Elara had carried the staff for two days before Targan noticed it. She'd burned her initial into the handle three years ago, when she first started counting their meetings in notches down the shaft. The notches had run out of room last winter. She had cut a new line around the base and started over. This morning she planted the staff upright in the dirt outside the hatchling pen, where Targan could not miss it, and waited. He came at a run, the way he always came now, with the boy and the pipe trailing behind him. Four hatchlings screamed in the stone pen. The boy lifted the pipe to his mouth and blew, and the screaming dropped to a whine. Targan saw the staff. He stopped. "Elara." His old dragon circled once overhead and settled on the ridge. "I've got an hour before the pipe gives out again." "You've got the rest of the day," she said. "Walk with me." She pulled the staff from the dirt and started toward the small cabin at the tree line. He had built it for them two springs back and slept in it maybe twenty nights since. She had hung a knotted heart of red and green cord above the door last month. He had not seen it yet. She heard him follow. She did not look back to check. Inside, she shut the door and set the staff across it like a bar. The room smelled of cold ash. She told him she wanted the garden this year. She wanted the dog before the first frost. She wanted a child before she was too tired to chase one. She told him she had packed a bag once and almost gone, and that she would not pack it a fourth time. She would just be gone. She said the word soon was finished between them. He could answer her now or answer the door when she walked through it. Targan looked at the staff across the door. He looked at the notches. He sat down on the bench by the cold hearth and put his hands on his knees. "Aye," he said. "The boy can hold the hatchlings four more days. After that, I find a second rider or the pipe fails and we lose them." He met her eyes. "Give me the four days. Then the garden. Then the rest." She set the staff against the wall and sat beside him. Outside, the pipe started up again, thin and far away. Neither of them moved to the door.