Iris woke to a quiet knock on the door.

It took her a long moment to remember where she was, and why. As she sat up, her mind skimmed over the events of the day: the attack on Whitehall, the tunnel, the bear, and the boy—had that all happened today? She started to stand, because it was probably Lyle at the locked door, come with food and supplies—but then her mind jolted into place and she remembered something far worse than what had happened today: her father was dead.

She sat down and fought back tears. She glanced at Clive, who had fallen asleep next to her. For all his fussing, he still hadn’t wanted to sleep alone.

The knock came again, a bit louder, but Iris was still waging a battle in her mind. She couldn’t hold all of this at once. Was her father truly dead? It was just a piece of paper they had received; she had no physical proof. She wouldn’t believe it until she went down to Ilyich herself and saw his house. Of course he would be there. He was always there. And if not, well, that didn’t matter right now. For the duration of this adventure, she could believe he was alive and waiting for her back home. Her tired mind agreed, and switched back to a time before she had heard the contents of that letter.

As she went to the door, her heart lifted with the idea of her father waiting on that dock for them, whenever it was safe to return to Ilyich, wanting to hear every detail of this story. They would be laughing while they told it to him, because it would be long over, and everything would be back to normal.

She hesitated at the last moment before unlocking the door. “Who is it?” she asked, quiet enough not to wake Clive but hopefully loud enough to hear on the other side.

“It’s me,” Lyle said. His now-familiar voice was a comfort. She opened the door. He came in, and with him a cold breeze. “Sorry it took so long,” he said as she shut the door behind him. He looked around her to where Clive slept in one of the beds. “Everything all right in here?”

“We’re fine. A little cold.”

He went straight to the fireplace and had a fire going in less than a minute. She didn’t even know how to do that. Then he started pulling out some food to make them dinner. She hardly knew how to do that, either.

She approached him from behind, watching as he started a fire inside the stove using some already-lit wood from the fireplace.

“Why are you really helping us?” she asked, rubbing her arms.

He glanced her way but continued his work, pulling an iron pan from a cabinet. “What do you mean? There are blankets in the closet, by the way.”

She went to the closet, pulled out a wool blanket, and wrapped it around her shoulders. Then she sat in a chair at the table and continued to watch Lyle cook. “I’m sorry we’re making you lie to your family,” she said. “I’m really grateful that you’re doing all of this for us. But I’m surprised you actually agreed. Why did you?”

He took a deep breath. “I mean, I really do want to keep you safe and help you out—I’m not just going to leave you out here in the grass for the bears. But also . . .”

“I want the truth, before we go along with you.”

He met her eye. “For my little brother. He doesn’t belong here. He needs to go out into the world and travel, and—whatever people do out in the world. Experience things. See the ocean. Meet people. Learn everything he can. Go to . . . what are they called? The buildings that only holds books?”

“Libraries,” she said, breaking into a smile.

“Yeah, libraries. But we don’t have the money—I work all of the time and it’s still not enough. If I do this, he can safely travel the world, right?”

“It can be dangerous out there, but yes, people travel the world. My mother has done it. She’s been everywhere.” She paused. “If your brother needs to see the world, why isn’t he coming with us?” Lyle avoided her gaze, so she said firmly, “The truth.”

“The truth?” He sighed. “If I bring my little brother, and I have to choose between protecting him and protecting you, I would choose him. And then I wouldn’t have any money and I’d be right back at the start.”

She inclined her head. “That was very honest, thank you. I understand.” She looked over at Clive, breathing heavily into his pillow. “I understand,” she said again, softly.

“Anything else you want to know to be able to trust me? Because I’m going to need you to listen to me when we’re out there. If I tell you to run, or duck, or hide, you have to listen. You can’t hesitate.”

She nodded slowly. That sounded quite heroic, she thought. He would make a good knight.

“Why are you smiling?”

She tried to stop smiling, but ended up smiling wider. “I just—I think you would make a good knight.”

“A knight?” He raised his eyebrows. “Aren’t they the ones who are obsessed with honor and chivalry, and fight monsters?”

“Yes, they are. But no, I don’t think they actually fight monsters.”

“Well, I don’t think I would count, since I’m doing this for the money.”

“Sure, but what’s behind the money is a good cause. It’s for your brother. And—if you had to pick between protecting us and protecting yourself, I think you would pick us, wouldn’t you? You already have. That’s very selfless. You’ve already done something that could make you worthy of being knighted.”

He shrugged. “I was just doing my job.”

