The sea wind blew in Karin’s face, stinging her eyes and whipping her hair. She took a deep breath of clean salty air and abruptly felt awake for the first time in ten days.

It had been like a dream during a bad fever, events rushing at her too fast, incomprehensible. She must have slept during that time, but she could only picture herself working, or else lying fully awake in bed, longing achingly for Roric. She had prepared for the trip to the All-Gemot with no conscious memory of having done so, packing her clothes, making sure that Hadros and Valmar had their own finery, choosing what herbs to include in her medicine chest, preparing food to take, instructing the maids on what would need to be done in her absence.

When Valmar had tried to talk to her about a person he said could not possibly have been a Wanderer, when the king raged so that the men went to their loft immediately after dinner without drinking with him, she went about her chores with her face placid and her eyes devoid of any expression.

Now she seemed suddenly aware of herself again, the skin on her cheeks, the way her cloak tugged at her shoulders, the feel of the smooth railing under her hands. For ten days she had been constantly busy, constantly moving, but all at once there was nothing to do except watch the sailors and the sea. She ran a finger along the broad links of her gold necklace; it had been much too heavy for a child, but her father had given it to her to wear when she went to Hadros’s castle, and she would wear it coming back.

The king joined her at the railing. The ship ran with its red sail taut, rising up on the long swell that had come across hundreds of miles of empty ocean to the channel, then sliding into a trough rimmed by waves that seemed they must surely sink the ship in the next second. But the ship always rose again, the foam white under its bow, and the lines creaking overhead.