“I don’t know what chance brought the professor to that spot on that day,” Lorine continued, “but he found me. It’s all hazy to me, a little dreamlike, but he took me from there and brought me here. I was tended till I healed, and then he presented me with legal papers declaring me a free and sovereign citizen of the empire. I couldn’t read them, of course. I also don’t know what it cost him to buy those papers, but I know it wasn’t just a little.” A smile flickered at distant memory. “I begged him to let me serve him. Despite the papers, I thought I’d be sent back to the mills or sold off, but he just laughed and said that if I stayed, that we’d have to work out an agreeable wage. Not only did he save my life and bring me into his household, but he paid me. I live in luxury, miss! I am so happy here. To top everything off, he and Mr. Harlowe have taught me to read and write, too. I can read my own papers, now.”

Although Karigan had glimpsed slaves out on Mill City’s streets, Lorine’s story brought another dimension to it, made it all too real. “There should be no slavery,” she said.

“It is the way that it is,” Lorine replied with a shrug. “Some come to it from family that’ve been enslaved for generations, as I did. When the emperor came, he made slaves of his enemies. It has been this way always.”

No, Karigan thought, it had not always been so. But much of the empire’s populace would not know there was any history prior to the emperor.

“You have a kind heart,” Lorine said, “but it is safest not to speak those things aloud. People who are against slavery and speak of it, well, they tend to disappear.”

On that sober note, Lorine left Karigan to her ruminations. As she watched the smoky air waft outside her window, she thought about what Lorine had said about the emperor enslaving his enemies after his rise to power. She wondered about her friends, so many who must have died in the war with Second Empire, and then during the destruction of Sacor City. If any had survived, they may have been enslaved. What had become of her father and aunts? The aftermath of the war and all the destruction must have been tumultuous. People must have known great fear.

She leaned her head against the window frame. Did she really wish to know what had become of her friends? Of her family?

It was too painful to contemplate, so she tried to dash those thoughts with a renewed determination to get home and prevent any of this from happening in the first place.

SEEING CONDOR

It wasn’t until the following day that Karigan was invited to return to the old Josston mill, although this time it was Cade who asked and not the professor. It was during breakfast, and the professor was busily going over schedules and duties with his students, all except for Cade who, it appeared, was senior in ranking to the others. Instead Cade finished his breakfast and stood to leave. On his way out he paused by her chair.

“Have a pleasant day, Miss Goodgrave,” he said, and then mouthed, “Tonight.”

She took his meaning immediately and nodded. She didn’t think anyone else noticed their exchange, although Lorine watched Cade leave. Was that longing in her eyes? Briefly Lorine’s gaze met Karigan’s, and Karigan looked away, focusing on her plate of eggs.

The day could not pass quickly enough. Brownish-gray clouds still billowed overhead, and upon Karigan’s visit to Raven, Luke voiced his hope that they’d get some rain in the night and maybe that’d clear the air.

“The horses need a good run,” he told her, “but I won’t hurt their lungs out in that filth.” He jabbed his finger out the stable doorway at the sky.

Karigan tended Raven till once again he shone, and she even took to pulling his mane, which had grown bushy. He didn’t like it much and told her so with a trumpeting whinny and an authoritative stomp of his hoof. She settled for only minimal thinning. When she did all she could for Raven, she returned to the house and to her room.

What was keeping her, she wondered, from simply saddling up Raven and just leaving? From finding her way home? She’d amassed some significant information about how the world had turned out . . . She paced in front of her window, arms crossed. She only came to the same conclusion as she had on other occasions: Nothing was preventing her except the fact that the professor kept her safe, clothed, and fed. If she ventured out into the world without a plan, there would be no escaping the empire. It claimed the entire continent. How long could she hide? If she was busy hiding, how could she find a way back to her own time?

She needed to figure out how to get home while under the professor’s protection rather than while out in the world trying to fend for herself. The problem was, she had no idea how to proceed. She’d not done much to find her way home because she didn’t know what to do. It was almost as if she’d been awaiting some sign, some miraculous indication to direct her actions. She’d thought that, maybe, if the gods had put her here, they’d show her the way home, but nothing seemed forthcoming. Not even a hint. Maybe the gods intended for her to stay in this time forever, though she couldn’t imagine why, just as she could not fathom why they’d brought her here in the first place.

“Bloody damnation,” she muttered. She was supposed to have the ability to cross thresholds, to pass through the layers of the world, which somehow included time, but she could not do so in a world lacking magic, and there had always been something drawing her into the past, like wild magic and the First Rider, or Queen Laurelyn of lost Argenthyne. Would any of the “pieces of time” of the Eletians have survived? Even if she could find one of the moondial devices, either by re-entering Blackveil and searching for one, or by going to conquered Eletia, without knowing what remained of that country, she wouldn’t know how to use it. Not precisely, anyway. She could end up anywhen.