Alton suppressed a chuckle, thinking she was probably right.

“The tower was in shambles,” he told Estral. “And there was someone’s skeleton on the floor. The walls were all blackened with scorch marks. Even worse, there was something else there. A creature ... or something.” He shuddered.

“Is that what caused the lightning?”

“I don’t think so because it got struck as well. It’s almost as if the tower generated the lightning.”

“I wonder what the creature was,” Estral said, “and how it got in there.”

“So do I. If some evil creature from Blackveil penetrated Tower of the Earth, what’s to say the other towers aren’t vulnerable as well?”

Dale suddenly halted Plover.

“What’s wrong?” Alton demanded.

“My bladder is sloshing.” She flung her leg over Plover’s neck and slid to the ground. “I’ll be right back,” she said and dashed into the woods.

Estral watched thoughtfully after Dale. “She’s hiding how much that burn hurts, and the riding is taking a toll.”

He almost retorted that Riders often rode while injured and bore it, but her expression was one of genuine concern and he did not want to sound like an oaf, reinforcing anything Karigan had told her about him being “mean.” Her approval of him had somehow grown significantly in importance, so he kept his peace and was content to sit in her company while they awaited Dale’s return.

WATER MUSIC

Alton wished he could come up with something clever or witty to say while they waited, but it was as if he no longer knew how. He was out of practice. All his attention had been centered on the wall, which did not require making small talk with others. In fact, for the longest time he hadn’t cared much about conversing with anyone at all, except maybe Dale and Merdigen. But now he found himself wanting to talk to Estral just to hear her voice, her ringing laugh. Her responding to him.

Karigan. He would have liked to talk to Karigan if only she’d been assigned to the wall as he’d requested, but she was not here. If only she would write him! He was so unsure of her, of how she felt toward him, or if she even thought of him at all. He had wanted to ask Estral about Karigan, but did not know how. An appropriate moment never seemed to materialize and, he realized with no small amount of surprise, he hadn’t been dwelling much on her of late. He’d been . . . distracted.

As if picking up on the subject of his rumination, or maybe also feeling the need to fill in the silence with conversation, Estral said, “After the excitement at the tower, I think I now have a sense of what Karigan’s adventures are like.”

An opening. Alton leaped on it. “Do you hear from her much?”

Estral chuckled. “Oh, you know Karigan—not the best of correspondents. Occasionally I receive a letter, but usually she’s woefully terse on details. More often I get the bigger news, like the rescue of Lady Estora, secondhand.”

“Secondhand?”

“Other minstrels. Sometimes Mel has a tidbit or two from your captain.”

Alton had forgotten the captain’s daughter, Mel, was studying at Selium.

“Yep,” Estral continued, “Karigan hasn’t written me a single word about her part in the rescue of Lady Estora. We did have a big old talk, though, when she came through in the fall searching for the Silverwood book.”

“Did she ... did she say anything about me? Besides that I was, um, mean to her?” He grimaced when he heard himself, and felt a blush warm his cheeks.

Estral glanced away, perhaps considering how to respond. He did not think it boded well.

“That did come up,” Estral said. “Your anger toward her really hurt her.”

“I know.”

“She understood you’d been under immense strain here at the wall, but she didn’t understand why it made you angry at her. Despite that, she never stopped caring for you.”

Alton felt a rush of guilt. Yes, he’d been forgiven, but he wasn’t sure he could forgive himself. “How . . . how much does she care? For me?”

Estral did not answer, but darted her gaze into the woods where Dale staggered out of the underbrush. In the waning late afternoon light, Dale’s face looked drawn and pale. When she reached Plover, she couldn’t seem to get her toe in the stirrup to mount. Alton immediately shoved all personal concerns to the back of his mind.

“Dale?” he asked. “How are you doing?”

She ignored him and tried to mount again, but Plover swerved away out of reach. Alton knew messenger horses tended to be more sensible than their Riders at times, so he slipped off Night Hawk and took Dale’s arm. She was shivering and he could see the pain in her eyes. He checked the burn. It was an angry, swollen red and blistering.

“We’re stopping for the night,” he declared. “We’ve still got a long ride ahead and I think it would be better if you got some rest before we continue on.”

It was a measure of the pain Dale felt that she did not protest. Alton made her sit on a rock, wrapped in his greatcoat, while he and Estral tended the horses and set up camp.

He watched Estral from the corner of his eye as she collected firewood and dumped it in a pile before setting off to find more. She worked efficiently, silently, and without complaint, not at all like the citified noblewoman he had expected, but as competent as any Green Rider. His lips curled into a smile. Then he cleared his throat and straightened his features, remembering what Dale had said earlier about him smiling a lot more lately.