A/N: Um. It's late. I'm sorry. I had other things on my mind. Also, this chapter gave me grief. I now have a special elephants'-graveyard-type document, just for cut scenes. I hope they appreciate it. Please read and review!

Also, the next chapter will be late too. Because this November I am embarking on my usual fit of madness: '50,000 words or bust'!

yes. I'm doing NaNoWriMo. >>

They had found a stream with a large meander bend in it to camp by, and about time too, for it was not long till sundown and the shadows were long under the trees. Levin cast a diamond of protection without being asked, and Mirayle lit a fire, and took out bedrolls with waterproof covers against the drizzle, which had let up for the night but would surely be back at dawn, for the both of them while he did so, then rummaged in her pack for the food she knew was in there somewhere while the Rangers took out the supplies the sendings had issued them with.

While eating, secure within the golden lines of a well-cast diamond of protection and relaxing quite happily, Mirayle realised that the meander bend they were camping in made the place bear a surprising resemblance to Belisaere. She mentioned this to Levin, who blinked at her and then gave grudging assent, obviously convinced she was half-mad.

“Belisaere?” Emrys, one of the Rangers, asked. “You have mentioned Belisaere before. Is it a town?”

Mirayle laughed, but not scornfully. “No. It’s a city- the capital. A huge white city- more than fifty thousand souls. It’s by the sea, almost cut off from the rest of the Kingdom by it, like the meander almost cuts us off here. And the palace is on a hill- built in white stone like most of the rest of the city, with terraces and towers, and... I spent my summer holidays there sometimes. Or at least some of them.” She fell silent, remembering the longest stretch of time she had spent there since first going to boarding school; she had been ten or so, and Cousin Elen, Sam’s wife and mother of the younger Sameth and Aletta, had just died giving birth to twin boys. The entire extended family had congregated in Belisaere, and it had been a thoroughly unpleasant time before the children of school age had had to travel back to Ancelstierre, with young Sam existing in a permanent state of misery and Aletta failing to understand. Since then, she had rarely spent long at once there; she sometimes went to the Clayr’s Glacier, or to Abhorsen’s House, but otherwise a week at Midwinter was the most it usually stretched to.

“Summer holidays?” another Ranger asked, intrigued.

“I... well. Do you remember the big house where you came out into Ancelstierre?” Mirayle asked, foreseeing a culture clash of regrettable proportions and hoping she would be able to explain it. There was some nodding, and she continued. “Well, that was a school. Where you go to learn things, like reading, and writing, and geography and mathematics- sums,” she translated. “It’s a boarding school, which means I stay there for a few months as well as learning there, because my home is so far away from it I can’t go there and back. But you can’t stay at school the whole time, because you have to see your parents, so you go home for a couple of months in the summer and winter.”

“Do you have sisters or brothers who go to this... school?” Emrys asked.

Mirayle felt considerable relief. A safe topic of conversation, provided nobody had younger siblings who’d died of the scarlet fever or anything like that. “Yes- two sisters, both older than me. Susellen left the school two years ago, because she’d learnt everything. Filris also left two years ago, but not because she’d learnt everything. She’s a seer, and the visions- she couldn’t cope with them in Ancelstierre, she kept seeing things in the pond and having visions in hockey matches, so she had to go to the Clayr’s Glacier where they know how to cope with teenaged seers. You know Filris, don’t you?” she enquired, turning to Levin, who had been listening quietly.

Taken by surprise, he blinked and nodded. “Yes, although Mishali knows her better. They manage well as friends,” he added dryly. “Mishali has trouble with reading and writing- Filris spends half her time with her nose in a book. Show Filris a bow, and she’ll look at it and say ‘very nice, is it yours?’ and then move on to something else- Mishali is one of the best shots in the Glacier. They share an interest in Charter magic, though.”

