Sam, along with a few sausage links and a handful of dates.
By the time she stepped out of the larder, Sam had managed to get a small fire going. He grinned up at her as she approached. “You look a bit ghostly in this light,” he said. Then his eyes fastened on the bread in her hand.
“Here.” She tossed it to him. “It ain’t cursed or nothing. Eat up.”
He needed no further urging. While he tore into the loaf, she built up his fire and made a flat place among the embers. Then she found a pan and set the sausages on to cook, passing Sam the dates to keep him occupied until they were ready.
Only after she’d turned the sausages did she stop to think about the smoke currently traveling up the oven chimney. Would Soran see it from the tower?
“You can’t keep this fire going all day,” she said, speaking over her shoulder. “But you can stay here until sundown.”
“And you’ll stay with me?” Sam asked around a mouthful. He was sitting on the floor close to the fire, one hand full of dates, the other still clutching the end of the loaf. “Boggarts, Nelle, you don’t mean to leave me alone in this old tomb, do you?”
She cast him a quick glance. Using a fold of her skirt to protect her hand, she pulled the pan off the fire. After setting the sausages aside to cool, she started breaking the fire down. “I can’t stay. He’ll keep searching until he finds me, you know. He might be on his way here even now.”
Sam’s face hardened. He set the bread down on his knee and gave her a penetrating stare. “Didn’t you once tell me you don’t belong to no one?” One eyebrow slid up his forehead. “Sounds to me like this Miphato owns you.”
“He ain’t like that,” Nelle snapped, glaring at him. “He’s not Cloven or Gaspard, he’s just . . . He’s gonna be worried. You saw those monsters on the beach this morning. Roseward ain’t safe right now.”
“Is it ever safe?” Sam leaned toward her. He set aside the last of the bread and reached as though to take her hand again. “I want to help you, Ginger. I risked everything to get here, to bring you Mage Gaspard’s message. And I want to help. When it’s safe to travel again, you’re coming with me. We’ll get whatever it is you were sent for. Between the two of us we can manage one mage, I’m sure. And then we’ll—”
Nelle stood and backed away from him quickly. “I’d like my cloak back, Sam.”
He gaped up at her. Then, shutting his jaw with a snap, he worked the clasp at his throat, unslung the folds of velvet from around his shoulders, and passed them to her. He started shivering almost at once, but for the moment she didn’t care.
“Feel free to wander about,” she said as she donned the cloak. “Find a blanket or something. Get some rest. I’ve got to get back to the lighthouse now, but I’ll return before sundown.”
“And if you don’t?” Sam asked, one eyebrow upraised.
Nelle drew a long breath. “If I can’t get here in time, you got to get yourself out. Go down to the harbor—you’ll see it from the cliff’s edge. There’s a bunch of old buildings there. Take whatever food you can find with you, blankets and such. And . . . and try not to go to sleep.”
He frowned up at her, pale and strained in the half-light making its way through the briar-choked kitchen windows. Then he stood and reached a hand to her. His face was so unlike the old Sam she’d once known, it wrung her heart to see it.
“Don’t go,” he said. “Stay with me. Please.”
But she shook her head. “I’ve got to. It’s the only way.”
Before he could catch hold of her, before he could utter another word of protest, she grabbed her satchel off the nearest worktable where she’d dropped it and hurried to the door. She ducked out into the tangle of brambles, pulled the door tightly shut behind her, and prayed to all seven of the gods that Sam would have the good sense to listen to her, just this once.
When Soran spied that wild red mane in the distance, his heart surged in his breast. He’d walked almost all the way around the island and was half convinced that Kyriakos had found the girl and spirited her away while