The Bandit King

Chapter One

Thief, liar, assassin, whore. Tale-bearer, spy, extortionist, confidante, scandal-smoother. A knife in the dark, poison in a cup, a shield and a defense on the battlefield as well as in the glittering whirl of Court. Puppetmaster, spymaster, whoremaster, brutal thug, protocol handler, cat’s-paw, pawn, troublemaker, cutthroat, fiend, pickpocket, swindler, brigand, pirate, kidnapper, alter ego, usurer, false witness…

This, then, is the Left Hand. And more.

The Hand does what must be done to cement the hold of the monarch on the realm, to protect the sovereign we swear fealty to—even at the cost of our own lives. Even at the cost of our honor.

There is only one word never applied to us, only one thing a Hand has never been.

Traitor.

To be the Left Hand is to be the most trusted of a monarch’s subjects, a position of high honor, though very few will know the truth of your face or name. Most of a Hand’s work is done in shadow, and well it should be. The Hand does those necessary things, by blood or by leverage, that a monarch cannot do. According to the secret Archives in the Palais d’Arquitaine, the first of us was Anton di Halier, who created the office in the time of Jeliane di Courcy-Trimestin—the Widowed Queen, history names her—who depended on Halier for her very life during the great wars, both internecine and foreign, of the Blood Years.

Those were winters when wolves both animal and Damarsene hunted in our land, and we have not forgotten. Nor have we forgotten the famine. Thin as the Blood Years, the proverb runs, and always accompanied by the avert-sign to ward off ill-luck.

I find it amusing the first Left Hand spent his service under a Queen. Sometimes.

We rode through the Quartier Andienne toward the white block of Arcenne’s Temple glittering on the mountainside: three of my Guard, Adrien di Cinfiliet the bandit of the Shirlstrienne, and I.

And her, silent on my mother’s most docile palfrey, hood drawn up over her dark head, moving like a slender, supple stem.

Hard campaigning, the cat and mouse of catching bandits or criminals, the melee of the battlefield, and the quick danger of Court-sorcery duels—all these I have endured, and I rarely think of fear. Rather, I think only on what must be done, and there is no room for terror. Yet Vianne di Rocancheil et Vintmorecy threatens to stop my idiot heart each time I glimpse her.

A long strand of dark hair had slipped from under her hood, and just the sight of that dark, curling thread made me long to tuck it away, perhaps brush her cheek while I did so. That, of course, led to the urge to take her in my arms. For so long I held myself in abeyance, barely daring even to glance at her. I was still in the habit of stealing sips of her face. That is what starvation will do, make you a thief even when you possess a table of your own.

Arran half-stepped restively, catching my tension. The King’s Guard ride large grays, thoroughbred and battle-trained. Arran had been my companion for three years; he had borne both Vianne and myself away from the danger of the Citté.

She still had little idea how narrow our escape had been.

I could have lost everything. At least once a day, the cold consciousness of the almost-miss caused me to sweat. Another man might have soaked it in liquor or another form of oblivion. I kept it close. It sharpened me.

Muffled hoofbeats echoed against the shuttered houses on either side. This Quartier held the domiciles of merchants and some few petty officials and small nobles, pleasant villas of white stone snuggling against the lesser processional way to the Temple. Late-blooming nisteri showed blood-red in window boxes, their color faded under torch- and witchlight but still enough to warn of autumn’s approach.

Then would come winter, and with it snow, rain, uncertain roads. An army would find it most difficult to assail Arcenne once the season turned.

But before? That was another tale, and one we were faced with now.

I had found her in the bailey with di Cinfiliet earlier that afternoon, pale but composed, stunned by the arrival of ill news. She had afterward told my father and her Cabinet to prepare the city for siege, as di Cinfiliet had arrived bloody and missing half his men, bearing news of impending doom. I had heard the report of her commands from my father, and right annoyed with her action instead of docility he was, too.

Chivalieri en sieurs, I will decide tomorrow morning if I am to risk open war or if I will surrender myself to the Duc and hope for peace. I am loath to risk even a single life… Until I decide, I leave the preparations for this city’s defense to you. I have another duty now. Sieur di Cinfiliet, I will ask you for a few more moments of your time, tonight, in the Temple. Until then, rest and look to your men and horses.

She was far too quiet. I have learned to mistrust such peace. When my d’mselle is so silent and grave, it means she is thinking on a riddle to which the answer is most likely dangerous. My d’mselle is of a quick mind, an understanding as surprising as it is deep; she had never been content to simply be an empty-headed Court dame. Studying Tiberian, hedgewitchery, playing riddlesharp, her influence at Court was used for scholarly pursuits and decorum. Which the Princesse, truth be told, had sorely needed. Henri’s daughter had been that most shallow of royal creatures, a spoiled pet I could not imagine ruling Arquitaine. The King had largely left Princesse Lisele to her own devices, perhaps thinking the Damarsene blood in the wench would make her cowlike and docile as her foreign mother. Henri had often contemplated another marriage while he was still fit enough to sire; Lisele had not known how slender her hold on the title of Heir truly was—nor had she known to be grateful to her mother’s kin for their heavy insistence that she be accorded every honor.

For all that, Vianne had loved her, and still grieved her death.

Something no conspiracy had taken into account, my d’mselle’s fierce loyalty to those she cares for. It was a small mercy, and one with thorns, that her loyalty had included me when it mattered.

She had been so laughably oblivious to my presence at Court. And yet, her wits had kept her free enough to traverse the passages of the Palais, slip past a drunken Guard, and appear at my cell like a demiange of mercy, freeing me from a net my own folly had led me blindly into, seeking a prize I should not have reached for.

The prize that had fallen, all unknowing, into my cupped beggar’s hands.

“A copper for your thinking, m’chri.” My voice, pitched low, surprised even me.

Her shoulders stiffened. She turned, pushing her hood back a trifle. Her eyes, dark blue as the sky in the last stages of twilight, met mine, and I ached for the pain in her gaze.

“I have much to think upon.” A soft noblewoman’s murmur, accented sharply as the Court women spoke. “An army draws nigh, invasion threatens, and the Duc has outplayed me in this hand.”

Was it bitterness in her tone? I would not blame her.

She must go north and east to the Spire di Chivalier while we hold this city against the approach of di Narborre. From there you may organize an army. My father’s voice, as he stared into his winecup. Above all, you must guard her with your life, m’fils. Or we shall all hang before this is finished.

My own answer barely needed to be spoken, it was so laughably evident. What else could he expect me to say? There is no risk I have not already taken for her, Père. I shall try to convince her.

I did not think I could prevail upon her to leave Arcenne, though the need was dire. She did not wish war before winter. Yet if the Duc d’Orlaans had sent a collection of troops to lay siege to my father’s city and Keep, the situation was graver than even my pessimistic Père had dreamed. That Timrothe d’Orlaans, the false King, was forced to allow Damarsene troops on Arquitaine soil was both balm to my soul and a deadly grievance.

How he must be cursing me, for not having the courtesy to die to ease his plans. And he must be mad, to purchase Damarsene aid within our borders. The dogs of Damar and Hesse both wish to bite at the rich softness of Arquitaine’s vitals, and have since time immemorial.

Vianne’s eyes were darker than usual in the uncertain torchlight. Her lovely face—winged eyebrows, the mouth most often serious and made to be kissed, the high planes of her cheekbones, the glow of her gaze—was thoughtful, a vertical line between her eyebrows. She studied me as if I were a puzzle of Tiberian verbs.

