Gaborn’s horse stood next to hers, and it shifted its feet, so Gaborn’s knee suddenly touched Iome’s. “Then you should rejoice,” Gaborn said. “People can be beautiful on the inside, too. And when they feel most bereft of outer beauty, then they so long to be beautiful that they rearrange their hearts. And beauty springs from them, like these flowers spring from this field.

“When I look inside you,” Gaborn said, staring at her, staring into her, “I see your people smiling. You love their smiles, above all. How can I not love what is in your heart?”

“Where did you get such strange ideas?” Iome said, wondering at his last words, wondering how he had managed to capture her love and hope for her people in so few words.

“From Hearthmaster Ibirmarle, who taught me in the Room of the Heart.”

Iome smiled. “I should like to meet him someday, and thank him. But I begin to wonder about you, Gaborn. In the House of Understanding you studied in the Room of the Heart—a strange place for a Runelord to spend his time. Why spend your time among troubadours and philosophers?”

“I studied in many places—the Room of Faces, the Room of Feet.”

“To learn the ways of actors and travelers? Why not the Room of Arms, and the Room of Gold?”

Gaborn said, “I received training in arms from my father and from the palace guards, and I found the Room of Gold . . . boring, with all those little merchant princes watching one another with such envy.”

Iome smiled at Gaborn, bemused.

Presently the girl issued from her cottage with some scones and meat, and three fresh figs. Gaborn paid her, warned her that Raj Ahten’s army might pass this way in a matter of hours, then let the horses walk for a while.

They stopped outside town, beneath a tree, and let the horses drink from a pool beside the highway. Gaborn watched Iome eat in silence. He tried to rouse the King, so he might eat too, but Iome’s father remained asleep.

So Gaborn saved some bread, meat, and a fig in his pocket. Ahead of them, the mountains rose dark blue and threatening. Iome had never been so far south. She knew of Harm’s Gorge, of the deep canyon just beyond the mountains, which divided much of the realm.

She’d always wanted to see it. The road, she’d been told, was very dangerous. For miles it consisted of a narrow track beside a precipice. The duskins had carved that road centuries ago, made the great bridge across Harm’s River.

“I still think it odd,” Iome said, “that you spent your time schooling in the Room of the Heart. Most lords study little else but arms, or perhaps Voice.”

“I suppose,” Gaborn said, “if we Runelords only want to win battles and hold our fortresses, we need only study in the Room of Arms.