Read on below for the Prologue to the third book in the Griffin Mage Trilogy, Rachel Neumeier’s Law of the Broken Earth.

PROLOGUE

Mienthe did not remember her mother, and she was afraid of her father—a cold, harsh-voiced man with a scathing turn of phrase when his children displeased him. He favored his son, already almost a young man when Mienthe was born, and left Mienthe largely to the care of a succession of nurses—a succession because servants rarely stayed long in that house. If Mienthe had had no one but the nurses, her childhood might have been bleak indeed. But she had Tef.

Tef was the gardener and a man of general work. He had been a soldier for many years and lost a foot in a long-ago dispute with Casmantium. Tef was no longer young and he walked with a crutch, but he was not afraid of Mienthe’s father. It never crossed Mienthe’s mind that he might give notice.

Despite the lack of a foot, Tef carried Mienthe through the gardens on his shoulders. He also let her eat her lunches with him in the kitchen, showed her how to cut flowers so they would stay fresh longer, and gave her a kitten that grew into an enormous slit-eyed gray cat. Tef could speak to cats and so there were always cats about the garden and his cottage, but none of them were as huge or as dignified as the gray cat he gave Mienthe.

When Mienthe was seven, one of her nurses started teaching her her letters. But that nurse had only barely shown her how to form each letter and spell her own name before Mienthe’s father raged at her about Good paper left out in the weather and When are you going to teach that child to keep in mind what she is about? A sight more valuable than teaching a mere girl how to spell, and the nurse gave him notice and Mienthe a tearful farewell. After that, Tef got out a tattered old gardener’s compendium and taught Mienthe her letters himself. Mienthe could spell Tef’s name before her own, and she could spell bittersweet and catbrier and even quaking grass long before she could spell her father’s name. As her father did not notice she had learned to write at all, this did not offend him.

Tef could not teach Mienthe embroidery or deportment, but he taught Mienthe to ride by putting her up on her brother’s outgrown pony and letting her fall off until she learned to stay on, which, fortunately, her brother never discovered, and he taught her to imitate the purring call of a contented gray jay and the rippling coo of a dove and the friendly little chirp of a sparrow so well she could often coax one bird or another to take seeds or crumbs out of her hand.

“It’s good you can keep the cats from eating the birds,” Mienthe told Tef earnestly. “But do you mind?” People who could speak to an animal, she knew, never liked constraining the natural desires of that animal.

“I don’t mind,” said Tef, smiling down at her. He was sitting perfectly still so he wouldn’t frighten the purpleshouldered finch perched on Mienthe’s finger. “The cats can catch voles and rabbits. That’s much more useful than birds. I wonder if you’ll find yourself speaking to some of the little birds one day? That would be pretty and charming.”

Mienthe gazed down at the finch on her finger and smiled. But she said, “It wouldn’t be very useful. Not like speaking to cats is to you.”

Tef shrugged, smiling. “You’re Lord Beraod’s daughter. You don’t need to worry about being useful. Anyway, your father would probably be better pleased with an animal that was pretty and charming than one that’s only useful.”

This was true. Mienthe wished she was pretty and charming herself, like a finch. Maybe her father . . . But she moved her hand too suddenly then, and the bird flew away with a flash of buff and purple, and she forgot her half-recognized thought.

When Mienthe was nine, a terrible storm came pounding out of the sea into the Delta. The storm uprooted trees, tore the roofs off houses, flooded fields, and drowned dozens of people who happened to be in the path of its greatest fury. Among those who died were Mienthe’s brother and, trying to rescue him from the racing flood, her father.

Mienthe was her father’s sole heir. Tef explained this to her. He explained why three uncles and five cousins—none of whom Mienthe knew, but all with young sons—suddenly appeared and began to quarrel over which of them might best give her a home. Mienthe tried to understand what Tef told her, but everything was suddenly so confusing. The quarrel had something to do with the sons, and with her. “I’m . . . to go live with one of them? Somewhere else?” she asked anxiously. “Can’t you come, too?”

“No, Mie,” Tef said, stroking her hair with his big hand. “No, I can’t. Not one of your uncles or cousins would permit that. But you’ll do well, do you see? I’m sure you’ll like living with your uncle Talenes.” Tef thought Uncle Talenes was going to win the quarrel. “You’ll have his sons to play with and a nurse who will stay longer than a season and an aunt to be fond of you.”

