arm around her waist and rolled her under him as he laughed. "All right, all right. No Raven would think of working wizardry, and Ravens don't live for centuries."
"That's right," said Seraph, burying her face against his neck. "So Hennea is not a century-old wizard - nor is she the Shadowed. We would know - Jes would know."
Tier rolled to his side and was still for a while. She thought he'd fallen asleep and was halfway there herself when he spoke again.
"If Hennea joined you to help bring down the Path, why is she still here? Why isn't she looking for her clan to rejoin them? You said that the Path didn't kill them all, only her Raven lover."
Seraph started to answer him, but he continued. "It was Jes who made me question it. I think if she felt she was free to go, she would have left us as soon as she could simply because of Jes."
"What do you mean?" Seraph asked frowning. Tier was better with people than she was, but she was certain Hennea was attracted to Jes. "She likes Jes."
"She loves him," he said, with a certainty Seraph didn't feel. "Which is why she would leave if she could."
"That doesn't make sense." She hated it when Tier did that. She didn't doubt he was right - he usually was correct about people - she just hated it when he went out of his way to be obtuse, which was why he did it.
Tier grinned, his teeth flashing in the dimly lit room. "Not to you, my love. You take the world and shake it into a form that suits you. Most of us have too much self-doubt. She's worried about him. Not just that he's too young, but that he is Guardian. He's in the middle of a change - you must have noticed it."
"Yes." Seraph sternly repressed the fear that thought caused her. "He switches back and forth more often, and it's faster." She said the next part fast as if that could keep it from being true. "And I don't think the Guardian ever leaves entirely anymore."
"Jes, as Guardian, is the one who told us what lived in the smith's well," he told her. "He told me he smelled it. Has Jes ever encountered a mistwight?"
Seraph's fingers started to play nervously with the blankets. "Not that I know. There aren't any around here, and we didn't run into any on the way to Taela."
"That's what I thought. I asked him how he knew, and the Guardian deliberately switched to our Jes just long enough to tell me he didn't know, then switched back."
"Why would he do that?"
"I think that if the Guardian had told me he didn't know, he would have been lying."
"The Guardian knows things that Jes doesn't know?" Seraph groped for Tier's hand; when she found it she held it tightly. "That's not a good thing. If Jes is to survive, he and the Guardian have to be one." That's what her father had told her Guardian brother anyway.
"I'll talk to him," said Tier, as if talk could solve all problems.
Seraph let it make her feel better anyway. For Tier, talk solved a lot more problems than it ever had for her.
Tier tugged her until her head was on his shoulder, then pulled the bedding over her shoulders.
Hennea loved Jes. Seraph was fairly certain that Jes felt the same way, though it was sometimes difficult to tell.
"She's never said so much, but I don't think she has anywhere else to go," Seraph told him. "I don't know what Jes said to her to get her to come with us, though Lehr told me that at first she was going to go with Benroln. I know what would make her stay, though."
"What is that?"
"Duty. She's a Raven, Tier. She has responsibilities that supersede love and family. Somewhere out there is a Shadowed who wants to destroy you, my love. Doubtless he is hunting you down - and it is her duty to be here for the kill."
Tier laughed, bouncing her head gently. "His or mine?"
"Go to sleep, you," she scolded, to hide her worry.
When she and Tier approached the house the next morning, the priest was sitting on the porch bench with his eyes shut.
"You look tired, Karadoc," said Tier, waving at some people who'd shouted greeting to him from the fields, where they were taking down tents.
Karadoc's bright brown eyes opened. "You're a fine one to talk. From the way you're walking,