At the foot of the hill, she clambered into the saddle, wincing as her fresh bruises were jolted, but setting her teeth against the pain and wrapping herself hi her cloak against the midnight chill. Once she looked up at Falconsward on its crag, high above her.
Bearer of Burdens! 1 cannot, I cannot – Father is sorry, he beat me, this is madness, I should go back before I am missed….
But then the memory of Darren’s face as she gave him the hawk, of her father’s rage, of Ruyven’s set, despairing eyes the last time she had seen him, before he ran away from Nevarsin. . . . No, Father will have us what he wishes, not what we are. The memory of Dom Garris handling her rudely at Midsummer, the thought of how he would behave when she was turned over to him, his wife, his property to do with as he would-
She set her face like iron. Had there been anyone to see, at that moment, they would have marked; she was very like her father. She rode away from Falconsward without once looking back.
Book Two: THE FUGITIVE
CHAPTER ONE
On the third day it began to snow. Romilly, who had lived all her life in the foothills of the Hellers, knew that she must find shelter quickly; nothing alive could survive a storm, even at this season, except under cover. The wind whipped like a knife, and howled along the trees lining the path like the voices of ten thousand devils. Briefly she considered retracing her steps to the little hill-farm she had passed early that morning, and asking shelter there . . . but no. The farmers there might have been among those who came, now and again, to Falconsward, and even in her boy’s dress might know her for The MacAran’s daughter. She did not know them; but she had never been this far from her home, and was not sure where she was.
She knew vaguely that if she followed this trail, keeping to the north, she would come at last to Nevarsin, where she could take the road to Tramontana Tower. There she would find her brother Ruyven – or if he had been sent elsewhere by the leroni who ruled in the Towers, she could find news of him. It was in her mind that she might seek the training of her laran within the Towers, as the leronis Marelie had invited her to do some years ago. Alternatively, she might remain in Nevarsin for the winter – she had lived in the Hellers long enough to know that travelling in the winter, by the roads she must take to Nevarsin, was a dangerous enterprise, undertaken only by the mad or the desperate. Surely in Nevarsin she could seek to find work somewhere as a hawkmaster’s apprentice, or with some blacksmith or horse-keeper as a stableboy-for she had no intention of revealing herself as a girl. She had seldom been away from her own home, where even the kitchen-girls and washerwomen were treated kindly and properly supervised by Domna Luciella, but the very way they reacted to this treatment told her how rare it was, and one of the women, who had worked as a tavern wench for years, had told many stories of the treatment she was apt to receive. Romilly did not doubt her own ability to care for herself and to keep unwelcome hands off her; but even the lowest stable boy was paid more than any cook-woman or tavern maid, and Romilly had few skills to lift her above the lowest scullery-maid’s tasks. All she knew was horses and hawks, and the supervision of servants. Dressmakers and children’s nurses, she knew, could earn higher wages, but even the thought of working as a sewing-woman made her smile, remembering the botchery she made of her sewing, and for a child’s nurse they would want to know much more about her than she would be willing to tell. No, if she chose to stay in Nevarsin for the winter she would remain a boy to all appearances, and seek work in stables or mews.
And that way, at least, she would be around horses and hawks. She thought with a bitter pang of the lost Preciosa.