That last thought brought a shockingly powerful pang of remorse—even of fear: Vansen dead and her brother alone? She could not in that moment say which would be the worse result.

I must pray for them, she told herself. She saw Vansen in her mind’s eye, tall but not overbearing, his hair the color of a walnut husk, his face either carefully expressionless or open and wounded like that of a puzzled child’s. Who was he to stay in her thoughts so? Others far more important were also lost, like her brother and father, and Shaso and Kendrick were dead. Why should she think of Vansen? He was a guardsman, a nobody—a failure, to be absolutely fair, since he had lost half his troop or more the first time he had been given a responsibility. What female weakness or pity or even—the Three defend her from her own foolishness!—desire had made her give him a second chance, she wondered, and especially with the care of the most precious thing she could have given him to protect?

She pushed all thoughts of Vansen out of her mind, tried to concentrate on her brother, to make sense out of the mysterious mirror-vision. How had it come to her? If Lisiya was alive, was some other god watching over them too? Had Erivor, their house’s patron, granted her the vision for some reason she was too blind to understand?

Great lord of the sea, help your foolish daughter! Zoria, lend me your wisdom for a little while!

Her heart sank again to think of her brother lost in some foreign place. He had always been like a hermit crab, the claws of his anger no real threat to others at all. Only his shell protected him, because without it he was too soft to live, too frightened to keep the world at bay.

One year—they had both been, what, nine or ten?—their father had allowed the Master of Hounds to give them a puppy to be their own, a beautiful black hound. Barrick had wanted to name him Immon, but Briony had refused. She had been very religious then and had not used even the mildest curses, not even silently to herself. Barrick had always laughed at her, calling her “the Blessed Briony,” but she had been firm. They were certainly not going to name him after the powerful god of burial, the Earthfather’s gatekeeper—that would be blasphemy. She named the puppy Simargil instead, after the faithful dog of Volios (although she toyed with sacrilege herself by generally referring to him as “Simmikin”) and except for the ordinary high spirits and growling, nipping play of a young male dog he had been an exceptionally sweet animal. Briony had been as attached to him as if he had been a baby brother. She had been shocked, then, when Barrick refused to play with him, saying that he was vicious and evil.

Being who she was, Briony would not let her brother rest until she had forced him to join her in playing with the dog—or at least being in the same room with the animal, since at first Barrick hung back in the doorway while Briony scratched Simargil’s stomach and engaged him in playful, mock-fights, the dog growling in delight and throwing himself from side to side as he struggled to catch up with Briony’s moving hand.