Chapter 3

 

When Zora woke again, she felt much better. She was lying on her side on the floor in the solar, next to the fire, propped up by Colin’s hip at her back. She opened her eyes just a little bit, and saw Kyril sitting on the opposite side of the fireplace sharpening his dagger. He always sharpened the dagger when he was upset. Zora figured it was the male equivalent of embroidery—something to do with his hands.

She could hear the soothing, rhythmic stroke of the blade against the honing stone. She could also hear the fire, and the breeze that blew through the window, and she could see the motes of dust in the beam cast by the late-afternoon sun. She raised her eyes to look at the fire and realized that there was a face in the flames.

Not here, it said, and the face vanished. The voice, however continued. You must choose freely.

All right, maybe I’m not awake yet. There’s no reason the Lady of Fire would be talking to me. But why does that phrase sound familiar?

“How are you feeling?” Colin’s voice came from behind her.

“Well, I don’t feel as if I’m dying anymore. For a while there, I thought I was.” Zora shuddered. “It was pretty bad.”

“It was strange,” Kyril said. “When they left to do the evening ritual, they were still trying to figure out why it hit you so much worse than it did Kassie. I don’t think it was the blood—I was much more annoyed with her than with you.”

Zora thought about that, and she remembered how cut off from everything she had felt. “I think it was my training,” she said thoughtfully, pushing herself slowly into a sitting position.

“What?” Kyril looked blank.

Colin put an arm around Zora’s shoulders. It felt good, like an extra connection to the real world.

“Unlike Kassie, I’ve been training to serve the Goddess my whole life. I’m used to hearing her when she speaks to me, and I’ve been able to feel her presence for as long as I can remember.”

Kyril frowned. “Does the potion interfere with that?”

Zora nodded. “The potion severs the link instantly and completely.” She could still remember vividly just how it felt. She wondered if she would ever be able to forget. “It was awful.” Even worse than the day the Earth Mother chose Kassie. “I’ve never felt so alone in my entire life—and I never want to again.” She leaned against Colin, grateful for the solid warmth of his body.

“So don’t drink the potion again,” Kyril said simply. “There’s no reason you have to, is there?”

“I don’t think so. I can’t think of any reason why I’d need to use it again.” Zora frowned, trying to remember exactly what Kassie had said about it. “I think the Goddess just wanted me to recognize it if I encountered it again.”

“Would you?” Colin asked.

“Recognize it? Absolutely. First because the ingredients are not generally used in potions, and second because the last one—the blood—has to be added right before the potion is taken. If anyone drops fresh blood into a goblet in front of me, I’m not going to drink it.”

“Good idea,” Colin said grimly, “but I don’t think it was your training, or at least not just your training. I think the fact that you’re being starved has something to do with it too.”

“What do you mean I’m being starved?” Zora asked in bewilderment. “I eat everything I’m served at meals, and I haven’t been feeling hungry.”

“You’ve been eating all your meals with your mother,” Colin said.

Zora shrugged. “I am living with her at present. Am I supposed to be demanding special meals?”

“He may be right,” Kyril said. “You haven’t been out flying with the rest of us in weeks.”

“I was grounded, remember?”

“That was over a month ago. You’re not required to stay in your mother’s rooms now. You’re not forbidden to change shape, but you haven’t done it, have you?”

Zora sighed. “I’ve been tired, all right? Kassie and I both have a lot to deal with.”

“True,” Colin said, “but have you been drinking that special tea Druscilla drinks?”

Zora’s jaw dropped open and stayed that way until she remembered how unattractive she looked like that and hastily closed her mouth. Mother’s special tea. The first thing I learned how to make when I started working in the stillroom. The one I’ve made a batch of every month for more than ten years.

“I am such an idiot. Yes, I’ve been drinking the same tea she drinks. I didn’t notice because I never tasted it before, but I should have remembered how it smelled.” The tea was designed to decrease Druscilla’s appetite. Because she couldn’t walk, it was important that she not eat too much. If she gained weight, it would make it difficult for her maids to help her move and to care for her.

Zora cast her mind over the ingredients of the tea. “Even you two wouldn’t be hungry if you drank that!”

“And probably neither of us would notice anything was wrong until our wings got too weak to hold us up,” Kyril said.

“The way you eat?” Zora scoffed. “Somebody would notice long before that happened.”

“But you’ve been with your mother,” Colin said grimly, “and nobody realized what was happening until I carried you up here and noticed how little you weigh.”

