[Envinyatar]

Derufin waited while she considered his offer. He half expected her to say, ‘No’. She barely knew him. He tapped his fingers quietly on the sides of the mug he had grasped in his hands. Perhaps he should offer to ask Piosenniel to go with them.

‘Yes, that would make it less awkward, you ninny,’ he told himself. ‘What were you thinking, to be so bold? This isn’t your style.’

His mind wandered down conflicting paths. Not a man to be uncertain of himself, he found this somewhat disconcerting. Mentally revising his approach for the fifth or perhaps sixth time, he almost missed, again, the words she was speaking.

‘Yes,’ she said, her grey eyes looking at him with some amusement. ‘Yes,’ she said again. ‘Let me just tell Pio where I’m going, and I’ll fetch my cloak.’ She rose from her chair, heading for the kitchen. ‘Can you bring a small bucket and a cloth to cover it,’ she called back over her shoulder.

Derufin nodded his head, saying that yes, he could do that. ‘Clay,’ he said to himself, finishing up the last swallow of ale in his mug. ‘The woman wants clay . . . and she shall have it.’ He shook his head, trying vainly to remember what she had said about it and why it was so important.

‘Just play along, man,’ he told himself, walking out to the stable. ‘Sooner or later it’s bound to come clear without you asking and making a fool of yourself again.’