Summer garb is a cast-off wool tunic, heavily worn and much mended, that falls past their knees. Because the tunics are too big for them, Ao has woven them belts from dried reeds long enough to wrap several times around their torsos and keep the extra fabric from blowing. In recent months, Ao has taken to adjusting the strapping of her own tunic to pouch up and hide her budding breasts that seem to keep swelling larger every month. Elen’s chest has a scant new contour, but she can still pass as a boy with her tall, lanky frame and shaved head. Not that the lowest-born retainer youths of any sex are safe around the northern soldiers who came south with Lord Thelan. They don’t respect Lady Eleawona’s rules of decorous conduct.

It’s a good day, as days go. No sign of Spore, nothing that makes El’s heart squeeze and her nose tingle. A good day, right up until midafternoon, when they reach the night’s halting place.

Their destination is a moated villa. A patrol band of the lord’s soldiers has arrived ahead of them, down from the hills. They’ve brought a prize to hand over to Lord Thelan: a nest of outlaws they flushed out of a cave, deep in the forest. In fact, the advance party from the court arrives while the soldiers are still raping and abusing their captives, and so the little cavalcade enters the villa to the horrific sounds of screams and sobs and the hopeless moaning of one poor soul saying, “Just kill me. Just kill me and be done.”

Ao runs to the atoners’ pen and shuts herself in, but El follows the deputy chatelaine. After speaking to the local caretakers—who are hiding in the kitchen wing and very upset that such unpleasantness has been visited upon their peaceful villa—the chatelaine marches to the guards’ quarters and shouts for the sergeant to show himself.

He emerges from the building, buttoning his trousers and looking annoyed. “What is this? Who are you?”

“I am chatelaine lieutenant to Lady Eleawona’s household, as you ought to know.”

“Yeah, you lot don’t know how good you have it here in the south, without Sea Wolves nipping at your balls day and night,” he sneers.

She ignores his crude tone. “Her ladyship and his lordship will arrive before nightfall. Get this cleaned up. It would be ill fortune for them to arrive hearing such wailing and weeping. As it is said, ‘The white-haired god causes the wicked to weep and the sinful to hear the weeping, but the godly shall hear only song and smiles.’ I assume you’ve set aside any children for the atoners’ pen. Untouched.”