Tef was right about one thing: In the end, Uncle Talenes vanquished the rest of the uncles and cousins. Uncle Talenes fnally resorted to the simple expedient of using his thirty men-at-arms—no one else had brought so many—to appropriate Mienthe and carry her away, leaving the rest to continue their suddenly pointless argument without her.

But Tef was wrong about everything else.

Uncle Talenes lived several days’ journey from Kames, where Mienthe’s father’s house was, in a large highwalled house outside Tiefenauer. Uncle Talenes’s house had mosaic floors and colored glass in the windows and a beautiful fountain in the courtyard. All around the fountain were flower beds, vivid blooms tumbling over their edges. Three great oaks in the courtyard held cages of fluttering,sweet-voiced birds. Mienthe was not allowed to splash in the fountain no matter how hot the weather. She was allowed to sit on the raked gravel under the trees as long as she was careful not to tear her clothing, but she could not listen to the birds without being sorry for the cages.

Nor, aside from the courtyard, were there any gardens. The wild Delta marshes began almost directly outside the gate and ran from the house all the way to the sea. The tough salt grasses would cut your fingers if you swung your hand through them, and mosquitoes whined in the heavy shade.

“Stay out of the marsh,” Aunt Eren warned Mienthe. “There are snakes and poisonous frogs, and quicksand if you put a foot wrong. Snakes, do you hear? Stay close to the house. Close to the house. Do you understand me?” That was how she usually spoke to Mienthe: as though Mienthe were too young and stupid to understand anything unless it was very simple and emphatically repeated.

Aunt Eren was not fond of Mienthe. She was not fond of children generally, but her sons did not much regard their mother’s temper. Mienthe did not know what she could safely disregard and what she must take care for. She wanted to please her aunt, only she was too careless and not clever enough and could not seem to learn how.

Nor did Aunt Eren hire a nurse for Mienthe. She said Mienthe was too old to need a nurse and should have a proper maid instead, but then she did not hire one. Two of Aunt Eren’s own maids took turns looking after Mienthe instead, but she could see they did not like to. Mienthe tried to be quiet and give them no bother.

Mienthe’s half cousins had pursuits and friends of their own. They were not in the least interested in the little girl so suddenly thrust into their family, but they left her alone. Uncle Talenes was worse than either Aunt Eren or the boys. He had a sharp, whining voice that made her think of the mosquitoes, and he was dismayed, dismayed to find her awkward and inarticulate in front of him and in front of the guests to whom he wanted to show her off. Was Mienthe perhaps not very clever? Then it was certainly a shame she was not prettier, wasn’t it? How fortunate for her that her future was safe in his hands…

Mienthe tried to be grateful to her uncle for giving her a home, but she missed Tef.

Then, late in the year after Mienthe turned twelve, her cousin Bertaud came back to the Delta from the royal court. For days no one spoke of anything else. Mienthe knew that Bertaud was another cousin, much older than she was. He had grown up in the Delta, but he had gone away and no one had thought he would come back. Only recently something had happened, some trouble with Casmantium, or with griffins, or somehow with both, and now he seemed to have come back to stay. Mienthe wondered why her cousin had left the Delta, but she wondered even more why he had returned. She thought that if she ever left the Delta, she never would come back.

But her cousin Bertaud even took up his inheritance as Lord of the Delta. This seemed to shock and offend Uncle Talenes, though Mienthe was not sure why, if it was his rightful inheritance. He took over the great house in Tiefenauer, sending Mienthe’s uncle Bodoranes back to his personal estate, and he dismissed all the staff. His dismissal of the staff seemed to shock and offend Aunt Eren as much as his mere return had Uncle Talenes. Both agreed that Bertaud must be high-handed and arrogant and vicious. Yes, it was vicious, uprooting poor Bodoranes like that after all his years and years of service, while Bertaud had lived high in the court and ignored the Delta. And flinging out all those people into the cold! But, well, yes, he was by blood Lord of the Delta, and perhaps there were ways to make the best of it… One might even have to note that Bodoranes had been regrettably obstinate in some respects…

Since the weather in the Delta was warm even this late in the fall, Mienthe wondered what her aunt could mean about fl inging people into the cold. And how exactly did Uncle Talenes mean to “make the best” of the new lord’s arrival?

“We need to see him, see what he’s like,” Uncle Talenes explained to his elder son, now seventeen and very interested in girls, as long as they weren’t Mienthe. “He’s Lord of the Delta, for good or ill, and we need to get an idea of him. And we need to be polite. Very, very polite. If he’s clever, he’ll see how much to everyone’s advantage raising the tariffs on Linularinan glass would be”—Uncle Talenes was heavily invested in Delta glass and ceramics—“and if he’s less clever, then maybe he could use someone cleverer to point out these things.”

