Kieri rode off with his Squires. How different from the previous summer, when he had been beset with visiting princesses and their difficult guardians and had sensed impending war. Now every tenday, Torfinn of Pargun sent a message reporting on the progress of rebuilding or offering advice on the design of a “proper port.” Torfinn wrote as he spoke, and even in writing had a tongue like a rasp, but all that old animosity had burned away. And the king of Kostandan seemed downright friendly, crediting Kieri with Ganlin’s chance of marrying royalty in Tsaia.

But the Lady’s death made a difference, though not in Kieri’s sense of the taig. While she was alive, the elves—when not absent with her—seemed full of purpose, vividly alive. Now, when he saw elves at all, they seemed uncertain, vague, and almost too cooperative. No elves had come to the Midsummer ceremonies.

Still, they had not left the kingdom, and that was to his credit. He had asked their advice on the road west toward Dorrin’s domain—which trees might be cut, which must be left—and they had answered sensibly enough. They had been alarmed at the thought of a river port, but mollified somewhat by his intention to use the scathefire tracks as the road to it.

“ ’Tis a pity, in that case, the scathefire did not burn along the river from Riverwash to where you want the port,” one said. He was younger, Kieri had been told, scarcely five hundreds old. The others were horrified, he could tell.

He shook those thoughts from his mind. Today, riding down the scathefire track with fresh green showing at its margins, he need not deal with elves. Today was for today’s problems.

Not far ahead, he saw Lady Tolmaric waiting for him beside the road at a new clearing in the forest. Here on her own land, with the time between to get past the worst horrors of Sier Tolmaric’s death, Lady Tolmaric seemed like any solid, competent countrywoman. Now she smiled at him less shyly than before.

“We have something to show you, sir king,” she said.

“I can see already you have made progress,” he said, looking around the clearing. He followed her down a lane, expecting to see a farmstead under construction—perhaps even a barn and house completed. Instead, he saw a building as large as a barn but laid out very differently. Stone below, timber above, it looked like … like an inn. Stone steps up to the entrance with a wider door than any farmhouse. Windows to either side. The width, he judged, would allow for a sizable downstairs common room and kitchen. Several chimneys poked out of the tall roof; a streamer of pale smoke drifted from one. A wall of upright timbers to either side, with a gate to the right. The farmer and his family stood before it, bowing.