He smiled at her. “I love Talat too, you know,” he said mildly. “If I can aid you, you need only to ask.”

Teka and the redroot were a little more difficult.

“Teka, what is redroot?” Aerin asked one afternoon as she applied an uneven patch to a skirt she had always detested, and glowered at the result.

“If you spent a quarter of the time about your mending that you have over that old saddle, you would be better turned out than Galanna,” said Teka with asperity. “Rip that out and do it again.”

Aerin sighed, and began to pick at the irregular stitches. “I suppose there’s no point in mentioning that I have no desire to be better turned out than Galanna.” She picked a moment in silence and added, “For that matter, Galanna never wears anything that has a patch or a tear.”

Teka grinned. “No. She takes out a great gash and puts in a whole new panel of different cloth, and it’s a new dress.”

“I would like to make a new floor mop out of this thing,” replied Aerin.

Teka lifted it out of Aerin’s hands and squinted at it. “The color has not worn well,” she explained, “but the cloth is sound. We could re-dye it.” Aerin did not show any marked access of enthusiasm for this plan. “Blue perhaps, or red. Don’t overwhelm me with your gladness, child. You’re always wanting to wear red, in spite of your flaming hair—”

“Orange,” murmured Aerin.

“You could do quite well with this skirt in red, and a golden tunic over—Aerin!”

“It would still have to be patched,” Aerin pointed out.

Teka sighed heavily. “You would try the patience of Gholotat herself. If you will do something useful with that wretched bridle that has been lying under the bed for the last fortnight, I will re-dye your poor skirt, and put a patch on it that not even Galanna will notice—as if you cared.”

Aerin reached out to hug Teka, and Teka made a noise that so sounded like “Hmmph.” Aerin fell off the window seat and made her way over to the bed on her hands and knees and began to scrabble under it. She re-emerged only slightly dusty, for the hafor were dutiful floor-sweepers, held the bridle at arm’s length and looked at it with distaste. “Now what do I do with it?” she inquired.

“Put it on a horse,” Teka suggested in a much-tried tone.

Aerin laughed. “Teka, I am inventing a new way to ride. I don’t use a bridle.”

Teka, who still occasionally watched Aerin and Aerin’s white stallion in secret to reassure herself that Talat would do her beloved child no harm, shuddered. It was the luck of the gods that Teka had not been watching the day Talat had jumped the fence. “I don’t want to hear about it.”

“Someday,” Aerin went on with a bold sweep of her empty hand, “I shall be famous in legend and story—” She stopped, embarrassed to say such things even to Teka.

Teka, holding the skirt to the light as she made deft invisible stitches around the patch, said quietly, “I have never doubted it, my dear.”

Aerin sat down on the edge of the bed with the bridle in her lap and looked at the fringe on the bed curtains, which were the long golden manes of the embroidered horseheads on the narrow canopy border, and thought of her mother, who had died in despair when she found she had borne a daughter instead of a son.

“What is redroot?” she asked again.

Teka frowned. “Redroot. That’s—um—astzoran. Red-root’s the old term for it—they used to think it was good for some things.”

“What things?”

Teka glanced at her and Aerin bit her lip. “Why do you want to know?”

“I—oh—I read a lot in the old books in the library while I wasn’t ... feeling quite well. There was some herb-lore, and they mentioned redroot.”

Teka considered, and some of her thoughts were similar to Tor’s when Aerin had asked him to teach her swordplay. Teka had never thought about whether Aerin’s fate had more to do with what Aerin was or what Damar was, or for reasons beyond either; Teka merely observed that Aerin’s fate was unique. But she knew, knew better even than the cousin who loved her, that Aerin would never be a court lady; not like Galanna, who was a beautiful termagant, but neither like Arlbeth’s first wife, Tatoria, whom everyone had loved. None of the traditions of Arlbeth’s court could help the king’s daughter discover her fate; but Teka, unlike Aerin herself, had faith that the destiny was somewhere to be found. She hesitated, but she could remember nothing dangerous about the no longer valued redroot.

“Astzoran doesn’t grow around here,” said Teka; “it is a low weedy plant that prefers open meadows. It spreads by throwing out runners, and where the runner touches the earth a long slender root strikes down. That is the redroot.” Teka pretended great concentration upon her patch. “I might take a few days to ride into the meadows beyond the City and into the Hills; I am reminded that there are herbs I need, and I prefer to gather my own. If you wish to come, I will show you some astzoran.”

Teka asked no questions when Aerin rolled up a small herb bundle of her own and tied it to Kisha’s saddle during their journey, a bundle that included several long thready roots of astzoran, and if any of the outriders noticed (for Teka only rode at all under duress, and even on her slow, sleepy, elderly pony she felt much safer with several other people around), they said nothing either.

The ointment recipe, Aerin found, was not as exact as it might be. She made one mixture, spread some of it on one finger, and thrust the finger into a candle flame—and snatched it out again with a yelp. Three more mixtures gained her three more burnt fingers—and a terrific lecture from Teka, who was not, of course, informed as to the details of why Aerin seemed intent on burning her fingers off. After that she used bits of wood to smear her trial blends on; when they smoked and charred, she knew she had not yet got it right.

After the first few tries she sighed and began to keep careful notes of how each sample was made. It was not an exercise natural to her, and after she’d filled several sheets of parchment with her tiny exact figures—parchment was expensive stuff, even for kings’ daughters—she began to lose heart. She thought: If this mess really worked, everyone would know of it; they would all use it for dragon-hunting, and-would have been using it all along, and dragons would no longer be a risk—and that book would be studied and not left to gather dust. It is foolish to think I might have discovered something everyone before me had overlooked. She bowed her head over her burnt twig, and several hot tears slipped down her face onto her page of calculations.

ON HER EIGHTEENTH BIRTHDAY there was a banquet for the first sol, despite all she could do to prevent it. Galanna shot her glances like poisoned arrows and clung curiously near Tor’s side for someone else’s wife of so few seasons. Perlith made witty remarks at Aerin’s expense in his soft light tenor that always sounded kind, whatever he might be saying. The king her father toasted her, and the faces around the tables in the great hall glittered with smiles; but Aerin looked at them sadly and saw only the baring of teeth.

Tor watched her: she was wearing a golden tunic over a long red skirt; the tunic had embroidered flowers wound round its hem, and petals of many colors stitched drifting down the full sleeves; she wore the same two rings she had at Galanna’s wedding. Her flame-colored hair was twisted around her head, and a golden circlet was set upon it, and over her forehead three golden birds held green stones in their beaks. He saw her wince away from the courtiers’ smiles, and he shook Galanna’s hand from his arm impatiently, and then Galanna no longer even pretended to smile.

Aerin did not notice this, for she never looked at Galanna if she could help it, and if Galanna were near Tor she didn’t look at Tor either. But Arlbeth noticed. He knew what it was that he saw, for better or for worse, and it was not often that he did not know what was best done about the things he saw; but in this case he did not know. What he read in Tor’s face tore at his heart, for it would be his heart’s fondest wish that these two might wed, and yet he knew his people had never loved the daughter of his second wife, and he feared their mistrust, and he had reason to fear it. Aerin felt her father’s arm around her shoulders, and turned to smile up at him.