‘Now I need bait.’ Hook in hand Llew flicked the grass with her fingers to see if she could stir anything to life. Tasked with catching a fresh dinner, she was determined to impress.

‘Like what?’ Jonas asked, crouching beside her. Alvaro followed him down on her other side.

‘Like . . .’ Llew said, looking about. ‘That.’ She pointed at finely flickering grass blades where she had just caught a glimpse of a cricket going into hiding.

Jonas squinted to see what she was pointing at. The cricket leaped from its cover, disappearing into another clump of the yellow native grass. The grass shuddered and Jonas flung out his hand.

‘Like . . .’ He opened his fist, clutching the creature’s powerful hind legs between the knuckles of two fingers. ‘This?’

Llew grinned at him.

‘That’s spittin’ distance to cheatin’, that is,’ said Alvaro.

Jonas raised an eyebrow dismissively at him.

Llew carefully took the cricket and grimaced while slicing the insect’s head off with the hook. It wasn’t her favorite part of fishing, but it was necessary – she’d rather they died from a quick decapitation than writhed around with a hook through them, no matter how much more appealing that might be to the fish.

‘Usually, catching the bait is as much a challenge as catching dinner,’ she said, threading the hook through the fleshy abdomen. ‘There were a few hungry nights I could have done with you around.’

The water downstream from the swimming hole filled the air with a babble loud enough to drown out the loose stones shifting under their feet and to cover their approach from over-sensitive fish that Llew hoped had returned since their earlier swim. She stepped up to the water’s edge, let out her horsehair line, and set about her usual performance of teasing the fish with light flicks of her bait on the surface. She sensed Jonas step up close behind her left shoulder. He blocked what breeze there was, and the warmth emanating from him gave her a heady feeling not unlike that provided by his small bottle of liquor.

Alvaro placed himself by Llew’s right shoulder. He started to say something but, with a raised hand, Llew demanded silence of them both as they waited for the fish to grow brave enough to investigate the insect touching down on the water’s surface.

Little more than an hour later, Llew had caught four sizable fish, which the three of them had scaled and gutted, releasing the entrails into the water to be washed away to feed more fish downstream.

‘So, why were you leaving Cheer?’ Aris asked, tucking into the now boiled fish. Llew wished they had a skillet and a little oil but, even boiled, the fish was a welcome change.

‘My . . . friend accused me of murdering his boss. I figured it’d only be a matter of time before the law tracked me down and hung me for it.’ Less than an hour, but they didn’t need to know that. ‘I didn’t do it.’ She eye-balled each of them.

Anya nodded. She might not have lived on the streets, but she would have known something about the ways of the law in Cheer. If someone of her standing had been accused, there would have been a trial. Lucky for Llew, it seemed that in her excitement about her impending trip, the news of the hanging of the two young thieves had skipped Anya’s notice. She watched the other girl carefully for signs of ringing bells, but it seemed Anya had remained sheltered from such events.

‘So, you cut your hair and left your home town, that it?’ Aris was savvy. He knew Llew’s one-of-the-boys act wasn’t new.

‘My pa didn’t like me as a girl. Said I reminded him too much of my ma.’ She sensed everyone’s mood change. She supposed it was sad for her pa to feel that way, but she had little time for his feelings anymore. ‘And by the time he went missing, I already knew what happened to girls on the street. I didn’t want that, so I stayed as a boy. I hardly knew different by then, anyway.’

Aris nodded, then his eyes narrowed. ‘Didn’t happen to know anything about that witch we were questioned over just out of Cheer, did you?’

Llew felt her insides constrict and she concentrated very hard on not letting it show. She shook her head as assertively as she could, which probably just made her look as guilty as she was trying not to appear. Aris’s gaze lingered long enough that she nearly peed herself, but he said no more on the subject and soon returned his attention to his fish. He congratulated her on the catch. She tried not to beam too broadly – just enough for the appreciation of the fish.

Watch duty was as unpleasant as it had been the first night. Unfamiliar animals prowled the forest floor, and she now had the added fear that they were surrounded by Aghacian natives; this was not helped by the occasional scuffle through the trees that sounded human-sized. Again the air lost all heat soon after sun-down, and, even in her jacket, Llew spent most of her awake time shivering and she didn’t look forward to trying to return to sleep.

The task of rousing Cassidy without waking anyone else wasn’t easy, but she managed it eventually and headed for her own bedroll.

Shivering in the chill night air, she stopped before the sleeping Jonas and recalled snuggling in the arms of Kynas on cold winter evenings. They had been unsettling times. Being warm should have allowed her to relax, but being so close to Kynas and his ever groping hands did not a pleasant night’s sleep make. While she had traded the skin-crawling for the cold in Kynas’s case, she was seriously considering otherwise this time. Besides, Jonas was at least nice to look at. Maybe the rest wouldn’t be bad, either.

Of course he would expect something in return, that was the nature of things. You traded what you had for what they had: and he had warmth. Technically they were sharing heat, but Kynas had always made it clear that he gave more than she did and therefore the deficit ran in his favor. In Jonas’s case, maybe it would help with the whole matter of not putting a knife in her if the truth about what she was came out, too. Maybe.

She shrugged off her jacket, placed it on the ground nearby and tugged off her shoes, hopping about in an effort to remain balanced on one foot on the frosty damp ground. She knelt before him and peeled back his bedroll. He clung to the tightly woven wool, but with a little pressure Llew had him sleepily making room for her. Some part of her wondered if he knew it was her or if, in the fog of sleep, he was imagining his wife joining him. She didn’t dwell on it long; she’d been up against her mother’s ghost almost her entire life and lost. Anyway, this was just about getting a comfortable night’s sleep. That was all.

Jonas wore only his shirt and long-johns, and when Llew pressed back into his chest she was rewarded with immediate heat radiating down the length of her spine and permeating through her body. Relaxing, she settled herself in closer, fitting her rump into the fold of his hips. His arm drooped lazily over her and he gave an unconscious welcoming hug and relaxed again, the steady pulse of his breathing interrupted by one contented sigh.

As was expected in these situations, Llew brought her hand up behind her, found a gap between long-john buttons and slid her fingers inside, but as she touched the coarse hair the arm that was over her drew back and a strong hand gripped her wrist. He withdrew her hand and, linking his fingers with hers, resumed his casual embrace so that, instead of pleasuring him, she found herself captive to a warm cuddle.

Llew was confused. He was a man, she was a girl and they were beside one another. Usually that meant groping and nakedness. Was there something wrong with him? He shuffled back to remove the growing pressure against her lower back. Nothing physically wrong with him, then.

Pondering the quirks of men, Llew fell into a deep, pleasantly warm slumber.

As Llew passed him, Aris stood up from tending the fire and strode back to Jonas, who was untangling himself from his bedding. No matter how much she strained, though, she couldn’t hear their words. Whatever was being said, Aris didn’t look happy. His voice rose enough so they all knew Jonas was being reprimanded, but his words still weren’t clear to anyone not standing right in front of him. Jonas looked like a kicked puppy by the time Aris was finished. Llew watched Aris return to the fire and restrained herself from glaring at him when he looked up at her. His expression wasn’t clear. She still felt like she’d done something wrong. She supposed she had: girls in polite company did not share their bed with young men, and despite their need to sleep outdoors, she supposed she was in polite company.