The entrance doors were open. Through them came the warm early morning light and the sound of the courtyard — horses, voices, the creak and shift of wagons being loaded and checked. Somewhere in that noise was Cassius, and his party, and the horse that was going to carry her out of Aelundra. She could smell the salt in the air.

She would miss her home.

She had not let herself think that until now. It was too large and too shapeless a thing to be useful, and she had spent the past three weeks keeping herself to useful thoughts. But standing at the top of the entrance steps with the sea wind in her face and the Vethian coast somewhere beyond the palace walls, she allowed it to be true for exactly as long as it took to breathe in and breathe out.

Then she descended the steps.

The courtyard was fuller than she had expected and better organised than she had any right to be surprised by. Cassius's party had arranged itself with quiet efficiency — wagons positioned, horses ready, the supply lines already dressed and waiting. Her own trunks were loaded and roped. She could see Thessaly's bag already secured to one of the rear wagons, which meant Thessaly had sent it ahead, which meant Thessaly had been managing logistics at an hour that did not bear thinking about.

She found Cassius near the front of the column.

He was speaking with his steward, low and direct, and he had not yet seen her come through the doors. She had a moment, therefore, to observe him without the complication of being observed in return, which she used with the same instinct she had used the eastern gallery for on the morning he arrived — cataloguing, assessing, maintaining the particular distance that information provided.

He was dressed for travel. Dark wool, practical cut, a heavier cloak than she had seen him in before. He looked entirely at home in what he was about to do.

Then he looked up and found her at the bottom of the steps.

There was a moment — brief, contained — in which his eyes moved over her in the straightforward way he did most things, without performance in either direction. Not the studied neutrality of a man carefully not looking, and not anything else she could name precisely. Simply the honest fact of taking in what was in front of him. Then he said something to the steward, who nodded, and he crossed the courtyard toward her.

"Good morning," he said.

"Good morning." She kept her voice level. The wind was pulling at the edges of her cloak and she resisted the impulse to hold it closed. "Your party is well organised."

"They have done it before." He glanced briefly at the column and back to her. "Did you sleep?"

"Sufficiently."

He looked at her for a moment — noting the non-answer, choosing not to press it. She had learned to read that in him over the past fortnight. It was one of his more useful qualities. "Your horse is here. I would like to introduce you before we move, if you are willing."

"Of course."

He led her along the column to where a mare stood apart from the others, held by a groom.

The mare was grey — not pale, but the deep iron-grey of good Drevornian stock, compact and solid, with a calm that was immediately apparent in the way she stood. She was watching Seralyn's approach with large, dark, considering eyes.

"Her name is Arvel," Cassius said. "She is eight years old and she has made this crossing twice. She is not excitable."

"She appears very sensible," Seralyn said. She stepped forward and offered her hand and the mare dropped her nose into it without hesitation and breathed out once, warm against her glove.

"She is." He paused. "I should tell you — I asked your father's head groom about your riding. Before the wedding."

She looked at him.

"I wanted to know the appropriate horse for you," he said. "Not to embarrass you. I did not raise it with you directly because I did not think it would be a welcome conversation at the time."

She held his gaze for a moment. "And what did the groom tell you?" she said.

"That you ride correctly and infrequently." A brief pause. "Arvel will not challenge you. And the pace of the column is not fast. You will find it manageable."

She turned back to the mare and ran her hand once along her nose.

"Thank you," she said. "For the boots as well."

"They would have been uncomfortable otherwise."

"Yes," she said. "They would have."

A brief silence. Around them the courtyard continued its business — the final checks, the last adjustments. She was aware that this was it. That the next movement after this one would be into the saddle, and the movement after that would be through the palace gates, and then the road.

"Are you ready?" Cassius said.

She looked at Arvel, who looked back at her with the same dark, unhurried patience she had shown from the beginning. Something within her begged her to say no. She did not want to leave her home. She wished she was born a man.

"Yes," Seralyn said. "I am ready."