It was in the year 4039 that we finally got Davon married off. He was twenty-three at the time, and I’d started to worry just a bit. Marriage is something that shouldn’t be put off too long. Bachelorhood can be sort of habit forming after a while. Hattan, who was in his late fifties by then, told me that I worried too much about things like that. ‘We’re unusual people, Pol,’ he said to me just before the wedding. ‘If I were just another Algar, I’d be sitting on a horse near the River Aldur watching a herd of cows right now. I’d have an Algar wife and ten children, and we’d all be living in wagons. But I’m not just another Algar, so I’m married to Layna, and I’m living in Muros getting rich instead of keeping cows out of trouble on the plains of Algaria. I was older than Davon is right now when I married Layna. I needed some time to get my feet on the ground before I got married. Nobles and peasants marry early. Businessmen tend to wait.’

Davon’s bride-to-be was a very pretty blonde girl named Alnana. She had a bright, sunny personality, and she was a joy to be around. Eldara and I considered her rather carefully and decided that she’d be acceptable. Young men always think that they’re the ones who make these decisions, but they tend to overlook certain realities in these matters. The influence of the women of the house is very strong in the business of choosing suitable wives.

No. I won’t pursue that. Women know about it already, and men don’t really need to know.

The wedding of Davon and Alnana was the social event of the season that fall. Our family was quite prominent in Muros by now, and we had no real reason to keep the affair unostentatious as we had when Geran had come in out of nowhere to marry Eldara. Weddings are major events in the lives of the merchant class, so they tend to make them lavish.

After the wedding, Davon and Alnana took up residence in a new wing of my house. Things were a little crowded to suit my tastes, but we all got along quite well, so there was a minimum of friction.

Hattan, my dear, dear friend, lived long enough to see his great-grandson, Alten, born in 4041, and then one blustery spring morning out in the stockyards, Hattan was gored by a large belligerent Algar bull: Cows are such silly animals most of the time that we tend to forget that they always go about fully armed. Hattan died almost immediately, so there wasn’t anything I could really have done, but that didn’t prevent me from blaming myself. It sometimes seems that I’ve spent half of my life sunk to the eyebrows in self-recrimination. That’s one of the major drawbacks of the study and practice of healing. Healers are always shocked and outraged when they discover something else that they can’t heal. No one has yet come up with a way to heal death, however, so a physician has to learn to accept his losses and move on.

Layna was totally devastated, of course, and she didn’t long survive her husband. Once again natural mortality was thinning the ranks of those I loved the most.

I consoled myself – as I’ve done so many times – by devoting a great amount of time to my new nephew. By the time he was six years old there was no question whatsoever that he was a member of the little family to which I was devoting my life. When the three of them, Geran, Davon, and Alten, were together, we could all see the almost mirror-image resemblances. Davon and Alten would never have to waste time wondering what they’d look like when they grew older. All they had to do was look at Geran.

Geran’s sandy-colored hair began to be touched with grey at the temples after he turned fifty. It actually made him look rather distinguished. It was in 4051 when the grave sensibility greying hair seems to bestow upon even the silliest of men brought Geran and me to the closest thing I think we ever had to an argument. ‘I’ve been asked to stand for election to the town council, Aunt Pol,’ he told me one summer evening when we were alone together in my garden. ‘I’ve been giving it some fairly serious consideration.’

‘Are you out of your mind, Geran?’ I asked sharply.

‘I could do a lot better job than some of the incumbents,’ he said defensively. ‘Most of them are just using their offices to line their own pockets.’

‘That’s not your concern, Geran.’

‘I live here too, Aunt Pol. The well-being of the city’s as much my concern as it is everybody else’s.’

‘Who raised this idiotic notion?’

The Earl of Muros, himself.’ He said it with a certain pride.

‘Use your head, Geran!’ I told him. ‘You can’t do something that’d attract so much attention to you.’

‘People don’t really pay all that much attention to the members of the council, Aunt Pol.’

‘You’re talking about the local people. Outsiders – including Murgos – pay a lot of attention to the people in power. All we’d need would be to have some Murgo asking around about your origins. When he found out that you came here in 4012 – just ten years after King Gorek’s assassination – and that I’d come here with you, everything would fly out the window.’

‘You worry too much,’ he scoffed.

‘Somebody has to. Too many things match up for a Murgo to just shrug them all off as coincidence – your age, your appearance, my presence, and the fact that I don’t get old. He’d have suspicions, and he’d take them to Ctuchik. Ctuchik doesn’t worry about niceties, Geran. If he has the faintest suspicion that you’re the survivor of that massacre at Riva, he’ll have you and your entire family butchered. Is getting elected to some silly office that important to you?’

‘I can afford to hire guards. I can protect my family.’

‘Why don’t you just paint a sign saying ‘King of Riva’ and hang it around your neck? Guards, Geran? Why not hire trumpeters to blow fanfares, too?’

‘I could do so much for the city and its people, Aunt Pol.’

‘I’m sure you could, but Muros isn’t your concern. Riva’s the town you’re interested in. Someday, one of your descendants is going to sit on the throne there. Concern yourself with that, not with street repair and garbage disposal in a dusty town on the Sendarian plain.’

‘All right, Aunt Pol,’ he said, clearly irritated. ‘Don’t beat me over the head with it. I’ll give my apologies to Oldrik and tell him that I’m too busy right now to make speeches about corrupt officials.’

‘Oldrik?’

‘The Earl of Muros. He and I are rather close friends, actually. He asks my advice on certain things now and then.’