He didn’t understand. If he hadn’t stopped that bear, she would be in pieces right now. She would be . . . a carcass in a cave, being chewed on by wild animals. She shivered. Her mother would never find her, Clive would be scarred for life and also be lost in the wilderness, Oliver would never forgive himself for letting them go alone . . . and Iris herself, she would never get to live out her life. Never finish any of her dreams, never possibly become queen, never see the ocean again, never sit in her father’s study again . . . “Lyle, I owe you my life,” she said quietly. “Just say ‘you’re welcome’.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

She snickered. He smiled at the food he was cooking, then slid some onto a plate and handed it to her. “Should we wake your brother?”

“He can eat when he wakes up.”

They sat at the table and ate together. She found herself quite amused by him.

“So you think,” he said sarcastically, “if I went out into the world, I could be a knight?”

“Sure. I mean, it takes about ten years of training, and you should have started younger, but . . . well, I suppose you already have lots of training. So yes, I think you could. My mother could knight you,” she said, realizing it was true. “For saving me. If you were older, she might.”

He chewed on some meat and watched her.

She realized she had said too much. Her mother being able to bestow knighthood—would he know what that meant?

“Is your mother all right?”

She frowned at her plate. “What makes you ask that?”

“You both seem pretty worried.”

Iris bit her lip.

“Iris,” he said, which gave her chills, for he had not said her name yet, “I’ve been honest with you. I need to know what we’re dealing with. Are you certain someone will be waiting at Northfort for us?”

She glanced over at Clive, making sure he was still asleep. “Promise me you won’t tell anyone.”

“I’ve already promised.”

“Promise again.”

“These promises only count until after this is over, right? I can tell my family about this after you’ve gone?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Then yes, I promise again.”

Oliver would never let them trust a stranger if he were here. But he was not here, and Iris had a certain trust reserved for people her own age. She understood their motives more easily. Far more than adults, at least. Adults could hide a million things and no one would ever know.

But a boy her age, who had already done so much for them? And was from nowhere, and knew nothing of the politics her family was wrapped up in? Even logically, it seemed smarter to let him know what he would be protecting them from. It was astronomically unlikely that he had ulterior motives.

“We were in a castle,” she began. “It’s called Whitehall. It’s in Ordivicia.”

He held up a finger, went to his bag, and pulled something out of it, then came back to the table and unrolled a map. It was poorly drawn, but a map nonetheless.

They weighed down the edges with plates and cups, then she pointed to Whitehall. “We’ve been staying in Whitehall while my mother . . . fights Ordic tribesmen that live all over here—“ she ran her finger along the mountains and coast to the north and east of Whitehall. “Last night, we were attacked. They—“

Armor! NOW!

She swallowed past a lump in her throat. “They got inside the walls, somehow. Our mother told Oliver—one of her guards—to take us to a secret tunnel that led out of the castle. He was supposed to go with us, but I made him go back to protect our mother. And . . . we don’t know what happened after that.”

You should come with us. Tahlia, you should run.

“That sounds terrifying.”

She nodded and tried to keep away the image of the man with an arrow in his throat. “Oliver told us the tunnel went to Northfort,” she went on, running her finger along the mountain range up to the fort along Ordivicia’s northern border, the one they shared with Slovland. “But that’s a long walk, and we didn’t have any food or water. Then the tunnel split, and we didn’t know which route to take.”

I will find you there. Don’t stop for anything. Don’t come back this way.

“We picked the left one.” She ran her finger over to where the map read Brey. Lyle’s valley wasn’t even visible on this map. She wondered if it were too small to be of note, or if the people of the valley purposefully kept themselves a secret from the world. “We were too hungry to keep going. We saw a hole.”

Lyle nodded, brow slightly furrowed as he looked over the map. “But you were the only ones who took the escape route? No one else in the entire castle knew about it?”

She shrugged. “Everyone else in the castle is a soldier. It’s being used as a military base right now, for the war. Other than the servants, of course, the cooks and whatnot. I don’t know where they went.” Her gut clenched, thinking of the girl who did her hair every morning and helped her into her dresses, and the people who served them dinner, whose names she had never learned, but whose faces had become familiar to her over the months. She hoped they were all right. If the castle had truly been sacked, and her history books were correct, they were very much not all right.

She shook it off. They were fine. They were all fine, because the Ordics had attacked a military fortress full of soldiers and there was no way they could win against that.

“Then why were you living there,” Lyle inquired, “if it’s just for the military? Is it because your mother is . . . who is your mother?”

She sighed and glanced back at Clive once more. Still asleep. Would it change Lyle’s mind to learn the truth? Or was it better for him to know the danger? “She’s . . .” She steeled herself and lowered her voice to a whisper. “She’s the queen of Ordivicia.” To her surprise, Lyle almost started laughing. “What?” she demanded.

