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the inn at Applebridge and the life which went with it. The guilt was because I had wanted that kind of peaceful life, and had built it along with Maggie, and it seemed terrible to me that I wanted it no longer while she still did.
    She had said we would find work as labourers ‘until we can start again'. And I had no doubt that she would start again. Within two years of choosing some village, Maggie would again run an inn, or a cookshop or a barter house. She would learn a cobbler's trade or a cooper's or an apothecary's. She could learn and do anything, anything at all, and she would not let me do what I wanted, which was what I had always wanted: go to Soulvine Moor, cross over, and find my mother in the Country of the Dead. Only from my mother could I learn who was my father, who was the crowned woman in my terrible dreams, who I was myself.
    ‘You will seek your mother. Despite anything I would tell you,' Mother Chilton had said two years ago. But I had not. Now the chance had come, and I would not rest until I found my mother and she told me what I must know.
    So I walked with Maggie as we moved south-east and the countryside grew steeper, more wooded, less peopled. I joked with her, slept at night across a banked campfire from her, and said nothing about my plans. And so we came to Haryllbury.

    ‘This is the place,' Maggie said.
    In mid-afternoon we stood on a high rise, looking down at a village beside a small lake. It was larger than most hill settlements, perhaps because of the lake. A small river fed it, tumbling down from the mountains and winding like a slim swift snake among the steep hills and through the sudden ravines. Farm plots, tiny and irregularly laid out, but nonetheless under cultivation.
    I didn't know if we still stood in The Queendom or over the border in the Unclaimed Lands, and later, when I came to learn the village's name, I still didn't know. ‘Haryll' sounded like the latter, ‘bury' like the former. The place was a cross-breed, and so likely to belong to neither.
    ‘It's big enough to afford us work,' Maggie said. ‘But small enough to be unnoticed.'
    ‘Yes, I agree. Jee, take Shadow and buy some bread.' I gave him a penny.
    Jee started down the hillside, Shadow bounding alongside. Maggie and I sat on the thick grass, grateful for the chance to rest our legs. She began to pull up daisies and braid them together into a chain. Bees hummed around us, drinking of the red clover, and a rabbit leaped by.
    Lucky for it that both Jee and Shadow had gone.
    Maggie said quietly, ‘Don't go, Peter.'
    She knew. Perhaps she had always known. I couldn't look at her.
    ‘Don't leave us. You were going to slip away at night, weren't you? Make sure we had work and a place to sleep, and then set out alone. Leaving me. Again.'
    Once before I had tried to leave her behind, when I had forsaken the palace and gone to search for Cecilia. That time she had insisted on following. I sensed that it would be different now. She would not follow a second time. Maggie had her pride, and it had suffered enough where I was concerned. She wouldn't insist on coming with me, but she would do everything she could to prevent me from going.
    She said, not without dignity, ‘Please don't lie to me. You are planning on going to Soulvine Moor, aren't you? To search for your mother over ... over there. Please don't lie. to me!'
    ‘ Ye will seek your mother. Despite anything I would tell ye .'
    ‘Yes,' I said, so softly that she bent her head towards me to hear, ‘I'm going. I must go, Maggie.'
    ‘No,' she said simply, ‘you choose to go.'
    And to that there was no answer. She didn't rage, she didn't argue, she didn't even cry, and I found myself thinking that I would rather any of those things than this quiet hurt, deep as the sea. The chain of daisies lay in her lap. Her head bowed over them, and her fair springy curls fell forward to hide her face. She stayed still, so still that except for the tension in her neck, she