He sat quietly, watching and listening, and after a time Arian came over. “Sir King? Do I disturb you? I wanted to talk to you about Pargun.”

His pulse sped; he ignored it. “What is it?”

“You recall that before the princesses came, I had been up near the river, carrying messages to Talgan.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been keeping up with the dispatches coming in—I know you have as well—and I’m concerned about those troops.”

“So am I,” Kieri said. “I may ask Aliam to send me another cohort.”

“I can’t understand why they’d send their princess to you and then prepare an attack.”

Kieri had not told any of the Squires about Elis being instructed to kill him. “They wanted me dead,” he said, and went on to tell Arian everything Elis had told him. He pitched his voice so all could hear if they wished. Arian’s face expressed the horror he had felt. Then it softened.

“A hard trial for such a young girl,” she said. “No wonder she was so difficult to understand.”

Now that the princesses were gone, the Siers in Chaya began making comments about marriage again. Was he looking? Could he use some advice? Kieri wondered when they thought he had time to look; every day had some crisis he must deal with, and that on top of his regular work. He understood their concern, but it had not even been a half-year yet.

“The thing is, my lord,” old Joriam said, soaping his king’s back, “you may be young, as half-elves go, and you may be strong as oak and lithe as willow, but if some rock drops on your head, you’re dead. Or a fever: even kings get fevers. It’s your duty, same as wearing a crown or visiting your father’s bones.”

“I know that,” Kieri said, feeling smothered by the constant attention to his single state.

“She doesn’t have to be royal, my lord. Or even noble. Just … you know …” He left it there, and poured the clean water over Kieri’s soapy body. “Fertile,” was what he meant.

Kieri tried looking at all the women around him with marriage in mind, but he hated thinking of them that way, as breeding animals. They were people, people he had come to know and care for. And they were, mostly, too old to have children or too young for a man his age. He wanted companionship; he wanted someone he could talk to.

That thought sent him to the ossuary, one hot afternoon. This time he lit no candle, just sat and listened … to nothing … for a long time. Then once again he felt presences gathering around him. One conveyed the combination of wistfulness and stubborn anger that he now associated with his sister.

I’m here, he thought.

Once again: Betrayal. Danger. He sat quietly, trying to open his mind as he did to the taig. They lie. She had conveyed that before, but who lied? She trusted. Who trusted? A fuzzy image of a face leaning down, a sense of warmth and safety. Kieri finally realized this was an adult’s face as a very small child might see it … a face he almost knew … did know, as he noticed the elven bone structure, subtly different from human.