Soon I found myself devising one scheme after another to crack Gerick’s shell. One day when I visited the tower, I brought a small wooden box that held chess pieces and unfolded into a small game board. I asked Gerick if he played. He nodded, but refused to have a game with me. Another day, I brought my knife. Surely knives were irresistible for young boys still practicing swordplay with wooden weapons. I made a flute from a hollow reed, proud that I got it to play passably. When I offered to show Gerick how to make one, he flared his nostrils in distaste. “You are a wicked, evil woman. Everyone knows it. Why do you stay here? Go away!” At least I had evidence he was not struck dumb by my presence. On another day I brought a bundle of tall meadow grass and spent an entire afternoon weaving figures of animals as my old friend Jonah had taught me to do when I lived in Dunfarrie. Gerick stayed, pretending to shoot arrows at birds, only leaving the tower once I had used up my supplies. I considered that a victory.

Only one certain conclusion resulted from my activity. The boy was not afraid of me. Though he still maintained his reserve, he would sit on the windy parapet all afternoon, separated from me only by the empty firepit or a stone merlon. He watched me for hours at a time while I was at my business, though he knew I was aware of him. So, if fear that I might somehow ensorcel him was not keeping him silent, he must have some other reason, well calculated and determined. It made me look at him with new eyes. What could prompt a child to maintain such control?

Not for the first time I wished I had the ability to steal the boy’s thoughts as Karon’s people could. Scruples prevented the Dar’Nethi from using their power without permission, but for my part, the puzzle of my nephew would have quickly overcome any such ideals.

Philomena paid no attention to Gerick’s attempts to be rid of me. She was pleased with our arrangement, she told me. No one bothered her with tedious business, yet the house was calm, the servants well ordered, the food excellent, and, most importantly, it would soon be Covenant Day, and silver would flow into the Comigor coffers once more. “You’ve been a great blessing, Seri,” she told me one evening after our reading time. She had just finished detailing Gerick’s latest complaints. “I told him he’s acting the selfish little pig.”

“Tell me, Philomena, have you considered getting some friend of Tomas’s to foster Gerick?”

“Well, of course. Not that anyone I know would put up with him. One would think someone might offer out of sympathy, but only the captain has said he’d do it. He’s such a nosy.”

“The captain?”

“You know him. Tomas’s trained dog. Captain Darzid.”

Hatred bubbled up from my depths for the immaculately groomed courtier who had stood in every dark place of my life. Karon’s arrest and trial. My son’s murder. Darzid had hunted the sorcerer prince who had come to me at midsummer, and I believed he had lured Tomas to his death, making him a pawn in the long war between Karon’s people and the three sorcerers who called themselves the Lords of Zhev’Na. “Darzid has offered to train Gerick?”

“Of course, I would never consider him.” Philomena fanned herself with a flat of stiff, painted paper cut in the outline of a rose. “He’s no more than a common soldier really, not even knighted. Not at all suitable for a duke’s companion.”

“Very true. How perceptive of you to see that a relationship with your son would be only to Darzid’s advantage and not Gerick’s at all.”

“Gerick loathes him. He’d probably kill the man if forced to be with him. I told the captain not even to think of it.”

I almost patted Philomena’s head that evening. I read to her for an extra hour, which put her quite to sleep. “Your snobbery has served you well for once,” I whispered as I blew out her lamp.

Common sense told me to waste no more time trying to befriend a child who so clearly wanted nothing to do with me, but somehow that answer was no longer acceptable. I could not shake the image of his red-brown hair blowing wildly in the wind on the roof of the northwest tower. Whatever was troubling Gerick had cut him off from the most basic human contact. No child should be so alone.

One morning in late fall, Allard, the head stableman, came to me with an odd story. Two days previous, a boy had come to the stables asking for work. Being unknown to anyone, he was sent away. “An ordinary kind of boy,” said Allard. “But yestermorn, that same boy was at the kitchen door, asking cook for work. Cook sent him away, too, though she gave him a morsel of food as he looked so forlorn. I hope that’s all right, ma’am, as I wouldn’t want to get cook in trouble.”

“Of course, that’s all right,” I said.

“Then last night late,” said the stableman, “I woke with the feeling that all was not right with the horses. When I went to the stable, I found that boy again! I thought to take a whip to him, but he started talking about how Quicksilver was getting a twist in his gut that was hurting him terrible, and how Slewfoot had a crack in his hoof and would soon go lame if it weren’t fixed, and about how Marigold was going to foal a fine colt, but we needed to keep her quiet as she was delicate…”

I almost burst out laughing. Paulo! No other boy in the Four Realms had a feel for horses like Paulo. It was hard to let Allard talk his worries out.