“Is... Mishali... your sister?” yet another Ranger asked. Honestly, they were coming out of the woodwork to reveal themselves as chatterboxes once put beside a good fire with little else to do! Mirayle had rarely seen anything so incongrous, unless the time someone had accidentally washed a white shirt of her father’s with a red tabard of her mother’s and her father had worn it to a ball and hadn’t noticed it was pink until Lady Heria pointed it out to him counted. Captain Tomas seemed to have little against the chatter, either.

Levin hesitated, then shook his head. “... No. My mother and her mother are twins, and-”

“Inseparable?” Mirayle suggested. “Identical?” She had taken a long time to decide simply to call both Sanar and Ryelle ‘Auntie’ without bothering about which was which, as only Filris and Lirael could ever tell them apart easily, and neither of them would believe there was any trick to it at all, though they had never succeeded in teaching anyone else to do it.

Levin gave her a reproving look. “Inseparable will do, thank you.”

She grinned and folded her arms, bright white teeth shining in the rapidly deepening gloom. “Welcome.”

“You will come to a sticky end one day, Mirayle Sayre. As my lady-“

Mirayle sat bolt upright. “Not fair!”

“-but thoroughly deserved. Anyway. As my lady says, my mother and Mishali’s mother are twins, and inseparable, so Mishali and I were brought up as siblings.” He shrugged.

“You’re very proud of her, aren’t you?” Mirayle said absently, her knees drawn up to her chin and staring into the fire, not realising that she was treading on thin ice. Levin tipped his head up to look at the black sky, face hard to read, blue eyes unblinking, like the first creak of the ice, for he seemed not to see the first stars’ shine, but the shine of blue eyes like his when they narrowed, sighted, fingers let fly, and another arrow hit the centre of the target.

“Yes. Very proud.”

Mirayle’s head snapped up, a bright flush covered her cheeks, and she opened her mouth to curse herself (idiot! Clodpole! Fool!) because of course he would be thinking of his cousin- well, sister better described her –and worried for , if Susellen knew what her little sister was doing, she would probably be wearing the floor out in Corvere! Mirayle felt a sudden stab of triumphant spite; let Susie’s betrothed cope with Susie’s Old Kingdom roots now, when they tugged and yanked at the strings of her heart! That is, Mirayle hastily amended, if it’s bothering her at all, but the triumphant spite had a solid bedrock of years of knowing Susellen, and it snapped at her: Don’t be ridiculous; she loves you, of course she frets.

Then something happened that startled her- an image flew into her mind of Susellen, dressed for Ladies’ Day at the races and marching up and down in a sitting room, wrenching her gloves anxiously in white-knuckled hands: then the older girl came to a halt, forcing herself to relax her fingers, but still she could not help herself, and she turned to the north like a magnet, drawn inexorably towards one point, and one point alone.

Just a picture- it meant nothing- but somehow very comforting indeed. Mirayle smiled, wrapped her arms around her knees and continued peacefully watching the fire while the Rangers changed the subject, taking it, moulding it with a name, a number, a story and passing it on to the next, who changed it in his turn, and the words whirled in the flickering light of the fire, a comforting murmur.

After a while, Mirayle curled up on her bedroll to keep listening, the phrases and names floating about her head, and a while still after that her eyes closed, and her breathing became even, and someone dragged the blanket of the bedroll over her, and she slept. She dreamed of peace.

She woke in the early dawn, well before true light had come, to someone shaking her shoulder and calling her name, their voice pitched low. “Mirayle. Mirayle, wake.”

She rolled over, and found herself nose-to-nose with Emrys. “Wannow?” she complained quietly. Somehow the Ranger discerned the bones of the words ‘what now’ in the muddle, and explained.

“You fell asleep- Lord Levin-“

“He will roast you if he hears you call him that-“ Mirayle interrupted.

“-Never fear, he will not- said we should not wake you, for you were half a child still-“

She shot upwards, cracking her head on his with a shared stifled cry of ‘ow!’ and some hissed obscenities, after which she demanded, still as quietly as possible: “He didn’t say that. Did he?”

Emrys, rubbing his bruised head, grinned. “Yes. And we set watches, and this is ours. Go on, get up before we wake the camp.”

