Renata stopped in mid-stride. She would need to get some things straight. "Few know better how fraught the matter of succession can be," she said gently. "Your successor is not here. If he shared this talent of yours, to resonate and commune with forest, then that interests me; else I need hear nothing of him. I would leave fireside stories for those who can take pleasure in the telling, and the hearing."

She took his hands again, that light fingertip-touch. "And I would not have you call me 'lady', Robin. When you do, I hear it in our language, vai domna they would say, and I half look about for Comyn Council. We are not in the Seven Domains and you are no vassal of mine." She spoke as one used to being heeded. "I am here to work, not to command; when I am at work, those who work with me call me freely by my name. I would have you do the same." On this she would not budge. It was simply too uncomfortable to be ascribed an honorific. "I would not be ... set apart," she said.