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Prince Eon was an irregular visitor. They had both always been members of the Zodiac priesthood, but as Chronos she had been treated like a princess since the day she was born. She was a princess, born of princesses, future queen of the Outer Reaches, Lady of the Seasons, holder of the Opal Crystal.

Prince meant something different. To be the Epoch meant that when the former Epoch cavalier died, they scryed the stars and waited for the planets to align so that they could discover which of their planet had been born the next Eon. He had been dressed up in scholar's robes very young and taught sacred mysteries that she was not taught. When they had met as children he had seemed very important and old. But he had smiled at her, and was nice to her, and despite his incredible agedness (he was thirteen to her ten) did not lord it over her as any other older child might.

They arrived on foot. Amidst the other scholars it was hard to pick him out, at first: a cluster of six, looking like travelling monks with shorn heads. Their robes were muted browns and greens, belted with different cords (mine are dark still, he'd told her, the whiter they are, the cleaner my knowledge has become) at the waist. He did not dress like a Prince Eon. Yet.

She watched them take water as they were let into the castle, dipping their fingers into bowls and cleaning their faces from the trek. It was irritating work trying to make out which one was Eon from the abyssal length of time she'd last seen him, a whole seven months, not when their faces were all turned away and when they were talking all at once. When would they let her see him?

In the end, the test as to who Eon was she conducted herself. Her attempts to be secretive were not as good as they might have been, being ten, especially not when she was head-craning and pursing her mouth at the same time trying to figure out who was who. Someone was bound to notice eventually. One of the scholars turned their head to look at her, and when they did their eyes widened and they smiled: Eon.

His hands were still damp with water when he left his group to join her. The cords around his waist were dove-grey, she saw, and he peered behind the pillar owlishly to see what the attraction was. Then he looked around the pillar just as carefully. Around. Up. Down. He even touched it. The finger that brushed against its stone he put to his mouth and pretended to taste.

"As pillars go, it's not particularly interesting," he said. He was keeping a very straight face. "Did you pick it for a reason?"

The twelve-year-old boy obligingly hid behind the pillar. Sometimes Eon was a bit too willing to indulge her and play games when there was not, in fact, a game to be played, and she was no longer six and would not welcome an imaginary tea party. It was probably a side-effect of being twelve years old and a Scholar. Their little outpost studied every inaccessible concept of what came from beyond the Surrounding, all the things that were ancient and unknown, so if Eon was a bit insufferably mature about it it was to be expected.

"Are we hiding from anyone?" he inquired. He darted an over-the-top look around the pillar's side and pulled a face. "Oh no. Scholars. Let's hide here forever, I hear they're terribly boring." (If the other scholars were perturbed at all, they were not letting on and were chatting with her mother's seneschal.) "When they're not looking maybe we should escape. What do you think? I have a friend who's a princess here, and I'd like to find her."

"All right," said Eon, agreeably. "Let's walk across the tiles without touching the lines. If we do that, we'll be invisible and we can escape."

They walked across the tiles, carefully setting foot so that they did not tread on the grouting between each one. The scholars turned a blind eye to this -- confirmed invisibility! -- and they made it to a side-arch where they could duck down a corridor. "The lines are fine from here," he said, and they shuffled their feet on the lines obligingly to test it. Nobody was around.

The walls were whitewashed and cool to touch, curving around as though they were walking in an underground tunnel and not in a castle. He reached up to drag his fingers over the curve to the roof. "Now we can find my princess friend."

Eon measured a height that was about half-a-head shorter than herself. "She's, um, this tall, maybe? And has hair to here." The measurement was also about a handspan shorter than her hair actually was. In the light here she could see the short cap of fuzz on his head, an indistinct lightish colour that was never let to grow long. "She likes flowers and she doesn't eat fried bread. Do you know anyone like that here?"

"It's very busy," he agreed. "It doesn't leave me a lot of time."

They linked arms and walked down the cool corridor. Outside, the smell of green succulents growing and the paved dirt assaulted their nostrils: they stood by the open doorway with the light on their faces and watched. He seemed to like it. With the tips of his fingers he picked up the ends of his robes as he stepped off into a side garden, beckoning her to follow. White-dressed servants weeded the plants.

"I wonder if my princess friend will remember me," he was saying. "It's been a while. Maybe she doesn't have a very good memory. She could look at me and say, 'Who are you? I have no recollection of you at all.'"

For as long as she knew Eon had talked like an adult, as though he had eaten a dictionary, though in other ways he never talked like an adult at all. He would call it my one princely virtue, as though one was all he got allotted. (If he had known other adults -- more cynical ones -- sometimes gagged at his Sweetness and Lightness, he would have been annoyed.)

The gardens here were filled with herbs. Eon left her side to go to a leafy bed of something lemony-smelling, reaching over and breaking off the tiniest leaf to roll it between his palms. He cupped his hands together and breathed them in; but he was interrupted halfway through by a sound that made him whip his head around. Before she could say anything, he had shot off in search of it.

She found him crouched by a bush, looking at a frog who sat very still other than its continually gulping throat. It looked dry. Eon's brows were knotted together. His brows were a pale brownish colour, in comparison to the stubble on his head. "That's not usual," he said. "It's a long way from any pond."

The frog looked distressed.