Karre nodded, puffed up with importance because his father was explaining this to him. Mienthe, tucked forgotten in a chair in the corner, understood finally that her uncle meant to bully or bribe the new Lord of the Delta if he could. She thought he probably could. Uncle Talenes almost always got his own way.

And Uncle Talenes seemed likely to get his own way this time, too. Not many days after he’d returned to the Delta, Lord Bertaud wrote accepting Talenes’s invitation to dine and expressing a hope that two days hence would be convenient, if he were to call.

Aunt Eren stood over the servants while they scrubbed the mosaic floors and put flowers in every room and raked the gravel smooth in the drive. Uncle Talenes made sure his sons and Mienthe were well turned out, and that Aunt Eren was wearing her most expensive jewelry, and he explained several times to the whole household, in ever more vivid terms, how important it was to impress Lord Bertaud.

And precisely at noon on the day arranged, Lord Bertaud arrived.

The family resemblance was clear. He was dark, as all Mienthe’s uncles and cousins were dark; he was tall, as they all were tall; and he had the heavy bones that made him look sturdy rather than handsome. He did not speak quickly and laugh often, as Uncle Talenes did; indeed, his manner was so restrained he seemed severe. Mienthe thought he looked both edgy and stern, and she thought there was an odd kind of depth to his eyes, a depth that somehow seemed familiar, although she could not put a name to it.

Lord Bertaud accepted Uncle Talenes’s effusive congratulations on his return with an abstracted nod, and nodded again as Uncle Talenes introduced his wife and sons. He did not seem to be paying very close attention, but he frowned when Uncle Talenes introduced Mienthe.

“Beraod’s daughter?” he asked. “Why is she here with you?”

Smiling down at Mienthe possessively, Talenes explained about the storm and how he had offered poor Mienthe a home. He brought her forward to greet her lord cousin, but Lord Bertaud’s sternness frightened her, so after she whispered her proper greeting she could not think of anything to say to him.

“Manners, Mienthe,” Aunt Eren sighed reproachfully, and Uncle Talenes confided to Lord Bertaud that Mienthe was not, perhaps, very clever. Terre and Karre rolled their eyes and nudged each other. Mienthe longed to flee outto the courtyard. She flushed and looked fixedly at the mosaics underfoot.

Lord Bertaud frowned.

The meal was awful. The food was good, but Aunt Eren snapped at the maids and sent one dish back to the kitchens because it was too spicy and she was sure, as she repeated several times, that Lord Bertaud must have lost his taste for spicy food away in the north. Uncle Talenes worked smooth comments into the conversation about the brilliance with which Bertaud had handled the recent problems with Casmantium. And with the griffins, so there had been something to do with griffins. Mienthe gathered that Feierabiand had been at war with the griffins, or maybe with Casmantium, or maybe with both at the same time, or else one right after the other. And then maybe there had been something about griffins again, and a wall.

It was all very confusing. Mienthe knew nothing about griffins and couldn’t imagine what a wall had to do with anything, but she wondered why her uncle, usually so clever, did not see that Lord Bertaud did not want to talk about the recent problems, whatever they had exactly involved. Lord Bertaud grew more and more remote. Mienthe fixed her eyes on her plate and moved food around so it might seem she had eaten part of it.

Lord Bertaud said little himself. Uncle Talenes gave complicated, assured explanations of why the tariffs between the Delta and Linularinum should be raised. Aunt Eren told him at great length about the shortcomings of the Tiefenauer markets and assured him that the Desamion markets on the other side of the river were no better. When Uncle Talenes and Aunt Eren left pauses in the flow of words, Lord Bertaud asked Terre about hunting in the marshes and Karre about the best places in Tiefenauer to buy bows and horses, and listened to their enthusiastic answers with as much attention as he’d given to their parents’ discourse.

And he told Mienthe he was sorry to hear about her loss and asked whether she liked living in Tiefenauer with Uncle Talenes.

The question froze Mienthe in her seat. She could not answer truthfully, but she had not expected her lord cousin to speak to her at all and was too confused to lie. The silence that stretched out was horribly uncomfortable.

Then Uncle Talenes sharply assured Lord Bertaud that of course Mienthe was perfectly happy, didn’t he provide everything she needed? She was great friends with his son Terre; the two would assuredly wed in two years, as soon as Mienthe was old enough. Terre glanced sidelong at his father’s face, swallowed, and tried to sound enthusiastic as he agreed. Karre leaned his elbow on the table and grinned at his brother. Aunt Eren scolded Mienthe for her discourtesy in failing to answer her lord cousin’s question.