Mirayle cursed, and wriggled out of her bedroll and back into her armour, which she had removed last night without bothering to remove anything else. “Damn you.”

Emrys chuckled. “Lazybones.”

Mirayle cursed softly at him, and he grinned unrepentantly. “You are such a pain,” she complained, and straightened, rocking onto the tips of her toes and looking around at the silent campsite. The Rangers appeared to be buried firmly in sleep, and Levin looked like one of the particularly daunting carvings of the kings of the Old Kingdom- Dantalion I, perhaps –in Belisaere. The first grey light was just touching the camp, filtering through the leaves but not yet dispersing the thin, cool-fingered mist that lingered over the leaf-litter coating the forest floor; the brook still ran smoothly, and there was a faint chill in the air. Mirayle breathed deeply and smiled: she liked autumn, and the cold catch in the air told her it had truly arrived. It was colder than it had been in Ancelstierre, but that didn’t bother her- it looked as if there was nothing to watch for, too, and that pleased her, though she was uncomfortably aware that only last week she would have said with confidence that she was going to finish school, perhaps go to university, then return to the Kingdom and decide what to do with herself then, and now, a few days later, she had no idea whether she would live out the month.

Mirayle clapped her hands, the sharp echoing sound clearing her mind of the darker thoughts but also making her wince as she realised that she might have wakened any of the sleeping men. Luckily, only a few turned restlessly or stirred, but she still grimaced at her own blunder. Emrys shook his head slightly, and shrugged- clear enough code for ‘it doesn’t matter’.

They waited out the watch in almost complete silence as the light began to grow brighter and stronger, and woke the others; though Mirayle had not been awake to hear plans laid, they were to leave as soon as more or less full dawn lit the forest floor, and Emrys had told her so after she woke, and she had agreed wholeheartedly. It was nice to be second-guessed by someone benevolent for a change.

Mirayle had given some thought to the problem of where to go next, and had shared the thoughts in question with the Rangers and Levin the previous evening- since none of them had objected, she presumed that the plan stood. They would follow the edge of the forest closer to the Ratterlin, which took them deeper into the centre of the Kingdom and closer to what the coded sketch map reckoned as Mhor’s hideout, but also closer to Belisaere, the probable location of the people Mirayle would have liked to run to and hide behind to escape the sheer horror of things like Jerryn’s lifeless body, being the last one left untrapped, and the change in herself that made all this so irrevocable: the black hair, the white skin, the way she held the bells as if she knew what she was doing. Her route would bring them close to a well-guarded fief close to the river, which made its money by dealing with those who worked the river trade routes and was extremely well defended against the Dead, thanks partly to a cautious lord and partly to the cautious lord’s even more cautious ancestors, who had taken care to make the fief’s castle one that could hold off most attackers for a long time. Apart from these facts, it was not a noteworthy fief, and Mirayle hoped it would still be standing, that the Dead that had attacked and destroyed Jerryn’s home would not have touched Forestedge, so they could get provisions and gain better news of the Kingdom. She was fairly optimistic, and Levin had agreed, saying that if they saw or heard anything amiss, the men and women of Forestedge would retreat into the keep like badgers into their setts (a comment which was so sharp it made her wonder if the Daughters of the Clayr got worse hospitality than the Abhorsen or Royal bloodlines, definitely something to look into when- if –this was all over.)

