"I thought that was what I smelled. Father will be pleased-it's one of his favorites."

"And what would you have done had it been something else, son of the dihqan?"

one of the cooks asked.

"Eaten it anyhow, I expect," Abivard answered. The cook laughed. Abivard went on, "Since it is what it is, though-" He tore off another piece of flatbread, then raided the pot again. The cook laughed louder.

Still chewing, Abivard left the kitchens and went down the hall that led to his own room. Since he was eldest son of Godarz's principal wife, he had finally got one to himself, which led to envious sighs from his brothers and half brothers. To him, privacy seemed a mixed blessing. He enjoyed having a small place to himself, but had been so long without one that sometimes he felt achingly alone and longed for the warm, squabbling companionship he had known before.

Halfway down the hall, his left sandal started flapping against his foot. He peered down and discovered he had lost the bronze buckle that held a strap around his ankle. He looked around and even got down on his hands and knees, but didn't find it.

"It probably fell into the Void," he muttered under his breath. Moving with an awkward half-skating motion, he made it to his doorway, went into his room, and put on a new pair of sandals.

Then he went out again, damaged sandal in hand. One of Godarz's rules-which, to his credit, he scrupulously followed himself-was that anything that broke had to be set right at once. "Let one thing slide and soon two'll be gone, two lead to four, and four-well, there had better not be four, there had better not," he would say.

Had just a bit of leather fallen off the sandal, Abivard could have gotten some from the stables and made his own rough repair. But to replace a buckle, he had to visit the cobbler in the village that surrounded the stronghold.

Out into the heat again, then. The sun smote him like a club. Sweat sprang out on his face, rolled down his back under his baggy garment. He wished he'd had farther to go; he wouldn't have felt foolish about getting on his horse. But if his father had seen him, he would have made sarcastic noises about Abivard's riding in a sedan chair next time, as if he were a high noble, not just a dihqan's son. Abivard walked.