“I don’t know. Home, I suppose, to start with. I’ll have time to think on the way there, if I need to. But I’m still in the god’s path. I can feel the wind blowing. Why are you smiling, Galapas?”

But he would not answer that. He stood up, then pulled me towards him and stooped and kissed me. His kiss was dry and light, an old man’s kiss, like a dead leaf drifting down to brush the flesh. Then he pushed me towards the entrance. “Go. I saddled your pony ready for you.”

*   *   *

It was raining still as I rode down the valley. The rain was cold and small, and soaking; it gathered on my cloak and dragged at my shoulders, and mixed with the tears that ran down my face.

This was the second time in my life that I wept.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE stableyard gate was locked. This was no more than I had expected. That day I had gone out openly through the main yard with the merlin, and any other night might have chanced riding back the same way, with some story of losing my falcon and riding about till dark to look for it. But not tonight.

And tonight there would be no one waiting and listening for me, to let me in.

Though the need for haste was breathing on the back of my neck, I kept the impatient pony to a walk, and rode quietly along under the palace wall in the direction of the bridge. This, and the road leading to it, was alive with people and torches and noise, and twice in the few minutes since I had come in sight of it a horseman went galloping headlong out over the bridge, going south.

Now the wet, bare trees of the orchard overhung the towpath. There was a ditch here below the high wall, and over it the boughs hung, dripping. I slid off the pony’s back and led him in under my leaning apple tree, and tethered him. Then I scrambled back into the saddle, got unsteadily to my feet, balanced for a moment, and jumped for the bough above me.

It was soaking, and one of my hands slipped, but the other held. I swung my legs up, cocked them over the bough, and after that it was only the work of moments to scramble over the wall, and down into the orchard grasses.

There to my left was the high wall which masked my grandfather’s garden, to the right the dovecot and the raised terrace where Moravik used to sit with her spinning. Ahead of me was the low sprawl of the servants’ quarters. To my relief hardly a light showed. All the light and uproar of the palace was concentrated beyond the wall to my left, in the main building. From even further beyond, and muted by the rain, came the tumult of the streets.