After a few hours of riding I bade us stop, and I gathered my dirty riding clothes from Lilac's saddlebags and carried them behind some bushes at the side of the road. After a furtive glance towards the road I changed out of the blue dress and into my faded blouse and trousers. I was sick of wearing them, but now that we were so close to being home I did not want to complain.

If anything, I should have complained that home might no longer feel like home. With my parents and possibly my sister dead, I wondered what was left for me in the city.

We continued travelling and Timoth spoke to me. 'You should not have said what you did.'

'I shouldn't?' I asked him. I hoped he wouldn't take the one thing that I felt good about in the past few days away from me. 'The crowd seemed happy enough.'

'Do you even know what it is that you said to them?' Timoth asked me. There was a venomous tone underlying his words which put me on edge. What had I done?

'I told them that even without King Degron's men, we will stand against the Western Islanders,' I replied, thinking back to our departure from Trackford. Timoth sighed loudly.

'That is not what you said. You said that “the Reach will continue, with or without Halivaara.” It sounded like a call to secession.'

My jaw dropped at this revelation. I knew that thoughts of independence had been stirring in the Reach during my absence, their flames fanned by the withdrawal of King Degron's soldiers from Haelling Cove, but I had no desire to stoke them further.

'That was not my intention,' I said quietly.

'Intentionally or not, that is what will spread throughout the Reach. And to the King,' Timoth said. 'You are now of the ruling generation. You are basically an adult. You must be mindful of your words and actions.'

'I must be mindful?' I asked sarcastically upset by Timoth’s unnecessary harshness. 'You are the leader of Ebonreach, yet you walk through land ravaged by twenty Western Island longboats completely unescorted. Father would never have travelled without his housecarls.'

'It was necessary,' Timoth said, his own voice suddenly quiet suddenly.

'Necessary? Where will the Reach stand if you and I are killed on this road? If Kaeya… if she does not reappear, some distant cousin or uncle will probably inherit the throne. One with barely a drop of noble blood in his veins, no experience of rulership, and no reputation. You are the most important person in the County, Timoth. You can no longer chance your life so haphazardly,' I told him.

He went silent, and after a few minutes I regretted the aggression in my voice. It was a hard time for both of us, but I chose not to apologise. Despite their cruelty, my words contained an important truth. Besides, he’d started it.

'Do you think the ambush on the road to Trent was a coincidence?' Timoth eventually asked me, throwing me a furtive glance to see if I’d considered the alternative.

‘It seems unlikely that Western Islanders could raid on so large a scale at the same time as we were attacked. The question of motivation also makes coincidence unlikely: had the ambush been successful, all five members of the ruling family would have died at once, leaving Ebonreach leaderless,’' I replied. 'Yet I don't see how Western Islanders could be responsible for the attack on our caravan. The highwaymen did not have the look of Western Islanders, nor could they have been so far from the coast.'

'It seems odd to me,' Timoth agreed. I wasn't sure that he had come to a conclusion yet, but he was formulating theories. Potentially dangerous theories. 'Did you hear that all of the longboats bore the Tokuan flag?'

'They did?' I asked, again rhetorically. 'How did Tokua get so many ships?' My understanding was that each of the dozens of Western Island petty kingdoms possessed only a handful of ships, which is what made the large scale of this raid so shocking.

'Do you remember Father saying in his letters that the number of raids had declined? My guess is that the Tokuans were occupied subduing the other Western Island realms. That would explain how they were able to command so many ships,' Timoth mused.

It had always been evident that a united Western Island would be something to fear, with a combined strength equal or greater than that of Halivaara. Yet such thoughts had seemed far-fetched. I felt as if we should have had warning that the petty kingdoms were uniting under one banner.

'Do we have no spies in Tokua who could have sent warning or confirmed this?' I asked him.

'We should have done,' Timoth responded. 'The records will be in the castle. I fear that I must spend the first days of my rulership catching up on Father's affairs.'

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Silence pervaded our conversation again. There was to be so much to think about. It seemed so unreal that Timoth could be charged with leading the Reach at so young an age. I knew that I had to have my coming of age ceremony as soon as possible so that I might lend my weight to his cause. I said as much to Timoth, and he nodded in agreement.

'It is important that you still have your ceremony on time,' he said. 'It will give our people a sense of normalcy. It will also increase your standing amongst the Halivaaran nobility.'

That brought to mind Prince Alum. His memory was warm, but I felt a twist in my gut as I pondered how our circumstances might have changed my marriage prospects.

'Do you think I’ll still be able to pursue Prince Alum?' I asked him. It was the only way I could think of to phrase the question without making it obvious that I was asking him for permission, for he was now the head of our house.

'I think he is a great match, sister,' Timoth replied, and I smiled for the first time in many hours.