“Nothing, I’m sorry—“ he tried to compose himself. “You’re a princess, then?”

“Sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“I mean, my mother has only been a queen for two years. I wasn’t raised a princess.”

“But you are one now.”

“I suppose. But—do you see—you can’t tell anyone our names. If her enemies found out where we were . . .”

“I’ll call you George and Tahlia around anyone else.”

Her mother’s name made her sad. “Yes,” she said quietly.

“If your mother is a queen, who is your father? The king?”

“No, he . . . um, he’s a merchant. They met long before she was queen. He lives . . .” She ran her finger down the map, but it didn’t go far enough south, so she kept going until she was a ways off the paper and onto the table. “Down here, in the city of Ilyich. It’s a port city in Rhondivar.”

He looked at her finger strangely. “Your parents . . . live on different sides of the world?”

“Yes.” Really they lived on the same coastline, crossable by ship in a few weeks—across the world would be all the way in Astheld, and that would take months, if not years, to travel to. But she didn’t think it was the time to enlighten him on how large the whole world was.

“Is that . . . normal?”

“No,” she laughed. “No, it’s not normal at all. It’s . . . complicated. They both have very important things to do in different countries right now, that’s all. Until two years ago, we all lived in my father’s house together.”

“Until your mother just . . . decided to become queen of a country on the other side of the world?”

“Ordivicia is my mother’s country, she was just living down in Rhondivar for us. She always planned to go back and help—Ordivicia has been a mess of warring clans for a long time, and it was only getting worse. No localized government, no laws, just a few organized city-states and then a bunch of clans doing whatever they wanted.”

“City-state?”

“It’s just a big city that kind of functions as its own country. It has outlying towns and farms that keep it fed, and it trades with other city-states. The major city-states of Ordivicia—Breden, Gamach, Rawthey, and Lerman—got tired of the clans attacking them and taking their food and livestock, so they started to make pacts between each other to destroy the clans, or at least keep them far away. My mother was helping with that, and kind of planting the idea that she could be their leader and they could create a real country.”

She took a few bites of food.

“My mother has royal blood from both Ordivicia and the Astheldian empire, and she’s well-known in the East because she helped create the Alliance.”

It occurred to her how many of these words were new to him. “The Eastern Alliance is what we call the countries that border the coast of the Eastern Sea.” The map didn’t show any of the countries of the East except a sliver of Cambria to the south, so she ran her hand down where the map would extend if it were bigger. “Cambria, Rhondivar, Endal, and Siluria are down here. Alyria is west of them, but it’s part of the Alliance, too. They all have an inter-connected military and trade, to keep them from fighting each other. The Alliance was created to stop the Astheldian Empire. Both of my parents helped with that. If the East hadn’t come together to make the Alliance, the Astheldian Empire would have conquered the entire world. But that’s . . . a different story.

“Anyway, my mother didn’t want to completely invest in the idea of becoming queen of Ordivicia until we were older,” she added, nodding toward Clive. “But things started happening up here that she wanted to be a part of, and my father still had to run his business down south, so we decided that Clive and I could live with each parent for a few months at a time. But . . . things started going wrong.

“To counter the city-states organizing against them, the clans started working together. Eventually they picked a leader, Malcolm Maclagan. That’s when everything went wrong for us. No one expected the clans to be able to organize the way they did. My mother had to become queen sooner than she expected—the city-states voted her their leader—so they could keep the clans at bay. That’s when the war really started. By that time, the roads and the seas weren’t safe enough for travel, especially not for us, so we were trapped up here.

“That was two years ago. By now there are only a few clans left who haven’t surrendered and joined our new country, but Malcolm Maclagan is still trying to unseat my mother. He’s probably the one who attacked our castle.”

Gods, she hoped her mother had won that battle. Who knew what would happen if she hadn’t?

Lyle looked intrigued but puzzled.

“What is it?” she inquired.

“Nothing, I just . . .” He blinked. “I’ve always been told nothing interesting happens out there. That it’s just a wasteland, and some faraway kingdoms go to war all the time.”

“Well, most of your country is indeed empty plains, but the whole world isn’t like that. There is war sometimes, but there’s a lot more than that. As far as I know, actually, this is the only war happening in the world right now. Ever since the Astheldian Empire dissolved into independent territories, everything has been quite stable. You heard about that, right? Your country was a part of the Empire until a few years before we were born.”

Lyle nodded distantly. “They said the last emperor stepped down, but I never learned why.”