But they only intended to skirt Forestedge unless there were clear signs that all was well, and it would by Levin’s reckoning –since he knew the Kingdom better than she did, having travelled over so much more of it- take a good three-quarters of the day to reach and pass the castle and its attendant Charter stone. In fact, the journey was a little shorter than this, a circumstance Mirayle put down to the fact that the Rangers seemed to walk and walk without ever getting tired, and had apparently discovered some miraculous pace of walking which meant that it didn’t matter if you had to get from one side of the Kingdom to the other on your own two feet, you would do it without collapsing. She tried the pace herself, a steady one that reminded her of the Guards’ marching pace, and found that it meant her feet could carry her along on automatic while her head thought about other things, such as that ominous-sounding snap of twigs. Happily, any such noises turned out to be nothing throughout the whole day, and they saw not a soul about, which didn’t worry Mirayle until they came to the Charter stone attached to the castle and found it whole, but with no-one about it, not normal for a stone so close to a castle and village. There should have been at least the village children about; they often learnt their lessons about the stone, and sometimes healers took their patients to a stone, just to sit and bask a little in the Charter’s warmth. However, the wretched drizzle had returned, cold and unrelenting, spotting Mirayle’s glasses with distorting droplets of water and putting a dull, irritated edge on everyone’s mood. There had been a point where a Ranger had started humming a tune Mirayle didn’t recognise but found strangely cheering, but he made the mistake of beginning to sing the words and Captain Tomas hushed him angrily. Humming in the wilderness wasn’t proper, of course, not when you were attempting to move with stealth, but it had been at least a cheerful sound among the constant drip, drip, drip of rain, the tramp, tramp, tramp of feet, and the curse, curse, curse of those who had discovered tree-roots or rocks where tree roots or rocks ought not to be.

She stopped by the Charter stone, tapping one foot absently in the muddy ground, frowning, and dragged her mind firmly from the question of that catchy tune and whether or not the unnamed Ranger ought to have been humming it or not in order to apply her mind to the problem of why the stone was deserted. The rain probably explained it, she decided, and turned to follow the path that led towards both castle and village, with an earlier turn-off for the village. The others, who had waited patiently and silently while she thought, walked on with her and found themselves stopping abruptly only a few minutes later, just before the turn-off. Mirayle was staring at the ground, and after a few moments she took off her glasses, wiped them on a corner of her surcoat and propped them back on her nose in order to stare harder at the ground. “Captain Tomas,” she said quietly, and the Captain pushed through the bottleneck of Rangers caused by Mirayle’s stopping so suddenly and joined her.

Mirayle pointed at what she had seen: the tracks of a barefoot child, coming from the village and turning sharply to follow the path to the castle. “Strange, isn’t it? What’s a kid- no, no, not the small goat, the child! It’s a figure of speech! –doing running about on his or her own, barefoot, in the rain? Now of all times? Especially alone? And I can smell Free Magic. I’m not a tracker, though, and the Free Magic could be from the hint in the air. Is there anyone among your men who could read these signs more accurately?”

The captain nodded. “Easily. We all can track better than most, and this is a simple trail to read.”

“Can you do it yourself? Quickly? I’m not sure we should be hanging around.”

The Ranger nodded again, and stepped forward, careful not to obscure the tracks, and examined them while Mirayle fidgeted and waited for him to work out the riddle to his own satisfaction. Then he nodded for the third time, and returned to Mirayle. “The child is young, and moving quickly. I cannot tell if it is a boy or a maid-child, but he or she passed this way not long ago, and some time after the last person before them used the path.”

“Hm,” Mirayle said, rapidly acquiring the proverbial bad feeling about this. She took a few cautious steps down the village path, in order to see if the faint sensation of Free Magic intensified or faded; it did neither, so she logically concluded that it was the rain getting to her, and proceeded along the path, though she was more careful than before. The trees were close here, had no doubt been allowed to grow so thick for the purposes of confounding anyone wishful of taking armed men along the path in more than single file, and the path was winding, with a number of sharp corners. She had tensed unconsciously, not wanting to be taken by surprise.

They came eventually to the clearing before the castle’s gates. This had several trails leading to and from it: the proper road, one that could be used by wagons, the half-hidden one that led to the Charter stone and the village, and that guarded by the gates, which led directly to the keep. Mirayle stopped before this, well out of sight of anyone in the clearing, the same senses that made her tense making her unwilling to walk into the open. She knew something was wrong- perhaps an earlier Abhorsen, with less diluted blood, could have named the something, but for all she didn’t know what it was she knew it existed.

