'No, what you said was "fish", not "mother". Carry the "aa" sound more.' Lanna bent back to her task of separating out the seedlings, pushing in vain at the grey mud on her elbows and knees.

'I don't want to confuse mother and fish,' he muttered. 'But I'm not sure my tongue can move like yours.'

There was a pleasant breeze from the south that carried a slight chill against the suffocating warmth. Lanna paused to enjoy the cool caress over her cheeks.

Last night the village council had come to a consensus. There could be no more delay. To get a third harvest before the brief freeze, they needed to act. The cold air indicated the seedlings on the upper terraces might not have time to ripen. They must be moved and that meant double planting the lower fields, which impacted fertility, but yields over the last few years had fallen, so the village had little choice.

Lanna didn't know what the fuss was about. A third harvest? She had never harvested at all in the south. If these people ate meat, they would understand that there was food all around them.

Hemil shivered at her side and rubbed his bare arms, smearing mud over honey skin.

'Don't laugh at me.' He gave her a semi-serious glare. 'My clothes for the freeze are in a chest somewhere.'

Lanna lifted a brow. 'It's hardly the freeze yet.' She gestured to the blue sky above, filled with tiny wisps of cloud so light and high they looked near transparent. 'Unless I've somehow forgotten what snow looks like and we're actually...'

'Alright, enough. I know you're as tough as boot leather – no need to insult my masculinity.'

She laughed and bent to grab another armful of seedlings, pulling the spears of green from the sucking sludge. 'You couldn't have been too confident in your maleness if all it took is being around me to feel insecure.'

The banter helped pass the time. The hours burnt away in Hemil's company.

A grin split his face.

'Oh, being around you makes me glad to be a male, Lanna.' His words were in jest, but that didn't stop her dropping her gaze as her stomach tightened.

They had agreed to be friends. Yet something in his behaviour caused her to doubt his pledge. Comments and 'accidental' touches, awkward silences and glances at her that lingered too long. Could he still be pursuing her?

A hand fell on hers, startling her. Slick mud oozed between his palm and the back of her hand.

'Teach me something else,' he demanded. A low chuckle rumbled through his chest. 'Like that word you shouted when the rooster spurred you.'

She would have glared at him, but her heart hammered. Had he always smelt so good? He should stink of mud and slurry, yet he did not. A warm scent tickled the back of her nose, woody. A scented oil?

'I'm not teaching you that.' She couldn't look at him but knew he would be grinning, as if he wasn't kneeling in mud.

'Why?' He squeezed her hand. 'Is it too scandalous for my naïve Imperial ears?'

'What? No! I mean, well it is... I...' She snatched her hand away and grasped more seedlings. 'Just forget about it,' she muttered to the green bundle.

Without warning, Lanna found herself knocked into an irrigation channel. She gasped as her back splashed into shallow muddy water. Hemil straddled her legs, pinning her down. Before she could react, he tickled her without mercy, her body quaking beneath his muddy fingers, and she twisted under him, helpless with giggles.

Clanswomen learnt how to defend themselves, but no one had covered 'getting tickled by an agile Imperial boy' in Lanna's training.

'Tell me!' he said, chuckling, fingers sliding under her tunic and raking over her ribs. He seemed to know every weak spot.

Then he stilled his hands, giving her a much-needed moment to catch her breath. 'This can all stop.' He leant closer, his face a breath from hers. 'Just tell me what the word meant.' He shoved his hands higher, and she gulped, his fingertips brushing below her armpits. 'Or we can find out if you're ticklish all over?' His voice dipped to a purr.

She wanted to spit in his smug face, but his hands were close to her breast binding. With a tight leash on her temper, she conceded defeat.

'It's a lewd word. Is that what you want to hear?'

'What does it mean?' His fingers drummed on her skin, a reminder and a threat. Mud oozed down the neck of her tunic, slipping down her spine in a tepid caress. What if Mika happened to see them?

Lanna uttered a quick apology to her female ancestors then lay her head back and relaxed as if mud wasn't seeping into her underclothes. She turned her gaze away from the boy pinning her down. Defeat could be temporary.

'It's a word for breeding,' she muttered.

'You mean like rutting?' he asked.

'Worse.'

His eyes widened. 'Oh!' Then he burst out laughing. 'So it meant "fuck"?'

She nodded and squirmed, shifting in the mud, allowing her hips to roll under his.

The smile melted from his face and a heat she hadn't seen before entered his gaze. Lanna let him look, then moved.

Both of her knees jerked from the mud, pulling long limbs free, and her shins slithered between his legs to his abdomen. Lanna grabbed hold of his hands and rolled. He struggled but she had the momentum. A breath later and he lay under her, with her knee pressed close to a very delicate area between his legs, his hands pinned either side of his head. She grinned down at him.

'I may be new to this country, but I'm not new to little boys who want to get their own way.' She clenched her hands and let her hair slip over her shoulders to drip muddy water over his slack-jawed face.

'You wish to be educated then let me help.' She switched to Southern. 'You can go and hump a rancid fish.'

'Lanna!' Her father's incensed voice made every fibre of her body stiffen. She wasn't the only one – Hemil gave a sharp inhale.

'Let the boy go, Lanna, before you hurt him!' Alric splashed through the mud towards them.

Lanna let Hemil go and he pushed himself to his knees before scrambling away with as much dignity as the mud allowed.

Her speedy compliance didn't save her from a skelp across the crown of her skull that set her ears ringing. She bowed her head to Alric, as a chastised child should, hoping her hair hid the defiant smirk that tugged at her lips.

Her father helped Hemil to stand. He mumbled broken apologies at the same time as he scolded her in Southern.

