Rounding a sharp promontory sometime before dawn, she stumbled on the uneven stones littering the newly dried fringe of the lake. In a moment, Fulton was at her side, taking her elbow discreetly.

Adare shook him off.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m fine.”

“Of course, Your Radiance,” he murmured, dropping his hand but remaining at her shoulder.

For a while they walked in silence, listening to the thousands of boots crunching behind them, to the clank of steel on steel as soldiers shifted their weapons. Adare glanced over. The Aedolian was wearing a quarter his weight in armor, well more than the most heavily laden legionary, but if the strain bothered him, he didn’t show it. Hand on the pommel of his sword, eyes fixed resolutely ahead, he marched with all the strength of the younger men following behind. He was no longer as cadaverously thin as he had been in Olon, but the past months had left their marks on his face, in his graying hair.

“Thank you,” Adare said quietly, surprised that she had spoken.

He turned to look at her. “For what, Your Radiance?”

“For coming after me,” she replied. “For staying after . . . after what I did. At the Well . . .”

“No thanks are necessary, Your Radiance,” he replied. “We all have our duty. Yours is to rule. Mine is to make sure you stay alive to do so.”

“I just want you to know that I appreciate it—everything you’ve done for me.”

He watched her for a while. “Please do not take this the wrong way, Your Radiance,” he replied at last, “but it isn’t for you.”

Adare shook her head, confused.

It was a long time before Fulton spoke again. When he did, his voice was low, private, as though he’d forgotten she was there.

“I decided a long time ago what kind of man I wanted to be. I’ve sworn oaths to your family, but it is the promises a man makes to himself that he must keep.”

She waited for him to say more, but he turned his eyes north, picked up the pace slightly, and walked on in silence, leaving Adare to her pain and her pondering. She was jealous of it, she realized, this unwavering fidelity to one’s own code, the keeping of unspoken promises offered up in silence from the self to the self. She envied the Aedolian his ability to stay true to his convictions, and more, she envied him the convictions themselves. She had had convictions once, beliefs about justice and honor, right and wrong, but the slow turning of the world, like a mill wheel over grain, had ground them down to flour so fine that it slipped softly and silently between her fingers.