“I am happy,” Mienthe whispered dutifully, but something made her add, risking a quick glance up at her lord cousin, “Only sometimes I miss Tef.”

“Who is Tef?” Lord Bertaud asked her gently.

Mienthe flinched under Aunt Eren’s cold glare and opened her mouth, but she did not know how to answer this question and in the end only looked helplessly at Lord Bertaud. Tef was Tef; it seemed impossible to explain him.

“Who is Tef?” Lord Bertaud asked Uncle Talenes.

Uncle Talenes shook his head, baffled. “A childhood friend?” he guessed. Mienthe stared down at her plate and wished passionately that she was free to run out to the courtyard and hide under the great oaks. Then Uncle Talenes began to talk about tariffs and trade again, and the discomfort was covered over. But to Mienthe the rest of the meal seemed to last for hours and hours, even though in fact her lord cousin departed the house long before dusk.

Once he was gone, Aunt Eren scolded Mienthe again for clumsiness and discourtesy—Any well-bred girl should be able to respond gracefully to a simple question, and why ever had Mienthe thought Lord Bertaud would want to hear about some little friend from years past? Anyone would have thought Mienthe had no sense of gratitude for anything Talenes had done for her, and no one liked an ungrateful child. Look up, Mienthe, and say, “Yes, Aunt Eren,” properly. She was much too old to sulk like a spoiled toddler, and Aunt Eren wouldn’t have it.

Mienthe said Yes, Aunt Eren, and No, Aunt Eren, and looked up when she was bidden to, and down when she could, and at last her aunt allowed her to escape to the courtyard. Mienthe tucked herself up next to the largest of the oaks and wished desperately for Tef. Speaking his name to her cousin had made her remember him too clearly.

Six days after Lord Bertaud’s visit, not long after dawn, a four-horse coach with the king’s badge in gold scrollwork on one door and the Delta’s in silver on the other arrived at the house unannounced. It swished around the drive and pulled up by the front entrance. The driver, a grimlooking older man with the king’s badge on his shoulder, set the brake, leaped down from his high seat, opened the coach door, and placed a step so his passenger could step down.

The man who descended from the coach, Mienthe saw, did not fi t the image implied by its elegance. He looked to be a soldier or a guardsman, not a nobleman. By his bearing, he was well enough bred, but no one extraordinary. But he wore the king’s badge on one shoulder and the Delta’s on the other. Mienthe did not move from the window seat of her room. She was curious about the visitor, but not enough to put herself in her uncle’s way.

She was surprised when Karre put his head through her door a moment later and said, “Father wants you. In his study. Hurry up, can’t you?”

Mienthe stared after Karre when he had vanished. Her heart sank, for whatever Uncle Talenes wanted, she already knew she would not be able to do it, or at least would not be able to do it properly, or would not want to do it. Probably he wanted to show her off to the visitor. Mienthe knew she would look stiff and slow and that Uncle Talenes would regretfully tell his visitor that she was not very clever. But Karre called impatiently from out in the hall, so she reluctantly got to her feet.

She was not surprised to find the visitor with Uncle Talenes when she came into the study, but she was surprised at Uncle Talenes’s expression and manner. Her uncle liked to show her to his friends and talk about what he would do with her father’s estate when she married Terre, but this time he did not look like he had brought her in to show her off. He looked angry, but stifled, as though he was afraid to show his anger too clearly.

In contrast, the visitor looked… not quite oblivious of Uncle Talenes’s anger, Mienthe thought. No, he looked like he knew Uncle Talenes was angry, but also like he did not mind his anger in the least. Mienthe admired him at once: She never felt anything but afraid and ashamed when Uncle Talenes was angry with her.

“Mienthe? Daughter of Beraod?” asked the visitor, but not as though he had any doubt as to who she was. He regarded Mienthe with lively interest. He was not smiling, but his wide expressive mouth looked like it would smile easily. She nodded uncertainly.

“Mienthe—” began Uncle Talenes.

The visitor held up a hand, and he stopped.

Mienthe gazed at this oddly powerful stranger with nervous amazement, waiting to hear what he wanted with her. She felt suspended in the moment, as in the eye of a soundless storm; she felt that her whole life had narrowed to this one point and that in a moment, when the man spoke, the storm would break. But she could not have said whether she was terrified of the storm or longed for it to come.

