The king swept the headgear off. “Once we are on the road, I expect you to do your duty with the wine cup,” he said before he yanked the door open and stalked out. The queen composed herself and followed.

Eddis stared openmouthed.

“Not a word,” warned the king.

Her eyes sparkled. She might have been a banker seeing every loan repaid at once, and she too lowered herself in a courtesy to the king. Perhaps glimpsing the sudden uncertainty in Hilarion’s face, as she rose she assured the king that not even her attendants could have done better. Hilarion relaxed.

Eddis wore a perfectly ordinary Eddisian uniform, the only concession to her status a plain silver circlet on her head. Sounis, also in uniform, was standing by with his lips so tightly pressed together they were invisible.

Everyone was very subdued as they listened to the directions, repeated three times by the anxious palace official in charge, how the royal party would exit from the palace and parade through the city. Attolia and the king were to lead the way from the room. Sounis and Eddis would follow. The attendants of all four of them lined up in order of precedence, and in the rigor and the silence of the ceremonial moment was the song of the little bird that announces itself even as it hides, calling “look-at-me, look-at-me, look-at-me” from the bushes.

The high king didn’t turn a hair. The queen of Eddis poked her husband. Sounis looked back with wounded innocence. It was the last lighthearted moment for a long time.

When we reached the courtyard where the horses were waiting, my pony was among them. She was named Pepper, after the sprinkling of black dots on her white flanks, but I called her Snap because the stable master had taught me to snap my fingers, and taught her to come to me when I did. He’d also commissioned a special saddle for me, and every free moment I’d had I’d gone to him for riding lessons.

While careful not to draw attention to myself, I had obsessively checked to be sure my name was included on every list of the king’s attendants. I was determined not to be left behind, and if anyone considered the matter even for a moment, I knew I would be.

As I’d hoped, everyone around me was much too preoccupied to notice the stable master boosting me into the saddle. I rode behind the king through the city, surrounded by the shouting crowds, and my heart lifted. We moved at a snail’s pace while mothers held up their children to see the kings and queens as they passed. Even those who were older and wiser and knew what lay in our future waved and shouted, buoying our spirits against privations to come. If only wars could be won on the strength of the cheering when they begin, instead of the blood and the pain and the horror that feed the gods of discord.

By noon, we had not made it more than a mile from the city and I was already paying for the heady feelings of participation with an ever-increasing discomfort in my hip and my back. I had never ridden for more than an hour or two at a time. I’d had no way of knowing what it might be like to ride all day.

Snap carried me as carefully as an egg in a cup, and we fell farther and farther behind the king. Marchers and carts passed us by. Panic fluttered just under my breastbone when I saw the magus waiting at the side of the road. I was sure he was going to send me back to the city. Instead, he turned his horse as I approached and rode beside me.

He claimed to have seen a crested sinerine fly past. “They are quite rare on this side of the Middle Sea. Shall we take a look for the nest?”

Warily, I went along as he led the way off the road. He helped me to dismount and we tied our horses. The magus followed a narrow path into the trees, going slowly so that I could limp after him, the stiffness slowly easing as I moved. Much to the surprise of us both, we did find the colony of birds. Their nests were remarkable, like a hundred knitted socks all hanging in the branches of a tree. Though the magus was very obviously delighted, the sinerines were an excuse for me to stretch my leg, and we both knew it.

When he helped me back onto my pony, he asked if I was feeling better, and I nodded.

“Are you lying?” he asked me frankly.

Defeated, I nodded again. There was no way to deny that even with the special saddle, my whole body hurt. Every individual sinew seemed to be drawing itself as tight as the strings on a lute. I’d focused so narrowly on getting far enough that I couldn’t be sent back, I hadn’t considered what an impossible position I would be in if I couldn’t keep up.

“The first day is the hardest,” the magus reassured me. Then he flagged down a wagon. He loaded me into it, and to my surprise climbed in after me, tying his horse beside Snap at the tailboard. For the rest of the afternoon he chatted amiably with the blacksmiths squeezed onto the benches with their anvils and their tools. It was a very different side of the acid-tongued man I’d heard flaying opponents in arguments over the council table.

As the sun settled toward the horizon, Sotis came back with dinner in a basket and several bottles of wine. As darkness fell, we pulled into a makeshift camp beside the road. The magus stepped from the wagon to the back of his horse and held out a hand to me to help me onto Snap. I didn’t take it, afraid of falling if he unbalanced me. When he saw how much trouble I had standing, one of the blacksmiths lifted me as easily as another man might lift a lamb and handed me into the magus’s arms.

The magus rode nearly an hour more in the dark, Snap dutifully following behind, passing campfires and tents pitched on either side, finally reaching the spot where the tents of the royal party were pitched beside the even larger council tent. The magus handed me down to Petrus, who was waiting with hot water and his tinctures ready.

Because he was busy with me, it was not Petrus, but Galen who discovered the king was feverish. The king insisted he was not ill, merely overheated by his elaborate clothing. Petrus felt that Galen encroached on his prerogative as the Attolian royal physician. Galen was jealous of his privileges as the healer who had cared for the king since his youth. In the morning, when there was no sign of the fever, Petrus said the king was well enough to travel and Galen disagreed.

The king would have overridden Galen’s concern, but Sounis, to everyone’s surprise, dug in his heels and absolutely refused to ride on until both Galen and Petrus said the king was well enough to continue. As a result, I had that extra day to rest as soldiers marched past the royal pavilions, lowering their voices and casting worried looks at one another.

The next day the king and I were both ready to ride. Galen and Petrus watched the king like a hawk while the magus supervised me no less strictly. I rode for the first few hours, a little more comfortably without the stopping and starting of the first day’s march. When Snap and I had fallen back as far as the blacksmiths, they welcomed us into their wagon, out of the goodness of their hearts, or in expectation of the baskets one of the king’s attendants would deliver later in the day. The magus often joined us, quizzing me with math problems and watching as I tried to mark answers on my slate while the cart bumped over the ruts in the road. Every few miles, he made me do Petrus’s stretching exercises, and he insisted I get down to walk whenever the wagon was stopped. Each day, I rode a little longer, and eventually, I was able to step from the tail of the wagon onto Snap’s back and ride to where the royal tents were being pitched. If it seems unlikely that I could make up my lost distance at the end of the day, one must consider the universal truth of armies. The larger they are, the more slowly they move.