His three sons clattered out, taking the housecarls with them. Karin stood up with a swirl of her skirt, thinking that she would work in the weaving house; it did not require much concentration, once the pattern was established, and the tension burning inside her needed an outlet. The maids would be impressed at how fast she threw the shuttle today.

But King Hadros motioned to her. “Come here, Karin. I would speak with you.”

He smiled when he spoke, and she went somewhat reluctantly to sit beside him, looking at him steadily. Hadros was no taller than she but twice as wide, all of it muscle. He had little white scars all over the backs of his hands and arms and a long one on his cheek, which just barely did not reach his eye. Ever since she was fully grown, she could usually manage to talk and smile him into being agreeable.

Today she was less sure that she could control herself. This was the man, she thought, who had ordered Roric murdered.

But the man she saw now was the one who had taught her to ride, the man who had given her the direction of his household when the queen had died and she was still only a girl herself. She had known him both in riotous good humor and in black rages, especially when he had sat drinking long with his warriors. It was Hadros who, when she had first started developing a woman’s body, and one of the housecarls had made a remark to her so coarse that she had been another year older before she understood it, had seized the man by the neck and smashed him to the floor with such force that he died. But at some point, almost without her noticing, Hadros had developed lines in his tanned face and gray in his hair. And she had never before not known him to lead when they brought in the foals.