“Actually, Kassie said something while I was changing clothes in her room this morning.”

“About your being poisoned?” Colin asked skeptically.

“No, just that I’d lost weight. And the tea isn’t a poison.”

“If you die from drinking it,” Kyril asked, “doesn’t that make it a poison by definition?”

Actually, yes, it does. “Do you think Uncle Ranulf would let me go with you to look for new shape-changers, the way Kassie was supposed to?”

“Good idea,” Kyril said. “Getting away from here would probably be good for your health. I’ll ask him.”

“And there are things I can do to help in the meantime,” Colin said. “I still have friends in the kitchen.”

~o0o~

Over the next several days, Zora realized they were right. Her mother had been starving her. She didn’t know whether it was deliberate or not, but it really didn’t matter. Whatever the cause, the results were the same—Zora was too weak to change shape—and definitely too weak to fly.

Colin had obviously talked to somebody in the kitchen. Zora’s meals gradually got larger, although not so quickly that her mother would notice. And every night when she went to bed she found a basket of food—including the dried fruit and nut bars the shape-changers ate for extra energy—in her room.

Zora wondered what shape Colin was using to get them there unobserved. They didn’t use giant eagle inside the castle walls because it would be too noticeable. Giant spider was a possibility if he waited until after dark—Zora smiled at the mental picture of a spider climbing up the castle wall to her window with a basket clutched at the end of one leg. There was an owl-shape that could be kept fairly small and still lift four times its own body weight. It also had feathers in varying shades of gray that made it invisible from twilight until daybreak, and it flew in silence. Unless it was literally right next to your head, you couldn’t hear the movement of its wings. But Zora didn’t care if Colin was using magic, she was just glad to get enough to eat. It was odd that she hadn’t noticed she was starving until she actually started to get enough food.

Zora didn’t have the strength for a complete shape-change yet, but she could change her eyes. She practiced cat vision at night, and eagle sight during the day, whenever she got a chance to stand at a window with her back to the room.

When Zora ate breakfast with her mother, she picked at her food, which seemed to please Druscilla, but only sipped the tea. Perhaps her mother wasn’t deliberately trying to weaken her. Perhaps it was just that she didn’t think about how being on her diet would affect a shape-changer. Druscilla had never been known for deep thought about the consequences of her actions. (Zora didn’t know exactly what that meant, but she had heard Aunt Akila say it to Uncle Ranulf once when they didn’t know she was within earshot.) Now her actions were limited and not likely to damage others. But, no matter how accidentally, Zora had been damaged. The only thing she could do was work to repair it.

She ate everything on her plate at the other meals, while being careful to avoid the tea. She also ate every bite that was smuggled into her room. She got out of bed after Druscilla and her maids had retired for the night and practiced changing shape. After a couple of weeks Zora had gone from being able to change her eyes or extend claws suitable for tree-climbing to being able to do the full change to wolf. Once she was secure with that, she changed to owl and practiced flapping her wings, very briefly.

Zora sat up in bed the next morning and suppressed a groan. Her back ached on both sides from her collarbones to her hips. So much for thinking I’m not that badly out of shape. She sat there for several long minutes, using her back muscles to move her currently non-existent wings until the worst of the soreness dissipated. All right, I’m going to practice using my wings every night until this stops happening. Dear Goddess, if I tried to fly right now I’d probably plunge to my death.

That night, mindful of the fact that a fall from the windowsill could kill her, Zora perched on the footboard of her bed and changed to owl-shape. The wings were doing better. The ability of her talons to grip the equivalent of a branch, however...

Zora wrapped her wings tightly around her and tucked her head as she fell. She hit the mattress and bounced. When she came to rest she realized there was no way she could move in owl-shape without her talons slashing the bedding. Disgusted with herself, she changed back to human shape and crawled under the covers.

~o0o~

The strange dreams Zora had before Marfa died resumed that night. The first one was vague: Zora seemed to be looking into a mirror and drinking something from a silver goblet while a dark shape hovered next to her. It was strange and slightly disturbing, but it wasn’t exactly a nightmare, and it faded into the back of her mind soon after she woke up.