For all her loyalty and her quick wit, Vianne did not understand me at all. Which was a gift of the Blessed, for had she understood she may well have recoiled in disgust.

“We should remove to the Spire di Chivalier.” I sought to sound thoughtful instead of persuasive. “Tis safer, and closer to the lowland provinces declared for you. I like not the thought of you trapped in Arcenne by d’Orlaans’s dogs and foreign troops.”

A shrug, under the cloak. “I will make no decision until the morrow.” She pushed the hood back further, as if irritated at its covering. The single movement forced my idiot heart to leap.

By the Blessed, Vianne, why? “Tomorrow may be too late.”

“Tis in the hands of the gods, Tristan.” Quiet stubbornness lifted her chin slightly, sparked in her eyes, and fair threatened to rob me of breath. “I am fully acquainted with what your father thinks I should do. Do not press his suit.”

I knew enough of her quicksilver moods to let the matter lie, for the moment at least. Humor, then, the kind of banter indulged in at Court. She had a reputation for a sharp, quiet wit; well-earned, too. And a gentle rebuke from her could sting more than the most furious scolding from another, because she so rarely uttered reproof. When she did, twas delivered with such earnest softness that a man might well fling himself into battle to win her approval.

So I attempted humor. “May I press my own suit, then, d’mselle?” I strove for a light tone and failed. It had been easier at Court, when I could not dare to speak to her, lest an enemy or even a gossip remark upon it.

Such a question usually calls forth a disbelieving half-smile that lights her eyes and turns her into one of Alisaar’s maidens, those fair demiange who wait upon the goddess of love and comb her golden, scented hair. Now, however, she simply studied me, her hands on the reins and the line between her eyebrows deepening.

Before us rode my lieutenant Jierre, with a witchfire torch and his sword at the ready, behind us, Tinan di Rocham and Adersahl di Parmecy et Villeroche, both trustworthy men bearing torches glowing with crackling Court sorcery. With them, Adrien di Cinfiliet, the serpent in bandit’s clothing. I would find an account to settle with him sooner or later, if only to make certain he did not seek to advance himself at the expense of my Queen.

“Tristan?” Such uncertainty I had not heard from her since our marriage-night. I wondered, to hear it now. “I have a question I would ask you.”

I nodded, our horses matching pace if not stride. The thoroughbred’s size meant I had to look down at her hood unless she tilted her head back to regard me as she did now, handling the reins with that pretty, useless Court-trained grace. And yet, on her, it looked so natural. “Ask what you will, Vianne. Whence comes this solemnity?”

She has a perfect right to be solemn; that quick understanding and loyalty will make her old before her time. Give her some small merriment, even if tis only that small laugh that sounds like weeping.

The street was dim with twilight; we would turn onto the greater processional way and start up toward the Temple soon. We had not come this way on our marriage-day, but I felt the same sharp pang I had then. A lance through the heart would hurt less.

Vianne pushed her hood fully back with a quick impatient movement. It fell free, braids in the style of di Rocancheil framing her face. I knew what it was to tangle my fingers in that hair, to taste her mouth; I knew what it was to sleep beside her. Now that I knew, was it worth the price I’d paid?

“Tell me what happened. After you left me, in the Palais. Retrace your steps.”

My heart knocked against my ribs, settled back pounding. I tasted copper, but my face did not change, schooled to indifference. “I like not to think on it.” Do not ask me. It will not do you any good.

“Please. For me.” Pleading, delicate, and careful, as if she expected sharp refusal.

By the Blessed, why inquire now? But I sought to sound merely weary. “For you, then. I left you in the passage and reached the Rose Room in time to see Henri dying. His pettite-cakes had been poisoned. As his soul left, the Duc’s guard burst into the room. I killed six of them before I was taken to that charming cell, where they beat me until the Duc paid me the honor of a visit. Then, I was left to contemplate my eventual beheading at the Bastillion until I heard your sweet voice through the bars.” There, does that satisfy you? I heard my own harshness, bitter as the lie.

The sharpest sword, di Halier once wrote after his Queen took him to task over some trifle, is directed at one’s own soul. Yet what is murder, or worse, if it keeps Arquitaine safe?

And yet. So easily, she reminded me of the man I should have been, instead of the one I was. When di Halier spoke of “Arquitaine,” twas easy to see he sometimes merely meant the woman who embodied, for him, the country’s rule.

Had Jeliane embodied far more to him, as my own Queen did to me?

Vianne examined my face as if I were a scroll or a dispatch. My heart mimicked a cobblestone caught in my windpipe. Do not ask more. Let the matter remain there.

“Nothing else?” Her eyes glittered, and she pulled her hood up with an expert movement of her fingers to settle the material just so over her beautiful bowed head. “Tis important, Tristan.”

You have no idea how important it is. “Why? Is there a question of my movements? You are perhaps believing the Duc when he accuses me of regicide?” It fair threatened to choke me. The truth will do so, when one least expects it. Di Halier never warned of that.

She hesitated. “I simply… There is so much I do not understand of this, and I would understand all.”

What more do you need to understand, m’chri? The King is dead, you are the Queen, I am the traitor who will keep you safe. If I must lie, and kill, and do the worst a man can do, I will.

I already have.

She said nothing else, her head bowed and her shoulders moving slightly.

We turned onto the processional way, hooves clopping on paving stones. Arcenne rose around us, the white stone quarried from the mountains the province is famous for glowing eggshell-delicate. There is very little as beautiful as my native city at dusk, as she gathers the last rays of the Sun’s beneficence. Even the sinks and fleshpots of the Quartier Gieron are well-scrubbed, and the spires of the Keep above rival the peaks themselves for grace. Arcenne is cleaner than the Citté, more tantalizing than Orlaans, and smells far better than, say, Marrseize. In spring, the orchards are a froth of paleness on her white shoulders, and she is a lady of freshness and grace.

Another held my heart now, but a man never forgets his first. No matter how far he rides, his birthplace will always be at his shoulder.

“Vianne?” Her name, uttered so many times in the privacy of my room or the secret corridors of my brain. For so long I had kept it a secret pleasure, a fruit to be indulged in late at night.

She did not answer, but a slight movement told me she had tilted her head, the better to catch my words.

“I would have you know only this.” I paused as Arran’s ears flicked, noting some sound I could not. When they returned to pointing forward, I continued. “All I have done is for your safety. If you should find yourself in doubt—any doubt, for any reason—simply remember that.”

The declaration earned me a startled glance. More tears, glimmering on her cheeks? In the uncertain light I could not be sure. “You were the King’s Left Hand.” Softly.

As if she thought I needed reminding.

“Now I am yours.” Even before Henri died choking on his own blood, I was yours.

I was left with a suspicion of my own to keep me company on the remainder of our short journey. There was no reason for her to ask unless she thought something amiss. Which was not comforting. Nor was the thought that followed in its wake.

I did what I wished to do. It was worth the price.

Chapter Two

The Temple’s courtyard echoed with hoof strikes and ran with ruddy lamplight; I caught Vianne’s waist and lifted her down. Her hood fell back, revealing a glory of intricate braids held together with blue ribbon, and I took the chance to brush at a stray strand, tucking it behind her ear. She wore a pair of emerald ear-drops, longer threads of gem-weighted silver swinging heavy against her cheeks, that I did not recognize. They were not my mother’s. Mère had all but fostered her, providing Vianne with dresses, hair-ribbons, jewelry—all the things a man would never think on, as well as sorely-needed gentle companionship. Vianne seemed easier with my mother than with most others, a smile blooming on her lately-solemn face whenever they met.

