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In some places the river was half a inated, born of ice and snow in a jagged line ofdown the landscape in unnavigable rapids, birthing other rivers that spread across the land like branching veins Few adventurers traveled that far north for the land was icy and harsh and no one lived there As the river flowed into Sacoridia, first through Adolind Province, it calrapids Here at the Rivertown crossing, the river ide and comparatively placid
The oarsmen took up their stations starboard and port, and the ferry , long strokes of the oars, they began the crossing The northind pushed at the ferry and curdled the surface of the river, but the ferryon the tiller kept thes to stand steady, the whites of her eyes showing
As the ferry pulled out farther into the river, they left behind a shore littered with rank river weed and fish floating belly up in the shallows a and broken barrel staves Rotten vegetables and refuse added to the stink of dead fish, and a boot was caught in the ribs of an abandoned dory There was sear stuck in theto any busy harbor town
The wind lifted spray from the oars in upstroke, which slapped her cheek in icy splashes
“So’s it true the king has got hisself a woman?” the ferry master asked
Karigan blinked, then alhed It was the first time she had heard the betrothal referred to in such a way “King Zachary has contracted to hter”
“Aye, contracted Whore games of the nobles that is”
“Best to watch how you speak of our king and future queen,” Karigan warned, though she thought of it in much the same way
“Well, that’s fine,” the ferryon his pipe “Time the old boy took a wife”
Karigan lifted her eyebrows Old boy? King Zachary? She didn’t knohether to be perturbed or to laugh King Zachary was older than she by twelve years, but “old boy”? She glanced at Fergal to see hoas taking the conversation, but he was leaning over the port rail, staring into the river’s depths as the ferrymen dipped and pulled on their oars in a hypnotic rhyth with each stroke
The harsh wind blen the river and nearly carried off the ferry ht it in time and pulled it down securely over his head The craft shuddered against the blast and an shivered and stood in the lee of Condor to cut the wind