Zora ate breakfast with Druscilla, and then tried to leave her rooms. Admittedly the only time she had left them since Lord Ranulf grounded her was the day she and Kassie had made the potion, but she didn’t think she was supposed to be a prisoner. Her mother thought otherwise. When Zora responded to her mother’s demand to know where she was going by telling her that she wanted to see Aunt Akila, Druscilla informed her that Akila had better things to do now than indulge Zora’s curiosity, especially now that she wasn’t going to be a priestess. Zora fled back to her bedroom before Druscilla could see her tears. She didn’t want to give her mother the satisfaction of knowing she had hurt her. Besides, it was true. Zora wasn’t going to be a priestess, at least not here. Not here. She’d heard that before, but where?

After Zora was all cried out, she splashed cold water on her aching eyes and tried to think. What was it the Goddess wanted of her? She hoped the Goddess would give her further instructions.

Apparently the dreams were instructions, but they were so vague as to make oracles look specific. As they continued, night after night, Zora became aware that the dark shape was a woman, apparently about fifteen years older than she was. Then she started to hear a voice, but the only thing that was clear was her own face and her hands raising the goblet to her lips. She began to remember more of the dreams during the daytime, and she was pretty sure that she would know the goblet if she saw it in her waking life.

Someone, presumably Colin, continued to sneak food into her room each evening, and Zora ate everything he gave her in addition to what she ate with her mother. She practiced changing, and she flew out after dark to strengthen her wings. At least she was making progress as a shape-changer, if not as a priestess.

Then one night the voice of the dark woman in the dream went from an unintelligible mumble to something Zora could understand, and she woke up gasping in horror. She called me Lina. That’s not a reflection of me. That’s another person who looks like me!

Zora had no idea who her double was, but she felt compelled to find her. I’ll bet she is the reason the Goddess didn’t want me—at least not here. Maybe she wants me to be with Lina, wherever that is. And, if Lina looks just like me, she is probably a shape-changer, too. It doesn’t matter what my mother says about it, I need to take Kassie’s place on this year’s expedition. Lord Ranulf will probably agree. Kassie took my place, so it seems only fair that I take hers.

~o0o~

Zora avoided dealing with her mother’s unwillingness to let her leave her room by flying out her window and into the top floor of the old tower before anyone woke the next morning. There were always extra clothes there because the students used the rooms to change to and from eagle-shape. She dressed and went to the great hall in the main keep, where she could talk to Lord Ranulf when he came down for breakfast.

Lord Ranulf not only agreed with Zora, he went with her to talk to Druscilla and override her objections.

“She’s too young,” was Druscilla’s first objection. “And it’s much too dangerous. I’ll never see her again if you make her leave!”

I’m as old as Kassie, and she was going to go.

“Zora is seventeen, which is definitely not too young. Several members of the group are younger than she is. And I don’t believe she’s going to get killed and you’ll never see her again,” he added. “If I thought it was that dangerous, would I have assigned both Kassie and Kyril to this year’s journey?”

“But they were trained for it!” Druscilla wailed. “Zora has led a sheltered life. We never expected her to leave here—”

“And I expected Kassie to be able to go!” Lord Ranulf snapped back. “Zora has had the same training in shape-changing as all the rest of them, she’s not going alone, and I need another girl to replace Kassie. Many of the shape-changer girls we find need another girl to relate to, not a pack of sixteen- to eighteen-year-old boys.”

“You say now that you were going to send Kassie—”

“He announced it at the evening meal months ago, Mother—before Marfa died. He said it then, and everyone heard him, so you can’t claim he didn’t mean it or he’s just saying it now. If the Goddess had chosen me instead of her, Kassie would be on the road this week.”

“This week!” Druscilla shook her head violently. “No, you can’t. You mustn’t!”

“I can, I must, and I will,” Zora said firmly. She turned to Lord Ranulf. “Uncle, may I move into the dormitory with the rest of the girls? It will help me prepare.” Not to mention allowing me to sleep in peace without having to listen to my mother wailing over my upcoming departure.

“I think you had better,” Lord Ranulf said as Druscilla succumbed to hysterics. “Call her maids to look after her, and come with me.”

Zora was glad to obey him. If I need anything from my room here, I’ll climb the wall in the middle of the night to fetch it.

~o0o~

Apparently Lord Ranulf really did need Kassie—or now Zora—because there was only one other girl in the entire group. Tekla was a few years older than the rest of them, and, thank the Lady, she had done the annual search twice before. One of the older boys had done it once, but the rest of them were making the journey for the first time. This meant a lot of lectures from Lord Ranulf about the surrounding territory—apparently he had traveled over or conquered a great deal of it in his younger years. Zora was learning all sorts of interesting new things these days. There were lessons on local customs, proper modes of dress, things you should say when meeting someone, things you should never say out loud to anyone, words that had different meanings depending on where you were...