I took advantage of the momentary jostling to press a kiss to her forehead, a familiar rush of heat spilling through me as her skirts touched my breeches. I turned slightly, habitually, to keep my rapier-hilt free. She smelled of soap and heavy velvet, of sunlight and of woman, a peculiar aroma hers alone. At Court her hair-ribbons were imbued with bergaime and spice; it had taken a few gold coins to persuade the Court perfumier to blend me a tiny crystal bottle of the same mix commissioned by the Duchesse di Rocancheil. The vial had been lost in my room at the Guard barracks, along with all else—except the papers I had taken the precaution of burning the night before conspiracy broke loose.

I could not bring myself to destroy the tiny fluted crystal. The Princesse and her ladies favored lighter floral scents, but Vianne’s aura of green hedgewitchery would have overpowered those blends. The two times I drank myself into a stupor, with the door securely locked and the window barricaded as well, I had held the crystal to my face and inhaled its bloom between draughts of acquavit.

If a man seeks to drink enough to blind his conscience, tis acquavit or nothing.

She could rest her head below my shoulder if she wished. Yet she did not, gazing past me to the milling horses and the Temple novitiates even now taking Jierre’s mount. My lieutenant tucked his thumbs in his belt as I handed Arran’s reins to a gray-robed novice, accepting the boy’s bow with a slight nod. I had received my Coming-of-Age blessing in this Temple before going to Court, my birth had been registered here, and here I had held Vianne’s hands in mine and pronounced my marriage vows.

Here, also, I had seen the statue of Jiserah the Gentle blaze with silver light, and my Queen’s face also ablaze as she stared unblinking into that radiance, the Aryx’s three metal serpents writhing madly on their slim silver chain against her breastbone. I had thought the gods were about to strike me down for my effrontery, kneeling at her side. Even now, I could not shake the feeling of being watched within the Temple’s environs by eyes less human than a serpent’s.

The gods take an interest in Arquitaine, of course. But theirs are not the petty concerns of smaller fleshly beings. They had let the Aryx—the Great Seal that even now hung at my d’mselle’s breast—sleep since the death of King Fairlaine and his beloved Queen, and hard-pressed every monarch and Left Hand since had been to hide that slumber.

Now the Aryx was awake, and the gods had taken an interest again. I will admit I was made uncomfortable by the thought, and by another: that they would not have made me what I was and given me Vianne if they did not expect I would set myself against even their fury to see her safe.

She slipped past, her cloak brushing me, and I had a moment to admire her grace as she stopped four paces away to tip her head back and look to the sky. A quick glance assured me there were naught but stars overhead, and a slender quarter-moon just beginning its long nightly walk. I moved to stand at her shoulder, my gaze meeting Jierre’s as he exchanged a few quiet words with Adersahl and tilted his head in an unspoken question.

I replied with a fractional shake, no. And subtly, Jierre moved aside to let Adrien di Cinfiliet pass, the bandage glare-white against the bandit’s head. He had finally changed out of his bloody, torn clothes, and he had eyes for none of us except Vianne. Even now, his storm-gray gaze rested on her as she drew in a deep breath, steeling herself. She lowered her chin, her eyes closed and her shoulders coming up under a heavy invisible weight.

It was my task to make that encumbrance lighter, or at least share its burden. I closed my hand over her shoulder as a priestess appeared in the Temple door at the north side of the courtyard. Twisted jabak trees framed the rectangle cut from white stone, and the white-and-green-robed woman of Jiserah’s elect put up a hand to smooth her hair as she paused, looking out over this small courtyard used only by visiting nobility who did not wish to traverse the high stone steps of the front entrance. Twas Danae, the priestess who had heard our wedding vows—the second time, that is.

Slight blond Tinan di Rocham halted before Vianne. “D’mselle?” His dark gaze spoke too, worshipping her; the boy’s open adoration earned him much jesting in the Guard barracks. For all that, the teasing was good-natured and gentle instead of ribald. We did not grudge him his blushes, though I think some of them envied his youth and the grace with which she accepted his sallies.

“Tinan. How is your wound, chivalier?” She favored the boy, taking comfort in his easy humor. For that, I allowed him familiarity.

“Well enough, d’mselle. Is there aught you require?” He cast a nervous glance at me; Vianne seemed not to notice.

“I am as any other supplicant here.” Now she sounded sad, as the priestess approached, sandals shushing on paving-stones. Jierre and Adersahl were deep in conference, Adersahl stroking the rebirth of his fine mustache as he glanced warily at di Cinfiliet, whose own inspection of the courtyard paralleled mine. The bandit had not survived in the depths of the Shirlstrienne without wariness, and I had a healthy respect for that caution. It might make him difficult to… surprise.

But not impossible, should the situation require it.

The priestess reached us, her fair round face crinkling with merry lines around her eyes and mouth. “Your Majesty.” A bow, a trifle lower than it should have been, and held a trifle longer. “You honor us.”

Vianne’s chin lifted fractionally, a queenly gesture. “I come not as royalty but as a pilgrim, Danae da’Jiserah,” she said formally. Adrien di Cinfiliet watched with narrowed eyes, stroking his swordhilt. My hand rested upon my own rapier. There has been royalty enough slain in Temples, whether the gods willed it or no. “Tis guidance I would ask. Is the penitent’s cell ready?”

“Ready and waiting.” The priestess straightened, her dark gaze touching me. We are a brunet people, the Arquitaine—not ill-favored as the Damarsene, though. Arquitaine breeds beauty, just as Pruzia breeds harshness and Rus cold, exotic cruelty. “D’mselle, your instructions—”

Vianne held up a hand; Danae’s tongue halted. “Tinan, Jierre, accompany Tristan in seeing to the safety of the Temple. Adrien, I would speak to you privately; Adersahl shall attend me while I do so.”

Adersahl saluted, as did Tinan. I felt the first faint stirrings of trouble. I would not leave your side, even here. But neatly done, I cannot argue. Ordering Adersahl to watch the door while she conferred with Adrien was a touch worthy of the lady who had caught many intrigues in the female world of Court, where the women played for privilege and position—and sometimes, the eye of a nobleman.

While Vianne di Rocancheil’s sharp gaze was at Court, none dared offer her Princesse overt insult. Still, I had smoothed the way where I could, marveling at her loyalty to Henri’s spoiled little half-Damarsene farrat of a daughter.

“If it please you,” I said. “Though I like not leaving your side, m’chri.”

“It shall not be for long.” She did not meet my gaze, and my unease sharpened. “It would please me to know I may sleep safely tonight.”

If I am at your side, you will ever sleep safely. But she wished the penitent’s cell, which meant she planned on a lonely slumber. “As you will it.”

Danae visibly swallowed a question. I wondered what secrets my face was telling, smoothed my features. As ever, Vianne. As you will it.

“My thanks, chivalier.” A small smile, as if she had to force her mouth to it, and she was gone, ushered away by the fluttering priestess.

I dreaded even her innocent questions; a guilty conscience leaps even at a pinprick. I nodded at Jierre, the command answered almost as soon as it was given, and he turned on his heel, a slight gesture bringing Tinan to his side. They would sweep the Temple and make a report later.