Captain Tomas had seen her stop, and Mirayle was not the only one in whose mind alarm bells were ringing, because it was just too quiet and the girl was too on edge for someone who seemed awake to the dangers of this strange country. Levin, too, was glancing about, fingers twitching towards his sword-hilt every now and then.

“Scouts,” the captain said in an undertone that carried exactly as far as it needed to, and two men separated themselves from the gaggle of Dúnedain and came forward, looking at first their captain and then, out of courtesy, Mirayle for permission to proceed. The captain nodded, Mirayle added her consent after mouthing ‘scouts?’ and getting an answer in the affirmative, and the two soldiers crept forward on silent feet, camouflaged by their muddy greyish clothing.

This is what they saw as the clearing came within their field of vision: a small girl, standing before the castle’s closed gates. Her fair hair was dirty, her shirt and skirt torn and muddied, but she stood patiently and with her back to them, looking upwards to the ramparts. “Mama?” she said suddenly, her child’s voice pleading. “Mama? Mama?”

Then, the scouts made a single wrong move, nothing but bad luck but the move that sealed their fates. One of them shifted his weight ill-advisedly, and a twig snapped. The girl span, and her eyes were wide, their pupils shrunk to pin-pricks while the blue irises were twice their normal size. “Mama?” she said again, and then seemed to see them through the thick foliage, and smiled, and that was no child’s smile, though there were the gaps of a child who was losing their baby teeth, it was too wide, and the scouts could see the beginnings of something writhing under her skin, reddish outlines shifting and changing grotesquely. “Mama?”

And then she ran towards them with inhuman speed, her bare feet slapping on the muddy ground, but she herself never once losing her balance, and all the time those outlines growing- a scout screamed in honest fear and horror as the outlines bulged beneath her skin and burst out and the child herself burst into sickening, roiling flame, and both Mirayle and Levin caught their breath and choked as the feeling of Free Magic spiked agonisingly, and then the not-child’s fingers closed on the first scout’s wrist- he could not move- he was trapped-

“Run!” Mirayle shouted, terrified, and led them racing back up the path, she had seen another way, there must be another way, it had been Charter-guarded, yes, and she ran, slapping and shoving those who would not move fast enough, till she found what she had seen and turned at right-angles, plunging into the trees and almost directly through the guard-sending who appeared. “Let me pass!” she barked, her hand brushing the edge of the sending’s short-sword though she didn’t feel the sting, and the sending stood aside, and Mirayle fell on the hidden door beside it, howling the Charter marks to open a door aloud and then seeing the others in one by one, seizing the last, the remaining scout, by the tunic and hauling him bodily in and slamming the door as the monster that wasn’t a child reached them. Yet she knew, still, her work was not done, that creature... there had to be some way of locking it out and she put both palms flat against the door, plunging into the Charter and grabbing mark after mark, stringing them together with an effort, and a hand grasped one of her wrists tightly, lending her strength as its owner fought to lay another spell of locking on the basis that if one is good, then two is better.

At last they fell away, the spells cast, and Mirayle collapsed to the floor, her throat raw and her eyes stinging and seeing fluorescent lights from the power of the spell. Armed men from the keep had come running to see who used the secret passage, and found a group of strange soldiers clogging the passageway, a young Abhorsen and a messenger of the Clayr flat on the floor, the glare of their locking spells fading to a less offensive flare but still present.

Levin prised himself off the floor and stood, swaying and pale and staring at the door. Mirayle levered herself up as well, and walked slowly through the Rangers, who let her pass, to the astonished men-at-arms. “Good afternoon. I am Mirayle, daughter of the Abhorsen-in-waiting, this is Levin of the Clayr, and these are assorted Rangers, Dúnedain they call themselves-“ she mangled the word but not too badly- “who’ve suffered a geographical accident. And we require sanctuary. Thanks. Knew you’d agree. Is the lord receiving visitors?”

