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“Asha.”

“It’s yours.”

“You kept it.”

“For you.” She presses the wrapped cup down between the folded clothes. “You can bring it back when you visit. Or use another one. We do own several.”

I laugh and wipe my face with the heel of my hand.

She hugs me, which stops me doing anything more embarrassing. Then she hugs Daurek, which surprises him so much that he takes a moment to bend.

“You can come again,” she tells him.

“I would like to.”

“Bring her.”

“I’ll bring him,” I say.

Asha smiles at me over his arm. “That will do.”

After three days on the road home, the Heartwood smells of rain and supper.

Ziku meets us in the courtyard. Reivaka has told him not to ask too many questions, and he tells us this before asking how many would be too many. Daurek gives him my bag to carry upstairs. It occupies his hands, which does nothing for the rest of him.

In my room, I unwrap the blue cup and put it on the writing ledge beside Asha’s letters. My comb is where I left it. The little wooden bowl holds my spare hair ties. Outside, the fig has made a new leaf.

Daurek stands at the courtyard door, looking pleased by the tree.

“It survived without you,” I tell him.

“Reivaka watered it.”

“So you did leave instructions.”

“One.”

I go to him. He puts his arm around me while we look at the pool, its warm surface broken by one drifting petal.

Daurek takes me to the house above the northern lake before the week is out. In the morning, I wake with his arm around me and the shutters open to the water. He asks if I like it. I kiss him while he is still waiting for the answer.

Back at the Heartwood, Senna brings me a quarrel she would like help settling. I hear enough to be interested, name my fee and arrange to meet her after breakfast the next day.

Then I return to the cup of tea I had been drinking with Reivaka. She is telling me a story about Daurek, a very young tree and an argument he believed he could win. I want to hear the end.

My afternoon is free. I mean to keep it that way.

Daurek finds me before I have decided how to spend it. He stands in the doorway, sunlight catching the edges of the leaves at his shoulders, and looks at me for a moment before he speaks.

“Come with me.”

“Where?”

“I found something I think you’ll like.”

“Is it another fig?”

“No.”