“There’s no need to speak his name.”
“I never saw them before, not with you, but I love you.”
“You saw them before, though?” the keep mistress said. “When? You never told me.”
“I’m sorry. I should have. It was on the night my daughter must have been conceived, when I went to the Great Rite at the temple in this village. I should have known they would come back.”
“Your daughter?” Gallia said. “So, it was I who was barren?”
“It doesn’t matter now.”
“It does matter!”
“I’m dying, and it’s too late; I never knew her, not for long.”
Eppie heard the tent flap open a little, but the prince and his mistress were too intent on each other to notice, it seemed.
“Is she dead, then?”
“I don’t think so. She was in Anamat. She went there as a scrappling and became a priestess like her mother, bu
