Jason Weiser

It drank the blood of countless young men who had come before and who would follow after.

To the world, Don Pedro was nothing special.

He would be forgotten, but not for Doña.

No matter what, she would not forget.

To the world, he had been nothing, but to her, everything.

The mountain pass beckoned from the road before her.

Even though Doña Josefa Ramirez didn't think of her parents as necessarily shrewd, the need to be crafty was like hunger.

They were both things her parents had not experienced in a long time.

They weren't fools.

Beyond the docks, there was one way out of town, and she would need to make it to the city Murcia before she could walk openly.

The logic that took her south would draw her parents as well.

Like a mouse, she stayed away from the thoroughfares of the pass, creeping along the plants, traveling at night, and freezing when she heard footsteps or shouts.

Wide plains beyond the foothills, dotted with the gatherings of plants, signaled a mixture of relief and danger.

There was no place to hide, and the scattered farms would notice someone sleeping in a bush or padding through the fields at night.

The city of Mercia sitting on the horizon, Dunya heard hooves behind her, and she had to quell her instinct.

Cavaliers don't flee.

A nod from her father's chamberlain to the young man walking the road between, presumably, adventures or lovers or both, let Dunya know that she was safe in this lie.

Mercia was grand and lively, and for days she walked the streets, lodging in an inn that was nice but not too nice, and avoiding any places that might draw her father, uncles, or any other person who would know her before they saw her face.

Besides...

Men like the ones she was hunting wouldn't be in the house of the mayor or any of the nobles.