“You scared the starlight out of me, Tuc!” Drunais complained as she regained her composure and the seal king bellied himself up onto the rock beside her. Then she sobbed, “He left me!”

“Your har’un?” asked Tuc, using the Fey word for the English. Drunais could only nod silently in response, then asked plaintively, “Why would he leave me?”

“A ship,” Tuc told her, wondering why he didn’t keep his bewhiskered nose out of it.

Drunais thought for a moment, then decided all news was bad news. “He’ll meet some golden-haired harlot and leave me!” she wailed. “And I don’t even know what a harlot is!”

If she had been one of his wives Tuc would have rubbed his chin on her head and offered her a fish, but he didn’t think that was how land-dwellers did things.

Drunais gripped her lute and began to play.