“I am Enned son of Lakas, king’s man and servant of the Lord of the Delta,” declared the young man. “Your cousin Bertaud son of Boudan, Lord of the Delta by right of blood and let of His Majesty Iaor Safiad, bids me bring you to him. He has decided that henceforward you will live with him in his house. You are to make ready at once and come back with me this very day.” Looking at Uncle Talenes, he added warningly, “And you are not to fail of this command, on pain of Lord Bertaud’s great displeasure.”

“This is outrageous—” Uncle Talenes began. The young man held up a hand again. “I merely do as I’m bid,” he said, so sternly that Uncle Talenes stopped midprotest. “If you wish to contend with this order, Lord Talenes, you must carry your protest to the Lord of the Delta.”

Mienthe looked at the stranger—Enned son of Lakas— for a long moment, trying to understand what he had said. She faltered at last, “I am to go with you?”

“Yes,” said Enned, and he did smile then.

“I am not to come back?”

“No,” agreed the young man. He looked at Uncle Talenes. “It will not take long to gather Mienthe’s things,” he said. The way he said it, it was not a question but a command.

“I—” said Uncle Talenes. “My wife—”

“The lord’s house is not so far away that you will not be able to visit, if it pleases you to do so,” Enned said. He did not say that Mienthe would visit Uncle Talenes’s house.

“But—” said Uncle Talenes.

“I am to return before noon. We will need to depart in less than an hour,” said the young man inflexibly. “I am quite certain it will not take long to gather Mienthe’s things.”

Uncle Talenes stared at the young man, then at Mienthe. He said to Mienthe, within his voice a note of conciliation she had never before heard, “Mienthe, this is outrageous—it is insupportable! You must tell the esteemed, ah, the esteemed Enned son of Lakas, you will certainly stay here, among people who know you and have your best interests close at heart—”

Mienthe gazed into her uncle’s face for a moment. Then she lowered her gaze and stared fixedly at the floor.

Uncle Talenes flung up his hands and went out. Mienthe heard him shouting for Aunt Eren and for the servants. She lifted her  head, giving the esteemed Enned son of Lakas a cautious glance out of the corner of her eye.

The young man smiled at her. “We shall leave them to it. Where shall we wait where we will be out of the way?”

Mienthe led the way to the courtyard.

Enned son of Lakas admired the huge oaks and trailed his hand in the fountain. Mienthe stood uncertainly, looking at him, and he turned his head and smiled at her again.

His smile lit his eyes and made Mienthe want to smile back, though she did not, in case he might find it impudent. But the smile gave her the courage to ask again, “I am not to come back?”

“That’s as my lord wills,” Enned said seriously. “But I think it most unlikely.” Mienthe thought about this. Then she turned and, going from one of the great oaks to the next, she stood on her toes, reached up as high as she could, and opened the doors to all the cages one after another.

The birds swirled out and swept around the courtyard in a flurry of sky blue and delicate green, soft primrose yellow and pure white. The palest blue one landed for a moment on Mienthe’s upraised hand, and then all the birds darted up and over the walls and out into the broad sky.

Mienthe lowered her hand slowly once all of the birds were gone. When she nervously looked at Enned, she found that although he was looking at her intently and no longer smiling, his expression was only resigned rather than angry.

“Well,” he said, “I suppose I can pay for those, if Lord Talenes asks.”

Uncle Talenes did not ask. He was too busy trying to persuade Mienthe that she really wanted to stay with his family. Aunt Eren tried, too, though not very hard. Mienthe looked steadfastly at the fl oor of Uncle Talenes’s study, and then at the mosaic floor of the entry hall, and then at the gravel of the drive. When Enned asked her if everything was packed that should be, she nodded without even glancing up.

“Well, you can send back if anything is missing,” Enned told her, and to Uncle Talenes, “Thank you, Lord Talenes, and my lord sends his thanks as well.” Then he handed Mienthe formally into the coach and signaled the driver, and the horses tossed up their heads and trotted smartly around the sweep of the drive and out onto the raised road that led through the deep marshlands into Tiefenauer.

Mienthe settled herself on the cushioned bench and fixed her gaze out the window. A bird called in the marshes—not the little brightly colored ones from the cages, but something that sounded larger and much wilder.

“You will like the great house,” Enned said to her, but not quite confidently.

“Yes,” Mienthe answered obediently, dropping her eyes to her folded hands in her lap.

