"It's this blasted heat," Willam said, wiping sweat from his brow after laying the final stone on Martyn's cairn. "We're not made for it, Lady Dara, we surely aren't."

She was inclined to agree - the heat would have been bad enough had it not been for the bindings on her chest, for the difficulties they had faced in finding water safe to drink, for the blasted sun that had burned her whole face red and peeling.

"We must continue," she said helplessly. "We cannot let Mark and Ethan and Martyn's deaths have been for nothing."

"They shan't be," Howland promised her, passing around a little pot of salve that eased the burning on all their faces and forearms. "We will find Lyanna, Dara, I know we will."

Howland's unwavering faith in their mission had been the one thing that had kept Dara from despairing when sweet Mark and shy Ethan and poor dear Martyn fell, and she relied on him more than she would have liked - not because he made her feel as though she would owe him some great debt when all this was over, but simply because she had never been used to relying on anyone much save herself, and sometimes Bran. To have someone not her brother taking care of her was odd, to say the least.

Gods but she missed Bran. Even when she had been at the Eyrie, she had sent more ravens to Bran than she had to home, and to think that she would never again receive a rambling, over-telling letter in his appalling, near-illegible hand broke her heart.

If I do not hurry, she reminded herself, I will never see another scrap of Lya's perfect script.

They were halfways down the Prince's Pass, and halfways dead, and it seemed to Dara as though they would reach the end of only one journey. She did not yet know which one.

Asric had been coming and going between Blackmont and Rhaegar's accursed tower for near a week, learning how Arthur and the others worked their shifts, trying his best to discern a means of releasing Lady Lyanna from her captivity, and he had learned little aside from the hilarious fact that Ser Gerold Hightower, the White Bull, the noble Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, liked to sing about Florian and Jonquil and other such romantic heroes while he polished Vigilance, the silver blade as white as his armour in the sharp sunlight.

Larra had, in the past two days, taken to riding out with him when he departed Blackmont at sunset, determined to do all she could to help - she felt that mayhaps she, looking at the tower and its guards without a military eye, might see some little thing that Arthur and his cohorts had missed.

Instead, she saw something else altogether, as they rode along the mountain path that cut into the cliff above the Prince's Pass.

"Asric," she said, sounding surprised. "Asric, look - there are northerners down there!"

To Larra, as to any person of Dornish blood, anyone from north of the Marches was a northerner, but Larra could not have known just how accurate she was in that moment.

"They're passing onto Manwoody lands," Larra said. "You know how fond of the Martells Dagos and Myles are - they'll slaughter any northerners without even finding their names. Come, Asric, we must halt them."

"Larra-"

"I will not see innocents murdered," she said shortly. "And besides, one of them is a woman - the second one, she rides as differently to her companions as I ride to you."

Asric could not see any great difference between the second of the little company and the others, but then, he could see no difference between himself and Larra.

They turned from the path and headed down towards the Pass, and it was not until they were near on the valley floor that Asric was struck by a sudden, horrible thought.

Surely she would not be so foolish. He had thought there was a fine mind behind those fine eyes of Dara Stark's, but if this was her, if she were so foolish...

"Sweet Theo," Dara begged, "please stay strong just a little longer."

Buckets was doubled over his horse, nothing left in his stomach but every bit he had eaten and drank for the last day or two left on the road behind them - one more of them struck down with the illness, and Dara was terrified that rather than finding Lya, it was she who would be found, as a skeleton along the side of the Prince's Pass.

Mayhaps we should have taken the Boneway she thought hysterically, and her laughter came out as a hoarse croak. She was so thirsty, but only Howland seemed to know which pools - of which there were surprisingly many, hidden in little lees and alcoves along the cliff to the west and the feet of the mountains to the east - were safe to drink from, and he was off ahead, scouting for enemies.

"I am trying to do my best, Lady Dara," Buckets teased faintly, a mockery of his usual grin lifting his face for a moment. "But it is hard in this heat. These mountains be all wrong, they do."

That, she did laugh at, and so did Willam - Buckets had complained incessantly that mountains should be capped in snow, that the passes should be full of ice, and it was a good sign, surely, that he continued to do so.

Howland returned in a cloud of dust, his face as red with exertion as it was with sunburn, panting as hard as his horse.

"We're to have company, Dara," he said. "Two riders, coming from the west - they seem to have come right out of the mountains, and will be upon us in moments if we do not hurry."

Dara hesitated - what if these strangers were not enemies, as Howland clearly feared? - and looked to Buckets.

She would risk that. Either they would all die, or Buckets might live and they might find Lya.

Well, either way it was likely that they would all die, but she would grasp any opportunity to save her companions that arose.

Asric was furious when he saw that yes, she was that foolish.

He knew it was ridiculous - he had no claim to her, no reason to fret over her safety so, but something about Eddara Stark's quiet smiles had caught him and held him, and so he did not care that is was ridiculous.

"You blind idiot!" he bellowed, kicking Selwyn into a gallop (gods, Father had laughed to hear that Asric had named his horse for him) and riding as hard as he could towards Eddara bloody stupid Stark. "What are you thinking? What are you doing?!"

She was pale under all that terrible sunburn and windburn and sandblast - had they never heard of veils? - and her eyes were huge in her long face.

"I- Ser Asric?"

"Yes, yes," he fumed, drawing Selwyn so sharply to a halt by her horse that he reared magnificently - any other time, and Asric would have been delighted, would have laughed, but not now. Now, Arthur was helping a rapist, Rhaegar was the rapist, and only Allem and Larra seemed to find true fault in those things as Asric did.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded instead, calming Selwyn with a hand on the horse's neck so he could fix Dara with the sort of glare that he had learned from his mother.

"I am searching for my sister, ser," she said, shock cooling into a very tight sort of anger, "and unless you are here to offer help to my companions and myself, I would ask that you leave us be."

Asric's stomach went sideways, and his anger petered out as Larra caught him up.

He let his veil fall and pressed his hands over his face instead.

"Lady Blackmont," he said, "I should like to introduce the Lady Eddara Stark, and her companions, who are unfamiliar to me. They hunt for the Lady Lyanna Stark, my lady."

Larra's breath caught audibly, and she too dropped her veil.

"Lady Stark," she said, holding out a hand in greeting. "It would seem that we have much to discuss."