"What, they both indulge in grandiose sulking?" Niabheara scowled and scanned the horizon. "Raise your hand, lay it on the follow side of her neck." The left lay sloped downward and seemed to be a more direct route to cover. "They told me the impression was that he would let her go," she added, to give Marcello a little encouragement.

Marcello gave her a pained look. "That was before we found the letter," he said quietly, as he tried to follow her horse-related instructions. "I meant they both go to astonishing lengths to try to get their way. if he hurts Mira..." he said, and his voice tightened.

Her knee pressed gently, reflexively, against the back of his thigh. "He won't. He can't have been plotting this for very long; it sounds like it all happened at a chance. Likely he saw the opportunity and took it."

He reached his free hand back to touch her leg, briefly. "Do you know where he could be going?" Marcello asked. "It sounds like he was trying to leave the castle, not...you're right. It didn't sound like he set out to kidnap her...Cormac seemed worried."

"North," she said simply. "North to Fiona, or to Cnoch-na-Niall. North, where an he'd had the patience to wait a single day, I would have offered to send him." She touched her forehead between his shoulders and tried not to make any angry noise loud enough to startle the horse.

Marcello sighed. "I know," he replied. "I mean...where would he be going...in the next hour or so? So we can find them, and..."

He frowned at an object in the mud...an object that appeared to be a girl's shoe.

"Hold." Niabheara snaked an arm around Marcello and tapped the horse. It drew to a halt, shifting itself in the thick mud. "Is that . . . do you recognise it?"

She looked back up, seeking out a trail in the grass, anything.

A little further off was what looked like a bundled piece of discarded fabric. Marcello dismounted-- rather sloppily, skidding in the mud-- and reached for the shoe, then raced ahead to pick up a cloak. "The shoe's hers," he said. "The cloak...isn't, but..." He held it up so she could see it; it was a regulation guard's cloak.

Niabheara slid off the horse's back. She shook her head in denial. "Father can't have been too distracted to notice she was leaving a trail. Unless he did it himself to lead a search off-course."

Marcello gave her a worried look. "Unless he did something to her," he said worriedly. "He wouldn't, would he? Not if he thinks he needs her for ransom?"