“And well you may,” the other observed sardonically, “since you do nothing that becomes a man but ride astraddle. I warn you again: be slow to call that third male or female. Wait a little, and see what you see.”

The first sentinel answered him without turning. “If I had grown up never dreaming that there were two separate secrets to the world, if I had taken every woman I met to be exactly like myself, still I would know that this creature was different from anything I had ever seen before. I have always been sorry that I have never pleased you; but now, when I look at her, I am sorry that I have never pleased myself. Oh, I am sorry.”

He bent still further over the wall, straining his eyes toward the three slow figures on the road. A chuckle clattered behind his visor. “The other woman looks sore-footed and bad-tempered,” he reported. “The man appears an amiable sort, though plainly of the strolling life. A minstrel, like enough, or a player.” He said nothing more for a long while, watching them draw near.

“And the third?” the older man inquired presently. “Your sundown fancy with the interesting hair? Have you outworn her in a quarter of an hour‌—‌already seen her closer than love dares?” His voice rustled in his helmet like small, clawed feet.

“I don’t think I could ever see her closely,” the sentinel replied, “however close she came.” His own voice was hushed and regretful, echoing with lost chances. “She has a newness,” he said. “Everything is for the first time. See how she moves, how she walks, how she turns her head‌—‌all for the first time, the first time anyone has ever done these things. See how she draws her breath and lets it go again, as though no one else in the world knew that air was good. It is all for her. If I learned that she had been born this very morning, I would only be surprised that she was so old.”

The second sentinel stared down from his tower at the three wanderers. The tall man saw him first, and next the dour woman. Their eyes reflected nothing but his armor, grim and cankered and empty. But then the girl in the ruined black cloak raised her head, and he stepped back from the parapet, putting out one tin glove against her glance. In a moment she passed into the shadow of the castle with her companions, and he lowered his hand.

“She may be mad,” he said calmly. “No grown girl looks like that unless she is mad. That would be annoying, but far preferable to the remaining possibility.”

“Which is?” the younger man prompted after a silence.

“Which is that she was indeed born this morning. I would rather that she were mad. Let us go down now.”

When the man and the women reached the castle, the two sentries were standing on either side of the gate, their blunt, bent halberds crossed and their falchions hitched round in front of them. The sun had gone down, and their absurd armor grew steadily more menacing as the sea faded. The travelers hesitated, looking at one another. They had no dark castle at their backs, and their eyes were not hidden.