Roland finished fastening his gunbelts before going to open the door. The way they sat low-slung and slack on his hips contrasted sharply with his tailored suit, the style in which he wore his guns being better-suited to worn jeans and hard travel than to silk shirts and sharp-pleated pants. But somehow, it almost worked. They were so much a part of him that, even incongruous as they were, they could only make him look more like himself.

He noted the second gun at her hip, but swallowed the question half-formed. It wasn't hard to guess, with all he had learnt yesterday, whose gun that might be. He wasn't going to salt her wounds by asking. Instead, he just stepped aside to let her in. Unlike his study, which was piled with maps and wax tablets and filled with the various paraphernalia of his duties, his bedroom was neat, almost spartan. Indeed, it looked more like a guest room than most of the rooms he had put her family into. Roland sat down on the bed, taking the opportunity to pick up the hunting horn which had been on top of a cupboard and to fasten it to his belt.

"You look beautiful," he said. It was for something to say more than anything else, but that didn't make it untrue.