“Those who owe me fealty,” she replies.She smiles again.“If there’s a war, kneel to me, Lyra Thornwind.I promise I will keep youquitesafe.Or are you trusting in the strength of Senator Marcus?”
“Maybe I trust in my own strength,” I counter.
“Good,” Lady Cassandra replies, and it feels as though I’ve passed another test with her.
Around us, the rest of her party thunders along, horses eating up the leagues between us and the border.I can feel their strength the way I might feel my own body.They aren’t tired.If anything, they want to run more, run faster, where most horses would have to pace themselves for a long journey.
“Your horses are impressive,” I say.
“We breed them to be the finest mounts in the world,” Lady Cassandra says.“For us, chariot racing is a far more beautiful sport than your petty gladiatorial contests.”
I wonder how Domitian or Marcus would react to the contests being called petty when they’ve put so much effort into them and seem to think of them as the soul of Aetheria.
We keep riding, the sun rising above us, then starting to dip again.Finally, in the distance, I can see a vast swathe of trees, a forest that seems to stretch out forever.Even more distantly, I think I can see structures rising from those trees, woven into their fabric in living cities.
“Behold, Arboria,” Lady Cassandra says.“One day, you must come to see its beauty.”
“But for now, we’re heading to the village where Selene Ravenscroft was sighted,” I say.
She nods.“Although it occurs to me that I could simply carry you into the forest.You could leave the cares of Aetheria behind, Lyra.”
I decide to make a point and reach out for the minds of her horses.I slow them, then bring them to a halt.
“Enough,” I say.“The village is what matters, and the people in it.”
“As you wish,” Cassandra says.
We head to the village of Tree Edge.It lives up to its name, on the very edge of the forest, clearly a place for trappers and hunters, lumberjacks, and foragers.People start to rush into their houses as we approach, obviously afraid of any strangers, but they start to come out from their houses now that we've stopped.Perhaps some of them recognize the Arborians.
“People of Tree Edge,” Cassandra says, “I am Lady Cassandra of Arboria.I have with me Lyra Thornwind.”
“The gladiator?”a woman says.She’s maybe twenty, with short dark hair and wideset eyes.She looks as though she’s been crying.
"And now a senator of Aetheria," Lady Cassandra says."She's here to learn about the young man who was taken from you and about the woman who took him."
The young woman speaks again.“My Gar… they’re saying he went with this woman willingly, but he wouldn’t do that.”
Selene Ravenscroft has many talents as one of the most powerful mages Aetheria has ever produced.I’m sure she has more than enough power to force some young man to do what she wants.
“Can you show us where this happened?”I ask.
The young woman nods.“It’s this way.”
She leads the way through the village to a spot near its edge, where there's a small meadow filled with wildflowers.
“What’s your name?”I ask her.
“Marianne.I feel so guilty.”
“Why?”I ask.
“Gar was up here to meet me,” she says.“We were… we were planning to be married later this year, but until then, we had to sneak out to see one another.”
“This isn’t your fault,” I say, trying to reassure her.
“I wish I’d been closer,” Marianne says.“I could have tried to stop her.I could have-”
"There's nothing you could have done," I say.I'm grateful that she wasn't close enough to try to interfere.Selene Ravenscroft has more than enough power to kill her with little more than a flicker of effort.
