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    Wiping her hands on her apron, Selah brushed back a stray strand of hair from her brow and slipped an arm through her daughter’s to lean forward and give her a light kiss on the brow.
    Selah was taller, of a height with Geric, than Ailith now knew she would ever be. Ailith’s majority was fast approaching and her full height had been achieved. A thing of her father’s blood and her mother’s mother but Ailith had long accepted her smaller stature. It affected little. She’d been raised to command and knew how to take it. Her skill with a sword was unquestioned.
    “Yes, we’ll ride out within a candlemark,” Ailith said.
    “What is Gwillim after this time?” Selah asked with half her eye on the poultice she was preparing, her nose flaring slightly at the scent of the herbs.
    Smothering a smile, Ailith knew Selah’s mind was as much there as with her. The scent of the herbs mixed with water or wine, and sometimes other things, told her mother how they blended.
    “Boggart,” Ailith said. “I’d best be going.”
    “Have a care,” Selah said, distracted, as she reached for another pot of herbs.
    Korin, the stablemaster, had Ailith’s horse saddled and ready.
    “Hai, Ailith,” he said, smiling warmly as he led the horse out himself, rather than letting a stable lad or lass do it.
    “Hai, Korin,” she said, gladly herself, taking the horse’s reins.
    Korin was an old friend, having been stablemaster for the castle since she was a small child. He was the one who’d first taught her to ride. Few of the folk of the castle named her title, as they didn’t to her father or mother unless others were about. The Kings of Riverford weren’t much for standing on ceremony among their own.
    Out of long practice, Korin gave her a leg up, lifting her lightly and easily up into the saddle.
    “Now, you be careful out there, my lady.”
    Raising an eyebrow, amused, Ailith looked down at him. “Now, Korin, when have you ever known me not to?”
    He patted her knee. “Well enough. Still, it should be said.”
    “Thanks, Korin, I shall.”
    As she approached the gate she raised a hand of greeting to Caradoc, the Captain of the Guard, standing high above on the wall. He raised a hand back, nodding greeting in return.
    Riverford was an older castle, a small and simple mott and bailey affair, consisting of one tower and the surrounding curtain wall. There was no forecastle, no tower above the gate, only a portcullis, with a bridge across the moat and the long causeway.
    It was early enough in the year that the moat didn’t have its summertime stench yet, Ailith noted with relief as she rode over it. By high summer it could be unbearable.
    A channel carried water from the river that gave both castle and town their name and sluiced through the moat. Come summertime when the water was lower, the garderobes and slops buckets that emptied into it made the moat reek horribly. Most others seemed to ignore it but it always turned Ailith’s stomach.
    At the end of the causeway she turned toward the Hunter’s and Woodsmen’s camp which was nestled between the castle and the river itself. Some of both were about the chores that such folk needed to do when they were at home – mending tack, honing weapons or training new recruits.
    “Hai, Ailith, fairest of the fair, sweet rose of Riverford, a delight to the eye and the heart,” a voice caroled. “Were it not for my own fair lady, my heart would be yours.”
    Restraining a smile and rolling her eyes, Ailith turned in the direction of the voice.
    “Oh, Gwillim, go on with you,” she said in mild exasperation.
    The leader of the Hunters grinned, sweeping off his hat in an elaborate bow. Difficult to do in the saddle. Tall, lean and rangy, as happily mated as any she knew, Gwillim flattered every woman he met but her in particular, teasing her as always. She was neither fair nor anyone’s definition of a sweet rose. Which he well knew.
    Well used to it, the