The front of the summer house was still darkly unfamiliar as she went back down the steep path, but the knowledge that a fire now burned in the kitchen made it a friendlier place, and this time she had a shuttered lantern in her hand so she could see where she was putting her feet.

So, we’ve lived through the first day—unless someone saw the boat and they’re coming after us. Startled by the thought, she looked toward the castle, but although she saw a few lights moving on the walls, there was no obvious sign of pursuit by water. And if someone came to search M’Helan’s Rock before she and Shaso could depart? Well, she knew the island and its hiding places better than almost anyone else. But, what am I doing? she asked herself. I shouldn’t tempt the gods by even thinking such things….

Shaso was able to walk a little, but the two young women had to do most of the work getting him up the stairway; it was a mark of how weak he was, how close to utter collapse, that he did not protest.

When they reached the lodge Briony found blankets to wrap around the old man, then sat him in a corner near the kitchen fireplace, propped on cushions she had pilfered from the over-furnished sitting room known as the Queen’s Withdrawing Chamber. The girl Ena had already begun to search through the few odds and ends left in the cupboards in hopes of adding to the food she had brought from her house beside Skimmer’s Lagoon, but Briony knew the pantries would be empty. Supper would be dried fish again.

Dried fish was a great deal better than starvation, she reminded herself, but since Briony Eddon had never in her life come anywhere near starving, that was a purely academic sort of comfort.

After having been fed the first mouthful or two of fish broth, Shaso made it very clear he was going to feed himself. Although still too weary and ill to speak, he managed to get enough soup into his stomach that Briony felt confident for the first time that the old man would survive the night. Now she could feel her own exhaustion pulling at her. She pushed her bowl aside and stared at it, fighting to keep her head upright.

“You are tired, Highness,” said Ena. Briony could not easily read the girl’s expressions, but she thought she saw kindness there, and a surprising, calm strength. It made her feel a little ashamed of her own frailty. “Go and find a bed. I will look after Shaso-na until he falls asleep.”

“But you are tired yourself. You rowed that boat all night!”

“It is something I was raised to do, like swimming and mending nets. I have worked harder—and for less cause.”

Briony stared at the girl for a moment, at the huge, round dark eyes and the naked brow shiny as soapstone. Was she pretty? It was too hard to say, too many things about her were unusual, but looking at the intelligent gaze and strong, regular features, Briony guessed that among her own kind Ena might be considered pretty indeed.