It was a bewildering mixture of facts, and it was totally different from the sort of things Zora had been studying before. Fortunately Lord Ranulf put Tekla in charge of the entire search team, and he assigned the rest of them to sub-groups within the main group.

Zora was put in a sub-group with Kyril and Colin, who had the advantage of having lived in a city until he came here to study. Colin’s job was to keep Kyril and Zora out of trouble, and they were sternly told to listen to him about anything to do with city life. Kyril muttered something under his breath at that order, but subsided when his father glared at him. “You don’t know as much as you think you do, Kyril. Listen to Colin. If you think he’s wrong and there’s time and privacy to discuss the matter, you can. If it’s an emergency, do as he says.”

Zora made no protest. She didn’t know anything about life outside Eagle’s Rest, anyway.

A week later they all rode out the gates, past the lake, and onto the road that led south.

~o0o~

It was less than two days Zora discovered why Lord Ranulf thought it vital to have girls in the group.

They had just passed through a small village, which made Zora nervous because she found being stared at unsettling. Of course, this was the first time in her life that she had been a stranger to the people around her. She wondered if this was what Colin had felt like when he first came to Eagle’s Rest.

The village—and its people—were out of sight behind them, and she was starting to relax when a young girl scrambled out of the woods beside the road, tripped, and fell almost under Zora’s horse. The horse simply moved sideways to avoid trampling her. Lord Ranulf’s horses were very well trained, not to mention being accustomed to much stranger things than this. It was much less happy about the man chasing after the girl with a whip, a dislike Zora heartily shared. She had never seen anyone go after a human with a whip. Whips were not used even on animals at Eagle’s Rest, although the fact that there were people who whipped animals in the outside world had been part of the lessons.

Lord Ranulf said that people who needed a whip to make an animal obey them were not good owners, but that in most places their actions were legal. “You should, therefore, restrain your perfectly natural impulse to take the whip away from the human and use it on him. Use your brains first and your strength only if you must.”

Kyril, who had been riding just behind Zora, tried to get his horse between her and the strangers. He managed to block the man temporarily, but the girl rolled under his horse and scrambled to her feet next to Zora. Her dress was torn and there were whip marks visible on her skin where the dress was about to fall off her. Part of her ribcage was visible, and not only could Zora see her ribs, she suspected she could have picked the child up by any one of them—assuming that it didn’t snap in her grasp.

The man wasn’t fool enough to use the whip on either Kyril or his horse, which was a good thing. The horse would have bitten him. Kyril might have too. By this time the rest of the group was surrounding Zora and Kyril as best they could on the narrow road. The man completely ignored Tekla and directed his attention to the oldest-looking boy. “Do you folks disagree with a father’s right to discipline his child?”

“Depends on the discipline,” the boy replied calmly. “What did she do?”

“She dabbles in witchcraft, and no daughter of mine does that!” He shoved in front of Kyril’s horse and reached for the girl’s arm.

For a moment Zora thought the girl was cowering on the ground, but then a kitten jumped out of the remains of the dress and landed on the front of her saddle. It overbalanced and fell into her lap, so she gripped it gently to keep it from falling off the horse.

The boy glanced from the rags in the road to the pile of fur shivering in Zora’s lap. “Is that a cat?” he asked in a convincing display of surprise.

“Kitten,” Zora said, thankful that the girl was young enough not to have turned into a cat. Cats went into heat all too often, and always at the most inconvenient time.

“My young friend appears to be attached to the animal, wherever it came from, and clearly it cannot be your daughter. Your daughter would be human.” He paused, and then continued as if the idea had just occurred to him. “Would you sell the kitten to us? I expect the girls can train it to be a decent pet.”

“Pet!” the man protested. “I’ll have you know that’s a valuable, hardworking—”

“Oh, is she a good mouser?” Zora muttered.

“Quiet!” Colin hissed.

Colin never talked to her like that, so Zora figured he knew something she didn’t. She shut her mouth and lowered her head to look down at the kitten in her lap, gently stroking it while keeping watch on the father through her eyelashes. One of the many benefits of being a shape-changer was having long eyelashes at will.

She sat quietly holding the kitten while the “men” concluded the deal, and the girl’s father went back into the woods, probably happier with the coin than he’d ever been with his daughter.

