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He had not filled the void with his own presence, but had instead mewed her up with unpleasant old men and women who lectured her about the rituals and responsibilities of her position and found fault with everything she did. By the time her father had become king, Miriamele's solitary childhood was over. Leieth, her handmaiden, had been almost her only young companion. The little girl had idolized Miriamele, hanging on the princess' every word. In turn, Leieth had told long stories about growing up with brothers and sisters—she was the youngest of a large baronial family—while her mistress listened in fascination, trying not to be jealous of the family she had never had. That was why it had been so difficult to see Leieth again upon reaching Sesuad'ra. The lively little girl she remembered had vanished. Before they had fled the castle together, Leieth had been quiet sometimes, and many things frightened her, but it was as though some completely different creature now lived behind the little girl's eyes. Miriamele had tried to remember if there had ever been any sign of the sort of things that Geloe had discovered in the child, but could think of little, except that Leieth had been prone to vivid, intricate, and sometimes frightening dreams.

Some of them had seemed so detailed - and unusual in Leieth's retelling that Miriamele had been more than half certain the little girl had invented them. When Miriamele's father had ascended to his own father's throne, she found herself both surrounded by people and yet terribly lonely. Everyone at the Hayholt had seemed obsessed with the empty ritual of power, something Miriamele had lived with for so long that it held no interest for her. It was like watching a confusing game played by bad-tempered children. Even the few young men who paid court to her—or rather to her father, for most of them had been interested in little more than the riches and power that would fall to the one who received her marriage-pledge—had seemed to her like some other type of animal than she, boring old men in the bodies of youths, sullen boys masquerading as adults. The only ones in all of Meremund or the Hayholt who seemed to enjoy life for what it was rather than what gain could be coaxed from it were the servants. In the Hayholt especially, with its army of maids and grooms and scullions, it was as though an entirely different race of people lived side by side with her own bleak peers. Once, in a moment of terrible sadness, she had suddenly seen the great castle as a kind of inverted lich-yard, with the creaking dead walking around on top while the living sang and laughed below.

Thus Simon and a few others had first come to her attention—boys who seemed to want nothing much more than to be boys. Unlike the children of her father's nobles, they were in no hurry to take on the clacking, droning, mannered speech of their elders. She watched them dawdling through their chores, laughing behind their hands at each others' foolish pranks, or playing hoodman blind on the commons grass, and she ached to be like them. Their lives seemed so simple. Even when a more mature wisdom taught her that the lives of the serving-folk were hard and wearIsorne, she still dreamed sometimes that she could put off her royalty as easily as a cloak and become one of their number. Hard work had never frightened her, but she was terrified of solitude. "No," Simon said firmly. "You should never let me get this close to you." He moved his foot slightly and twisted the hilt of his sword so that its cloth-wrapped blade pushed hers away. Suddenly, he was pressing against her. His smell, compounded of sweat and leather jerkin and the sodden fragments of a thousand leaves, was very strong. He was so tall! She forgot that sometimes. The sudden impact of his presence made it hard for Miriamele to think clearly. "You've left yourself open now," he said. "If I used my dagger, you wouldn't have a chance. Remember, you'll almost always be fighting someone with more reach." Instead of trying to bring her sword back where it would do some good, she let it drop, then put both hands against Simon's chest and pushed. He fell back, stumbling, before he regained his balance. "Leave me alone." Miriamele turned and walked a few steps away, then stooped to pick up a few branches for the fire so her shaking hands would have something to do. "What's wrong?" Simon asked, taken aback. "Did I hurt you?" "No, you didn't hurt me." She took her armful of wood and dumped it into the circle they had cleared on the forest floor. "I'm just done with that game for a while." Simon shook his head, then sat to undo the rags wound about his sword. They had made camp early today, the sun still high above the treetops. Miriamele had decided that tomorrow they would follow the little streamlet that had long been their companion down to the River Road; the course of the stream had been bending in that direction for most of this day's journey. The River Road wound beside the Ymstrecca, past Stanshire and on to Hasu Vale. It would be best, she had reasoned, for them to take to the road at midnight and still have some walking time before dawn, rather than spend all of this night in the forest and then wait through daylight again so they could travel the road in darkness. This had been her first opportunity to use her sword in several days, except for the inglorious purpose of clearing brush. It had even been she who had suggested an hour of practice before they ate their evening meal—which was one of the reasons her abrupt change of heart obviously puzzled Simon. Miriamele felt torn between a desire to tell him it wasn't his fault, and an obscure feeling that somehow it was his fault—his fault for being male, his fault for liking her, his fault for coming with her when she would have been happier being miserably alone.

"Don't mind me, Simon," she said at last, and felt weak for doing so. "I'm just tired." Mollified, he finished his careful rewinding of the cloth, then dropped the ball of dusty fabric into his saddlebag before coming to join her beside the unlit fire. "I just wanted you to be careful. I told you that you lean too far." "I know, Simon. You did tell me." "You can’t let someone bigger than you get that close." Miriamele found herself wishing silently that he would stop talking about it. "I know, Simon. I'm just tired." He seemed to sense that he had annoyed her again. "But you're good, Miriamele. You're strong." She nodded, absorbed now with the flint. A spark fell into the curls of tinder, but failed to produce a flame. Miriamele wrinkled her nose and tried again. "Do you want me to try?" "No, I don't want you to try." She struck again without result. Her arms were getting weary, Simon looked at the wood shavings, then up at Miriamele's face, then quickly back down again. "Remember Binabik's yellow powder? He could start a fire in a rainstorm with that. I saw him make one catch when we were on Sikkihoq, and there was snow, and the wind was blowing...." "Here." Miriamele stood, letting the flint and the steel bar tumble to the dirt beside the tinder. "You do it." She walked to her horse and began hunting through the saddlebags. Simon seemed about to say something, but instead applied himself to the task of fire-lighting. He had no better luck than Miriamele for a long time. At last, when she had returned with a kerchief full of the things she had found, he finally caught a small spark and provoked it into flame. As she stood over him she saw that his hair was getting quite long, hanging down onto his shoulders in reddish curls. He looked up at her shyly. His eyes were full of concern for her- "What's wrong?" She ignored his question. "Your hair wants cutting. I'll do it after we eat." She undid the kerchief. "These are our last two apples. They're getting a little old, in any case—I don't know where Fengbald found them." She had been told about the source of much of Josua's confiscated foodstuffs. There was an obscure pleasure in eating what had once been destined for that strutting braggart. "There's still some dried mutton, too, but we're almost through with it. We may have to try out the bow sometime soon." Simon opened his mouth, then shut it. He took a breath. "We'll wrap the apples in leaves and bury them in the coals.