Cashel's left hand rested lightly on Sharina's waist, not a claim but rather a badge of honor. He'd worshipped Sharina for as long as he could remember, but he'd never imagined that he'd be permitted to love her. Whatever else happened in Cashel's life, it'd already been more wonderful than he'd dreamed.

He looked at the island. Volita didn't have much to see that Cashel cared about. Ruins were interesting to some folk, just as books were. Tenoctris could touch a carved stone and talk about where it came from, while Garric and Sharina nodded in understanding. But for Cashel, rocks were mostly important when they were where they'd grown, because then they gave him a notion about how good the grazing was likely to be.

Garric was sailing his fleet slowly up the western arc of the kingdom, halting at each of the major islands. He was making what his advisors called a Royal Progress. Cashel didn't need anybody to explain the sense of it: a shepherd who kept his eyes open saw the same thing happen every Spring. Birds, squirrels-frogs, even-stared at each other and puffed themselves up, singing or screeching or croaking. All of them were trying to make their rivals back down.

With dogs you might get a fight, but that was dogs. It could be a fight between men too, but not if they were as smart as Garric.

Cashel was one of the people Garric talked to before he did things. Cashel hadn't understood why at first, him a shepherd who couldn't read or write sitting with nobles who were used to running things. He'd seen quickly that his knowing the things a peasant knows could be useful. With nobles, what they knew got mixed up with what they called honor. Honor to a noble generally meant acting like you didn't have any common sense.