'I'm sorry! You hurt?' Then, to Lanna: 'What were you thinking? No matter what he did, you shouldn't torment a man in that way!' He turned to Hemil again – 'Lanna not know own strength – will be told no.' – then back to Lanna. 'You could have snapped his arms!'

Hemil seemed too shamefaced to get his thoughts in order and muttered something as he straightened his clothes, shrugging away from Alric.

Her father rounded on her again, blue eyes snapping with wrath. He grabbed her ear and she endured once again the throbbing pain of having cartilage squeezed between his big fingers.

'You know better; if you act the child, I shall treat you as such.' He loomed over her. She gave a grimace as he pulled her upward.

She wouldn't cry out – she refused. In that she and Durrick were alike, as stubborn as their mother. Lanna fixed her eyes on the churned mud at her feet.

'We live on the goodwill of these people,' Alric growled. 'If you hurt the son of their clan leader what will happen to us? To you? Think! We have not abandoned all we know to be cast from another place because of you!'

She jolted and her eyes flew to his face. There: she saw it! Resentment – cold hard resentment in his eyes and tight jaw.

'Please.' Small fingers pulled Alric's grip from her throbbing ear. 'The fault is mine.'

Lanna could hardly hear Hemil's soft tones through the roaring in her blood. She didn't notice that Alric obeyed, his eyes still locked on her. He had spoken ill in anger; they both knew it. But it didn't matter: the damage was done. Lanna had seen what he hoped to hide.

'I teased her,' Hemil continued, daring to step between them. Alric glanced at him and the tension broke. Lanna turned and slogged her way through the mud, intending to get away before Hemil really did see her temper.

Once, long ago, she would have felt guilt. But in this new place, there was a change, a shift. Rage itched under her skin, like an overripe cheese threatening to burst its wax and spill sour bile over whoever dared touch it.

'Lanna?' her father called after her, tone uncertain.

She glanced over her shoulder, burying her hurt deep. She wasn't weak; she would show them. Her eyes raked over her father's rolled shoulders and stooped posture, hands left dangling. He was sorry; she knew that without it being said. But she had her pride.

'If I'm such a burden then you should have left me on the ice, Da. That was your duty, after all.'

It gave her some satisfaction to hear him hiss.

Imperfect things should not be allowed to live.

Survival was sacrifice.

Hemil glanced between them, the Southern incomprehensible to him.

Lanna didn't look back again, even when she heard her father's call falter. Her will quivered but she kept on.

Without realising the direction she walked in, her muddy steps took her to the peach grove. Yellow and orange-tinted the edges of the leaves. The villagers said that the freeze came early here. To the north, in the First City, it was still the high dry season.

Looking up at the dappled sunlight penetrating through the fluttering leaves, Lanna shook her head. She always found trees extraordinarily beautiful. Her head throbbed in warning, she sighed and cast her eyes away from the alternating patches of light.

Lanna's back then stiffened; she was aware of someone behind her. She spun, expecting her father, but the stinging words died on her tongue when she had to drop her gaze downward to Hemil's concerned face.

'Lanna?' His voice, her mispronounced name. She shuddered and turned her back to him. She didn't want to look at his dark gaze full of gentle questions.

'I'm alright.' She gave a forced chuckle, looking over the ancient trunk of a peach tree, eyes following the knots and swirls of the bark.

'I don't pretend to know what's going on, but I know you're hurting.'

'I'm fine,' she assured him. 'Da was just... he thought I was going to damage you and... got angry.'

'I noticed.' Grass whispered under wooden sandals as Hemil moved closer. 'We don't strike our children here.'

'South is different,' she replied, though her tone lacked emotion as she defended her old home. 'Being rebellious and wilful can kill you. The cold doesn't suffer the mistakes of the young.'

She made no move when a hand settled on the small of her back. Warm, supportive fingers splayed over her damp tunic.

'I know your people are strong, Lanna,' he whispered. 'But this is the Empire. Here, perhaps, you don't need to be strong. You can just be you.'

The hand moved over her hip and pulled. He offered consolation without knowing what pained her.

'How can I show you that I can take care of you if you don't tell me what you need of me?'

Yet he didn't need to be told. He offered comfort anyway.

Something burst. Lanna gasped and turned in his grip. Her face pressed into his mud-slick shoulder and her hands clung to the front of his slippery tunic. There were no tears but her body shuddered against him as if she wept.

He cocooned her in his arms. Firm, tight pressure to hold her together as she threatened to spring apart.

Soft words passed over the shell of her ear.

'You don't need to say anything.' Fingers rose to comb through her mud-matted curls. 'All will be well.'

She closed her eyes and the shuddering eased. How long he held her, she couldn't fathom, but when she pulled her face back from his shoulder, his lips wore the sweetest of smiles. His hands rose to her cheeks and brushed away dried mud. All she could do was look at his beautiful face.

'There.' His fingertips lingered. 'Would be a shame to cover all those new freckles.'

Her hands flew to her face. Freckles? When? Where? She touched her nose as if she could feel them. Mika was forever bemoaning her skin's tendency to freckle. An Imperial woman should avoid it.

Hemil caught her questing fingers and pulled them down.

'Don't you dare think you're anything other than flawless as you are, Lanna of the Clans.' His tone half rebuked her. He pressed a hand to her cheek in a brotherly gesture.

Why was her heart trying to crawl from her chest? Face heating, she made no objection when he took her arm and walked them away from the shade of the trees.

'Come: we still have work. Mika will be spitting feathers waiting for seedlings.'

He had the grace not to mention her flaming cheeks. She hadn't learnt enough Imperial to know how to thank him for that.