Nath woke hours later, lying flat on his back beneath a fur. His eyes adjusted, taking in the silhouette of tent poles, stretched hides, and a dimmed iron lantern dangling above him. He could see his clothes on the ground, tabard folded neatly beside his boots.

His side itched. A bandage ran across his bare chest up over one shoulder. Gingerly, Nath poked it, feeling a dull prickle across the skin underneath. He inhaled to test the strength of his lungs and found he could take a full breath without pain. Someone had healed him.

Nath turned his head and saw the faint glint of golden hair in the dark. The memory of the woman in the water rushed back to him. He knew it was her just by the shape of the shoulder moving beneath a thick fur. It hitched up and down with small, soft sounds.

She’s crying, Nath realized.

He knew only as much about women as his mother allowed. Then whatever Anryniel hinted at when he snuck Nath from the monastery to hunt. Both had told him Ammar’s knights owed their steel to their mothers and their honor to their wives. Queen Neith-Anne told him it was his duty to protect women from danger and give them children. Anryniel told him children were the danger. Every woman lives her life in fear over children -- fear of them, fear for them. See how Mama weeps over us?

“Why are you crying?” Nath hadn’t meant to say it, but the words tumbled from his mouth.

She went still at the sound of his voice. Nath thought maybe he’d woken her from a dream. He twisted onto his side and put a hand on the curve just above the fur blanket. He felt a rigid tightness there as if he held a strung bow.

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Maybe she doesn’t understand me, Nath thought. Perhaps she wasn’t Ammarish, but someone from Nynomath crossing over the Witch’s Teeth. Villagers to either side foraged in the hills for food while their armies gobbled up everything in the fields below. Maybe this poor woman found herself trapped here by the same spell that had almost pulled him into the pool.

The mages’ tongue wasn’t easy to speak, but Nath had learned it well enough to read their treaties. He chose a string of familiar words in Nymauti and tried to shape them into something that sounded polite and kind: “Lady, why do you cry?”

The shoulder beneath his hand stayed taut for a dozen heartbeats. He felt it tremble when she released a long, shuddering sob. Nath pressed close to her and saw that she shook her head in answer. He put his hand across her chest and pulled her back against him. He’d never held a woman before. It surprised him how good it felt.

“Was it a man?” he asked. Nath was not quite sure where the idea had come from, but once it seized him, it would not let go.

He felt the shift of her head against him when she nodded. Nath wormed his other arm beneath her, ignoring the ache from his wound. He held her against him while another sob claimed whatever she might have been about to say. She was such a little thing, he could have crushed her if he squeezed.

Nath went on holding her and ignored the urge to do anything more. She’d saved his life. The thought that she’d done it for some other man who’d taken advantage of her rolled across his mind like a fog of rage. He owed his life and his honor both to her, now.

“I will kill him for you,” he promised.

She didn’t nod at that, but her sobs lessened. Nath kept his arms around her, feeling the tightness in her limbs dissolve. Her breathing slowed and soon he felt himself grow drowsy listening to the steady sound of it. He went to sleep with her head tucked beneath his chin and dreamed of dying that way, to be buried in the King’s Crypt with his arms around her. Much better than lying beside his father and brothers.