“With your permission, Captain, I will note that Spore rises everywhere. It is Palls that cannot get a grip in high country. As a surveyor once said to me, ‘The Pall hates salt, and yet sinks toward the level of the sea.’”

He frowned and did not reply. She wasn’t sure if she had offended him by correcting him, or if he was thinking over what she’d said. Yet he was a man at least fifteen years older than she was, perhaps as old as fifty, experienced and competent enough to be accompanying a prince as his captain, a position of great honor and responsibility. He must know such a basic fact about Spore and the Pall. Was he testing her?

She could test, too. “I thought that for a journey of such length, an exalted highness would be accompanied by an imperial surveyor, who would know about the land beyond the roads.”

“We did not expect to leave the road,” he said curtly.

Simo left her and began ranging again, up and down and back and forth along the path, gaze scanning the ground and then the horizon and then the sky, as restless as a man must be who seeks to protect his precious charge. It must gall him to know that he, like his prince, had been so easily misled by a rival hoping to harm the prince. Fortunately, the convoluted inner workings of the palace were none of Elen’s business.

She proceeded in silence through the morning, enjoying the solitude even as she crept glances back to check on Kem. And to study the prince. If he was the prince.

As the sun reached zenith, they topped the long northern side of the upland valley. From here they would enter the Moonrise Hills with its ragged landscape rising and falling and rising toward a high plateau to the north. Trees began to grow on the northern side of the watershed, straggling at first, and then filling the land beyond with the rich scent of life. She could see birds on the wing, hear the creep and buzz of insects. In the far distance, at the edge of her hearing, she heard the chop of an axe against wood. Lazy drifts of smoke marked Sfendia Moat, her goal for the first day’s march. They could reach there by nightfall if they pushed. Otherwise, they would have to overnight at Thistle Spring, and she didn’t fancy its lack of defenses, in case there were bandits.

Xilsi and Jirvy halted to look back.

Xilsi said aloud, “Quite a view.” The woman pointed at the distant Spires, so far away they might have been bony fingers trying to claw out of the rock.

Jirvy crossed his arms and ignored her.