“All right, people,” Tekla commanded as soon as he was gone, “we’re going to ride as fast as we can and get well clear of this area before he comes back with his friends.”

“A man like that has friends?” Zora was astonished, and it showed clearly in her voice.

Tekla sighed. “I keep forgetting what a sheltered life you’ve lived. Yes, he’ll have friends—or at least drinking companions who will take his side in a quarrel, especially a quarrel with outsiders. I want to put as much distance as possible between him and us before we camp tonight. Pass the kitten to one of the boys; you’re not an experienced rider.”

Zora noticed that both Kyril and Colin winced. “I may not be the best rider, Tekla, but I’m probably the one most willing to have a nervous animal with sharp claws in my lap.”

Tekla looked at the boys and laughed. “I suspect you’re right. Tell us if you have trouble keeping up, and I’ll take her.”

Colin bent to scoop up the remains of the dress and tossed it to Zora. “Wrap her in this. She’s shivering.”

Zora suspected that was due to nerves more than cold but thought it better not to leave the dress in the road, where it would be evidence to support the man’s story. The rest of the group apparently felt the same, because the boys rode in such a way as to obliterate any clear tracks where they had stopped and to muddle the trail as the group moved out after Tekla.

They continued down the road until the light failed. By then the kitten had fallen asleep, so Zora stayed in the saddle while everyone else dismounted and led the horses even farther away from possible pursuit. The horses couldn’t see in the dark, of course, but the rest of the group didn’t have that problem. They finally ended up going single-file along a very narrow path that ended in a clearing in the woods.

Tekla had obviously been there before. She issued a series of instructions about watering the horses, pitching tents, and unpacking cold food. “It’s too late to hunt tonight—or at least it’s too late to cook what wolves can bring back. Zora, you stay on your horse until our tent is pitched. We can deal with our newest student while the boys handle the camp routine.”

When Zora finally dismounted, still carrying the kitten, Kyril was nearly carrying her. To say that she had stiffened up during all the hours in the saddle was an understatement. She was very thankful to be in a dimly-lit tent with Tekla, the kitten, their supper, and a jar of liniment for her sore muscles. She collapsed onto one of the bedrolls Tekla had laid out (she had added a third one tonight), and stretched out her legs, alternating the stretching with applications of the liniment.

While Zora was trying to get her body back into working condition, Tekla split the food into three portions and tried to convince the kitten that it was safe to turn back into a girl. Zora watched with interest. This was the first time she had been around a new student—assuming that the child wanted to be a student. Maybe she didn’t. It wasn’t as if anyone had asked her what she wanted. She had made no effort to move out of Zora’s lap once she landed there, but that only meant she felt safer there than with her father, and anything with a desire to survive would feel that way.

Tekla lifted her and placed her gently on the third bedroll. “Look,” she pointed out, “we have clean clothes for you, just like the ones we wear. We have plenty of food, and we can easily get more when we need it. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. If you don’t want to come study with us, we’ll make other arrangements. But would you please turn back into a human?” The kitten seemed to pull herself into an even smaller ball, and Tekla frowned. “I think she may still be in shock.” She poked her head out of the tent. “I need a couple of volunteers to fly back to where we found her, see what her home was like and whether there are any other children we need to get out of there. Whoever goes needs to be back here ready to ride by morning. News of whether anyone is coming after us would be appreciated as well. Who’s fastest, quietest, and best able to ride half-asleep the next day?”

Zora heard a few chuckles and some low-voiced discussion, but she didn’t know who they decided to send. She didn’t hear flapping wings either, so she presumed that whoever left had used owl-shape.

Tekla turned back and tied the tent flap closed. “It’s too bad there’s no way to get a cat to change back to human.”

Zora laughed. “You haven’t heard the stories of my early childhood. My mother mastered that trick before I could walk. Not that I remember it, but I’ve heard the story.”

Tekla looked hopeful. “You can get her to change back?”

“It can be done,” Zora said, “but I’m not prepared to apply my mother’s methods to anyone who’s already traumatized. Let me try something else first.” She lay flat on her stomach and looked the kitten in the eyes. “I won’t force you to change, but here’s what happens if you don’t. First, you’ll probably be called ‘Kitten’ for the rest of your life. Second, as long as you’re in cat-shape, you can’t eat a lot of the food we do. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with raw meat, but it’s a limited diet. Third, if you stay in cat-shape too long, you’ll forget how to turn back into a human, or into anything else.” Fourth, you’ll eventually get stuck as an adult cat, but I’m not getting into the disadvantages of that now. Then Zora realized something. Tekla had told the child that they came from a school for shape-changers, but...

