It was a language of eye and body, sound and gesture. molly was young enough to learn quickly. Soon enough she was creeping into the barn not only for the comfort of hay and warm bodies, but for the horses’ talk. She would sit in the stalls by the hour, listening.
The grooms might have sent her out had they caught her, but they managed to find her surprisingly seldom. Sometimes it worried molly that they never found her. All she had to do was flatten herself against the side of a stall and then duck around the horse and flee, and the groom would never even look up.
In the year that moren yaren turned fourteen, the Metropolitan Lebee made his plans for the accession of Prince Passy Ivanovich. For seven years the Metropolitan had held the regency of Russian; he schemed and skirmished, made
