Cara considered. “Yes,” she said slowly, “if only to warn those who thought to make trouble for me that they’d be taking on more than they could handle. Who’d want to get on the bad side of god of war or the midwife of death? You might come back as a toad or a slug or a kaprid or something.”

The baby kaprid stirred in Dayton’s arms as he clutched it more tightly to his chest.

“Yes, only to have your head lopped off once you crossed paths with a brute with a sword.”

“They’d kill if we didn’t! But,” she said, holding up a hand to forestall his protests, “we can argue that later. I’m not going to take care of that thing tonight. I’ve got no energy for anything but jabbering.

“And anyway, I don’t even know where you hid my blade,” she added, her lower lip jutting forward ever so slightly. “It’s like you don’t trust me with it.”

“I don’t—not where Cami is concerned, anyway. And it’s only half a sword.”

“Half is enough to do the job. And you still don’t know that it’s a girl.”

“I have faith. It’s what Acolytes are supposed to be good at, right? But my turn. How did you end up Master Chattin’s Apprentice?”

Dayton grinned. “Did he see you whacking at bushes with sticks?”

“No. He wanted payment for killing the rahk that took my sister. I was it.”

Dayton sat bolt upright. “Your family sold you? But that’s !”

He almost bristled with indignation at the injustice.

Cara raised one eyebrow. Outwardly, she wore an expression of vague amusement, but she couldn’t help but be touched at his immediate defense of her younger self.

“There’s the law, and then there’s what’s done. I was the second youngest at seven, the next that needed to get betrothed or apprenticed, and here was a Slayer needing an Apprentice to get his Masters credential.

“If I’d been apprenticed to the Weavers’ Guild, as my mother had been and my siblings after her, it might’ve been years before my work would be good enough to send money back home, and they’d have to pay for my upkeep besides.”

She rubbed at the river stone in her bag.

“This way, they’d be free of debt and of another daughter to feed. And before you start feeling sorry for me, I wanted to go. I wanted to learn how to beat the things that took my favorite sister away and fed her like so much mincemeat to its young.”

She looked pointedly at the whelpling, but it only yawned, smacking its infant incisors.

“No amount of pretty feathers and flying could make up for it treating my family like rabbits in hutches. If I could learn how to do that—how to beat the things and keep someone else from dying—then maybe I’d make it up to her.”

“I bet Ada wouldn’t hold her death against you.”

She gripped the stone so hard, it almost slipped through her fingers. She took a deep breath, held it, released it and the stone. “Well, she’s neither here nor there to tell me different, so I’ll keep on my way. It’s worked well enough. It’s my turn for a question.”

Cara leaned over and began to massage her shin, keeping her face pressed against her thigh so he couldn’t see her bite her lip against the momentary pain.

When it passed, she said, “You talked about the gods claiming Acolytes, and then the Acolytes claiming gods. When would that happen?”

“The Acolytes claiming gods, you mean?”

Cara nodded, her nose pressing into her thigh muscle.

“By the time an Acolyte turns fourteen, they have to be dedicated into the service of one god. If they’re not called specifically, they can choose one that appeals to them most and pursue work in that god’s glory.”

Dayton’s voice took on a hard edge. “If a god didn’t want me as their own, I wasn’t going to go out of my way to beg for their favor.”

The whelpling squawked again. Cara craned her head, still stretching out the stiff muscles of her thigh, and saw Dayton quickly settle the creature down in a nest of dirty rags that might’ve been a robe once. “Sorry, little one.”

As the baby kaprid circled like a puppy in the rags, pulling some pieces closer to suit it, he continued, “The monks gave me an extra year—to give a chance for the gods’ gifts to come through, they said, though I know it’s to give me time to stop being stubborn—before shipping me off to Cadens and Cleric Matimus.

“He works in the court as a confessor and counselor, apparently, but I don’t know that much about him, not even what god he’s dedicated to. Just that I’m supposed to give him that stupid trunk.”

He cast a longing eye at it. “Can we ditch it now?”

“After we’ve carried it so far?” She straightened up and cracked her neck, hearing the tendons pop. “What do you think?”

He sighed. “I guess not. So for my question—”

“Tomorrow,” Cara said quickly, and began to squirm into a reclined position to rest. She squeezed her eyes shut and began to take exaggerated breaths, as if trying to force herself to sleep.

When Dayton didn’t say anything, Cara sighed gustily and cracked open one eye. “Tomorrow, Dayton, I promise. Right now, I’m tired, my leg hurts, and I smell. Let me sleep, at least, and maybe get clean before you ask me what I know you want to know. And I…”

Cara looked outside, where the shadows seeped into the cave from the starry night beyond. “I’d rather not talk about it at night.”

“Cara the Brave, scared of the dark?”

“Not scared, just not stupid. Tomorrow, Dayton.”

“Tomorrow, then.” And he sounded determined, more iron in his voice than she’d have guessed he had in him.

She fell asleep, wondering how she could distract him from asking the questions she wasn’t sure she was quite ready to answer.