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often as Druyan did, but Travic had trusted her. It had not been a cynical assessment that an old horse and a less-than-attractive woman were unlikely to come to harm or mischief—it had been her husband’s respect of her need to take the air for an hour or so most days, his kindness in allowing her a pleasure from the very first days of their marriage.
    And now Travic was dead, of duty and a stray arrow.
    Dalkin had brought the news that morning, after walking alone a day and a night alongside the horse that bore his master’s lifeless body. He was the only one of the little company to return—the rest of Splaine Garth’s men, without a living lord to order them home after a reasonable period of service, had been conscripted into the duke’s army for an indeterminate span of months. But Dalkin was barely ten, old enough to accompany his lord and run messages for him, not grown enough or expected to fight. So home he came, on one last service to his master.
    Seaborne raiders had been harrying Esdragon’s dangerous coasts for the past hand-span of years. Darlith had mostly escaped the attentions of the men in the long black ships, boasting few towns where riches would be clustered for easier plundering; but eventually even quiet Splaine Garth’s luck had run out. It was late in the season, they had begun to hope themselves spared for another year, but the ever-prudent Travic had not relaxed his vigilance while there was still sailing weather and danger to come with it.
    Ready for trouble, he and his farmhands put the raiders to flight in wonderfully short order, and penned those they took captive within the farm’s root cellar. Then Travic had marched every able-bodied man beholden to Splaine Garth downcoast to join the ducal army defending one of Darlith’s scarce port towns, expecting to return in a sevenday. Instead, he met his fate, fletched with goose feathers gray as the sky. Ironically, the arrow was a stray come from his own side—the raiders were not even thought to fight with bows.
    Druyan twisted her big hands tight into Valadan’s mane, bent low over the horse’s neck as a lump swelled in her throat. I just buried my husband .
    Probably few folk would expect her to mourn Travic with an extravant, hair—rending grief, but they had shared married life for eight years, and his passing left a great empty place at the center of her world, as if a tree had been tom from the earth by storm winds. Part of her could not even accept the news. Another part of her looked ahead and saw worse disasters to come. Already she missed what she knew would never return. That was fool’s business—Travic had often been gone from home a fortnight, and she had not then been in an agony of loneliness. It had only been a span of days since he’d ridden out—if all had gone according to plan, he wouldn’t have been back yet anyway. If someone had known how to aim his bow, how to allow for wind and distance drop . . . how to shoot over his own lines. . .
    Their marriage had been arranged by her father, a year before Ronan died. Travic was nearly her father’s age, married once already to a woman who had given him no child, though she had eventually died attempting that wifely duty. Druyan had not given Travic an heir, either, but he had never spoken of setting her aside, or otherwise ill-treated her on that account. If they had not loved one another with passion, they had lived agreeably together, considerate of each other, partners.
    And now Travic was dead, and this barren widow faced the bleakest of futures.
    If only she’d had a child! That old ache cut deeper than the fresh pain of Travic’s death, but Druyan had long since shed all the tears she was able to on that account—each spring as every female creature in sight brought forth young, and her arms ached with the burden they were not fated to hold.
    But if she’d had a child—even a daughter—she would have been allowed to hold Splaine Garth in trust, and