"A pleasure to meet you, Lady Tara," she said. And she gave another curtsy. Although she was quite sure that the woman wasn't a Daruc--didn't smell like one, anyway--it was a name sacred to their people. She couldn't help but slip right back into a respectful pattern.

She was nothing if not well-trained.

Or, as she preferred to think of it, well-mannered.

"I haven't been here long," she said. "A few months. It's my first winter. But I was in the...place before. You might have heard people talking about it. 'Deerington,' they called it."