Adrik Adrikov (The Corrishman)

Ma Kupar led Mattie past guards set three and three beside a great arched door banded in iron, and left her in a high-vaulted hall; tapestries covered the stone walls, thick carpets the wooden floors. Mattie was the only woman in the room. Men in native costume filled the benches--the Gremas? She had never heard them called anything other than "northern barbarians," but Ma Kupar had used the name "Gremas." Red heads and brown heads sprinkled the crowd, but most were blond. Almost every eye turned toward her was blue.

At the hall's far end, a roaring blaze filled an enormous fireplace hooded in the same verdigris copper covering the turrets. On a dais before it sat two men in ancient, ornately carved chairs. Both wore richer versions of the common clothing--woolen trousers tucked into modern riding boots, and high-necked shirts. Their long quilted vests were silk embroidered in gold. The one on Mattie's left had hair so shot through with white that the blond strands remaining looked like sunlight streaked on snow. The other's hair was as dark as her own, though heavily threaded with silver; his beard, trimmed more neatly than those of the men around him, was almost completely gray. Something about his lean, angular face resembled the King's profile on a five-silver piece.

"Dunley? No," said Mattie, keeping her voice as blank and calm as she could despite her jittering insides. "My stepfather's name was Ambleson. It's the name he gave me."

Adrik laughed. "One of the things I love about you, Mattie, is that you're terrible at subterfuge. Your emotions cover you head to toe. You fell in love with me the first day, when you twisted your ankle, didn't you? My sweet girl, I would marry you no matter what your name is. I don't use my real name either."

Was Adrik in similar circumstances? Not long ago, when she lived in Reggiston and didn't have to lie about her name and didn't know whose daughter she was, she would never have considered the suit of a bastard. She couldn't very well put herself above one now, could she? She burrowed closer to him, and he hugged her tight. "If my name is not to be Mistress Adrikov, then, what is it to be?"

"I am Adrik Antremont, some day to be styled Adrin of Tremont."

Early spring in Corland could hardly be called spring at all, especially in the little city of Arren. It sat far to the north, just on Tremont's side of the border with the Northern Wastes, and winter loved it far too much to leave on time. Downy snow still fell from the sky, determined to smother the streets like an overstuffed featherbed. Mattisanis Ambleson--the former Mattie Dunley of Meadow House, Whithorse Estate--thought it beautiful. The cold rimed everything in brilliant, magical whiteness, hushed, as a breath held. Or perhaps lost. Ever since meeting Adrik Adrikov just after Neya's Day the year before, she had been breathless.