She kissed his hand and laid it down upon the coverlet. She stood up, bones aching with weariness, and went out into the corridor, where some of the councilors slept upon benches. In her own rooms, she made no noise as she rolled up some blankets and tossed a few things into a bag. Yet, despite her quiet, her foster daughter awakened and came to stand, sleepy and disapproving, at the bedroom door in her night shift. Norina said, “Did you intend to leave without bidding me goodbye? Where are you going?”

“Lalali.”

“Lalali! Surely not alone! Let me come with you.”

“The only thing that could make this journey more burdensome would be having to worry about your well‑being as well as my own. You will remain in the House of Lilterwess.”

There was a silence, then Norina said quietly, “I’m afraid I won’t see you again.”

Dinal slung her sword belt over one shoulder, her bag over the other, and kissed Norina farewell. “Know I love you.” She left her standing in the darkness.

She took a loaf of bread from one of the kitchens, and, out in the yard, saddled the first horse to come at her whistle. A weary, bent, aging woman wrapped in a black cloak, she rode out of the House of Lilterwess. Hoping to avoid the plague of violence that made the main roads unsafe to travel any longer, Dinal took the mountain road from Shimasal to the coast. This isolated and windblown track took her through the tablelands, along ridges which overlooked the rich Aerin River Valley. She traveled from before dawn to long after nightfall. She made her bed on hard ground, under cold stars, and she lay awake, counting the years of sorrow and naming the dead. She spoke the name of Harald G’deon himself in that grieving litany. Perhaps even now he breathed his last breath, as the mother of his sons dutifully followed his last whim on this lonely road to the sea.

Long before sunrise, she rose from her cold bed. She tied her hair back to boldly reveal the three earrings of Right, Regard, and Rank, and called her horse to the saddle. She rode in darkness down the steep track from the highlands to the coast. As the sky lightened, dawn winds carried to her the scent of the sea.

The sun had just risen when she rode into Lalali. The city gates stood open, guarded only by a pretty‑faced boy dressed in purple silk. He ran up, boldly clasped the heel of her boot, and gazed winsomely up into her face as he invited her to have her way with him. When he suggested what they might do, she jerked her foot away in disgust. Undiscouraged, he latched onto the empty stirrup. “Speak your secret desire, and it shall be yours. Is it a girl you’d prefer? Is it not power you seek, but rather to be overpowered?”

“Stand away, boy! I travel on the G’deon’s business!”

She threatened him with her lifted foot. He stepped away from the horse, crowing with amusement. “The G’deon’s business? Tell the G’deon there is only one business in Lalali!”

Dinal’s horse jumped forward at a kick of the heel, and left the young man to enjoy his hilarity in private. His laughter swooped and howled through sunrise’s silence. “The boy seems half mad,” Dinal muttered.

On horseback, she wandered the streets of Lalali as the sun gradually chased away autumn’s chill and cast a shimmer of light across the copper‑tipped towers. Sunlight glared on walls of white sandstone. It gilded three nude marble figures in the center of a fountain, engaged in a complicated sexual act.

Dinal passed a crew of blank‑eyed, starved and sore‑riddled street sweepers, who were so numbed by smoke that they did not even flinch when the foreman laid into them with a switch. Other than these, Dinal did not see another living soul until noon approached. Then, a few early‑rising whores came out to sit naked in the sun. Their pierced and bejeweled nipples glittered; last night’s golden paint peeled away in patches to reveal bruises, scars, scabs, and bloody wounds. Lounging in chairs dragged out into the middle of the road, they cushioned certain parts of their bodies with pillows, and watched Dinal pass with the same stunned and incurious gaze they turned upon each other. A street doctor made her rounds, dispensing poultices and headache remedies.

They smoked to dull the pain, Dinal supposed. But a whore under smoke was helpless to defend herself against injury. So the trap closed, and there was no escape.

Dinal’s horse stopped dead in the middle of a deserted square and looked at her over his shoulder. Dinal could offer him neither explanation nor purpose for their continued wandering. It was her lot and joy to serve at the beck of the G’deon. She would have to remain in this cursed town, and await either the bidding of her heart or the long‑expected word that the G’deon had finally breathed his last.

She allowed the horse to drink from one of the pornographic fountains, then she turned him toward the eastern end of town. Here, the nearby ocean scented the air with a sweet reek of seaweed and salt. In the debris of narrow alleys, rag‑dressed people huddled against moldy stone. When the sun suddenly came blazing over the edge of the rooftops, they began to awaken, in a mutter of groans and curses.

The narrow street led Dinal to a plaza, where a broken‑wheeled carriage stood with the horse still in the traces, and the driver, asleep or dead, slumped to one side with the reins in his hands. A few newly risen drunks had gathered to dunk their heads in the fountain. Two shouted at each other, and seemed on the verge of blows. One vomited onto bare stone, as another looked speculatively at the carriage. Others still lay like soldiers mowed down in a desperate rout and left behind to rot. Dinal’s horse picked his way squeamishly among the fallen.

Not much liking the look of this plaza or its occupants, Dinal turned her horse toward the nearest alley. Directly across from her, in a windowless wall scabrous with the remains of a decaying mosaic, a door opened. Out came a barefoot girl, dressed only in a night shift, with a water jug balanced upon her hip. She was extraordinarily tall and thin. The invading sunlight passed across her face as she stepped through the human debris. At Dinal’s hail, the girl neither stepped forward nor stepped away.

Dinal held out a hand, with a silver coin in the palm. “I have lost my way. Will you take me back to the main road?”

The girl examined Dinal from toe to head, her gaze lingering longest on the telltale gold earrings: three of them, marking her high rank. “All roads lead to the main road. No one will ever believe you are lost. Who are you?” Her body was all arms and legs; she had been growing with astonishing speed and her breasts had started to form. And she had come into her power, and had only just begun to realize what she was. This Dinal saw, imprinted in the girl’s very flesh. She was earth.

“I’m Dinal Paladin. I’ve come here to find you.”

“Now there’s a story,” the girl said. Yet her body had shivered, as with yearning, before she spoke with such quick cynicism. Perhaps she had half expected someone to come and find her, thinking that surely someone, somehow, would realize that an earth witch had emerged in the back streets of Lalali.

“I was sent by the G’deon,” Dinal said. “I am the mother of his children.”

After a moment, the girl said, “You must speak to my master and hire my services. Do you have a kerchief or a length of cloth, something to cover your face? And let loose your hair.”

Dinal untied the thong that bound her hair, so that it fell forward and covered her earrings. She took a black scarf out of her baggage, and the girl helped her to tie it so it covered her entire face, except for her eyes. “Now, stand so, holding the reins.” The girl demonstrated an attitude of impatience and boredom. “You must seem eager, but do not agree to pay more than you have there in your hand.”