Agatha sat atop Favory, her eyes tracing the line of the Yar as it wend its way through the foothills. It looked like it was full of diamonds, she thought to herself with a smile, the way the light danced and glittered across its surface.

The morning had begun somewhat cool and misty, with clouds hanging threateningly around the peaks of the Fjaelles, but the dampness had been quickly eaten away by the sun, which now blazed brightly in the sky.

Agatha had been born in the far south, though she hardly looked it, brought to court at a young age by an uncle, and because of this was prone to take a chill but had an unusual tolerance for the heat.

She was riding her cream-colored gelding along the river where the forest had been cut away, with Lady Signy just ahead her and two of the guard behind.

Agatha enjoyed spending time with Lady Signy, not just because she was from somewhere different and always had some story to tell, but because she made Agatha feel like she herself were interesting.

“Tell me,” Lady Signy said now, slowing her mount so that she rode alongside Agatha, “what is the Empress really like, when no one else is around?”

Agatha looked at her through bright blue eyes.

”What do you mean?” she asked, only partially feigning ignorance.

“Well,” Lady Signy said carefully, “I had always had the impression that the Empress was a very bold and venturesome sort of person,” she pulled her lips into a crooked smile, “temerarious even, some might say. But now that I’ve met her, she seems a good deal more—” she paused, searching for the right word, “reserved than I had anticipated.”

Agatha chewed her lip in contemplation. She did not know what “temerarious” meant, but she somehow thought it did not describe Mouse, the person to whom Lady Signy was undoubtedly if unknowingly referring.

Indeed, Mouse and the Empress were little alike in disposition—the Empress was self-possessed, controlling, and cruel while Mouse was given to a more quiet and brooding nature. Agatha did not particularly care for either of them, the Empress least of all, but she could not very well say so to Lady Signy any more than she could tell her they were two different people.

“The Empress is not so very different behind closed doors,” Agatha said, shifting uncomfortably in her saddle, “but I suppose she has not been feeling very well.”

“Oh?” Lady Signy raised her eyebrows at Agatha, the interest in her voice evident. “And why might that be, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Agatha thought for a moment. She had begun with lie, and now she would have to commit herself to it.

“I think it is something she ate,” she replied. “One of those sour apples perhaps.”

Lady Signy threw her head back and laughed.

“The Empress of Aros undone by an apple,” she said, “do not tell the General or he will plant trees all along the border.”

Agatha forced herself to smile in return. She could not see how she had said anything so very amusing, but she supposed it did not matter, so long as Lady Signy believed the lie.

They continued on another ten minutes or so across the wedge of land that ran between the river and a small stream that abutted the fields, when Lady Signy announced that they should turn back if they did not wish to miss dinner.

Agatha, for one, was glad of it, for she had slept through breakfast, and her stomach was begin to ache with hunger.

At last, they came across a bridge spanning the stream that would lead them back toward the castle. They had forded at a low point but the embankment was much steeper here.

They had just turned and were making for the bridge when a knight appeared, walking toward them. Agatha did not expect that such a bridge should have a tenant, but there was much about the way things were done at Pothes Mar that she did not understand.

Lady Signy rode forward to meet the knight.

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“Who holds this bridge?” she asked, looking loftily down at the knight. But if the man made any answer, Agatha, who remained back with the guard, could not hear it.

“Sir Frederik, is it?” Lady Signy asked. “I know you by the way you wear your sword,” she smirked, “if not by the etching on your plate.”

Agatha looked the knight over but could see no etching on his plate, only a few scratches here and there. She cast a glance over her shoulder at the guardsmen, to judge how they were taking the exchange.

“Come now,” Lady Signy said to the knight who refused to move from her path, “you must at least allow us ladies to cross.”

The knight looked past her, seeming to consider Agatha and the two guard who waited a few yards behind. He waited for a moment, and then stepped aside, allowing Lady Signy to ride past him across the wooden planks of the bridge.

Once she had crossed, Lady Signy turned and motioned for the others to follow.

Agatha felt nervous somehow, but nudged her horse forward, her heels pressing into his sides. Her heart began to pound as Favory’s hooves rang out against the wooden boards, and she did not know whether she should look at the knight or avoid his eye entirely. His helm had been drawn shut, but she could feel his eyes upon her.