“You cannot have been happy living with your uncle, surely?” Enned asked, but he sounded uncertain. “Now we are away, will you not speak plainly to me? My lord did not mean to take you away from a house where you were happy. He will send you back if you ask him.”

Mienthe turned her head and stared at the man. “But you said he would not send me back?” Then, as Enned began to answer, she declared passionately, “I will never go back—I will run into the marshes first, even if there are snakes and poisonous frogs!”

“Good for you!” answered Enned, smiling again. “But I think that will not be necessary.” He sounded cheerful once more. Mienthe looked at her hands and did not reply.

The great house was not what she had expected, though she had not realized she expected anything until she found herself surprised. It was not neatly self-contained, but rather long and rambling. It occupied all the top of a long, low hill near the center of town. It had one wing sweeping out this way and another angled back this way and a third spilling down the hill that way, as though whoever had built it had never paused to think what the whole would look like when he had designed the parts. It was made of red brick and gray stone and pale cypress wood, and it was surrounded by sweeping gardens—not formal gardens such as at her father’s house, but wild-looking shrubberies with walks winding away into them.

The house was huge, but nearly all the windows were tight-shuttered, and there was nothing of the crowded clamor that should have occupied so great a dwelling. Mienthe remembered that her lord cousin was supposed to have dismissed all the staff. She would have liked to ask Enned about this, but she did not quite dare. The coach swept around the wide drive and drew to a halt, and the driver jumped down to put the step in place. Enned descended and turned to offer Mienthe his hand.

Lord Bertaud came out of the house before they quite reached it. He looked tired and distracted. Behind the tiredness and distraction was that other, darker depth that Mienthe could not quite recognize. But his expression lightened when he saw her, and he came down the steps and took Mienthe’s hands in his.

“Cousin!” he said. “Welcome!” He smiled down at her with every evidence of pleased satisfaction. The darkness in his eyes, if it had been there at all, was hidden by his smile. Mienthe blushed with confusion and nervousness, but her cousin did not seem to mind, or even notice. He said to Enned, “There was no trouble?”

“Not at all,” Enned replied cheerfully. “I enjoyed myself. What a pity all your orders cannot be such a pleasure to carry out, my lord.”

“Indeed.” Lord Bertaud released one of Mienthe’s hands so he could clap the young man on the shoulder. “Go help Ansed put the coach away, if you will, and settle the horses, and then come report to me.”

“My lord,” Enned answered, with a small bow for his lord and another for Mienthe, and turned to hail the coach’s driver.

Lord Bertaud drew Mienthe after him toward the house. “You will be hungry after your journey. I had my men wait the noon meal—I am afraid we do not have a cook as yet. Indeed, as yet we have few servants of any description,” he added apologetically. “Of course you must have a maid, and I have arranged interviews for tomorrow, but for the moment you must make do with Ansed’s wife. Edlis is her name. I am sure she will not be what you are accustomed to, cousin, but I hope you will be patient with her.”

Mienthe, who was not accustomed to any but the most grudging help with anything, did not know how to answer.

Lord Bertaud did not seem to mind her silence, but led her into the house and down a long floor. The floor was not decorated with any mosaic tiles. It was plain wood. Though the boards were clean, they were not even painted, and they creaked underfoot. He told her, “You may explore the house after we eat, or whenever you like. I have put you in a room near mine for now—all the house save part of this wing is shut up at the moment, but later you may certainly choose any room that pleases you.”

They turned a corner and entered the kitchens, which were wide and sprawling, with three ovens and four work counters and a long table in front of two large windows. The windows were shaded by the branches of overhanging trees, but open to catch any breeze. The door to an ice cellar stood open, with a cool draft rising from it, and only one of the ovens glowed with heat. It was immediately obvious that there was no proper kitchen staff, for the meal was being prepared by a man who looked like a soldier.

“Yes,” said Lord Bertaud, evidently amused by Mienthe’s expression. “I did not want to hire a cook you did not like, cousin; the cook is almost as important as your maids. So it’s camp cooking for us today, I fear.”

“Well, my lord, I think we’ve managed something better than camp fare,” the man said cheerfully. “Nothing fancy, I own, but a roast is easy enough, and you can always tuck potatoes in the drippings. And I sent Daued into town for pastries.” The man nodded to Mienthe politely. “My lady.”

Mienthe hesitantly nodded back.

“We will all eat in the staff hall today, with perfect informality,” declared her cousin.

“Yes, my lord,” agreed the man, and poked the roast with a long-handled fork. “This is so tender it’s near melted, lord, so we can serve as you please.”

