The king’s party was drunk often. They sang hearty songs of war and love and living eternally in Hyrold’s great halls as they rode north along a winding path that was always slick with mud. At first, Mira struggled to ride with Halvar, but by the second day, she figured out a way to tie him to herself that kept him happy and her hands free. She loved riding, and even though she wondered where she was going and how long she would be there, she could not help but enjoy the hours she spent feeling connected to Honey, the gentle, golden-brown horse she had been leant by Arik.

The Northern countryside filled her with awe and wonder. Always to her left was the sea, and always to her right, there were blue-tinted mountains with snowy peaks. Giant hawks could be seen gliding above the hills in the distance, and each day the air felt warmer. Feeling the fresh, lively air on her face each morning gave Mira a great energy that lasted all day.

All of these small joys coupled with the beautiful boy curled up against her chest and the laughing man to her right brought immense peace. Mira loved the voices of the king’s men and found herself learning their songs with little effort.

Perhaps like when I was taken North, my frustration will prove foolish. Perhaps I am moving towards another strawberry time in another place that I will love.

Of course, it was not all easygoing. Feeding Halvar while riding was a miserable affair. At first, she attempted to do it while on horseback so as not to slow the king’s party, but it could not be done. Halvar would cry, and all the gruff men around her would try to hide their annoyance as she stopped and wandered away from the hoard with the child. Mira suggested they go ahead without her, as she could easily catch up when the boy was full again, but Arik would not hear of it.

Whenever she returned, she could feel their impatience. =

It is Arik’s doing, not mine, she argued with them in her mind. It was him who decided to bring a baby on this trek, not me.

As they journeyed, either Fell or Rowan was always with her. They seemed to silently agree that it was unsafe to leave her alone with Arik and his men. She enjoyed their company, though sometimes, when she thought of this behaviour, the seed of unease planted in her chest by Arik’s arrival felt like it was sprouting.

Each afternoon, Mira was summoned to sit with the king in his tent or walk with him along the shore if the weather was fair. At first, their conversations were pleasant—fun even. Mira found that Arik loved to learn about southern culture. If she spoke to him about songs, dances, stories, and the like, he would sometimes share things with her. One day he showed her a large map depicting many more places than she ever knew existed. She gawked at it, in awe of the size of the world. She could see to the south little eyes and little suns next to the clusters of cities gathered around a great sea. Arik showed her where Arcliff was on the Isle, and this was especially interesting to her as she’d not seen a map of her home country before. It was far smaller than she could have imagined, packed to the brim with cities and towns.

Another day Arik translated for her from a book about the god of truth. She discovered that the king spoke many different languages and that even though he believed in the god of truth, he thought that all the other gods were somehow a part of the whole.

“The truth has many sides to it, one for each god worshipped in the entire world,” he said.

He told her about places far away where people ate each other, places where people lived on floating cities tied to the shore and distant lands where it was so hot that the earth would burn your skin if you touched it. There were even places where people lived on horseback. Mira loved these stories the most and spent whole afternoons fantasizing about spending her entire life riding.

But as the days passed, her meetings with the king became more challenging. There was one day he’d laid out parchment and ink before she arrived.

“My lady, I was wondering if you might help me with something.”

“If I am able, I will do it, your Grace.”

“Could you draw for me? I wish to understand better the architecture in your country. I am thinking I will build something for myself inspired by it. Could you draw for me a map of your home in Arcliff?”

“My home, your Grace?”

“Yes. Draw a map of the rooms and floors in the building you lived in. The grounds as well.”

Mira’s face went hot. She did not like the request, but she did it. Perhaps from fear, or from the echoes of her obedience-focused childhood—as Myret would have thought—Mira drew a map of each floor in the castle of Arcliff. As the reed scratched into the page and the ink swelled and settled, she wondered how she could include falsities.

She tried to tell herself that Arik did not know much about the architecture of her people, so he would not know if she moved rooms around, added things, or took them away, but already the king had surprised her many times with his knowledge of the Isle. Surely Dayne would not want her to give the Northern king a map of their home, but each time she thought to add a lie to her drawing, her bravery left, and she drew the room as she remembered it.

When she was done, Mira pushed the parchment across the rough wooden table towards the king. He pulled from a stack of parchment another page with another map of a castle and compared the two, sometimes asking Mira what one room or another was used for.

“You have pleased me,” he said finally, pushing both pages back across the table so Mira could see them.

She was confused. His second map was already of the castle at Arcliff; it was labelled in her own language. He did not need her drawing.

“Why would you ask me to make another of something you already had?”

The king shrugged. “I wished to know how good your memory was. It is fine, though not so fine as you might think.” He pointed to the passage between the kitchens and the great hall with a smirk. Mira had placed it on the southern side, but on the other map, it was to the north. How had she forgotten this? How had Arik managed to find a map of her home?

“Why would you want to know about my memory?”

He shrugged again. “I want to know everything… Learning something new is one of life’s great joys, do you not think?”

“Someone said to me once that it is the purpose of our lives,” Mira said. “That the gods send us here to learn something in particular.”

Perhaps this is why the gods made him king? she mused. He must learn much more than a normal person.

“Who said this?”

This was another part of Mira’s conversations with the king—Arik did not miss a single word. Anytime something new was brought up, he would ask after it.

“Myret, she is our friend from back home. It was her who helped me bring Halvar into the world.”

Arik smiled. “Your friend sounds like a very clever woman.”