"Mother!" Radia opened the door to the house, stepping through the front room to the kitchen. She placed her basket on the table. "Mother!"

"What is it?" Anary glanced out from the back room the two of them slept in. "I'm trying to finish up some sewing -you can wash those greens. They were from Juna and Karn, right? For the coughing remedy?"

"Yes ..." Radia picked up a bucket of cold water from the corner and dropped the leaves in. "Mother, there was something else in the village today."

"What was it?" Anary placed the neatly mended skirt on her cot and went into the kitchen.

"It's someone from -oh, wherever the palace is. Kara told me -it's a group of soldiers and a prisoner."

"Oh?" Anary opened a cupboard and removed a few bottles and a bowl. "What do they want here?"

"They say they're looking for someone."

"Who?"

"A girl -someone who's about seventeen years old, has black hair, blue eyes ..."

Anary looked at her daughter with a mixture of curiosity and concern.

"Someone like you."

"Yes."

"Did Kara say why?"

"She said that the captain -someone named Cayd -said that a girl matching that description went missing and it's his duty to find her."

"What's her name?" Anary scooped out a spoonful of greenish-blue powder and tapped it into the bowl.

"Kara didn't know."

"What does a prisoner have to do with it?" Anary continued to pour and stir.

"I don't know -I'm guessing that they want to show that they can do whatever they want to anyone who doesn't help them. Kara said the prisoner was badly beaten." Radia paused, turning to her mother curiously. "Why are you so interested?"

"I want to know all that I can about someone who might want to take my only child away from me." Anary added a few drops of a brown liquid to the mixture and put the bottles back on the shelf.

"Does it have anything to do with the fact that it was the guards in the palace who arrested Father?"

Anary sighed, heavily.  "Not the arrest. It was a man named 'Cayd' who killed your father."

"Are you saying -"

"I don't know, exactly. I haven't seen the man."

Radia was about to answer when the two women heard a pounding on the front door.

"Open up in the name of the king!"