His voice had sounded like wind. Like rock-tumbling water.

Alba tried to push the worry away. Perhaps the shepherd had been simply in shock after falling so roughly. Perhaps the twin was at home watching the flock.

Beside her, the little boy sighed and turned in his sleep. She glanced at the children around her, their dark, resting heads, their placid cheeks, soft with childhood and dreaming. She’d let the guards take her in place of any of them, she thought. In place of all of them. Whatever happened, whatever awaited them at the end of this journey, she had to speak to the king. As soon as they arrived at the palace, she’d find a way.

She pressed her face to the canvas. Outside, dawn was beginning to slip over the hills. She watched towns rise out of the woods and fields, one after another, as the world grew pinker in the early light. As they came to each one, she felt she could even recognize it from what she’d learned of them from Maurus and all the priestly catalogs she had read: Oh, this is the village whose well went dry. This is the town overrun by vermin. This is the hamlet in need of a medic. She was overcome seeing what she’d spent so many years only imagining. She’d learned of these towns solely through their misfortunes, but now passing them, catching glimpses of the people rising with the dawn—a woman picking greens on a hillside, a villager singing while carrying buckets of water from the river, even a dog, tail proudly raised, prancing through a field with a fat, flabby rat dangling from its mouth—she was reassured to see daily life still going on. The people had found a way to rise above their towns’ fate—above the neglect of the king.

“That’s my village.” Cynicism all gone, the older boy spoke from the corner. Like Alba, he leaned close to the canvas. He looked at her over the heads of the sleeping children, his face drawn in the gloom. “I hope you’re right,” he said. “I hope you are the oracle-apprentice. I want to believe you. I want to go home.”

XXXVI

A LITTLE CLOUD

Mop did not rise the whole journey home. Tucked in the sheep cart, pulled along by a mule lent to them by Myntas—Don’t worry, Ness; take the mule, take Mop home, I’ll come to you when I can—Mop lay silent, unnaturally still. No matter how many times Rae, walking alongside, squeezed his hand or, with trembling voice, repeated his name—Mop, Mop!—he would not wake. Not when the wheels became stuck in soft earth and Nessa and Rae had to rock the cart while begging the placid mule to pull, pull!; not when they rattled over dry, rocky streambeds that threatened to bounce the cart over sideways; not when a shower passed and raindrops splashed over Mop’s quiet face. He did not wake when they reached their small farm, when the sheep ran bleating toward them, when Nessa and Rae half carried, half dragged him into the house and rolled him onto the bed. He did not wake when they started the fire or washed his face or wrapped him in fleece or lifted his head and brought a spoonful of herby broth to his lips.