“… and he sounded so true, that I took a look and Quicksilver was tender in the belly just as the boy said. All the rest was right, too. The boy is lame, which some would hold against him, but I could see as he was a natural with the horses, far past any lad in the stable. But I didn’t want to take him on without your say. I thought there might be something odd, as he was asking if this was where ‘the lady called Serf was set up to run things.’”

“Allard, would it make you feel better if I were to speak to this boy before you took him on?”

Relief poured out of the man like summer ale from a barrel. “Aye, my lady. That would be just what I was thinking.”

“Send him to me in the housekeeper’s room.”

The old man touched his forehead in respect and looked relieved to have shed the burden of the extraordinary. I hurried to Nellia’s sitting room and shooed her away, saying I was to interview a new lad for Allard. When Allard brought Paulo to the door, the boy grinned shyly.

“You can go, Allard,” I said. “No need to interrupt your work. Come in, young man.”

Paulo limped in, his twisting gait the result of one leg misshapen since birth. The old man bowed and closed the door. The boy grinned shyly at me and touched his brow.

Only the certainty that Paulo would be mortified with embarrassment kept me from embracing him. I offered my hand instead. “What in the name of the stars are you doing here, Paulo?”

“Sheriff sent me.”

Graeme Rowan, Sheriff of Dunfarrie, had sheltered the homeless thirteen-year-old since our adventures of the summer. Rowan, Paulo, and Kellea, an untrained young sorceress from Valleor, had become valuable, if unexpected, allies, as I helped the mysterious Prince of Avonar evade pursuit and accomplish his mission in our world.

“Is anything wrong?”

“Nope. Just checking on things. Not heard from you in a while. Sheriff thought you might want one of us about to take letters or help out or whatever. Easiest if it was me.”

“I’ve just been a bit busy. I’ll write a letter to send back, but before you go, I want to hear all the news from Dunfarrie.”

Paulo’s brown hand twisted the tail of his tunic, and his eyes roamed everywhere in the room except my face. “Course, I don’t need to go back. You got horses here need a good hand.”

“I’d be delighted to have you here, but don’t you think the sheriff would worry?”

“Time I was getting me a job. Don’t want to be a burden. He and Kellea are… well, you know. Don’t need me about all the time.”

I knew that the courageous sheriff, bound by his office to hunt down sorcerers and burn them, had lost his heart to a talented, short-tempered young woman who was probably the last living Dar’Nethi sorcerer born in the Four Realms. But I also knew that neither of them begrudged Paulo a home. “It’s not that Graeme’s making you work at your lessons?”

It wasn’t easy to make Paulo blush, but a spring radish would have paled in comparison. “Horses don’t care if a man can read.”

“I’ll give you a job in the stables. Allard needs the help. But later this winter, we might have to work on your schooling a bit.”

I returned Paulo to Allard, who was waiting in the kitchen, and I said I could find no fault with the boy except that he needed a bath even more than he needed a meal. Paulo scowled and followed the old man back to the stables.

Paulo and I seldom had occasion to speak. But as I made my rounds of the estate with Giorge or rode out for pleasure, I saw him limping about the place. He always grinned before he ducked his head and touched his brow. Allard swore that Paulo had been born in a stable, perhaps of equine parentage. Soon I couldn’t go into the yard without seeing the two of them, heads together.

I never told anyone that I had known Paulo in my former life, though I could not have explained why. I was certainly not ashamed of him. He was a good and talented boy who had been my companion in adventure, brave and steady in circumstances that would daunt many grown men. It just felt good to have a private friend.

Seille came, the midwinter season when we observed the longest night of the year and the ten days until the new year. Seille and Long Night were celebrations bound up with the legend of a wounded god brought from despair by the generous offering of food, entertainment, and gifts from the poorest of his subjects. I found the truths of sorcery, two worlds, and the magical Bridge that somehow linked them and kept them in balance more fascinating than any Long Night myth. But I had always loved the trappings of Seille: gifts bound with silk ribbons, storytelling, pageants, pastries, evergreen boughs, hot cider fragrant with cinnamon and cloves, and splurging with hundreds of scented candles to brighten the cold, dark nights.

With the holidays came the first evidence of real progress with my nephew. I was surprised and pleased to find Gerick in Philomena’s room when I went to her for our nightly hour on the Feast of Long Night. It had seemed a bleak holiday having no family gathering to parallel the festivity in the servants’ hall, so I had asked the maids to garland Philomena’s mantel with evergreen, ordered a special supper for the duchess, and invited Gerick to join us. Though matters between the boy and me had been more detached than hostile of late, I had never expected him to come. But he was dressed in a fine suit and had already lit the candles that Nellia had sent on the tray, adding their perfume to the scent of balsam that filled the air.