The men-at-arms wasted a few moments reflecting on the peculiarity of the ruling classes of the Kingdom, but Mirayle simply pushed past. She had cuts, grazes and bruises, she ached, she was soaked, and having decided on a course of action she was going to follow it through. Levin and the Rangers, uncertain of what she was doing but aware that it was purposeful, trailed wearily after her.

There was a proper ettiquette to greeting lords, and Mirayle intended to use it. She marched down the passageway, slipped out of the loose-box its entrance was in, strode through a courtyard scattering men-at-arms, serving-maids and children left, right and centre, steamrolled into the keep and demanded politely to be conducted to the lord of the castle, whereupon, after a brief discussion, she was shown into the lord’s study. Levin and the Rangers were detained, and escorted elsewhere, but Mirayle did not notice.

The study was warm, for a small fire had been lit in it, and there were papers neatly kept in order, shelves of books and a large mullioned window looking out onto the yard. The only thing absent was the lord himself, and this lack was shortly remedied by the arrival of his steward through a door Mirayle hadn’t noticed because it was part of a bookcase. She spun on her heel the second she heard the door open, one hand going to her sword and the other flying to the bell bandolier, but relaxed when she saw who it was. “Damn it, man, don’t startle me like that! Who do I have the honour of addressing?”

“Master Rede, my lady,” the steward answered. He was a full two inches shorter than her, with slightly watery eyes: he looked indecisive, but Mirayle granted that he might be a whiz at mathematics or something. “Lord Maghel’s steward.”

“And where’s Lord Maghel?”

The steward was silent for a moment.

“Well?” Mirayle demanded.

“Dead,” the steward replied with a slight shudder, reluctantly meeting Mirayle’s eyes. “The Dead overran the village, and Lord Maghel was out hunting, and-“ he spread his hands helplessly. Mirayle nodded, not wanting to contemplate the lord’s fate, and he continued. “And then that, that, that thing came and sat outside the gates. You know what it is, my lady, the men said you and your... escort... were fleeing it-“

“So we were,” Mirayle agreed, a little dazed. “So Lord Maghel is dead, Charter give him peace. Have you sent to Abhorsen?”

The steward began to look twitchy, and Mirayle suspected she was asking questions he didn’t particularly want to answer. She crossed her arms, perched on the edge of the desk, and waited for an answer. Eventually, he caved in and told her: “Yes, my lady, but we have had no reply, and we- we hear that Belisaere is besieged, all parts of the Kingdom attacked. We must have help- we cannot go for help- none who leave the castle return!”

Mirayle closed her eyes briefly. She was suddenly very tired indeed, and sleep seemed a long time ago, and this was all just a bit too difficult for her, wasn’t it, too much, how did she expect to fight this? Mrs. Greene was right. She was just a child.

“My lady? My lady, are you all right?”

“What? Oh. Yes, only a little tired,” Mirayle said, jerking back to reality.

“Will you help us?” the steward said hesitantly. “I have told you how it is. We need help. Will you give it?”

“Yes,” Mirayle said. “Of course.”

“Will you swear it?”

She stared at the steward, eyebrows drawn together. “Well- I- is that necessary? Never mind,” she sighed before he could respond. “Yes. I swear it.”

That was a mistake.

“What is amiss, Legolas? You look troubled,” Faramir commented, tearing himself from his book.

“The dead woman was from the same place the young ones are from, she was not killed by orcs and Sameth appears to have killed the culprit, they are rather closer to the Royal family than any of us thought despite what that feline said, and the creature laying waste to their country may start on ours when he is quite finished with theirs,” Legolas summarised briskly, making Faramir sit up sharply and stare at him. “Faramir, mellon nin, I think Aragorn must be told of this and soon. It is a day’s journey down the river to Minas Tirith, I believe.”

“What?” spluttered Faramir, book forgotten. “Legolas, have you run mad? They are quite harmless! Excepting the cat, and Sameth assures me that Aletta has some control over it!”

