How strange. She is surrounded by armed guards, on her way to an interrogation, probable incarceration, and yet the storm inside is at rest

“Ride on!”

Leonora presses the horse’s side and her black stallion starts to walk, then trot. She is flanked by Ottoman officers on both sides, sheathed swords knocking as they ride. Ines rides behind her.

One of the officers looks at the sky and urges them onward.

The trot becomes a canter.

Overhead, the sky is dotted with clouds; white but turning gray in the distance. Leonora pushes her traveling cloak off her arms and shoulders, she is growing warm from the ride.

The guards allowed Leonora to ride her own black stallion, and she has strapped a leather traveling bag to the creature’s back, filled with a blanket, and spare clothing. She is wearing her strong winter boots. Not because she needs them, although the sky is beginning to threaten rain and the seasons are changing. But more because she has worn these boots through hard journeys, and with them, she had always come home.

She left Yishai with his jaw set tight, eyes not seeing at all, but turned inward. He will see securing her freedom as his challenge, she knows. His chance to prove himself, once and for all. She does not know what he will come up with, what connections he will draw upon. Usually, she would relish the challenge; thinking through the possibilities would fill her with a feeling of strength, the thrill of a pulsing life force.

But now, as she holds the reins, firmly yet loosely, trusting the horse to step over rocks and find the right angle down the incline, she cannot think of that at all.

Nor can she think of Amram, the rounded eyes, dark with fear and surprise and something more… helplessness? Sorrow?

The guards slow, and point vaguely over the hills, to where the Akko road begins. So they are going to take her via the coastal road. It is longer, but easier on the horses. And she will see the sea.

Ines trots next to her and reaches out. Leonora grasps her hand, feels Ines’s fingers, the way the skin bunches around her knuckles. Ines is an old woman. She should not be making this journey. But she is grateful that she is here.