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Could she survive a night on the plain by herself? Maybe, maybe not. It depended on how cold it got. Prespine’s saddlebags contained a bit of bread and dried meat but nothing more. She had watched Cazio and z’Acatto start fires, but she hadn’t seen anything that resembled a tinderbox in the dead man’s possessions.

Reluctantly, she made her decision and prodded the mare toward the town. She needed to know where she was, at the very least. Had she made it to Loiyes? If so, the village ahead ought to be under the governance of her aunt. If she wasn’t in Loiyes, she needed to get there. She was more certain of that now than ever, for she had seen it in the face of the Briar King.

She realized that she knew something else.

Stephen Darige at least was alive. She knew this because the Briar King knew it. And there was something Stephen was supposed to do.

Not much farther along she came across a rutted clay road wide enough for wains; cut down into the landscape as it was, it had hidden itself from her earlier view. From where she met it the road wound off through cultivated fields. She noticed bits of green peeking through the snow, leading Anne to wonder what sorts of crops the farmers grew in winter or whether they were just weeds.

The haystacks she had seen as tiny at a distance were here prodigiously tall. Gaunt scarecrows in tattered rags stared empty-eyed from heads of gourd or shriveled black pumpkin.

The woodsmoke and its comforting aroma draped across the cold earth, and before long she came to a house, albeit a small one, with white clay walls and a steeply pitched thatch roof. A shed attached to the side seemed to serve as the barn; a cow watched her from beneath its eaves with dull curiosity. She could just make out a man in dirty tunic and leggings, pulling hay down from a loft with a wooden-tined pitchfork.

“Pardon me,” she called tentatively. “Can you tell me what that town ahead is named?”

The man glanced back at her, his tired eyes suddenly rounding a bit.

“Ah, edeu,” he said. “She ez anaméd Sevoyne, milady.”

Anne was taken aback by his accent, which was a bit difficult to decipher.

“Sevoyne?” she said. “That’s in Loiyes?”

“Edeu, milady. Loiyes ez here. Whereother should she beeth, to beg theen perdon?”

Anne let the question go as rhetorical. “And can you tell me where Glenchest is from here?” she pursued.

“Glenchest?” His brow furrowed. “She most to four leagues, creed-I, ’long the road most to way. You are working for the duchess there, lady?”

“That’s where I’m going,” Anne said. “I’m just a little lost.”

“Never-I’ve been thet faer along,” the fellow said. “But they tell ez net s’hard to find to ’er.”

“Thanks, then,” Anne said. “Thanks for that.”

“Velhoman, and good road ahead, lady,” the man said.

As Anne rode on, she heard a woman’s voice behind her. The man answered, and this time the language was one she did not know, though it carried the same peculiar cadence as his very odd king’s tongue.

So this was Loiyes, in the heartland of Crotheny. How was it, then, that the peasants here didn’t speak the king’s tongue first?

And how was it that she hadn’t known as much? She had been to Loiyes before, to Glenchest. The people in the town in Glenchest spoke perfectly good king’s tongue. According to the man, this was less than a day’s ride from there.

She had spent so much time traveling in foreign lands. The thought of a homecoming—of reaching a place where people spoke the language she had grown up with and everything was familiar—was something she had been longing for for months.

Now here she was, only to discover that the country of her birth was stranger than she had ever known.

It made her feel a little sick.

By the time Anne reached Sevoyne, the appearing stars were vanishing behind a new ceiling of cloud rolling in from the east, bringing for Anne a return of the claustrophobia she’d experienced in the forest. Her silent pursuer was near again, emboldened by the deep shadows.

She passed the town horz, the one