Nor Iron Bars A Cage by Kaje Harper

thought’s occurred, now and then. But walls alone don’t make a home. It’s what’s inside them.”
    “For me the walls were what counted. Oh, the books are good, and a bed and a bath. But not essential.”
    He looked at me steadily. “I misspoke. I meant, it’s who’s inside them that counts.”
    “Waiting for the right man, then.” I kept my tone academic.
    “Yes.”
    “Tell me about King Faro,” I said quickly. “What’s he like? His father was still king when I was in the capital, and by the time news of Faro’s coronation and deeds reached my village it was often a bit bent around the edges.”
    Tobin smiled. But he took up the topic, giving me a word-picture of our young king. Tobin clearly liked and respected him. Faro was only a couple years older than we were, but he’d spent time in every branch of his father’s service before inheriting the throne.
    A practical man, according to Tobin, and a shrewd one. Less ambitious than his father. “He wants to keep his nation safe but not to expand it. Right now, our borders have natural defenses, in the mountains to the east and north and the river on the south, the ocean west. The old king kept trying to push further into the mountains, but Faro was smart enough to make peace there.”
    “So things are quiet?” My village was far enough from the borders that affairs of nations rarely came to our attention, even if my news hadn’t mostly come via a fourteen-year-old with more interest in cows than kings.
    “I wouldn’t say quiet. The nomads in Icefeld test the northern borders, most autumns. And there’s a new Prince Regent in R’gin that His Majesty has us keeping an eye on. They like to start foreign wars over there, to distract the nobles from mismanagement at home.”
    “But we have the mountains between us,” I pointed out, “And the mountain tribes, who don’t like us or the R’gin. Surely they won’t look our way.” Of course a study of history and languages made me very aware that our ancestors and the R’ginads had flowed through those mountains back and forth over the centuries. And sometimes even taken to ships and sailed around the peninsula, or crossed the broad southern marshes of Canan to meet in battle.
    “They might give it another try, if they’re looking for a fight. Faro’s only been king three years, while the king in Canan is long established and very well garrisoned. They might even see our new treaty with the tribes as indication of weakness. Who knows?”
    I shivered. Some of the ancient tales of battles with the R’gin were quite graphic. They believed a warrior gained strength from each man they killed in battle, and took fierce pride in their skills. They took no prisoners and left no wounded behind on the battlefield. There was a time I might have imagined that last detail a kindness, putting the wounded out of their misery, but Tobin was right, curse him. However hard it was to live crippled, I was beginning to believe it could be better than being dead.
    Tobin said reminiscently, “I was in R’gin once.”
    “You were? When?”
    “After the leg. It was healing slowly, and I guess I was driving everyone around me crazy. Or so the king claimed.” There was a little smile on Tobin’s lips that for some reason annoyed me, but I just nodded. “So he said I might as well recover while doing something useful. He sent me by boat, all the way around the peninsula. Two weeks going there, with the wind. Almost four coming back beating against it.”
    “Why did he send you?”
    “To meet a man.” Tobin sighed. “Where there are kings and hostile borders, there are spies. This was a man I’d known, one of my riding instructors actually, from when I was young. He was dark-complexioned enough to pass as a R’gin. Apparently, he’d been sent there years before and managed to work his way into their army command. But he’d sent word he had a problem.”
    “So the king dispatched you to R’gin? While you were