Then, just as Agatha rode past the knight, he suddenly seized her by the ankle, causing her to cry out in surprise.

Lady Signy laughed.

“Your shoe!” she called to Agatha from the other side of the bridge. “Give him your shoe!”

Agatha, still rather startled and unsure of what to do, heeded Lady Signy and leaned down, hurriedly undoing her shoe and throwing it at the knight, before riding the rest of the way across the bridge as quickly as she could.

Lady Signy was waiting for her with a smile. Her dark eyes glimmered, but not in the same cold, malicious way the Empress’s did.

“Now it is up to the others to win it back,” she explained to Agatha.

The guardsmen, who were still on the other side of the bridge, did not seem to need any explanation of what to do, the first dismounting without hesitation and drawing his weapon from its sheath.

He approached the knight, going straight into a quick and relentless attack, alternating his strikes from high left to low right and so on, seeking to confuse and tire his opponent and thereby create an opening in his defense.

He might have succeeded eventually, had it not been for a careless over-parry that left his own left side open, and the succession of blows he was unable to overcome in the wake of his mistake.

“Do not despair,” said Lady Signy, noticing the fallen look on Agatha’s face. “There is still some hope for your second guard.”

Rolf was the second guardsman to face the knight, and Agatha’s only hope of getting her shoe back.

He began with a more measured approach, but Agatha was not willing to chance her shoe on his caution.

“Take him into half-swords, Rolf!” she shouted from her mount on the other side of the bridge.

The knight looked over his shoulder at her, turning back to his opponent just barely in time to meet his attack. Rolf heeded Agatha, using the distraction to take the fight into half-swords. With one hand on the hilt and the other on the blade, he was able to exact a stronger force upon his foe’s blade and slowly began to drive him backward.

Agatha’s heart now began to pound with excitement. It looked as though Rolf stood a good chance of defeating the knight.

However, just when it seemed that the guardsman’s victory was imminent, Sir Frederik found an opening, and throwing his sword aside, lunged forward, wrapping his arms around the guardsman’s legs. In one deft motion, he lifted the guardsman and threw him onto his back.

Rolf’s sword clattered out of his hand, landing just out of reach before being swept up by knight, sealing his defeat.

Agatha was a mixture of awe and distress. She had been duly impressed by the knight, but with both her guard defeated, how could she hope to regain her shoe?

She turned to look at Lady Signy, but the girl only smiled and nodded toward the knight who was now approaching.

Agatha felt her heart leap into her throat. It seemed to beat louder with every slow deliberate step of the knight as he walked toward her. He stopped at her horse’s shoulder, taking one side of its rein in a gloved hand.

Agatha looked down at the knight. Through the narrow slit of his helm, she thought she could just make out a pair of green glimmering eyes, and in that moment, she felt something in her begin to stir.

He held up her shoe, but as Agatha went to take it, leaning over in her saddle and extending an arm, she realized he held it just out of reach. She would have to give him something in exchange for it, if she wanted it back.

Her hand went instinctively to the ribbon in her hair, before she remembered it had been borrowed from Mouse, or rather, taken without her knowledge, and she therefore reached for her neck, removing the small silver chain she wore around it and holding it out to the knight, before dropping it into his gloved hand.

The knight looked down and the chain in his hand, seeming to admire it for a moment, and looked back up at Agatha, handing her the shoe, which she quickly slipped back onto her foot.

“Farewell, Sir Frederick,” Lady Signy said as the party, now safely reunited on the other side of the bridge continued on their way.

As they began across the fields toward the castle, Agatha cast a look back over her shoulder. There by the bridge, seemingly unaware that he was being watched, stood the knight. He had removed his helm, revealing soft brown curls that pressed against his face, and held it under his arm as he worked to fasten the chain Agatha had given him around his own neck.

Agatha once again felt something stir within her, a kind of flutter in her chest, a feeling like the taste of candied oranges on her tongue.

Sir Frederik, she repeated to herself as her eyes lingered a moment longer on the knight. I will not forget that name.