Adrien di Cinfiliet’s gray gaze passed over me. If it were the first salute of a duel, I do not think I was the worse for it. He followed Adersahl. I watched as Vianne’s slim shape silhouetted itself in the low door, her step light and graceful.

Before she entered the house of the gods, she did glance over her shoulder. Yet if her face held any expression other than resignation, I could not see it.

I was left to myself in the empty courtyard, but not for long. For the Left Hand, there is always a way, if there is a will.

And I had a will to hear what Adrien di Cinfiliet would tell my Queen.

Chapter Three

The penitent’s cell is usually a bare stone room with a cot, a watercloset, and a gem-jeweled statue of Kimyan the Huntress. She is the Blessed who rules the Moon, and thus rules dreaming sleep. Brought from the Old Countries with the Angoulême, the first conqueror of Arquitaine, she was the goddess adopted most thoroughly in her new land. To receive instruction from her, the penitent swallows a draught meant to guarantee dreaming, and when morn comes they have their answer, for good or for ill.

What few know is that one of Kimyan’s elect often secretes him or herself in a small closet, whose cunningly constructed wall is riddled with small eye-holes, and from whence could be heard the speech of the dreamer who had asked to receive guidance from the gods who steered the world’s course. The closets are not visible from inside the cell, and few outside the priests and priestesses know of them.

The Hand is one of those few.

I took care to ease the door shut, soundless. Small swords of light crossed my path as I lowered myself silently to the padded bench, keeping my rapier well out of the way.

Danae was speaking. “—and there is a bell-rope, should you need immediate assistance. Is there aught I can bring you, before…?”

“Some light sup, for my chivalieri.” Vianne, with the light, laughing accent of Court. “My thanks, Danae.”

“I shall return in an hour’s time to prepare you. An it please you, I take my leave.” The priestess slid away on her sandaled feet. She would not interfere, should I wish to listen to my d’mselle’s dreaming; my father’s support of the Temple bought that much.

Even the elect of the gods are corruptible. Or, if not precisely corruptible, then merely amenable to the clink of hard coin accompanying a nobleman’s polite request.

The door closed, and I heard velvet move. Her cloak, perhaps, falling to the floor. No, she was not so careless; she would drape it over the bed. A long, weary sigh.

“D’mselle?” Adersahl, uncertain. If there were a Guard most likely to aid her without question, it was he. “Shall I wait outside?”

“No, Adersahl. I would have you hear this. Di Cinfiliet? We have little time. Speak, I beg you. What proof do you bear?”

Of what? But my heart knew before the rest of me, and grew cold as the wastes of Far Rus.

“Proof not meant for gentle ears, d’mselle.” Di Cinfiliet’s boots clicked as he made a circuit of the room. A shadow slid across the thin spears of light bisecting the closet. I breathed quietly, falling into the peculiar state common to assassins and spies: listening so intensely every sound is magnified, every hair on the body erect and quivering to catch all nuance. “I beg your pardon for what I am about to tell you.”

“I hardly think I shall shatter at shocking news, chivalier.” Velvet moving again. Where was she? Abruptly, her tone changed. “Besides, you have already given me the worst news possible. I would hear the rest.”

What has he said to her? And when? Silence. I barely breathed.

When she spoke again, it was very softly, and every nerve in my body leapt into singing alertness. “Adersahl bears witness of my recognition of you, m’cousin, and of your mother, who shall receive full honors in this very Temple.” The last word broke, and the temptation to put my eye to a spyhole was nigh overwhelming. I denied it. “It grieves me that she was taken by di Narborre. She was the best hedgewitch I have ever known, and I mourn that I could not alter her fate. You are my cousin, and my Heir, should the worst befall me.”

My brilliant darling. Of course she had guessed his parentage—or had the bandit told her outright? I would not put it past him.

Di Cinfiliet finally spoke, hoarsely. “It… it means much to me that you would acknowledge her.”

A small sound. Was she weeping? When she spoke again it was without her usual lightness; twas the tone of brittle, impossible-to-refuse royalty she had so lately acquired. “Adersahl, please, come farther in so we may speak softly. Begin your tale, sieur di Cinfiliet, an it please you. We have little time.”

Di Cinfiliet needed no prompting. “We came upon the Damarsene force bound for Arcenne from their rear, as we had turned aside to make a foray into the lands patrolled by the Tierrce-di-Valdale garrison. Consequently, we saw the dust they raised, and went cautiously. Then we happened upon a rare piece of luck: dispatches.”

“A King’s Messenger.” The brushing of a woman’s skirts. She is pacing; I can hear her feet. My back was alive with chill gooseflesh. What mischief was he seeking to wreak upon her now? “Dead now, I presume.”

“Of course.” There was no pretense. “Most of the dispatches were useless, but there was this.” Sound of paper rustling. I closed my eyes in the unforgiving dimness. “Twas in a sealed pouch for di Narborre’s hand only. There are other papers of interest, which I have left at the Keep. But this, m’cousine Riddlesharp, you should see.”

Heavy paper, by the sound of it. Unfolded and held. Silence ticked by; I could hear the flames of the lamps inside the penitent’s cell burning, a dry hissing.

A squeak. She had sunk down upon the bed, perhaps.

“D’mselle?” Adersahl, alarmed.

“Chivalier.” A colorless whisper of a word. Had she also gone pale? “Do you know what this is?”

“No, d’mselle.” For the first time in a long while, I heard fear in Adersahl di Parmecy’s tone.

“Tis a statement wherefore a man swears his loyalty to a certain cause. It is signed, witnessed by two others, and has a mark of blood upon it.” Her throat must be half closed with tears to sound so. “The cause the man swears himself to is the murder of Henri di Tirecian-Trimestin, my half-uncle. The murdered King of Arquitaine.” She took a deep breath. “Judge if this is not a familiar hand, though the paper reeks of some oddness, being far too cheap for such an important document.”

The faint sound of paper changing hands. My heart lodged in my throat again, and I was cold. So cold.

“Dear gods.” He was loyal to the last, Adersahl. “No, this cannot… this cannot be, Vianne. It cannot. He would not kill the King. He would not.”

“D’Orlaans accused Tristan of regicide, yet untraditionally ordered his tongue torn out before his beheading in the Bastillion. There was something he did not wish the Captain of King Henri’s Guard to say.” Pitiless, she continued, each word a knife to the heart. “I was with Tristan that day, Adersahl, and something has oft crossed my mind since this afternoon. Tristan swears the King died of poison in pettite-cakes. I was there; I saw those sweets; I am not so bad a hedgewitch I would not have smelled a poison in them virulent enough to kill the King in scarce a quarter-candlemark. Once the alarums were rung to signal the start of the conspiracy, Tristan left my side. Some short time later I found my Princesse already dying and her ladies slain—work that would have taken some time. There is one other thing we must consider, Adersahl. Tristan was waiting in the passage I usually took from the kitchens to my quarters. So was the Minister Primus. Look at the second sheet of paper.”

“I…” Adersahl was having difficulty speaking.

