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seen a look on her face that reminded him of one he had seen in his own mirror. She had enjoyed herself last summer, surrounded by attendants, fawned over by titled lords and ladies, moving from breakfast to formal dinner to dress ball to breakfast with no apparent weariness. She had seemed to love all the activity, all the commotion.
    She had seemed wistful anytime she thought the season might end.
    He had wondered, now and then, how she amused herself once she was back at the palace. He had not seen her since their return about six months ago. Senneth was wrong—he did realize he could not just presume on a casual acquaintance with royalty—he had made no effort to continue that careless friendship of the road. But he had thought about her. He had wondered if she was lonely again. He had wondered where she might have made friends within the palace, and with whom. He hated to think of her feeling lost and abandoned and solitary and sad.

CHAPTER
3
     
    I T took Cammon about an hour to walk from Jerril’s house to the palace. It was cold, of course, but sunny, for a wonder, and he enjoyed the brisk exercise.
    “Don’t dawdle on your way, now,” Lynnette had told him as she fixed his breakfast and fussed over him a little. He loved it when Lynnette fussed. Her fluttering attention could drive Areel mad, but Cammon couldn’t get enough of the quick pats on the arm, the additional offerings of food, the questions, the worrying. “Keep in mind that you have a destination , and don’t let yourself get sidetracked.”
    Cammon grinned. Lynnette had been with him often enough when a quick walk to the marketplace had resulted in five detours because Cammon sensed someone needing assistance. Once they had come upon a man brutalizing a girl in the alley, his hand across her mouth to keep her from screaming. Lynnette had screeched for help and hit the attacker in the head with a rock, and other passersby had taken him down when he tried to run. Another time, Cammon had insisted they go inside a tumbledown, uninhabited building, and they’d found a baby whimpering there, half dead from neglect.
    “Not even if it’s something important?” he teased.
    “I think the princess is even more important,” she said in a firm voice.
    So he’d bundled up some spare clothes and headed out for the palace, his mind half shielded to keep out the incessant rumble of other people’s thoughts. Mostly he managed to ignore the stray spikes of strong emotion that intruded anyway—a shrill scream that modulated into a laugh, a spasm of grief, a flare of anger—none of them seemed urgent or desperate. He did stop twice to give directions to individuals who stood on street corners looking confused and feeling helpless, but those moments of kindness took very little time, and anyone else would have done the same thing.
    The gate to the palace grounds was guarded by four Riders, all of them familiar to him. “Hey, coming by to visit for a day?” one of them greeted Cammon. “Tired of playing at being a mystic, so now you want to play at being a swordsman?”
    Cammon grinned. “I’ll never be as good at fighting as I will be at magic.”
    “Is Justin coming back?” asked another. Her name was Wen and she was one of only five or six women good enough to be a Rider. She wasn’t very tall, but she was stocky and strong; Cammon had practiced against her often enough to know she was an excellent swordswoman. “Is that why you’re here?”
    “He’s still in the Lirrens, from what I can tell,” Cammon replied.
    “First Tayse married, and now Justin,” said one of the other Riders. “Makes you think anything can happen. The whole world can turn upside down.”
    Wen laughed along with the others, but Cammon caught her buried pulse of regret. She had been half in love with Justin, not that Justin would ever have realized it. And now he’s gone and married himself some strange little creature from the Lirrens. Never even thought about me .