'You do not wish me to wed someone who can bring more men or money to the Reach?' I asked him.

'It’s true that he’s unlikely to inherit,' Timoth replied carefully. 'Yet he is clearly your preferred choice, and the money and men that he can provide constitute a generous gift. Though I may request an increase if I discover that Tokua has indeed extended its control to the entirety of the Western Island.'

'Have you considered taking a bride?'

Timoth coughed, and I thought that he was embarrassed. Surely it had crossed his mind after two years spent in Hollowhold among dozens of eligible bachelorettes.

'I will have no time for such niceties, sister. The rule of the County must come first.'

'Producing an heir will create stability,' I argued. 'The right match could benefit Ebonreach in other ways as well.'

Timoth irritably raised a hand to stop me. 'I know well the benefits of marriage, but now is not the time. First I must organise the defence of the Reach. Then I must administer its the rebuilding of its capital. I must also assure the King and the folk of Ebonreach that I have absolutely no intention of declaring independence from Halivaara. There are also many domestic affairs that require attention, including your coming of age and potentially a marriage with Prince Alum.' He paused. 'I hope that Kaeya will be able to assist me. Her relationship with the landholders of the Reach would be invaluable.'

Silence fell again, and this time it was lasting. We had not spoken aloud of the possibility of Kaeya's death, and I think that he refused to consider it with the seriousness that it deserved. I had practically grieved her over the course of the night in which I’d cried at the loss of my parents, and would now be more excited to find her alive than depressed to see her corpse. Things had gone so badly wrong; how could I kindle more than the dimmest spark of hope for Kaeya's survival?

Of course if she was dead then I was the heir to the throne of Ebonreach. What a crazy notion! I suddenly wished that I'd paid more attention to Master Robarin. Schoolwork seemed incredibly important now that I had responsibility - an untimely thought to have on the eve of adulthood.

As we steered our steeds down the road to Haelling Cove the tears re-emerged, falling warmly down my cheeks. I’d hoped that I had exhausted them during the night when some dry hours passed. I wept as quietly as I could, not wanting to embarrass the carriage master, but it was difficult. Several times I was forced to hold my breath and pretend to be studying an interesting tree at the side of the road when other travellers passed us for fear of making a scene of my misery. It was unbecoming to be such a wreck.

Some of the travellers were refugees fleeing Haelling Cove. Timoth spoke to some of them in passing, men and women and children whose homes had been burned and their livelihoods stolen. They mostly aimed for Trackford in the hopes of starting a new life there. I understood better why Timoth was putting everything he had into the protection of the city: it was the only undamaged town Ebonreach had left. Some of the travellers thought to leave the Reach and pass through Trent, but I felt that many of them would change their minds after they saw that the raiders had spent far more time in the Duchy than in our County. In fact, I wondered if the population of Ebonreach might actually increase since those fleeing Trent would be far more numerous than those considering flight from the Reach.

We spent the first night under the cover of a large oak tree. Despite all we’d suffered on our journey, we were spared the misfortune of snow or hail on our journey. Sometimes I woke up crying, and I tried to keep my sobs as quiet as possible lest I wake Timoth or the carriage master. I forced myself to imagine nice things, such as Alum, to help me get back to sleep. I imagined him marrying me and starting a family of our own to replace that which I'd lost.

The second day passed much the same as the first. We caught sight of the hilltop castle of Haelling Cove as dusk fell upon the land, and I reflected that we’d made better time from Trackford than we had made travelling to it two years earlier. I was weary from fatigue and the exhaustion that sorry can bring on, but I knew that our path would take us through the damaged city and its citizens. I considered asking Timoth to halt the caravan so that I might change into something more decorative than my riding trousers but decided against it. Better the folk of Haelling Cove see that I had travelled as quickly as I could to come to their aid, rather than dallying about so that I might arrive in a pretty dress.

The city limits appeared largely unchanged by the raid. No doubt the raiders had seen little benefit in looting the edges of the city, where the inhabitants were poor and the distance back to one's longboat was great. Yet it did not take more than a few minutes of travelling before my eyes bore witness to the telltale signs of recent battle. The streets were quieter than I remembered, and increasingly buildings had been burned, or their walls and roofs were collapsed.

The closer we got to the coastline, the fewer buildings remained intact. Only those constructed of stone still stood, but the raid was nonetheless evident in the blackness of their burnt window boards and doors. Where the road took us almost directly against the beach no building remained whole. The quays had been burned, the buildings felled to their foundations, and warehouse doors broken down and their wealth plundered. There were still mixed groups of soldiers and commoners carrying debris from these buildings, piling them up in the streets. No builders or repairmen were in sight, though undoubtedly they were busy elsewhere in the city.