“Tis a similar sheet, but on far better paper, detailing the Minister Primus’s loyalty to the cause of regicide, and also to the removal of an inconvenient Captain of the Guard. Perhaps d’Orlaans thinks to convince me if I am given this… proof, in which case di Cinfiliet serves his purpose all-unwitting. Or di Narborre was to use this in some other fashion. The blood upon it would certainly make sorcery easier, would it not? Which might solve the riddle of how d’Orlaans and his dragoons tracked us so easily.” Velvet rustled again, and I heard her footsteps, quick and light as she paced. Di Cinfiliet was silent. “Yet the paper is not of a fineness, many of the events I witnessed refuse to grant me some understanding of their true import, and no Court sorcerer of d’Orlaans’s power and ability would let an opponent’s willingly-shed blood leave his grasp. The question I am to ask myself becomes, did Tristan d’Arcenne, my Consort, conspire to kill King Henri? I cannot think d’Orlaans would have had him sign a sheet of common rag. If my Consort is a traitor, or merely gave a dance to the idea of treachery, then afterward, when he was betrayed so harshly, did he think to revenge himself on his fellow conspirators by setting forth a hedgewitch provincial as Queen—a d’mselle who would, perhaps, be so blinded by a crumb of affection she would not question him? It is no secret I have not had many suitors.”

Rage tasted copper-bitter, the pulse in my throat and wrists pounding like maying-drums. I stayed perfectly still, red rising behind my eyes, my heart tearing itself in half. Hearing her so calmly, so beautifully string out a necklace of damning logic defied my self-control. It was the very softness, the sharply-accented Arquitaine singing in her beautiful mouth, that made the words cut so much more harshly.

Of course she doubted me. She would do well to listen to her instincts. And yet, a crumb of affection. Did she count me so small?

“Now I must beg you, Adersahl di Parmecy et Villeroche, Queen’s Guard and my friend. Give me counsel, for I know neither which quarter to face nor quite what to believe. I wish you to tell me truly what you think of this.” Now her voice broke, and she sounded perilously close to tears.

“D’mselle—” Di Cinfiliet. I wanted—oh, how I longed—to stride into the room, and… do what? What could I do?

At that moment, I did not know. And so I remained still and quiet, the trembling in me unmanly save for its source of pure white-hot rage.

“One moment, sieur, an it please you.” A muffled sound—she was weeping. My Vianne, weeping.

Adersahl did not speak for a long moment. Vianne’s weeping was soft; she sought to conceal it. Tears that should have fallen on my shoulder were now uselessly being spent in the presence of fools. And here, I was the larger fool, for I could not even coldly plan how to salvage somewhat of this.

Di Parmecy finally finished weighing his response. “There is one question I would ask, d’mselle.”

“Ask.” She sounded marginally calmer.

“I have lived with Tristan d’Arcenne, I have fought at his side and under his command, I have seen him in nigh every situation that may befall a man. I tell you, I am not so blind as not to notice a murderous intent on his part. We must set our minds to why d’Orlaans would send this foulness to his own Captain at this particular time. M’dama Queen, I would stake my life on Tristan’s loyalty, and this as some forged gambit of d’Orlaans.”

Relief burst inside my chest, dueling with the cold fury. I let out a soft, noiseless breath. Perhaps I had a chance to explain, or even to keep the secret. But how?

More soft sounds, Vianne weeping without restraint. She would even do that prettily, and I could have held her during the storm.

“D’mselle.” Di Cinfiliet, now. His tone had softened, as if he took pity on her. Or as if he understood now was the time for gentleness if he sought to set her course. “Tis a pretty tale, and it looks damning in many ways. But I’ve seen tales spun before, living at the dagger’s edge in the Shirlstrienne, hunted like a dog by di Narborre’s patrols. Now that I have had lee to think, I would say to let the man defend himself, for tis obvious he prizes you, and not just as a game piece or a broodmare. And yet…”

“And yet.” More velvet rustling; she would be pacing furiously now, probably dashing at her cheeks as if the tears offended her. “There was no poison, and the murders of my Princesse and her ladies took precious time. This bait must be salted with some truth, or it would not be even a half-effective lure for either Tristan or me. If I cannot trust my Consort, I cannot trust his father either. This fragile alliance will shatter, and the towns and provinces that have declared for me will be left without protection. Already civil war looks inevitable—or worse, a civil war with the Damarsene playing blind-hant in quarto to d’Orlaans. Blood will be shed, d’Arquitaine blood, and all those who depend on me for their lives—including you both—will meet worse fates than a Princesse’s lady-in-waiting can easily imagine. It becomes a question of whether I trust a possible traitor and pray he will not turn on me when the time comes, or plunge my land into chaos. A pretty choice.” The papers crinkled again. “Take these. Leave them where we spoke of, for I shall need them. Leave me the others as well, an it please you.”

My eyes squeezed shut. Tears trickled out between my eyelids, traced hot down my cheeks. Whether I trust a possible traitor and pray he will not turn on me when the time comes.

I should have told her. But I could not have afforded more of her “gentle feelings,” more of her naiveté. She had been all but dead of shock and grief, bearing each fresh indignity with numb, silent bravery heartbreaking to see in so fragile a body.

You did not tell her, for you feared the breaking of the image you saw in her eyes whenever she gazed at you. Be honest with yourself, at least, Left Hand. Else you will not lie so effectively to others.

“D’mselle… I truly do not think Tristan would…” Adersahl, almost knocked speechless. Of course, the sight of her weeping would astonish him.

“My thanks, Adersahl. I charge you with silence. Do not breathe a word of this. May I trust you?”

“I swore my service, d’mselle. I am a Queen’s Guard.” He was no longer young. I could almost see the stiff little bow he would perform.

“Go, and see to your sup, chivalier. It seems I am always leaning upon you.”

“I am here to be leaned upon, Your Majesty. Your leave?”

“Of course.”

He would bend over her hand—I heard the creak of leather, and his footsteps. The door, opening and closing. I scrubbed hot water from my cheeks with the bladed edges of my palms, taking care to do so silently. I kept my hand well away from my rapier-hilt.

I did not trust myself.

“So.” Vianne, breaking the pregnant pause, her tone husky with weeping. “It would seem I owe you much, m’cousin.”

“I count it an honor, m’d’mselle Riddlesharp.” A flash of light humor, jarring after the tension. “I suspect you have aught else to discuss with me.”

“It may not be… safe for you, here, if Tris suspects your parentage and di Narborre approaches. I would prefer to keep you near, yet I dare not.” Her tone softened. “If I may…”

“D’mselle.” The bandit sounded serious, now. “I may not have had the pretty training in bows and falconry, but I am still a nobleman. Blood must tell for something, must it not?” A faint whisper of steel leaving the sheath brought me to my feet, my hand suddenly clenched bruising-tight around my rapier-hilt. “I owe you service, d’mselle. Accept my oath.”

Gods above. The filthy little tale-telling bastard. Calm restored itself, but only by an effort that left me sweating and shaking. I was again not merely a man, but a Left Hand.

It was a relief—at least it stopped the stupid, worthless tears.

“Accepted, m’cousin. Please, stand.” Now twas the practical Vianne, the one so sharp and rapier-quick it was a glad wonder she was rarely unsheathed. “Here is a purse, tis all I could safely beg and borrow. Take your men and flee over the border into Navarrin; there you will be safely out of d’Orlaans’s reach. Here also is a formal introduction to the King of Navarrin; you will find some succor there. Above all, keep yourself safe. Take this as well. These are all I have left of my… of my other life, all I truly own. If I send a messenger for your return, I will send its mate as a token. Will you do this for me?”

A slight creaking movement. “And do you flee to Navarrin I will already be at the Court, to smooth your way. Well-played, lady Riddlesharp.”