Iris took a moment for herself to remember what her mother, who had been in the middle of these historical events, told her she could share with others and what had to remain a secret. She was fairly certain that to this day her mother still hadn’t told her everything. “The last emperor decided enough was enough. He set up independent governments for all the territories and dissolved the empire. He said the point of an empire was to unite and bring peace, and that had been done. Before he left he made sure all of the territories were so interconnected that it was essentially impossible to go to war against each other. And they all have pacts to protect each other if any territory is attacked by outside forces. It sounds crazy, but he was very smart, and it’s worked so far.”

She glanced at him, thinking of ways to change the subject. “Look, this map that you have? This is just the Northeast—the Kailands, Ordivicia, and Slovland.” She swept her arms around the table to trace a rough estimate of what a worldwide map would look like. It took up almost the entire table. “This is how big our continent is—it’s called Glavnaya.” She could see his eyes glimmering with wonder as he gazed at the map that only showed one little corner of their world. “I told you you’re missing a lot,” she said.

He suddenly frowned. “How long does it take to cross an ocean?”

“Um . . . a few weeks, usually. I mean, from Breden all the way into the Bay might take a couple of months, but you’d have to stop multiple times to resupply.”

He nodded thoughtfully.

She leaned her chin in her hand and sighed, her full stomach sending her waves of sleepiness.

He blinked, then his eyes focused on her. “You can go back to sleep. I’ll stay up—we have to leave here a couple hours before sunrise. I’ll wake you up then.”

She looked at him curiously. “Why do we have to do that?”

“Because we have to make it into Brey in time to catch the caravan that’s leaving tomorrow morning. We can join them if we pay for passage.”

She sat up straight. “What, really?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

She could kiss him, then. He had a plan. They wouldn’t have to walk to Northfort.

“I don’t know how long it will take to get there, though,” he admitted.

She examined the map closely, heart pounding. “Not long at all,” she breathed. “On a wagon—less than a day, I think.”

“Great,” Lyle declared. “That’s great!”

Clive shifted in his bed, and they fell quiet.

“Thank you so much, Lyle,” she whispered, beaming.

“You can thank me when we get to Northfort.”

She nodded, but was still smiling. A straight shot, that’s what this was—they would be with their mother—or at least Oliver—by midday tomorrow. She let out a deep breath and rested her forehead on the table.

“Get some rest,” Lyle suggested. “I’ll wake you up when it’s time.”

She nodded, then made herself stand up and head back to the bed.

Lyle started for the door.

“Where are you going?” she whispered.

“I’ll be right outside,” he promised. “So I can know when it’s time.” When she looked confused, he added, “By the stars.”

“Oh,” she breathed. That made sense, but was spectacularly impressive to her. She had studied the stars with her tutors, but she still would not be able to tell the time by them. “All right.”

 

Iris woke up with a jolt, afraid that they had missed the time they had to leave—but the windows showed it was still late at night. Then she realized what had woken her—Lyle was kneeling by the fireplace, carefully placing new logs over the flames. He hadn’t seen her wake. He blew on the fire, and she saw the orange glow light up his face, then fall back to shadow. The fire crackled and sputtered. He blew on it again, then held out his hands to warm them.

He glanced over at her, and she closed her eyes. After a few moments, she opened them ever-so-slightly and watched him from under her lashes. He was still looking at her, a thoughtful expression on his face. Then he seemed to shake it off, and stood up. He went back outside.

A few seconds after he closed the door, Iris felt the rush of cold air across her face. The rest of her was covered in thick blankets and furs. She could feel the warmth of Clive’s shoulder against her back.

She closed her eyes and tried to go back to sleep, but her mind was buzzing. What did the grassland look like at night? What did it sound like? She could hear it very distantly through the walls. Did it ever stop?

Why had Lyle looked at her for so long?

After a few minutes of failing to go back to sleep, she carefully slid out of bed and tucked the blankets around Clive. By the light of the fire, she found a heavy coat in the closet and pulled it on. It felt like it weighed nearly as much as she did, but it was very warm.

She found some pants, too, but her waist was about half the size it needed to be for them to stay on, so she abandoned them in favor of the wool blanket she’d used earlier. Then she slipped outside, closing the door behind her as quietly as she could.

The world outside was cold, dark, and eerily alive. Crickets chirped, the grass rustled aimlessly in the wind, and the stars blinked and flickered above.

Lyle looked up when she came out, surprised. “Are you all right?” He was sitting with his back to the cabin wall, his legs pulled up to his chest. He also had a thick coat on, and a couple of blankets wrapped around him. His bow was on the ground next to him, as well as his quiver.

“Can’t sleep,” she said quietly, and came to sit next to him. “I can take over if you want to go to sleep . . . though I guess I wouldn’t know what time it is.”

