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Marya was doing her shopping when the Heralds rode into the village, and the flash of white and sudden turning of heads in the corner of her vision made her stomach twist into an angry knot, her jaw tighten, and her fists clench. She knew what it was. Only one thing could be that white in the middle of a village in the middle of a rainy spring.

“Done,” she said, cutting off her bargaining abruptly and leaving Druk Pelan, the egg seller, open-mouthed in astonishment. She shoved the coppers at him, took up her basket and the eggs, and strode quickly back toward her house at the east edge of the village without getting any of the other things she’d meant to buy.

The house, inherited from her mother, which had been her parents’ before her, was really more of a cottage. They hadn’t needed much space: the loft bed for her, the bedroom her mother had slept in once she inherited the place until the day she died, and one big room that served as kitchen and work space and held her baskets of yarn and the big loom. So far as Marya knew, the cottage had been built around the loom; she couldn’t imagine how some of the big beams had been brought in otherwise. The windows were all positioned to give the person sitting at the loom the best possible light, all day. The kitchen was almost more of an afterthought; more often than not, Marya, her mother, and her grandparents had eaten food cooked at the baker’s or cold meats, raw vegetables, bread and cheese. Well she would have to make do with what she had, now.

The plain linen warp was half full of colorful woof threads now, with the cartoon beneath, for Marya was not just any weaver; she was a weaver of tapestries. So her mother and grandparents had been. People sent commissions to her from all over Valdemar, mostly from extremely wealthy households, for when you wanted to really impress people, there was nothing like an enormous tapestry hung against the wall. Ordinary arras hangings would do to keep down drafts, but a tapestry! That meant something.

This one was of some fancy family or other’s coat of arms, a pair of stags fighting on their hind legs. Some tapestry weavers sent out for their cartoons or used images that they kept carefully folded and put away. Up in the loft, there were stacks of those, some going back a hundred years or more. Her family had relied on such aids since they had begun weaving.

Not Marya. Marya drew her own. The sketch she’d been sent had been no bigger than her hand. The cartoon was twice the length of the loom, and that was only half of it. She’d flip it for the other half, the mirror image of the stag she was working on now, and carefully sew the two halves together for the finished whole. And an impressive backdrop to a head table that would be, too.

But she was not thinking of that. She was thinking of the Heralds in the village square and wondering angrily how long they were going to be in the village. Not long, she hoped. Because she had no intention of leaving her house while they were here, or she just might be tempted to—

She froze at the polite knock at her open door.

Surely not.

She turned slowly, but the reflection of white in the pots on the kitchen wall told her who it was before she actually finished the turn.

“Marya Bannod?” the older of the two Heralds asked.

She nodded curtly, unable to trust herself to speak.

“We’d like to ask for your hel—” he began.

She exploded. “Oh, you’ve a lot of nerve coming here and asking for my help!” she hissed, hands balled into fists at her side. “Whatever it is, you can damned well just go and take care of it yourselves, you with your great minds and fine ways! Get off my stoop!”

And she slammed the door in their astonished faces.

Then she let out a breath. That had felt good. Not as good as flinging some kitchen things at them, but good. Now they’d go away, and get on their white horses and—

There was another knock.

Surely not—

She opened it. They were still there.

Briefly, she entertained a fantasy of snatching up the beater from the loom and driving them down the street with it, cudgeling their heads and shoulders the whole time. But . . . no. These particular Heralds hadn’t done her any harm.

Just Heralds in general.

“You’re not wanted here,” she said, folding her arms over her chest and glaring at them. “Get out.”

“Perhaps you didn’t—”

“You think I’m feebleminded?” she snapped. “I understood perfectly. You’ve got some sort of tangle. You think I can sort it out for you and save you some time and effort. No. I realize that you don’t hear that very often. Perhaps you should; it would do you good. No. What part of no do you not understand?”

She slammed the door again. This time when the knock came, she didn’t answer it. Instead, she went to her loom and began work on the tapestry, singing out the color changes as loud as she could to a tune of her own invention. It helped her concentrate, and it soothed her nerves a little.