I could almost hear the slight, impatient toss of her head. Hers was a well-played hand, and di Cinfiliet for all his cunning was not her match. “I am not so concerned about my own health as yours. Whatever Tristan has done or not done, I do not think you are safe here. Not if he suspects what Risaine never bothered to hide overmuch from me.” A slight, bitter laugh. “I find myself unable to trust the things I was most assured of.”

“Tis life, d’mselle. Are you certain? I like not the idea of leaving you here. Come with us. My men are not so polished, perhaps, but they are loyal, and each one will fight to his last breath.”

“You will need all their protection. Please, sieur. Keep yourself safe. Much now depends on you.”

“Come with us.” Still he persisted, his tone becoming far more serious than it should have been. “If it is right for me to flee, it cannot be right to leave you here.”

“The Aryx chose me.” The sadness was almost too much to bear. “Even now, you see, it will not move from my flesh. I am tied to this fate until I can find a way to slip its chain. If the gods speak to me tonight, I may even find a way to salvage something of my country.” There was a soft sound, and when she spoke next her voice was muffled. “Go. Please. I feel the need to succumb afresh to a most ladylike crying-fit, and I would not have you watch. It disarranges me, you see.”

“D’mselle—” He caught himself. “Vianne. My fair cousine. I would not leave you here, as a kit among wolves.”

Worry not, di Cinfiliet. This wolf will not let his little kit receive the slightest harm, and his teeth are sharper than yours.

“Fear not. This kit will soon grow her teeth. Go, Adrien. Please.” Velvet moved. Had she embraced him? It hurt to think of it, and hurt equally to think of her planning so quickly and thoroughly. How could she think herself in danger from my quarter?

Why had I said poison? A fool’s move. I was accustomed to lying with far more aplomb. Now I was trapped by the story.

“Should you need me, send for me.”

“Do not return unless I send the other half as a token. Go. Must I beg you?”

“No. D’mselle?”

“Oh, for the sake of the Blessed, what?” Irritation, wedded to sorrow and flashing witchlight-quick. I knew that tone of hers; my heart leapt to hear it. I wanted to take her in my arms, my bones aching with the need.

I could almost see the fey smile he practiced upon her. “My thanks.” The sound of the door opening, his boots retreating.

I could not help myself. I dropped my hand from my rapier-hilt and edged closer to the wall, seeking one of the small holes glowing with lamplight. I peered through, almost holding my breath.

The room was not so severe as I had imagined. There was a bed, two chairs by the fireplace, a washstand in the corner, and a door slightly ajar to the watercloset. I could see a glitter that was the jeweled statue of the Huntress, her bow lowered. The lamps hissed, and it would be cold tonight; had they not thought to lay a fire for my Vianne?

She stood straight and slim, facing the bed. As I watched, she turned in a full circle, looking about the room, her skirts making a low sweet noise. I could not see her face; the angle was wrong.

“Tristan,” she whispered, and I started guiltily, though I was well hidden. There was no way for her to know I watched. “What I would not give to be assured of…”

Twas not the words themselves. It was the tone, numb agony in her soft, cultured voice. Of all the people who should sound so hopeless, she was the last.

It fair threatened to tear my heart from my chest. All I have done has been for you. I longed to tell her so, put my mouth to the hole I watched through and whisper the words. Would she think it the gods speaking to her?

She took two halting steps toward the door; that removed her from my sight. Did she think to flee? No, for she immediately turned back and walked with quick, unsteady steps to the bed, flung herself down. She had not lied; she sobbed fit to break both her heart and mine.

Oh, Vianne. I should have been at her side, to hold her while she wept. I should have told her. I should have made her somehow understand.

At least you are forewarned. If I hewed to the tale of my innocence, would it satisfy? Why, in the name of the Blessed, had I told her Henri was poisoned? I had not been thinking clearly.

Now I was, and I had to move with some speed if I were to save myself.

Chapter Four

“Captain?” Jierre’s lean, dark face greeted me as I stepped into the small room given over to our use, a pilgrim’s cell in the heart of the Temple. Adrien was apparently deep in prayer before a statue of Danshar the Warrior in the central nave; Tinan stood guard at Vianne’s door and it irked me to leave him there.

No matter. I would return soon enough.

They had dined, di Cinfiliet and the Guard; I did not. Time enough for that later. Now, as Danae the priestess prepared our d’mselle for her dreaming in the house of the Blessed, my expression brought Jierre to his feet. The remains of their dinner lay on the table, and there were four cots.

Adersahl did not look up. He sank into a chair by the fireplace, staring into the flames. His brow was thoughtful, but not troubled.

I led Jierre into the hall. “This goes to the Keep.” I thrust the hastily penned letter into his hands. “Do what is necessary to delay di Cinfiliet’s departure until my father reads it.”

My lieutenant nodded. No shadow of doubt marred his clear, dark eyes; none ever had. “And should our bandit take umbrage…?”

“I trust your judgment.”

He flashed me a wry smile. “A relief, I was beginning to think I had none left.”

“Precious little, Jierre. After all, you are still following me.” Through even the gates of the underworld, you said once. You were drunk, and you thought I was, too.

“That, my Captain, is a matter of taste. Not judgment. Look after the d’mselle.”

“As always.” If only you knew how I look after her. “Make haste.”

He left with a spring in his step, a spare, sinewy man whose quick eyes and fine mind were worth far more than a King’s Guard could ever be paid. He had held the last survivors of the Guard on the slopes of Mont di Cienne, waiting with unshaken faith for me to emerge from the bowels of the donjons. Which I had… but only because Vianne had trusted me.

Because I could not stand the thought of your beheading, Captain. Her chin lifting as she took me to task, a memory I did not have time to savor.

I stepped through the door again, bracing myself. Adersahl remained in the chair, staring into the fire. He did not stroke his mustache, and that spelled certain trouble.

I affected nonchalance, my thumbs in my belt. “Sieur di Parmecy et Villeroche.”

He waved a languid hand. “Captain. Standing on ceremony?”

“No more than usual.” You defended me. Loyal as she is. “How is she, Adersahl?”

He stared into the flames as if they held the Unanswerable Riddle’s full solution. “I would be surprised if you did not know, Captain.” It hurt, to hear him accord me the title with such brittle formality.

Are you feinting to draw me out? “I know far more than anyone credits, and far less than I like. For example, I think I know who is loyal to me. Strange, how rare such a quality is.”

“Rare, yes. Very important in a King’s Guard.”

Ah. “Even more important in a Queen’s.”

He nodded. “Even so.” He paused, as if he would speak. Settled for repeating himself. “Even so.”

I drew my breath in softly; my hand curled around my rapier-hilt. All the Guard are trained in swordplay as well as Court sorcery; I had insisted upon as much when I took the reins of command. It had done little good for those taken by treachery. But those who had survived were the best of comrades—and the worst of enemies.

Let us see how well I cast my dice. I found my throat full of something, could not speak for a moment. My gaze dropped to his boot-toes.

My voice surprised me, rough as if I had been at ale or acquavit. “If I suspect di Cinfiliet of treachery, Adersahl di Parmecy, I will show no mercy.”

A long pause, filled only with the snap and rush of flame. Would I have to be more explicit? I did not think so. What did he believe, if anything? There was a time when I would have been certain he would take my word as a writ from the Blessed themselves.

Adersahl sighed. It was a long, heavy exhale, full of weariness. “I know nothing of treachery from his quarter. What would you have of me, Captain?”