“I’m all right.” He pointed to the sky. “We’re waiting for that star to be two fingers’ width from the mountains. That will be two hours before sunrise.”

“Which one?”

He drew his head close to hers, so their temples were almost touching, and pointed. “You see the four that are in a half-circle? It’s a little up and to the left of those.”

She nodded, dazzled by the cosmos, but seeing the one he meant.

He moved away from her and leaned his head back against the cabin wall. The grass rustled and whispered, and in the starlight she could see the yellow stalks swaying. The sky was completely clear, and the stars were bright.

“Your family really won’t mind that you’re gone?” she murmured after a while. “None of them?”

He let out a breath that steamed before him. “Probably not.”

“Why not?” Her coat smelled strongly of leather, and though it wasn’t her favorite smell, she pulled it up to her chin, crossing her arms as the chill set in.

“I gave them some good excuses,” he said. “Are you cold?”

“A little.” He pulled one of the blankets off his shoulders to give it to her. Not wanting to take his warmth, she said, “Here, we can share it.” She unfolded the blanket and draped it over both their shoulders, which made her have to scoot over until their arms were pressed together. He didn’t complain. The gentle wind in the grass and the twinkling of the stars filled their silence.

There was a rustling in the grass not far from them, and Iris sucked in a sharp breath, thinking of bears. “What was that?”

“Raccoon.”

She looked over at him. “How do you know that?”

He tilted his head. “I can tell how big it is from the sound it makes. It sounded a little bigger than a raccoon, so it could be a gazelle. But it’s definitely not a bear.”

She looked back out at the grass. She didn’t know how that was possible, that he could tell so much just from the sound, but she remembered how he had heard his uncle on the road when she hadn’t heard a single thing. Maybe if you lived your whole life out in the grass, you learned all of its secrets.

Maybe she and Clive could just stay out here forever, safe in the grass. If anyone came looking, they would vanish into it. They could send word to her mother that they were never coming back. That way, they never had to go back down to Ilyich and see if that house was empty.

She sniffed, for the cold was making her nose run. She wiped at it, and had to dab her eyes a bit, too.

I don’t want to be an orphan!

Her own words terrified her. The way a scream had ripped out of her when she saw the blood of that soldier, squirting into the air—she shut her eyes, frowning hard.

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

She opened her eyes and let the rustle of the grass calm her. “Have you ever . . . seen someone die?”

“Yes,” he said quietly. “My mother.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” She hadn’t expected that. She’d seen a stranger die, and that was terrible enough to flash before her eyes and make her heart race every time she thought of it. It made her feel sick, and something else—something darker, deep down. That man really had died, she was sure of it. She did not know his name, and she probably never would. Was his family devastated? Right this minute, were they unable to sleep, thinking of him?

“It’s all right,” Lyle said softly. “It was a long time ago.”

“Does that make it better?” she asked hopefully.

“A little. It doesn’t hurt as badly, at least. It dulls. And then it just becomes a fact, unless you think about it too hard.”

She wanted to tell him about her father, but she couldn’t. Not even to say they had gotten a silly letter that was a mistake.

“What happened to your mother?” she asked him instead, voice breaking a little.

“Fever. It came through a few years ago, killed four people and made almost everyone sick. More died in Brey than here.” He shifted, his arm bumping hers. “Who did you see die?”

“A guard.”

“Was he protecting you?”

“He was . . . about to.”

Lyle nodded slowly. She watched his face out of the corner of her eye. His yellow hair fell into his face a bit, and he looked to be in distant thought. She liked his face—she didn’t know why, but he looked quite gallant to her. Peaceful, but smart.

She was confused, actually—she had been told that commoners out in isolated places were uneducated, rough, and uncivilized. Like the Ordics. This boy, even if he didn’t know much about the outside world, seemed more intelligent and self-aware than most people her age she’d met, even the children of nobility. She did not come to like people easily, either—she usually found new people to be either boring or annoying, but he was neither of those. He was pleasant.

Perhaps, she mused, the people who lived here had to be smart, or they would have been killed by bears by now.

He blinked and his eyes moved half-way to her. She knew he could tell that she was watching him. “You’re educated, aren’t you?” she asked. “I mean—I don’t know if that’s rude or not, but—you’re not exactly what I expected from a . . . commoner out here.”

He smiled wryly. “I can read and write, if that’s what you mean.”

“Did I offend you?” she asked quickly. “I really didn’t mean it like that—“

“No, it’s all right,” he said, shaking with laughter.