“Half an hour,” said Lord Bertaud, and to Mienthe, “I think you will like to meet my new gardener. I hired him just two days past, but I’m quite pleased. Just step out through that door and I think you will fi nd him working in the kitchen gardens, just here by the house.”

Mienthe stared at her cousin.

“Go on,” Lord Bertaud said, smiling at her. “Tell him that everyone will be eating in the staff hall, please, cousin. In half an hour, but if you are a little delayed, no one will mind.”

This all seemed strange to Mienthe, but then everything about her cousin seemed strange to her. When Lord Bertaud nodded firmly toward the kitchen door, she took a cautious step toward it. When he nodded to her again, she turned and pushed open the door.

The gardener was sitting on a short-legged stool, carefully setting new ruby stemmed chard seedlings into a bed to replace long-bolted lettuces. Though his back was toward Mienthe, she knew him at once. She stopped and stared, for though she knew him, she did not believe she could be right. But he heard the kitchen door close behind her and turned. His broad, grizzled face had not changed at all.

“Mie!” Tef said and reached down for the crutch lying beside his stool.

Mienthe did not run to him. She walked, slowly and carefully, feeling that with any step he might suddenly turn into someone else, a stranger, someone she did not know; perhaps she only imagined she knew him because the smell of herbs and turned earth had overwhelmed her with memory. But when she reached the  gardener and put a cautious hand out to his, he was still Tef. He rubbed dirt off his hands and put a hand on her shoulder, and pulled her into an embrace, and Mienthe tucked herself close to his chest and burst into tears.

“Well, now, it was an odd thing,” Tef told her a little later, when the brief storm had passed and Mienthe had washed her face with water out of his watering jug. “This man rode up to my house four days ago. He asked me was I the Tef who’d used to be a gardener for Lord Beraod. I said yes, and he asked me all about the old household.”

“And about me,” Mienthe said. Four days ago, so Lord Bertaud must have sent a man to Kames almost as soon as he had left Uncle Talenes’s house. So he must have been thinking even then about bringing her to live with him in the great house. That decisiveness frightened Mienthe a little because she still had no idea why her cousin had brought her to live with him.

“Yes, Mie, and about you, though not right at first. I could see he’d been working around to something, but I didn’t rightly know what, and then after I knew what, I’d no idea of why. But I couldn’t see what harm it would do to answer his questions, so I told him.”

“Yes, but what did you tell him?”

“Well, the truth! That your mama died when you were three and your father barely noticed you except when you got in his way; that Lord Beraod had a temper with a bite to it and couldn’t keep staff no matter he paid high; that you had twenty-seven nurses in six years and hardly a one worth a barley groat, much less a copper coin; and that—” He paused.

Mienthe looked at Tef wonderingly. “What?”

“Well, that I’d let you follow me about, I suppose,” Tef said gruffly. “So this man, he said Lord Bertaud, Boudan’s son, had come back to the Delta and meant to be lord here, only he needed staff, and would I want to come be a gardener at the great house? I said I wasn’t any younger now than I was then, but he said Lord Bertaud wouldn’t mind about that. And then he said the lord would be sending for you, Mie, so I gave my house to my nephew’s daughter and packed up my things, and, well, here we are.”

Mienthe thought about this. Then she asked, “But why did he send for me?” and waited confi dently for the answer. It never occurred to her that Tef might not know.

Nor was she disappointed. Tef said briskly, “Well, that’s simple enough, I expect. You know the old lord, Lord Berdoen that was your grandfather, you know he was a terror, I suppose, and rode his twelve sons with a hard hand on the rein and whip, as they say.”

Everyone knew that. Mienthe nodded.

“Well, Lord Boudan, your cousin’s father, he had just the same cold heart and heavy hand as the old lord, so they say. Anyway, Lord Boudan, he sent his son to serve at court—that was while the old king was alive, but by all accounts, Prince Iaor liked Bertaud well and kept him close. So even after Lord Boudan and then the old king died, Lord Bertaud didn’t come home—not but for fl ying visits, do you see. He’d hated his father so much he couldn’t stand any part of the Delta, is what I’d guess, and so he stayed on at court. And he still is close to the king, from what they say about this past summer: They say Iaor sent your cousin as his envoy to Casmantium after that trouble this summer, did you hear about that?”

Mienthe shook her head uncertainly, meaning that if her uncle had said anything about it at the time, either he hadn’t said it to her or she hadn’t been paying attention.

