“Drusis claims that he wants only to protect Nabbanai settlers from raids by the Thrithings-men,” said Eolair. “But that is the substance of the discord, yes, Your Majesty. I will summarize the rest of Pasevalles’ points. He believes the desire to push out into the grasslands is too strong among the houses of Nabban’s Dominiate, and in the country as a whole, for Duke Saluceris to openly forbid his brother these aggressive actions, and he is also not certain that the duke could survive an open struggle with Drusis in any case.”

“Does he truly mean ‘survive’?” asked Miriamele, alarmed for the first time. “Surely these are mere disagreements. The Benidrivine House is the house of Camaris the Hero himself, and Saluceris is the lawful duke of Nabban, not just by their own laws, but under our Ward. By the love of the saints, Simon and I crowned Saluceris ourselves in the Sancellan Aedonitis, in front of God and all Nabban!”

“All true,” said Eolair. “And I do not imagine Drusis would move directly against his brother and flout so much law and custom. But assassination, if it could not be directly laid at Drusis’s door, would still make him the next duke, since Saluceris’ son is still a child. I hate to say so, but as Your Majesties know, murder has long been a favored method of gaining power in the south.”

Simon made a frustrated noise. “Well, this is a puzzle and no mistake. But what can Miri and I do? It would be heavy-handed to send troops to Saluceris when he has not asked for such a thing.” He looked around at the column of armored men marching behind them and the vanguard of mounted knights. “Not that we have any troops to spare just now, with the planting season hard upon us. Maybe Duke Osric is right when he says we need a larger standing force . . .”

After the king had paused long enough that it was clear he had finished his thought, Count Eolair gracefully took charge of the conversation once more. “Let me be clear, Majesties. Lord Pasevalles does not ask you for a solution at this moment, but merely wishes you to know what the news from Nabban tells him, so that any change will not come as a complete surprise.”

“In other words,” said Miriamele, “he wishes us to share his worry and his helplessness.”

Eolair frowned just the smallest bit. “I’m afraid that is often a loyal subject’s duty in such cases, my queen.”

Miri knew she was being unduly cross, but the sun and the spring scents she had hoped to enjoy were fading beneath all these fretful shadows of statecraft.

“You look as though you are thinking hard, my clever wife,” said Simon. “You have been in Nabban far more than I have and your family is still powerful there. What should we do?”

Miriamele shook her head. “Clearly my Nabbanai kin are busy adding fuel to the fire, almost certainly for their own purposes, and I would not trust my cousin Dallo Ingadaris even to hold my reins for fear he would steal my horse. But there are still many other Ingadarines I trust. I’ll write to them and see how things appear from where they sit, and whether the fight between brothers is as dangerous as Pasevalles suspects.”

“We’ve already heard enough of this Drusis to think ill of him,” Simon said. “He’s an arrogant, troublesome fellow, no doubt. But surely one man cannot provoke an entire nation into war by himself.”

“It seems unlikely,” said Eolair. “But stranger things have happened. In any case, as Your Majesties pointed out, we cannot send troops when they have not been requested—the Nabbanai would rightly resent it. And this is only one letter. Pasevalles is from Nabban himself, so perhaps he feels its storms more strongly than the rest of us would. But when we return—well, perhaps greater attention to Nabban would not go amiss. They are a numerous and often quarrelsome people. I beg the queen’s pardon if I offend.”

After a moment’s silence, Miriamele said, “Offend? No, Eolair, I say it often enough myself. But we’ve barely begun this journey and already I see troubles growing everywhere.” The sun, though its beams still sparkled on patches of snow and the sky was empty of clouds, seemed to have grown dimmer. “I wish we were home.”

“We all feel that way, my love,” Simon told her. “At least, at times like this.”

He Who Always Steps On Sand, why did you lead your child to such a strange place?

The gods of Tiamak’s childhood in the Wran were nowhere near as powerful and ever-present as the deity his employers worshipped, but there were times he couldn’t help thinking that a little closer oversight from them might still be in order, especially on this royal progress into cold northern lands.

He pulled his cloak tighter. He would never become used to drylander clothes, but he was inexpressibly glad to have the right sort of garments for these chilly northern lands instead of what he had worn in the first part of his life, seldom more than a breechclout and occasionally a pair of sandals. Even thinking about what it would be like to cross into frigid Rimmersgard in such near-nakedness made him shiver, although several of the riders nearest him had taken off their helmets to enjoy the early spring sunshine.

Sunshine, he thought. Back in our swamp, no one would have called such thin gruel “sunshine.” It is not hot enough here to lure even a cold turtle out onto a rock.

It was not that Tiamak missed his marshy home, exactly; even in Village Grove he had been an outsider, a strange young man who had learned to read and write and had gone to Ansis Pellipé in Perdruin to study—an actual city! But he missed the security he had felt as a child in the swamp, beneath the spreading branches and heavy leaves, when everything had been known and familiar. Now it seemed that the more years passed, the more strange the world became.

Not too many years from now I will truly be old, he thought. Will the world be completely strange to me then?

Tiamak had never been this far north before, that was part of it. Not only the cold air, but the very size of the sky seemed foreign, the broad expanse of blue so wide that he almost felt as though he stood atop some terrible high plateau instead of on a broad plain of streams and snow-dotted meadows. But the snow was finally vanishing with the warming days, Tiamak reminded himself; he should remember to say a prayer of thanks. At the same time last year, as his comrades never wearied of telling him, this part of Osten Ard had been hip deep in swirling, mounding snow, the skies gray as lead.

So that is a good place to start with my gratitude, he told himself. Thank you, He Who Bends the Trees. Thank you for any sun at all and not too much snow!

He might have felt differently, he suspected, had they not been called north by such a sad circumstance, the imminent death of Duke Isgrimnur of Elvritshalla. Had it been anything less, though, he would probably not have accompanied the king and queen. But Isgrimnur had been Tiamak’s friend as well. Along with Miriamele, who was then only a young girl, they had faced impossible, almost unbelievable odds together and survived. That alone would have obligated Tiamak to travel to this unsettling part of the world, but over the years his friendship with Isgrimnur had become something more, something completely unexpected. The sulfurous duke, big as a house, as he had first seemed to Tiamak, had proved to be as wise as he was loud and as subtle as he was brave. They had stayed in touch by letter, only a few per year stowed in the diplomatic posts that passed between Elvritshalla and the Hayholt, but enough to keep the friendship very much alive.

And in fact, for most of that time it had been a three-part friendship, because Isgrimnur’s wife Gutrun had always carefully gone through her husband’s letters, adding in the words the duke had forgotten in haste, correcting the occasional woeful mistake of grammar (Isgrimnur was equally bad in his native Rimmerspakk, she had often told Tiamak) and adding her own comments full of useful news and funny stories about her husband. The news of Gutrun’s death several years ago had been one of the saddest days of Tiamak’s life. He had spent very little time in her actual company, but in her husband’s letters, peeping out from between his scrawled lines, she had made a home for herself in Tiamak’s heart.