“Then I am bid to tell you that I am sent here by a lord of infinite nobility, whose virtues I could number until the moon rose and set and rose again. I am sent to say to you, in this place and among the people here gathered in concourse, that the sun rises in your daughter’s eyes.”

There was a roar of astonishment.

“And who,” asked Shalhassan, still courteously, “is the lord of infinite nobility?”

“A figure of speech, that,” said Diarmuid, emerging from the crowd to their left. “And the moon business was his own idea. But he is my Intercedent and the heart of his message is true, and from my own heart. I would wed your daughter, Shalhassan.”

The noise in the square was quite uncontrollable now. It was hard to hear anything. Sharra saw her father turn slowly to her, a question in his eyes, and something else that it took her a moment to recognize as tenderness.

She nodded once. And with her lips shaped a “Yes,” for him to see.

The noise peaked and then slowly faded as Shalhassan waited beside his chariot, grave and unmoving. He looked at Diarmuid, whose own expression was sober now. He looked back at her.

He smiled. He smiled.

“Praise be to the Weaver and all the gods!” said Shalhassan of Cathal. “Finally she’s done something adult!” And striding forward, he embraced Diarmuid is the manner of the ritual.

So it was amid laughter and joy that that company set forth to ride to Taerlindel, where a ship lay waiting to bear fifty men to a place of death.

Diarmuid’s men, of course. It hadn’t even been a subject of discussion. It had been assumed, automatic. If Coll was sailing the ship, then Diarmuid was commanding it and the men of South Keep were going to Cader Sedat.

Riding alone near the back of the party, Paul saw them, laughing and lighthearted, singing, even, at the promise of action. He looked at Coll and red Averren, the lieutenants; at Garde and greying Rothe and lean, agile Erron; at the other forty the Prince had named. He wondered if they knew what they were going to; he wondered if he knew, himself.

Up at the front, Diarmuid glanced back to check on the company, and Paul met his blue gaze for a moment. He didn’t move forward, though, and Diarmuid didn’t drop back. Kevin’s absence was a hollow place within his chest. He felt quite alone. Thinking of Kim, far away and riding east, made it even worse.

Shalhassan left them in the afternoon at Seresh. He would be ferried across to Cynan, almost immediately. The mild, beneficent sunshine was a constant reminder of the need for haste.