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“May I buy a couple?” I ask, motioning to the peaches. “I’m traveling, or I’d take more.”

Quickly, she nods and motions me into the orchard. I follow, bemused, wondering why she doesn’t pick a few from the baskets. Carefully, she studies several, and then she motions to them, silently asking if those will be all right.

I nod, and she plucks them from the tree. She then carefully wraps them in a white handkerchief and gestures to the painted wooden sign to show me what I owe.

Before I pay, I ask, “Can you tell me which way I need to go to reach Riverwren? I’m not sure if I should take a left or a right up ahead.”

She walks to the edge of the road and extends her arm, pointing to the right.

“Thank you so much.” Smiling, I slip a gold coin into her hand and bid her a good day.

The clouds break up as I ride, and the air becomes a little less sticky. I eat one of the peaches as I breathe in the smell of the wet, sun-warmed grass.

It almost feels like summer. Squirrels run up and down the massive cottontuft trees that dot the landscape, preparing for winter, and locusts clack as they leap from the road into the long meadow grass.

It feels serene out here—peaceful even, and I decide going after Henrik isn’t such a chore after all.

“Maybe I should become a courier,” I tell my horse with a satisfied sigh.

She doesn’t answer, but I’m sure she agrees. I give her neck a pat, and we continue toward the towering northern mountains.

9

Henrik

“And then hesaid he killed five calnauths in one hunting trip, but everyone knows that’s impossible.” Bartholomew takes a deep breath, preparing to continue. “So I told him—”

“Just a minute,” I say, glad to have a reason to cut my squire’s story short. “Hector, mind that goat. It’s chewing on the wagon wheel.”

It’s the morning of the fourth day, and an all-too-familiar headache already stiffens my shoulders and neck. So far, except for a few rainy days, the trip has gone smoothly. But after we cross the Ileastra River, the road will be less traveled and far rougher. Our progress will slow by half. I’m afraid it will be at least another week before we reach the northernmost guard post.

Bartholomew continues, “I told him if he didn’t have the furs to prove it—”

“The barge isn’t crossing today,” Simon hollers to me as he walks back into the meadow outside the village of Riverwren, where we made a temporary camp for the night. “We’ll have to wait for the captain to return.”

“Where’s the captain?”

Simon ambles over, giving the wagon with the cheese a wide berth. The trip has done nothing to improve its aroma.

My second-in-command is a tall man, a few years older than I am, with close-cropped, cool brown hair. He’s efficient and trustworthy, but he has an easy way about him that I envy. The men all like him.

They don’t feel the same about me.

“They said his mother is sick,” Simon answers. “He had to ride to Cabaranth for medicine.”

“Of course, he didn’t have a single fur to show for his trip,” Bartholomew finishes smugly, unaware that I stopped listening to him ages ago.

“You’re telling me there’s only one man in the entire village who can run the barge?” I say to Simon.

The captain shrugs.

“What do we do, Henrik?” Bartholomew asks, finally focusing on the situation at hand.

Concealing my irritation, I say, “I suppose we wait.”

The young duke looks at the sky. “What about the birds?”

In the last day, we’ve attracted a whole flock of Calendrian vultures. They circle high in the air for no apparent reason, making the livestock nervous.