“I mean, I’ve been forced to learn a lot of useless things,” she rambled. “Philosophers’ writings, ancient plays, geography, about eight different languages, mathematics—“

“Mathematics aren’t useless. How else are you going to count money, or measure acres of land?”

“All right, maybe not, but—what I’m getting at is that I’ve been educated all my life, but I can’t read the stars like you can.” She motioned to the land. “Or the grass. I can’t defend myself against a bear. Who taught you all of this?”

He inclined his head. “My aunt and uncle. My parents . . . when they were around.”

“What happened to your father?” She watched him as his mouth quirked and starlight sparkled in his eyes as tears formed. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” she offered, wondering what could be worse than death, for he had spoken of his mother easily.

Lyle turned his head away from her and sniffed.

“Anyway, about the stars,” she went on, “That’s amazing. I wish—I wish I knew things like this. Useful things.”

“I could teach you,” he suggested, looking at her. He gestured around. “We have time.”

“I would love that.”

And so he told her about the stars—he had a few different names of constellations than what she had been taught, but he knew the practical uses of watching their movement. Then he told her about the bears, how they were to be respected and never crossed unless you intended—and had the means—to kill them, which consisted of a group of people, huge spears, the pots of pepper if necessary, and sometimes ropes. It depended, he told her, on how the hunters wanted to do it. If they wanted something easy, or if they wanted a real challenge. But always the respect for the bears came first—they wouldn’t let the hunters trap the bear and kill it while it was defenseless, for example.

“You called the bear we saw—what did you call her?”

“Tanter. She’s four years old, still young. This is her first year having a cub. She’s done surprisingly well.”

“Well—is it hard, hunting off the bears if you know them all by name?”

“Not really, no. Most of the ones we put up for hunt are aggressive young males, or females who are very old. We’re careful about how we trim the population. They would be killing each other off over resources anyway if we didn’t do this, since there’s only so much food in their valley. It’s good to see years when there’s plenty of food for all of them and they’re fat and happy. Sometimes it’s sad to see them die, but we try to make it quick. I don’t know.”

“Hmm,” she replied. She didn’t think she would be able to do it, but she saw no malicious intent, except maybe from the hunters themselves—depending on what their motive was. “I suppose that makes sense. Is your brother a guide, too?” She was curious about this mysterious brother she apparently wasn’t going to meet.

“No, he . . . well, he doesn’t like killing anything, for starters. He cried the last time he watched someone kill a chicken.” He snorted. “But he can’t be a watcher or a guide because he doesn’t have good enough vision. He can read well, but he can’t see very far. Even if he could see where the bears were, he wouldn’t be able to tell them apart, or which way they were looking—it’s not safe for him out in the grass.”

She hadn’t thought of that. “Well, I imagine it isn’t safe for anyone out in the grass.”

He shrugged. “It is if you know what you’re doing.”

She took a deep breath of crisp air. It smelled of grass. After a moment she held up her hand to the dark shape of the mountains on the horizon, and the star he had mentioned was four fingers from the mountains. “We still have . . . two hours before we have to leave?”

He held his hand up as well. “An hour and a half.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said sarcastically, “mister 'expert of reading the stars.’” Then they were both laughing, tiredly.

“Actually,” he said when he caught his breath, “you probably just have smaller fingers than me.”

“You think so?” They pressed their palms together to compare, fingers spread. His skin was calloused and rough against hers, and her fingers looked long and slim compared to his.

“Yep. Yours are just smaller.”

“So technically I was right.”

“You were still wrong about the time, but right about the finger-distance.”

“Uh-huh.”

“But this way of telling time only works on these exact mountains, anyway. You won’t be able to use it anywhere else.”

“Hmm,” she agreed, burying her hand back under the warm blanket. After a moment, for reasons she was trying to hide from herself, she asked, “This girl you’re going to marry. What’s her name?”

“Jessica.”

“What is she like?”

He shrugged. “She’s nice. Um . . . resourceful.”

“Resourceful?” she teased.

“I don’t know, she’s . . . tough.”

“Is she pretty?”

He started to turn red. “Yes.” He shook it off because she was grinning at him, and he nodded to her. “What about you, are you going to marry some prince?”

She blew out a breath. “Gods, I hope not. I’ve never actually met a prince, but I’ve met noblemen’s sons, and governor’s sons, and they’re terrible enough that I don’t even want to imagine what a prince would be like.”

“Isn’t your brother a prince?”

She grimaced. “I guess so.”

“Well, then who would you marry, if you don’t like rich men? I mean, I guess you don’t have to get married if you don’t want to. Do you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone I’d be willing to marry. I’ll figure it out when I’m older. You’re lucky you already know who you’re going to spend your life with.”

