bread.

I had thought there would be a moment when I knew what to do with all this happiness. Instead, I keep catching myself looking at Daurek and smiling for no reason I need to explain.

He is doing the same.

Later, when the first drum begins in the hall, I put down my cup and take his arm.