He looked at her, not particularly interested. The familiar thing she had noticed was now much plainer—a likeness in the eyes, in the hawklike nose and strong jaw, that could only have come from her own family’s blood. “So I’ve been told. Is she still alive?”

“She is alive and she is here,” said Hyara. “By the Thunderer, I do not know what to say!” A sudden thought came. “But if you wish to speak to her, you had better be fast. They will bring back my husband any moment now, and he will be angry. You must leave before he gets here. He is a terrible man.”

“No,” said the stranger, and his face suddenly went hard, as her sister’s face sometimes went hard. It was like seeing a ghost. “Your husband is strong, perhaps, or cruel, or even dangerous, but those are not the same.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, but she fumbled off the latch and pushed the wagon’s door open. “What do you mean?”

His look suddenly made her feel sick to her stomach—he was so cold, so terribly, hopelessly angry. “I am what a truly terrible man looks like.” He vaulted up the steps and pushed his way into the wagon.

Inside Vorzheva stood waiting, a look on her face that Hyara had never seen before, a mixture of both hope and horror. “No,” she said as she saw the stranger, and pawed at her iron-gray hair, still stubbornly streaked with black even after so many years. “No, go away. You cannot see me like this, covered in ashes.”

The gray-eyed man looked her up and down, and if Vorzheva’s face was something hard to read, his was suddenly even more so. “You are my mother,” he said at last. “Why?” There was something damaged in his voice that Hyara had not heard before. “Why did you do it?” He strode forward and took Vorzheva’s face in his hand, examining it as though it were some rare object, staring at each fold and wrinkle while she stood motionless but for her eyes.

She slowly lifted a hand to clutch the stranger’s wrist. “By my soul, it truly is you—!”

He shook her fingers off, then pushed her back so that she thumped against the wall of the wagon. Confused and only half-awake, their father Fikolmij struggled to sit up in his corner bed and failed.

“Tell me what is happening!” the old man demanded. “Who is this?”

Vorzheva and the stranger stood eye to eye. Hyara was frightened the man would kill her sister—she could see his arms trembling where he held her prisoned against the side wall—but before she could move toward them, he let her go and his hands fell to his sides. His face seemed empty of all feeling now.

“Why did you send me away?” he asked. “They told me that you and my father were dead.”

Vorzheva did not use her sudden freedom to escape him. “I had no choice. Send you away or see you killed—those were his orders. Him!” She pointed to the old man in the bed, who looked from his daughter to his grandson, still not understanding.

Fikolmij blinked, then looked to Hyara, his face almost pitiful in its confusion. “I don’t like this. Where is my supper?”

“Shut up, you old fool!” Vorzheva cried. “This is my son, do you hear? My son! And he has come back to kill you.” Her lined face was suddenly lit with some deep exhilaration. “My Deornoth has returned, and now all will be put right.” She turned back to the stranger. “That is your name, your true name—Deornoth! You were named after a hero.”

Her son showed his teeth like a dog. “What sort of name is that? A stone-dweller name? But it does not matter, for it is not mine. I am Unver, and Unver I will remain.”

“But your father was a prince!”

“My father left us for another woman before he died—you told me so all those years ago! And where is my sister, Derra? What did you do with her, marry her to one of those smirking brutes outside?”

Old Fikolmij suddenly seemed to understand what was happening. His eyes went wide, and his nearly toothless mouth gaped in a grin of delight. “By the Thunderer, is this the wretched stonedweller’s son? Is this Prince Josua’s bastard come back?” He laughed, an explosion of surprised amusement that turned into a deep cough.

“Where is my sister?” Unver demanded.

“She is gone, Deornoth, my son.” Vorzheva’s usually guarded expression was so naked, so raw that Hyara could barely stand to look at her. “She ran away from the family that took her. Twenty years ago, and I have mourned for her every day, as I mourned for you.” She lifted a hand toward Unver, but he backed away. “No, do not blame me! When your father left us, I tried to take you away to a safe place, but the grasslands were at war and we were captured—”

“Vorzheva, you cannot speak of this now,” Hyara said. “Gurdig will be back any moment. I can hear them shouting for him out by the paddocks. If this truly is your son, he must go before my husband gets here.”

“Run away?” Unver gave her a brief look of contempt. “After being cast out like a lame colt or a sickly hound? No. I will stay until I have answers.” He turned back to Vorzheva. “Where is my father? Why did he leave us?”

“Because he was a coward,” Fikolmij wheezed from his bed. “He was always a coward. And he made your mother his whore.”

Vorzheva grabbed a cup from a shelf beside her and threw it at him. It sailed wide and smashed against the wall. Fikolmij laughed, as pleased with chaos as a demented child.

“Shut your mouth!” Vorzheva screamed at the old man. “You tried to drive us apart from the beginning.” She turned back to Unver. “She lured him away. That Perdruinese witch Faiera, that Scrollbearer, she stole your father from us. He left to go to her and never came back. And his noble friends did nothing to help us.” Vorzheva looked around wildly for a moment, then hurried across the wagon to a chest piled with blankets. As Unver and the rest watched, she threw the blankets onto the floor and opened the heavy chest, sinews straining in her bony arms, then lifted something long and black from inside. It was a scabbard, and as the rest of it came into view Hyara recognized it—Vorzheva’s husband’s sword, a slender weapon even for the blades of city folk.

“Here!” Vorzheva cried. “Here is his sword! Tell me Josua was not bespelled by that Perdruinese she-demon! Otherwise, why would he go away and leave this behind? This is the blade he used to kill Utvart and win me!”

The tumult outside was growing very loud; Hyara could hear many people shouting. She had time only to say, “I warned you—it is Gurdig—!” before the door of the wagon was yanked open so powerfully that one of the hinges snapped. A tall, wide figure shouldered its way through, and for a moment the darkening skies behind and the flames from the wagon’s cookfire made it seem a kind of demon.

Not so far from the truth, thought Hyara, her stomach like a cold stone.

“Where is this stranger?” her husband bellowed but did not wait for anyone to answer his question. Gurdig crossed the wagon so quickly that Unver scarcely had time to raise his arms before the thane hit him with the back of his fist hard enough to knock him sprawling into the crockery chest, which overturned. The lid flew open and bowls and cups tumbled out onto the wagon’s floor, but even as Unver struggled to find his footing, Gurdig, who must have outweighed him by a hundredweight, caught hold of his tunic and yanked him to his feet, then threw him out through the open front door of the wagon and sprang out after him.

“Kill him, Gurdig!” shouted old Fikolmij, wheezing with delight as he struggled to get out of his bed, something he had not done in many moons. “Yes! Kill the stone-dweller’s whelp!”

“One thing I swear,” said Vorzheva, her voice gone icy cold. “Whatever happens, you will not be there to gloat, old man.” And even as Hyara watched in astonishment, her elder sister snatched the first thing that came to her hand, a long meat fork, and jabbed it into Fikolmij’s wattled neck. The old man shrieked, his eyes rolling like a panicked cow’s, but even as he thrashed in the tangling blanket, his long, straggling beard slowly turned red on one side, Vorzheva picked up another object, a great carving knife, and set the point of it against his nightshirt, between his ribs. “I promised myself this day,” she said, leaning close to the old man’s terrified face, then shoved the blade into him until it would go no farther. Fikolmij’s shrieks turned into gurgles. For a moment he waved his hands to no purpose, like an infant unable to control its limbs, then he slumped sideways in his bed in a widening red stain.