“They are not harmless,” Legolas said grimly. “I have just seen that young man swipe the head off the single most horrific creature I had encountered, short of the Balrog, in all my years. And then he searched the strange craft and fetched out what he called a message. It was a piece of parchment that spoke, Faramir! He then claimed that the message was addressed to the monarchs of his home country, and that they would not mind its being intercepted since they were his grandparents!”

“We knew they were Royal,” Faramir pointed out, trying to remain the voice of reason. “The cat said so-“

“I thought it was either lying or meaning that they were some kind of third cousin to the queen,” Legolas interrupted. “I was not in a mood to believe it, recall! But this is the least of our problems. Sameth and Aletta’s unexpected appearance, if the message is to be trusted, is thanks to the person currently waging war on their homeland, who, if I understood what was said correctly, loathes Gondor and your father, and is intent on exacting revenge. It is to be presumed that he will do so as soon as he is finished with Sameth and Aletta’s home!”

The Prince of Ithilien was silenced. He picked up the dropped book, smoothing its pages absently, and frowning as he tried to decide on the best course of action to pursue. “Where are they?”

“Aletta is with Eowyn and presumably by this point in a bath, having managed somehow to find a mud puddle to fall into-“ Legolas’s mouth twitched in amusement in spite of himself- “and Sameth has gone to the practice fields with a few new friends.”

“Hmm,” Faramir said, and got up decisively. “Luncheon is due in about three-quarters of an hour; we shall speak to them then. I hope you are remaining for luncheon?”

“I am now,” Legolas agreed. “I should prefer to bathe first, so I shall take your leave.”

“What- oh,” Faramir said, and grinned widely as he realised that Legolas was liberally splattered with dried mud, and not pleased about it.

Legolas nodded with considerable dignity, and stalked off in the direction of a hot bath and clean clothes, while Faramir tried not to have hysterics at the thought of the elf being splashed with mud by a ten-year-old girl, and only succeeded in alarming the occasional innocent passerby.

It was a lovely day out on the river: it was crisp and autumnal without being too cold, the sky was blue, the scenery was interesting and the Lady Elen was mostly steering herself, as she usually did. None of this, however, was improving Sam’s mood. In order to give himself something to do other than brood about the fact that he and Aletta might well be walking into a trap, he was sanding the scorchmark off the deck, and finding it an unpleasant job. He made a mental note to complain to Dad as soon as he got home: he didn’t mind Mogget, per se, but he did mind when Mogget did stupid and antagonising things that meant having to do jobs like this.

The morning having faded into afternoon, he decided to eat the packed lunch that Lady Eowyn had given to Aletta for the both of them, although it was to be hoped that Aletta hadn’t devoured the entire lot herself already. Looking at the scorchmark, it was pretty much gone- he’d done the best he could with the tools he had to hand –and he deserved his lunch.

He tracked down Aletta sitting in the bow and drawing heinous (but recognisable) caricatures of various people she did not like to Mogget’s instructions, and wrested the remainder of the packed lunch away from her while reflecting on the cruelty of girls with grudges. He had noticed Cerl –an apprentice come late to the Wallmakers, who made no secret of his dislike of Aletta and Sam or the twins – Jall Oren – who was possibly the closest thing Sam had ever seen to a creature that had died, been preserved and stuffed, and then brought back to life – and the unfortunate Countess Tanifer, who combined a lisp and being sweet on Sameth the elder with rampant snobbery and a poisonous loathing for Southerlings, which made her Aletta’s least favourite courtier ever. Sam was bound to admit that these people were not pleasant, but he was also a bit embarrassed that Aletta was mocking them so gleefully- it didn’t seem right.

Sam took himself off to the stern, as far away as possible from Aletta and her stick figures, and then decided that that was a bad idea, too, because that meant he had to look at their escort, which meant he had to think about exactly why they were sailing up a river Tirith had informed Sam was called the Anduin, to a city that Tirith said was called Osgiliath, and then riding to a city Tirith had gone into raptures about, Minas Tirith. Tirith claimed to have been born there, hence the name, which made Sam wonder about how exactly he had got to Ithilien, because Tirith had been sick before they’d been gone ten minutes and was even now lying in one of the bunks, looking green and clutching a bucket. That reminded Sam that he’d meant to check on Tirith, so he did.