He pursed his lips and looked into the grass. “Well, I don’t actually have that much of a choice. There are only so many girls who live here, and most of them are my cousins.”

“Oh.” She tried not to be heartened by that. It was a ridiculous idea, liking him, but she couldn’t ignore the fact that she’d never met anyone whose company she enjoyed so much—or rather, in whose company she felt this calm and comfortable. She felt like she could tell him anything. Maybe she was just feeling this way because he saved her life. Maybe it would fade by tomorrow, and saying goodbye to him forever wouldn’t feel as awful as she imagined it would.

“Iris?”

The way he said her name made her heart flutter. “Yes?”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but will you tell me more about . . . the world?” He rubbed his nose. “I just . . . I guess I won’t ever get to meet anyone who knows as much as you do.”

“I’d love to. I’ve read way too much history.”

So she told him about the vast deserts of Nuael, where strange tribes lived, and according to legend some of them could turn into animals if they wore the animal’s pelt over their back. She told him about the harsh mountains of northern Nuael, where supposedly the dragons used to live before they were hunted to extinction by the humans who feared them.

She told him about the Sun and Stars festival on the island of Endal, where they lit thousands of lanterns, shot fireworks, and took hallucinogenic mushrooms. She told him about the Bay, the huge body of water that split the East and West but connected them through trade.

She told him about the Black Mountains of Astheld, which were so huge the tops were concealed by clouds, and the First City, Rembar, which was built inside a mountain by the first people who lived on the continent to avoid the dragons. Unfortunately, thousands of years later, the city was destroyed by the last living dragon out of revenge for the humans hunting all his kin to extinction.

But the dragon who destroyed Rembar was no normal dragon—he was the incarnation of Ashok, the enemy of the gods, who wanted to kill all of the humans and was reborn every few thousand years into a black dragon to attempt just that. But he was always killed by the four gods, who, to protect the humans, were born down in this world as humans at the same time.

“Is all of this true?” Lyle inquired after that one.

“It’s hard to know,” she admitted. “After Rembar was destroyed, we have the Shadow Years, where everything kind of fell apart. There was a lot of war, and a lot of history was burned or forgotten. When we came out of that, most of what we had left were legends of the time before. So there really is no way to know for sure. If it is true, then in a few hundred years from now, the cycle will start again: Ashok will be born down here again, and so will the four gods, and they’ll fight it out all over again.”

“But how will he, if the dragons are dead?”

“Maybe he’ll come back as a human. But I suppose that would be against his point of wanting to destroy all humans. Maybe he’s been defeated, then. Or maybe there are still some dragons hiding out there. Who can know? And . . . I guess the two of us will never know, either way. We’ll be long dead in a few hundred years.”

Lyle frowned at the ground. “That’s . . . sad.”

“Yeah, I suppose it is. Or maybe we’ll be reborn into that age and we’ll get to see it. My father always says that life is just a big cycle, and we’re a part of it, and we always will be.” She shrugged. “I don’t know, I think we have enough to worry about here and now to bother thinking about all of that. Well, I do. You get to stay here and not worry about a thing.”

It took him a few seconds to nod, and it wasn’t very convincing. She hid her smile of victory. Perhaps she had changed his mind about living in one valley forever being a real life. Or perhaps this was a cruel game, because he might not ever have an option. “Maybe you can use the reward money to go on adventures with your brother,” she suggested. “You can both go see the world. Then you can stop by and visit me and Clive.”

“Maybe,” he murmured.

Iris put her hands under her arms to keep her fingers warm. “Speaking of gods, which one does your town follow?”

“Eshar, the horse. But you’ll hardly see it except during the winter festival and the harvest.” He paused for a moment, then added, “My mother always said it wouldn’t do you any good to follow the four gods, that if you wanted help, you should ask the Mother. The creator of us and the gods. She said the four gods are just guides and are only helpful in certain situations.”

Iris shrugged. “I don’t see much difference, personally. I’m not even sure I believe in them.”

“No?” he cocked his head. “What about the Summerlands? What do you think happens when you die?”

“I’d love to think we go to a land of light and happiness, but I can’t quite see the logic in that. What would be the point of all of this, then? And what about the people who have committed atrocities here, and hurt people? They just get to go free?”

“No, first they’re burned in hellfire with Ashok to cleanse them of their wrongs, and then they get to join everyone else.”

“That’s still getting off easy, if you ask me. I think they should have to feel all of the pain they’ve ever caused other people—on purpose and from carelessness and ignorance.”

“Maybe that is what they feel. Maybe that’s what hellfire is. Or maybe we’re reborn over and over, and in their next life they experience all that pain, and learn to be better.”

