“He missed you,” Mara said. “Was off his feed and moping, but as soon as you came back, he started eating regular. He’s a changed horse.”

“I missed him, too,” Karigan said. All the way through Blackveil she had. She assumed she had missed him in the future, as well. A Rider should never be separated from her horse.

She clapped his neck and tugged on his ear. He turned on his haunches and ran off bucking, which got some of the other horses playing. He cantered around, coming back to her more than once, as if to make sure she was really there.

“I am sorry I missed Damian Frost,” Karigan said wistfully, as she returned to Mara at the fence.

“I enjoyed meeting him. He actually brought more horses than we requested. He said he knew we’d need them. Horsemaster Riggs is working on gentling the unclaimed ones, and we all take turns exercising them and helping in the stable. The stable is, by the way, filling up just like the Rider wing.”

It gladdened Karigan that the messenger service was on its way to reaching its full strength, but she also wondered if it was the will of higher powers that Sacoridia be prepared for greater conflict.

After a while, Mara excused herself to attend to duties. Karigan lingered at the pasture watching the horses. It was comforting to see them play, or just dig for grass beneath the snow. Condor periodically returned to her to be scritched, and she stayed until she could no longer feel her toes or the tips of her fingers.

• • •

Karigan’s first night in her new room proved restless. Half-remembered images of people and places and nightmarish mechanicals reeled through her mind. When she awakened in the morning, her bed clothes were twisted in knots, and she felt spent, as though she’d been running all night, not sleeping.

Shortly after breakfast, a Green Foot runner found her in the common room and delivered a message directing her to attend Captain Mapstone in the records room. The records room resided in another old section of the castle. Karigan checked that her uniform was neat and proper, and she set off.

When she reached the records room, she found it busier than ever. Workers appeared to be disassembling scaffolding from beneath the stained glass dome. Dakrias Brown, the chief administrator, noticed her right off and came over to greet her.

“So good to see you, Sir Karigan,” he told her. “You were missed.” In a whisper, he added, “And not just by the living.”

Mara had alluded to the disruption at the memorial circle they’d held for Karigan. Karigan wished she could have been there to see it.

“They,” and Dakrias pointed vaguely in the air, “calmed right down when you returned.”

“What is with all the scaffolding?” she asked.

“A special cleaning of the glass,” Dakrias said. “Here, let me introduce you to the glass master, Master Goodgrave.”

Karigan almost missed a step behind Dakrias as she followed him. Goodgrave. The name was familiar. She had been called “Goodgrave” in the future, though she’d forgotten why.

She shook hands with the master, distracted by a familiarity about him, his bushy side whiskers and almost wolfish features, while he explained the meticulous cleaning he and his workers had given the glass.

“A masterpiece this dome is,” he said. “Few samples of such proficiency have survived time. I believe your captain is planning a ceremony to reveal it anew in its full splendor.”

“Indeed I am, Master Goodgrave.”

They turned to find the captain striding toward them with a sheaf of papers tucked under her arm.

“But I thought,” she added, “I’d give Karigan a little preview. She helped, after all, to bring it back to light in the first place.”

“Well then, now is a good time,” Master Goodgrave said, “with us being finished and the scaffolding coming down.”

“Fastion is above,” the captain said.

A lantern backlit the glass above, and rippled across scenes in a blur of fabulous color as it moved along. Then it paused and more lights were lit, illuminating the panel of the First Rider riding in victory after the Long War. The colors were stunning, so bright, and the images so crisp.

“Not bad, eh?” Master Goodgrave said, face shining with pride.

“It’s beautiful,” Karigan replied.

“We discovered,” the captain said, “that the three-fold leaf meant to symbolize the League that brought down Mornhavon was actually a four-fold leaf.”

“Four?” Karigan asked. “There was another ally?”

“Apparently. If you look behind the First Rider, you see what we always thought were horsemen in the far distance, but they aren’t. They’re p’ehdrose.”

The image in glass was far above, but Karigan could see it now, the many p’ehdrose. The dirt had obscured that detail.

“If only they were more than legend,” the captain said. “We could probably use some help against Second Empire.”

“They’re real,” Karigan said.

“What did you say?”

“The p’ehdrose. I saw stuffed and mounted specimens in the Imperial Museum.”

She and the captain stared at one another in shocked silence, Karigan for remembering such a detail, and the captain for hearing that p’ehdrose were not mere legend.

“That is . . . very interesting,” the captain said. She glanced up at the glass, and Karigan could almost see the wheels of speculation churning in her mind.