“My son will clean those horses right up for you. Sul—get on it, boy.” A young man not yet old enough to be married jumped with surprising energy and headed toward the door.

“The golden and the gray tied outside,” she called after him, tossing him a silver. He nodded dutifully and headed out.

“Can we get our meal in the room?” she asked, dreading the answer.

“Room’s tiny, ma’am, nowhere to eat. But the tavern isn’t too crowded. I’ll sit you with my daughter, if you’re worried about being bothered?”

She smiled. “How did you know?”

“Drunks will be drunks, ma’am. And we got more than a few of ’em, locals that keep this place running.”

“Indeed. We would appreciate your daughter’s company, thank you, if you think it would help.” This man, unlike the last few, seemed to have a decent head on his shoulders. “Here’s twenty for your trouble, sir, if you can give us breakfast in the morning. I’m also in the market for a saddle, if you have one for sale.”

He raised a slight eyebrow at that but took the money gratefully. “After breakfast in the morning, I’ll walk you out to our stable and you can have a look. We’ve got a few.”

With that he led them into the tavern room and sat them at a table with a young girl of maybe five years.

“Emie,” he said, “these are some out-of-town guests. Would you mind if they sat with you? And you come and get me or your mama if anybody needs anything.”

Emie nodded solemnly. By the way he said it, he’d said that line to her before, and it had more meaning than its face value. She knew the routine. He brought them some ale and left them. For a moment there was an awkward silence.

“So you know my name,” the little girl said with a happy little smile. “What are your names?”

“Aven,” Aven said, smiling at the little girl and clearly not thinking. She kicked him under the table.

“Lenara,” she said, trying to sound pleasant and pretend nothing was going on.

The little girl was having none of it, however. She laughed at them. “My mum does that to me sometimes as well,” she whispered at Aven, giggling. “Aven! That’s a nice name. That’s the prince’s name! Did you know my brother’s named after the king? Samul is kind of long to say, though, so we call him Sul.”

Aven nodded, smiling. “Samul is a good name.” Miara sighed with relief when he said nothing more.

“Is Emie short for anything?” she asked into the growing silence.

“Oh, yes, it’s short for Emilira. Kind of hard to say, too. Not like Lenara! That’s pretty, flows right off the tongue. Lenara!” She clicked her tongue for the fun of it.

“Thank you,” Miara said, smiling. The girl had a sweetness and energy that lifted the dark feeling that hung over Miara. Emie reminded her of a younger Luha. An ache panged in her chest. How was her little sister and her laughing brown eyes? What would she be up to at this moment?

“It’s almost time for snow, you know!” Emie said.

“Do you like snow?” Aven asked.

She nodded vigorously, her whole torso bobbing in excitement. “I do. It’s pretty, especially this time of year, when it’s light and lovely and doesn’t get too deep.”

Miara relaxed a little, leaning back into the bench. Aven seemed enchanted by the girl.

“It’s nice when it’s deep, though, too. You can go out and dig tunnels and roll up big balls of snow and throw them—but they don’t hurt! Well, as long as you don’t hit someone in the eye or try to make ice balls or something. Sul got hit in the forehead once. There was a lump the size of an egg. It was red as a coal for two whole days.”

“No! The size of an egg?” Aven was good at playing along.

She nodded her violently enthusiastic nod once again. “Sometimes this time of year, we don’t get snow, though. Sometimes it’s not for a few months. It’s still warm for snow. I wish I could make snow and have it whenever I wanted. Wouldn’t that be lovely?”

Aven grinned. “It would.” She studied his eyes, but he didn’t seem to realize that he could do precisely such a thing. Should she tell him later? It took cooling the air and calling the rain and then combining them together. If wind came naturally to him, perhaps the weather would be the logical next step. But if he wanted to stop her from taking him back to the Masters—well, there was nothing like a gigantic snowstorm to lock people in one place. It was doubtful he could pull that off. He would be lucky if he could summon a single flake. And even if he did, she could easily drain away all his energy until he gave up or passed out. She wouldn’t tell him about the snow, but he almost certainly couldn’t do anything with the knowledge even if he wanted to.

Aven prattled on with the little girl in a variety of harmless ways. They discussed all manner of weather conditions and then life around the village. He seemed very interested in that.

“What kinds of problems do people have?” he asked. “We’re from far away, near the sea.”

“Well, this year, a lot of people keep getting sick, but Old Man Jones can’t cure them all. He tries, though. This summer was pretty dry, so the harvest isn’t so good for some of the farms. It may be a hard winter. Pa tries to hide it from me, but I can tell he’s worried. Remol, the blacksmith, likes to fight with my Pa, but Old Man Jones gave him a talking-to, so I think he might be done with that.”

They continued. She listened, checking for the wrong words, but he only seemed interested in chitchat, and the little girl would probably think he was joking at this point if he tried to explain he would someday be her king. Miara just sat and listened to their idle prattle, as she sometimes liked to listen to Luha talk to the other girls, and just let her thoughts be quiet—let herself not think for a while, especially not about her life. The meat pie the innkeeper’s wife brought them was blissful and steaming. The words of the queen and the wolves still echoed in her ears, but she tried to focus on Emie’s instead.

When they’d finished eating, Emie led them to their rented room, taking the stairs two at a time. Aven followed behind Mara up around a corner to a small back room. Warm and with a belly full of meat and ale and a mind full of Emie’s sweetness, he was feeling better than he had in a while. The other rooms looked to be either rented or the innkeeper’s. Emie opened the door, showed them around, and bowed.