“Well, I don’t know much about it, either, but there’s been talk about it around and about the Delta because of your cousin’s being our right lord, do you see? And some folk say one thing and some another, but I guess there was some kind of problem with griffins coming over the mountains into Feierabiand early in the summer, but it all had to do with Casmantium somehow, which that part makes sense, I guess, since everybody knows that’s where griffins live, up there north of Casmantium. And Lord Bertaud was important in getting it all to come out right, somehow, and then the king sent him to Casmantium after it was all over, to escort the young Casmantian prince to our court as a hostage—”

“Oh!” said Mienthe, startled, and then put a hand over her mouth to show she was sorry for interrupting.

“Well, that’s what they say, though how our king made Casmantium’s king send him, I’m sure I don’t know. He must be about your age, I guess. The young prince, I mean.”

“Oh,” Mienthe said again, feeling intensely sorry for the displaced Casmantian prince. “I suppose he was sad to leave his home and go somewhere to live with strangers?” She supposed he might even have been sorry to leave his father, too, though that required some imagination.

Tef patted her hands. “Oh, well, Mie, a boy that age might be ready for an adventure, maybe. And you know, our Safiad king’s a decent sort by all accounts. Anyway, I’ve barely seen your cousin to speak to, you know, but somehow I don’t think he’d be the sort to lend himself to anything that wasn’t right and proper.”

“He seems kind,” Mienthe whispered.

“He does that. Anyway, besides about the young prince, I heard tell of something about a wall in Casmantium, but I can’t rightly say I know what that was about, except it was about the griffins again and likely needed some kind of mageworking to build. They say the Wall is a hundred miles long and was built in a single night, but I don’t know as I believe even the greatest Casmantian makers and builders could do that. Not even with mages to help.”

Mienthe nodded.

“Well, your cousin’s no mage, but I guess he built that Wall, or maybe had it built, somehow. Whatever he did, he came out of it with honors from both the Casmantian king and our king, which you can maybe guess or else our king wouldn’t hardly have sent his own men to serve Lord Bertaud here in the Delta, would he?”

Mienthe wondered again why her cousin had come back.

“Oh, well,” said Tef, when she asked him. He paused, picking up a clump of dark earth and crumbling it thoughtfully in his fingers. “You know, Mie, I think maybe Lord Bertaud was hurt somehow in all that mess this summer, and don’t fool yourself, if there was any kind of battle, I’m sure it was a right mess. They always are. Or maybe he was just tired out. I wonder if maybe he . . . well. What I think is, when it came right to it, when he found he needed a place to shut himself away from everything and just rest, somehow he found himself thinking of the Delta. It’s in his blood, after all, however hard a man his father was.”

Mienthe nodded doubtfully. “But—” she began, and then exclaimed, “Oh!” as she suddenly understood something else. “That’s why he dismissed all the staff here— because he’d hated his father’s house so much and didn’t want anyone here who’d been here when he was a boy! Is that why?”

“I should think so. He’s allowing the staff to reapply, but the word is, only the younger staff have a chance to come back—it’s just what you said, he doesn’t want anyone here who reminds him of those bad years. And that’s why he sent for you, do you see, Mie? Because he saw you in your uncle Talenes’s house and you reminded him of himself, that’s what I expect happened, and he decided to rescue you just as the king once rescued him.”

“Yes… ” Mienthe said softly. She could see this was true, that it must be true. Her heart tried to rise up and sink both at once. From being afraid that she would not be able to please her cousin and that he would send her back, she found herself afraid that she would not be able to please him and that he would be disappointed in her. Her famous, important cousin might not be sorry he had rescued her, but he would be sorry he had rescued her. That he had not found a girl who was clever and pretty and graceful—someone he could be proud of having rescued. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she rubbed her sleeve fi ercely across her eyes—she never cried, and here she was weeping twice in an hour!

In an hour. Mienthe jumped to her feet and said, “He said half an hour!” and then she really wanted to cry, because here she had barely arrived at the great house and already she was letting her cousin see how careless and stupid she was—

“Hush, Mie, it’ll all be well,” Tef promised her, patting her foot because he couldn’t reach her shoulder. “Do you think he didn’t know we’d get to talking? Hand me my crutch, there’s a sweet girl, and don’t cry.”

If you are a little delayed, no one will mind, her cousin had said, Mienthe remembered, so maybe Tef was right. She tried to smile, but still said anxiously, “But we should hurry. To the—to the staff hall, he said.”

“The staff hall it is, then,” Tef agreed, climbing laboriously to his feet.