He tips his head, conceding as if the point has been fairly taken. “When I was younger. I wanted to see Marrow from the highest point. I climbed up to the top of a guard tower on the wall. Turns out the guards spend more time playing dice than watching for trouble. It was amazing being up above everything, like the problems on the ground were somehow less when seen from above. I also nearly broke my legs getting back down.”

  Her eyes soften, just a fraction. “Nearly.”

  “Nearly,” he agrees. “I am fond of nearly. Nearly has kept me alive more times than I can count.”

  She waits. He notices that about her. The patience. Happy to take her time to draw everything in.

  So he gives her another small truth.

  “I used to sleep up on my roof in the summer,” he says. “The tiles held the heat, and if you lay flat with your arms open you could almost convince yourself you were bird. When the walls of my rooms felt too close, I would go up there and tell myself I was clever for finding my way to freedom.”

  “It sounds like you do not enjoy being stuck inside,” she says quietly.

  “I don’t mind being indoors so much,” he replies. “It is feeling trapped that gives me the need to go, and just be somewhere else.”

  That earns him a look that tells him she understands more than he meant to offer. He looks away, lets the clatter of wheels and the creak of wood fill the space between them for a few breaths. The plan is working. This is the point where he should ask a propping question, the one that draws more out of her then she planned.

  Yet. He doesn’t.

  To his mild surprise, he finds he would rather hear her speak by invitation than pressure. Truly interested in what she might offer up freely.

  She eventually speaks.

  “When I was very small,” she says, voice steady, “there was a wind that came from the sea and curled through the cracks in our shutters at night. It smelled of salt and jasmine and something wild. When it blew, my mother would put a bowl of water under the window and say the wind liked to see itself. In the morning there would be dust on the surface, and we would call it star sand. I kept some in a little paper twist until the paper fell apart.”

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  He is in. Now the back and forth with banter and humor. It takes time but now there is a chip in the wall, it is only a matter of widening the crack until he has her.

  “Once,” he says, “I stole sugared almonds from a stall because a girl I wanted to impress told me she liked them. I ate half the bag on the walk to meet her and realised, somewhere between the third and fourth handful, that I liked her far less than I liked almonds. That was the day I learned I am not as romantic as I thought.”

  She laughs. Quick and unguarded. It crosses her face like light and is gone just as fast, but he has seen it. He could see in the small smiles how beautiful she would be when she finally laughed. He allows himself the small satisfaction of it.

  He tells another story. Then another. Nothing too deep. Nothing that could ruin the jovial mood. He turns the questions back toward her and waits, patiently, watching her answers for clues. For anything that might give him a hook to use later and fish out the real answers.

  He asks what food she misses from her childhood and she tells him about a spiced bread baked only at midwinter. The dough thick and sticky. The scent clinging to hair and sleeves. The way the novices cheered when the loaves came out whole, as if something had been won rather than merely finished baking. He asks if anyone ever burned them and she says yes, the same priestess every year, because she talked too much and would leave them in too long.

  He asks what work she did at the Temple. She spoke of doing laundry as a novice. Then bandages as she grew old enough. The pages of reading everyday, not just of scripture but of the world. He asks if she enjoyed being told what to do and expects an easy no. She surprises him by saying yes, not always but in the end. It was a simple life of order and faith and she loved how safe it made her feel.

  He offers a foolish tale about a purse filled with pebbles that taught him to keep clear of men who smile kindly while watching your hands. He follows it with a memory of a dancer in a square who made men blush with silk ribbons and convinced them their own coins would be better off in her hands. He tried the trick, but was not nearly pretty enough to get away with it.

  Their talk wanders on purpose. At first it stays on safe ground, skirting the deeper places, then edging closer by degrees. The wagon rocks. The road rises and falls. The sun slips behind a cloud and returns. Somewhere in the middle of that ordinary passage, he realises he has stopped treating the conversation as a tool.

  He keeps forgetting to choose his truths for effect.

  He gives them because he wants to. Because her listening makes the telling easy. Because he finds himself curious about what she will say next, rather than what he can draw out of her.

  He does not chase her to open up her secrets. He lets her keep them. He keeps the conversation easy going. She does the same for him.

  Silence begins to take its place between them, short stretches set into the day like beads on a string. It feels easy. He can sit with his thoughts and feel her there without the sense of being weighed or watched. He notices, with some surprise, that he does not want to leave the wagon to collect a scrap of solitude somewhere else.

  Her presence does not drain him the way others do.