Zora peeled off her shirt and changed shape to a cat similar in size and coloring to the one in front of her. Another benefit of shape-changing kicked in: she could stretch much more effectively as a cat, and changing shape also healed simple injuries. She stretched for several minutes, and then changed back, put her sleeping tunic on, and reached for a dried fruit bar.

“Well, that fixed my sore muscles, but now I’m hungry. Good thing I can eat dried fruit.” She bit off several bites and shoved them into her cheeks in the way that had gotten her the nickname “chipmunk” as a child. It did, however, let her eat and talk—more or less at the same time. “If you turn human now, the damage from today’s beating should heal, and you can have these.” She held out a fruit bar.

The kitten sniffed at it and turned away in favor of a strip of dried beef. She dragged the meat to the foot of Zora’s bedroll, turned around several times to make herself a comfortable place to curl up, and started chewing.

Zora shrugged. “All right, Kitten it is. You can sleep with me tonight, and we’ll see how you feel in the morning.” And how I feel. By morning I may be willing to use my mother’s solution: dip cat in water until it changes back. She ate the rest of her food, giving Kitten a generous share of the dried beef, and crawled into the bedroll, being careful not to kick her.

Tekla got into her own bedroll, and blew out the candle.

Zora must have slept soundly indeed; when she woke in the morning Kitten had moved inside the bedroll and was curled up against Zora’s side. She woke up the instant Zora stirred and watched her carefully. Avoiding any sudden movements, Zora got dressed and took her “pet” outside, where the kitten promptly scrambled up Zora’s body as a pair of wolves trotted into the clearing, carrying dead rabbits in their jaws.

“Are we allowed to cook breakfast?” Zora asked.

“That’s an excellent question,” Tekla said, following her out of the tent. “What’s the report?”

“It’s your decision,” Kyril said, taking the rabbits away from the wolves, who disappeared to change to human shape and get dressed. “The scouts you sent out last night say that she’s an only child, and her father spent enough of the money in the local tavern to ensure that he and his friends won’t be up before noon, much less coming after us.”

“Very well,” Tekla said. “Build a fire, skin and cook the rabbits. We’ll continue on after we eat.”

“How long is she going to stay a cat?” Kyril asked.

Zora shrugged. “Until she feels safe being a human, I guess. In the meantime, I’m calling her Kitten. By the way, are we likely to be buying more people?”

Tekla winced. “Actually, we do have a budget for it. There are a lot of places where it’s legal to sell children, and people are most willing to do it at this time of year, when the crops are all in and they’re thinking of children less as workers and more as extra mouths to feed all winter. That’s why we make this trip in the autumn.”

“They’re not considered precious members of the family?” Zora asked in astonishment.

“Not once the family gets too big,” Tekla said gently. “When a family has a large enough number of children, the parents start forgetting which one is which—and that’s the best case.”

~o0o~

It was another three days before Kitten changed back to human shape, and even then, she refused to answer to any other name. Tekla took it in stride, telling Zora privately that in cases like this, a new shape-changer often wanted a complete break with her old life. Well, Kitten was certainly getting that. The life they led on the road couldn’t have been anything like her previous existence. It wasn’t even much like Zora’s.

They spent several more weeks travelling and collected eight more shape-changers. Two of them were girls and only slightly older than Kitten, and she started to spend time with them instead of following Zora’s every step.

~o0o~

At the halfway point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, Tekla decided they were ready to head back to Eagle’s Rest, getting all the supplies they had ostensibly been sent to fetch on the way. That was when Zora discovered that she, Kyril, and Colin had been assigned an extra errand.

“Father wants me to deliver a letter to his niece Catriona,” Kyril explained, “so we’ll be going farther south, along the river road.”

They packed enough provisions so they wouldn’t have to stop and hunt for food—the rest of the group would have plenty of time to do that on the way home, and it would be training for the new ones. Then they mounted three of the horses and headed along the road that ran next to the river.

“Where does Catriona live?” Zora asked, wondering how far they were going and what their destination would be like.

“A place called Diadem,” Kyril said. “It’s a city-state, with the city at the point where the river becomes navigable down to the ocean. It’s a matriarchy, and apparently it’s also where your mother grew up.”

Zora thought that sounded interesting. She had no idea what an understatement “interesting” was going to be.