“You will remain with her when I cannot, and you will kill Adrien di Cinfiliet if he threatens her. And you will breathe no word of my orders.” Even as I said it, I flinched inwardly. It was the first lesson a Left Hand learns: The only way to keep a secret is to consign the bearer of it to Death.

Including, sometimes, the Hand himself. That is the oath we take: As one already dead, I swear myself to service. I had often thought long and deep on the meaning of such a vow. If I was a dead man, did it matter who I killed or how I debased myself?

The problem was, I was still alive. She had resurrected me.

He still did not look at me. “You truly think di Cinfiliet so much of a danger?”

“His aunt raised him to hate the King.” A world of meaning lived under those words.

“The King is dead,” Adersahl murmured. “Long live the Queen.”

Absolutely. “If I have aught to say of it, she will live to a ripe old age. No matter what I must do to ensure it. Do we understand each other, di Parmecy?”

That caused his gaze to swing through the darkness, but not to me. He looked up at the ceiling, closed his eyes. Was he even now expecting a knife to the throat? The garrote? “I thought I understood you, Captain.”

“And do you?”

The weary old veteran examined the roof beams. “I am no fool.” He settled himself further in the chair’s embrace. “Loyal to a fault, but no fool.”

“I am gladdened to hear it.” I turned on my heel, gave him my back. “Go to your rest, sieur. Tomorrow may well bring surprises.”

“Of what sort?”

“Of whatever sort Vianne will dream up next.” The skin of my back tightened and tingled, expecting… what, a blade? No, twas not in Adersahl’s nature. He had defended me to my d’mselle. My unease was the sort that had followed me since I arrived at Court, the expectation of danger such a constant refrain I could hear no other music.

He said nothing else, and I left the room dissatisfied. The conversation had gone as well as could be expected… but still, there was something amiss.

What bothered me—now that I had time to turn my attention to less pressing problems, as I closed the door and set off down a stone hall in the house of the Blessed—was what further use d’Orlaans and di Narborre had thought to gain from such a paper as the one my d’mselle now held.

For I could have sworn I burned the only copy of that distressing oath, on paper as fine as any the King’s brother had access to, the night before the conspiracy broke loose.

Chapter Five

A priestess in green-and-white robes swayed gently out of sight down the hall as I relieved Tinan di Rocham of his vigil at my d’mselle’s door. The boy was pale, but he returned my salute and hurried away in the opposite direction, wincing as if pained. To be sent away from the lady’s door was probably mortifying. And he had recently come close to death, gut-stabbed by a Pruzian assassin and healed by sorcery. Wounds closed in such a manner sometimes pain one more in the aftermath than in the receiving. The body knows it has been violated, and not even the grace of the Aryx can dissuade it from remembering. Ghost-pain, the healers call it, the same term for a limb lopped off and yet still felt.

Which led me to the Aryx, the Great Seal of Arquitaine, its triple serpents twined in an endless knot and its power singing through my d’mselle. The Seal had been asleep since King Fairlaine’s time, true, but it was still a mark of the Blessed’s favor for Arquitaine. And now it was awake. Plenty of the old accounts of its power were… thought-provoking. Did Vianne know what other Left Hands had written of the Seal’s capabilities in the secret archives, she would no doubt seek to claw it from her flesh.

One more danger to guard her from.

I touched the door’s surface, smooth wood-grain under my fingertips. No line of candle or witchlight showed under its edge. She must be in her bed, prepared for dreaming with a soporific draught and left to embark on the sea of sleep. Danae would have prayed over her, and I pondered what wonder, if any, the priestess would have witnessed. Would the Aryx respond to this ceremony as it had responded to the marriage-vows?

A chill walked up my back. The door smelled of hedgewitchery. A thread-thin tracery of green, visible to passive, sorcerous Sight, twined through the wood. Was it a defense, a hedgewitch charm meant to bar passage? Did she fear to sleep here, knowing I would be at her door?

Not that. Please do not let her think that.

I took up my position to one side, and listened. The temptation to enter the closet of Kimyan’s elect and peer through the darkened eyeholes, to perhaps hear her breathing, ran through my body like fever, like ague.

Instead, I played the same game I have played through countless nights of watching and waiting. A Left Hand spends many nights in silence, like a viper under a rock, waiting in darkness for a victim to blunder past or an assignation to take place. Moreover, many a man has been proved unfit for the Guard, no matter how noble his blood, by the simple inability to wait.

To wait successfully, a man fills the time as best he may. My game runs thus: I think of Vianne. I consider her in different lights—under a flood of sunlight in her garden, on her knees and digging, sometimes cursing under her breath before she worked hedgewitchery, a green flame on her fingers threading through whatever herb or flower she sought to save or replant. I envision her under torch- and witchlight during the Court dances, in the slow stately measures of a pavane or during the wild whirl of the maying, her feet unseen under her skirts and her dark curls flying.

I think of her perched in a windowsill, bent over a book, the kiss of sun through glass bringing out threads of gold and darkness in her braided hair, gems winking against her throat and ears, sometimes with pearls threaded into the complex architecture of Court style.

I think of the moment Henri told me of his design to marry her to some Damarsene tradesman-turned-noble, if his plans came to fruition and the ruling house of Hese-Arburg suffered a setback. To a king, the female side of Court is a garden, some flowers culled for pleasure and others to be used as bargaining chits, played for alliance or to shift the balance of power.

That is a singularly unpleasant thought, though it arrives during any dark watch. So, I turn myself to remembering the grace of her wrist as she plucks at a harp, or of the grace of her wit when she and Princesse Lisele played riddlesharp and Vianne let the Princesse win, making a blunder too subtle to be anything but intentional.

I had sweeter remembrances to take the sting away. The moment she turned to me, in a bandit’s hut in the Shirlstrienne, and told me her strength depended on mine. The moment I realized she was mine for the taking, that my patience had plucked the flower I had tended as carefully as she ever tended a bed of priest’s-ease or finicky aurlaine.

The night wore on. That thin thread of green wedded to the wooden door mocked me. I longed to touch the knob, to steal on cat-feet into the d’mselle’s chamber and whisper the truth in her ear. Would she take it for a god’s voice, and would I be struck down for blasphemy?

What further blasphemy could I commit? Lying to tell the truth, lying to hide a truth, lying to cover my crimes, lying because I had lost the habit of truth itself—

You? Tristan d’Arcenne, worrying like an old provincial m’dama about blasphemy? What next? Spending all your time on your knees in black skirts, counting your prayers on your fingers?

I almost laughed at the vision. On a nightwatch, the mind does strange things.

Far away, reverberating through stone, the temple bells tolled. I counted the strokes. A carillon, then twelve. Midnight. After now would come the time of deepest darkness, the time when I most often lay awake, listening to Vianne’s soft breathing next to me and cherishing each moment of her warmth. How long had we been married?

Not nearly long enough to cool the fever in a man’s blood, when the only woman he wants is beside him and the world has spread itself at his feet. Or, at least, all of the world that matters.

The bells quieted, stone vibrating slightly against my back. I closed my eyes and touched the edge of her door, running my fingertips over the knob as if it were the sweet curve of her hip. So soft, and so—

I snapped into full alertness.

Boots. The jingle of spurs, metal clashing.

