them to the right spot. Nobody else knows the way.”
“Apart from your soldier escort,” the King said, a hint of triumph in his tone.
“Apart from my soldier escort,” Thirrin was forced to agree reluctantly.
“Good! Grimswald, call in the captain of the guard. You can give him details, Thirrin, and then run along to your tutor. Geography today, if I’m not mistaken.”
Grimswald piped at the door for the guard, who arrived in a clatter of armor.
“Captain Edwald. The Princess reports a werewolf close to the city. Take details and send out a patrol!” the King boomed, stroking Primplepuss gently. The kitten screwed her eyes shut against the huge blast of Redrought’s voice, then as Thirrin and the captain withdrew to confer, she rubbed her tabby face against the King’s enormous finger as it tickled her cheek.
Thirrin was furious. She should have led the patrol to find the werewolf, not that dolt of a soldier! And not only that, but the patrol would probably kill the werewolf as soon as they found it, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about this. She couldn’t help remembering that it could easily have killed her if it had wanted to, and neither could she forget the way it had bowed so ridiculously and had seemed to laugh before it ran off. She stormed angrily along the deeply shadowed corridor to her tutor’s room, striding like an avenging war goddess through the sudden bursts of sunlight beneath each window.
Arriving at her tutor’s door, she hit it once with her mailed fist, and burst through. Maggiore Totus was just drinking a cooling beaker of water, most of which he spilled down his black gown as he spluttered his surprise. But one look at Thirrin’s blazing eyes stopped him from saying anything about good manners being necessary even for a princess. Instead he smiled in welcome and waved her to a seat next to the window. “Perhaps Her Majesty would be more comfortable in a dress rather than chain mail?” he asked, using the stiff formality of his speech as a shield against Thirrin’s bad temper.
“No!” she snapped. But relenting slightly, she removed her sword belt and hung it on the back of her chair. It was Maggiore Totus’s job to make sure she was as well educated as the heir to the Icemark throne should be. But only the lessons of the horse and weapons masters really held her attention. Everything else slowed time to a sluggish crawl for her, and she’d perfected the art of staring at her books while her mind galloped over the plains or sailed out on the gray Icemark seas.
Now, as Maggiore Totus sorted through his notes, she let her mind drift away once again, imagining herself riding on the back of one of the huge Snowy Owls that lived on the winter ice fields. From her vantage point on the owl’s broad white back she could see the Wolfrock Mountains rising steeply from the northern plain, setting their jagged peaks like teeth against the cold blue of the sky, while to the south, the peaks known as the Dancing Maidens rose and undulated gently across the horizon, then slowly descended as low green hills into the lands of the Polypontian Empire. Maggiore had told her that this strange name actually meant “many bridges” and reflected the huge number of rivers that flowed through the rich green country.
From the height on the back of her imagined Snowy Owl she could see the multitude of rivers flowing across the Imperial land like fine silver threads stitched into a fabulous green cloth, embroidered with the regular field patterns of farmland and the dark splotches of forest, marsh, and pasture.
Then she flew over the cities of this wealthy southern realm, their streets sprawling and gray below her. The settlements had grown so large they’d burst beyond their walls and threatened the green land around them with dark factories that sent smoke thousands of feet up into the air as they filled the country’s treasury with gold. With this wealth the Polypontus had built a massive army, which over the years had conquered a huge Empire that stretched beyond Thirrin’s knowledge to all points of the compass. The army was led by the fearsome General Scipio Bellorum, who had never lost one of his wars of conquest and had won every battle he commanded personally.
Thirrin’s owl now flew lower over the streets of the Empire’s cities. There she saw the people. Some were richly dressed