“Maybe.”

“What does the rest of the world follow? I know Slovland follows the wolf, but that’s about it.”

“Most of them follow the wolf—you know all four of the gods, right? How they’re connected?”

“Sure. The wolf, the fawn, the bird, and the horse, right? The wolf protects the fawn, the fawn humbles the bird, the bird advises the horse, and the horse reminds the wolf of his honor.”

“Yes, simply put. All of the Eastern Alliance, as well as the Northeast—that’s you and me, the Kailands and Ordivicia—all follow the horse, Eshar. Almost the entire rest of the world follows the wolf, Thaire. It’s mostly because all of the North and West were under the Astheldian empire until recently. Endal, which is an Island off the coast of Rhondivar, is the only country left that follows the bird, Iesha. They’re the most advanced in science and medicine. Very few places still follow the fawn, Moura, and no countries do officially anymore. There were some, but they . . . fell apart.”

“That seems a bit . . . unbalanced,” Lyle observed.

“Absolutely. It’s especially a problem because the cultures that follow the wolf are the most likely to go to war. The wolf is the god of protection, but it’s often misperceived as the god of war and violence. That’s what the Astheldian empire was like, anyway.”

They were quiet for a long moment, and then Lyle asked, “When you grow up, are you going to help your mother?”

“Yes,” Iris said honestly. An ugly thought rose to her mind: that even if her mother turned out to be the villain in this story somehow, she would still help her. She was her mother. Iris would never abandon her mother to her enemies, even if her enemies were in the right.

“What will you do for her?”

Iris shrugged. “Diplomat, most likely. She can send me to allies—or enemies—to negotiate. I’ve been told I would be good at that. The only problem is that I don’t like talking to people.”

He smiled. “Understandable.”

“Or I could work her finances, but that doesn’t sound like too much fun.” She shrugged. “We’ll see.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be much fun with your attitude about mathematics.”

She smiled. “No, it wouldn’t.” She cozied up deeper under the blanket, the chill finally getting to her. She glanced up at the star and noticed how much closer it had moved to the mountains. She pointed to it. He held his hand up to it, then nodded. “You’re right. We should get going.”

They woke Clive and got him to eat what was left of dinner—reheated over the fire—as Iris recounted the plan to her brother.

Then Lyle gave them some clothing and shoes. “They’re my brother’s,” he explained. “Sorry,” he added to Iris, handing her a shirt and trousers, “I couldn’t find any girls’ clothing, but you’ll be safer on the road dressed as a boy anyway.”

She gave no complaint, and he turned his back as they changed. Clive was still sluggish, and Iris had to hurry him along after she finished.

When they came back to the kitchen, she saw Lyle replacing the bandages around his injured leg. She’d forgotten about it.

“How bad is it?” she asked, coming to look.

He finished unwrapping the cloth and showed her the cut. It was just below the back of his knee, three or four inches long, and as straight as a cut from a knife. It was hard to tell how deep it was.

“Does it hurt?”

Lyle shook his head as he cleaned the wound with a wet cloth and put a salve on it.

“Would you tell me if it did?”

Lyle smiled to himself and shook his head again.

“That’s what I thought,” she said severely, which only made him smile wider. “How long of a walk is it, again?”

“Two hours.”

“We can leave him behind if he’s injured,” Clive said sullenly.

Iris turned to stare at her brother.

Clive gestured to Lyle. “What? He can just point us in the direction and we can make it. There’s only one road, right?”

“Yes,” Lyle said calmly, “but strange children showing up in Brey will be noticed. Everyone there knows each other. And I can get us on the caravan easily—I know the woman in charge, Yelina.”

Clive crossed his arms. “You just want our mother’s money.”

Lyle finished tying off the bandage, then stood up. Iris was almost worried, but then she saw that he was still smiling. “You’re the ones who convinced me to do this by bribing me,” he pointed out. “I can stay if you want, but I really think you’ll have a better chance if I come with you. I know the land and the people, and I can protect you.”

“We can protect ourselves.”

“I’m sure you can, but three is always better than two.”

“Clive, leave it alone,” Iris said. She knew her little brother was irritable for good reason, seeing their situation, but none of this was Lyle’s fault. “You’re not being fair.”

Clive glowered at her but said nothing more.

They made sure they had everything, then Lyle gave Iris and Clive both a bag to carry on their backs—though the one he had on his own was twice the size of theirs. He put out the fire, tidied up the beds and the kitchen, and then they headed into the cold, dark grassland. Lyle locked the cabin behind them and left the key on the windowsill.