The young man was still prostrate on a bunk, and still looking unhealthy: this made Sam wonder even more, as he presumed that Faramir was aware that Tirith was so prone to sea-sickness, and yet Faramir had assigned him as a guard. This was partly because it had been fairly obvious to all concerned that Sam was not going to put up with any other guard on his boat, because he could at least pretend that Tirith was a friend who wanted to go sailing.

That pretense became less and less plausible the longer he looked at Tirith; he would never, ever willingly take someone this sea-sick on a day long river journey. It was nothing short of cruel.

Sam cleared his throat. “Feeling better, Tirith?”

Tirith gave a groan that might have contained the words ‘I hate boats’ or might not have done. Sam winced, and withdrew as quietly as he could to finally eat his lunch, giving thanks meanwhile that he didn’t suffer from any form of motion sickness.

Sam scrambled up onto the cabin roof and sat there, cross-legged. He took a drink from the bottle of water, and started on some cheese and a bread roll, looking out over the river as the Lady Elen sailed up it, tiller occasionally shifting this way or that to cope with the currents. Directly behind and ahead of him, he could see the two escort boats, which were carrying quite a few soldiers between them, as well as Lady Eowyn, Faramir, and Legolas; Sam smirked as he remembered the amount of time Legolas had spent staring with misgiving at the Lady Elen sailing itself, evidently waiting for something to happen, such as the boat to heel over and tip its passengers off, or capsize. The elf was no longer standing there; Sam presumed that Lady Eowyn had detached him from the gunwale and persuaded him to eat lunch, if elves needed to eat.

Sam corrected himself: he knew they did, because Legolas had been eating lunch yesterday when Faramir informed them that they had decided that someone called King Elessar ought to know about the fact that they were in Gondor, and that someone was apparently waging war on the Old Kingdom as a sort of warm-up for waging war on Gondor, like running around the football pitch before playing cricket. Sam didn’t consider this idea flattering, but was bound to admit that being prepared for the possibility of war was a good idea- not that he saw what they could do about a necromancer, unless they had an Abhorsen of their own –and that was why, after some questioning and finally a blunt demand (‘straight answer to a straight question, please, if I go to Minas Tirith am I walking into a trap and taking my sister with me?’) which had elicited favourable answers, he had agreed to sail there. He thought Legolas might possibly be holding a grudge against him for suspecting that foul play might be involved, but it balanced out. He also thought Faramir approved of sensible wariness, that if Faramir had a younger sibling he’d be very careful about the sort of trouble he got them into, and all things considered he’d rather have Faramir’s approval than the elf’s. The man was the most sensible person he’d come across yet. He almost reminded Sam of his father, in the moments when Sameth the elder wasn’t either tripping over his rowdy twin sons and accidentally teaching them new bad words or engrossed in creation.

Sam never knew Boromir, or he would have realised that he actually had more in common with Faramir’s elder brother than he did with Faramir, and that the reason Faramir approved was because he recognised the same reasons Boromir had always looked after him so carefully in Sam’s motives for not wanting to go to Minas Tirith or take Aletta with him, but Sam’s reading of the facts was close enough to reality to ring true.

Sam finished his breadroll, and more reflective thoughts were banished by the consideration that Aletta might have eaten the apples Sam knew had been in the packed lunch when it was given to her. A search of the bag the lunch had been in revealed a survivor hidden at the bottom, and Sam took a thoughtful bite, picked up the bag and prepared to jump off the cabin roof- not as risky as it sounds, the roof being fairly low.

Then he caught sight of something in the distance and straightened up. What was that- a white glimmer? Straining his eyes to try and see what it was, Sam leant forward. “Aargh! Damn!”

He was probably the only person in history whose first sight of Minas Tirith had caused them to fall off a roof.