Mel rolled her eyes, apparently wishing the same thing. “He wants to ride down to the river with you.”

Alton blushed.

“Oh!” It would be the last time she got to see him, and it would be pleasant to have company—to have him—along the way. “I don’t see why not.”

Alton exhaled in relief. “Very good,” he said, taking on a confident air again.

Karigan thought she heard Mel mutter something about “males.” The two girls said their good-byes, and Karigan left Mel standing forlornly in the shadows of the stable, the drone of flies filling the air.

At first Alton and Karigan rode in silence, he glancing at her covertly. They passed beneath the portcullis and through the castle gates. The horses’ hooves clunked on the wooden drawbridge. Two guards on duty watched them sourly as they passed through. Relations between the militia and messenger service, she learned, were strained by the misconception of the soldiers that Green Riders led uncomplicated lives.

Part of the castle wall that faced outward into the city was scaffolded. Workers on break sat idly on the wood scaffolding and passed around a jug. Alton scowled.

“What’s wrong?” Karigan asked.

“There is nothing wrong with that wall.”

“Then what are they doing?”

“Supposedy reinforcing it. Hah! That wall has survived since the Long War, and not a nick in it. D’Yers built it.”

“The king seems to think it needs reinforcing.”

“Evidently. I don’t know what he expects is going to happen. It wouldn’t be so bad if their work wasn’t so sloppy. He could have used D’Yers if he wanted the job done correctly. Granted, we’ve lost some of our skill since the castle was built, but Clan D’Yer still has the finest stone workers in all of Sacoridia.” He sighed. “I suppose the king wanted to generate local work.”

From the gates they followed the cobble-paved road that led from the castle into Sacor City. The cobbles, stones rounded for a millennium by the ocean, were harvested from the shores of King Zachary’s own province of Hillander.

As they descended the sloping road, Karigan looked over her shoulder, and for the first time, truly saw the castle as a whole, a view she had been denied during the Wild Ride. It stood high on a rounded hillock, turrets casting solid shadows across its gray granite facade. Blocky walls anchored the castle to the earth. It looked indestructible, unmovable, almost as if it had been hewn from the raw earth itself.

Tiers of courtyards, gardens, and the pasture softened the blunt effect of the castle. Smaller buildings, the barracks of the regular militia and the Green Riders, stables, and other structures, clustered at its base like children at their mother’s knee.

Karigan thought about the fragile people who dwelled within the forbidding fortress. She thought of stern Captain Mapstone scouring a love letter for hints to some Mirwellian conspiracy. She thought of poor Mel, young and alone, trapped inside those cold, stone walls. King Zachary was trapped, too, and he was just as alone as Mel, doing a job he never wanted to do. Caught by circumstance as she had been.

She felt regret on her own part for leaving these people who had been kind to her, but they were caught up in great things, and she felt tired, so tired. She had had enough intrigue and danger to last generations, and it was time for more capable hands to pick up where she had left off. When I get home, everything will be all right. She felt regret at leaving, but also relief.

Karigan and Alton continued downward, the castle and grounds soon lost from view behind the protective, encircling wall. Below them, houses and shops with cedar-shingled roofs jutted in jagged, descending disorder. Two more walls spread outward like growth rings. As the city had grown, new walls were built to surround it and protect it.

They rode through the second wall which led into the old part of the city. Peddlers hawking their wares filled the street. Musicians played on street corners for coins thrown by those who stopped to listen. Folk of all stations roamed the streets on horseback or in buckboards and carriages, and they yanked on rope leads to coax oxen to follow them. Shoppers paused at booths and ducked into well-stocked emporiums.

A small knot of people huddled up to a building where a woman stood on a hogshead. Karigan started in surprise, for it was the leader of the Anti-Monarchy Society, Lorilie Dorran. The woman’s eyes were wide as she took in the commotion of the city, and despite the meager group that had collected to listen to her, she spoke fervently, waving her fist this way and that in the air. Karigan heard nothing of the speech except an occasional “tyranny” or “taxes.” Lorilie’s supporters worked the crowds, passing out leaflets. A young man thrust one into Alton’s face.

Alton looked it over and scowled. “A waste of good paper, this.” He crumpled it in his fist.

“What did it say?” Karigan asked.

“It listed King Zachary’s crimes against the people of Sacoridia.”

It was not long before Lorilie Dorran and her supporters were lost in the moving throng, and Alton pointed across the thoroughfare to a Green Rider maneuvering her horse uphill and against the flow of traffic. She wove between wagons overloaded with wine casks, around children playing in the street, and a merchant burdened with numerous packages. She used her reins one-handed to guide her horse, tapping the gelding’s flanks with her heels.

“That’s Patrici,” Alton said, “Captain Mapstone’s aide. She comes from the borderlands where her clan raises horses. See how she handles Plover? Horses are in her blood.”