I hesitated. If twere merely news, there might be no need to disturb her. If twas something other…

They rounded the corner, torches spilling witchfire, almost the full half-dozen of the Queen’s Guard. Jespre di Vidancourt, named for a stone; dark Jai di Montfort; Tinan di Rocham pale as death, swept along with them. At their head, Jierre, my lieutenant, with his countenance graven. He seemed to have aged ten years since I had commissioned him to my father’s Keep.

I stepped forward, hand to hilt, and Jierre drew, steel singing from the sheath and his left hand lighting with venomous yellow witchfire, Court sorcery capable of blinding a man.

Treachery? Here?

“Hold!” Jai di Montfort yelled. His dark hair was disarranged, and he clasped Jierre’s shoulder, his other hand occupied with a torch dripping orange witchfire. “You have your orders, di Yspres! Stay your hand!”

We faced each other, the Guard and I, and I shifted my balance a few crucial fractions. Did they come for my d’mselle’s door, we would find whose steel rang truest. My fingers tightened, tendon-knots, on my hilt.

Six against one. I have taken worse odds, and Jierre will attack inquarto. He always does.

Did he come for Vianne, I would kill him, lieutenant or no.

Tinan di Rocham gasped for breath. “The order. Captain, the order—”

“Silence!” Jierre’s tone cut harsh as a clothier’s knife through silk. “Tristan d’Arcenne, you are under arrest.”

What? “What madness are you about?” My forearm tensed. The first thing to do would be to douse the torches, a flashy bit of Court sorcery but one I had practiced well. Darkness is where a Hand does his best work. “I stand guard over the Queen of Arquitaine!”

Di Montfort’s fingers dug into Jierre’s shoulder, white-knuckled, holding my second-in-command back. “Tis our d’mselle herself who commands it, Captain.” Jai was ever the voice of reason, one of the most levelheaded of the Guard. Tinan held up a scroll, its heavy waxen seal visibly imprinted with the symbol of royalty—the three serpents of the Aryx, twisting about one another.

My left hand leapt, not for a charm or killspell, but for the doorknob. It yielded, unlocked, the thin thread of hedgewitch-illusion that had darkened it breaking, and the door swept open as Jierre and the others surged forward. I saw the penitent’s cell, lit by a globe of glowrock and the low-burning lamps, guttering untended. The cot was smooth, unruffled, and I remembered the priestess swaying her way down the hall as I relieved Tinan of his guard duty. A priestess with a familiar gait, but I had seen the green-and-white robes and dismissed it.

Outplayed, Tristan, and by your very own d’mselle. I halted, and the killing rage sharpened under my breastbone, cracked against the chain of duty like a cur snapping at its leash.

“Captain.” Tinan di Rocham, his young voice breaking. “Please. We know not what the Queen is thinking—”

“I know what she thinks, boy. Hold your tongue.” Jierre shook free of di Montfort’s restraint. “We have orders to bring you whole and hale, d’Arcenne, but do you resist and it shall go ill for all concerned.”

The best of friends, the worst of enemies. I gathered myself, and tension sprang through them, as the springs and ropes of a siege engine will tauten when the engineers apply the levers.

I had subtly encouraged them to swear their fealty to her, had fostered their loyalty to her, had tied their fates to hers. A hedge of safety around my Vianne, and she had used it against me. Fair blond Luc di Chatillon had the chains, their rattle strangely subdued.

“I am to be arrested?” I made a show of slowly unbuckling my swordbelt, moving carefully. The angles of Jierre’s face contorted, whether with agony or murder I could not tell. “On what charge?”

“Treason.” Pillipe di Garfour said it like a curse, as a man would spit out sour wine. “Written in your own hand, Captain. You are to be tried.”

Oh, Vianne. You were so careful with Adersahl. “Tried by whom?”

“Take his sword, Tinan.” Jierre’s stare was pitiless, and empty. Of all of them, he would feel the most betrayed. How had she reached him, to turn him thus?

I offered it with both hands. Should I play the innocent? “I insist on seeing the order, di Yspres. It is my right.”

“You dare—” My lieutenant took a single step forward, and a shining inch of steel showed between hilt and scabbard. He was perilously close to murdering me where I stood—that is, if the knife in my boot did not find his heart when I killed the lights.

Jai di Montfort sank his callused fingers into Jierre’s shoulder again, drawing the man back. “Tis true. But I think it would not be wise of you to insist, d’Arcenne. Let us be calm, as befits the Queen’s Guard.”

“In the Queen’s name.” The words fair sounded to choke Jierre. His face shifted again, terribly, and shame suffused me.

I thought I had plumbed the depths of any shame I could feel the first time I killed an unarmed man in service of Henri di Tirecian-Trimestin.

I was wrong.

“For the Queen’s honor.” The words were ash on my tongue. My swordbelt was handed over. Luc di Chatillon did not clasp the irons overly tight, but he did make certain of them, and handed the key not to Jierre but to di Montfort. Jierre stood to one side, watching, hand on his rapier-hilt, and fury fair boiled the air around him.

When I was braceleted with iron and standing quiescent enough, Jai di Montfort let loose of my lieutenant’s shoulder. “Come. We are due at the Keep.”

Jierre appeared not to hear him. His gaze sought mine, and we weighed each other for a long, endless moment.

“I would have followed you even to the gates of the underworld, Captain,” Jierre said quietly. “I would have wagered my life on your word. I did wager my life on it.”

What could I say? He spoke truth. “You are still alive,” I pointed out. “I trust Vianne to your care, if she is to be robbed of mine.”

Even Jai di Montfort was not quick enough to stop him. He struck me across the face, a good blow with muscle hardened from campaigning and daily drill behind it, and I made no move to avoid it. It took Luc di Chatillon and di Montfort both to restrain him, and Pillipe di Garfour and Tinan brought me to my feet, near dragging me down the hall. My jaw had not broken, though I could feel the swelling in my cheek already. Twas not a love-tap, and yet my heart ached worse.

It is ever so, with men who are too loyal and too honest. Not even the thought of eventual revenge can restrain their rage when they find they have been used.

Twas why Jierre di Yspres would never have been a fit Left Hand.

Chapter Six

This cell did not stink, at least. I paced it—fourteen strides one way, eight another. There was a pallet, and no oublietta.

So I was not meant to be forgotten in a dark hole. At least, not yet.

The chains gave me lee to pace, fastened to a staple driven into the stone of the wall, and a witchlight torch outside the bars gave me no shortage of flat orange light. My face ached, dull pain spreading down my neck, and I winced every time I turned, chains rattling, measuring off each stride with a definite snick of my booted heel.

They had not searched me, and thus had overlooked the knife in my boot and the thin flexible stiletto in my sleeve. The lock on the cuffs would yield to some persistence, and there was no guard at the door. They had simply left me here, Jierre fiercely silent, Luc di Chatillon with an apologetic glance, and Tinan di Rocham looking halfway to tears.

I could expect visitors, but I could not know when. Would she not wish to measure my wounded countenance, see me in chains, present me with the proof?

What could I say?

He sought to take you from me, m’chri. You were the lure that killed a King.

One more reason not to tell her.

Arcenne throbbed above. An army drawing near with siege engines and some thousands, my d’mselle was probably still awake, planning feverishly with her nimble brain, seeking a way through the mire that did not mean shed blood. As dawn approached, the Keep would be readying itself, and the walls of the city would be alive with men, criers dispatched with orders to tell the common people their home was about to be flung into the maw of war.

You will fret yourself into a lather, d’Arcenne. You have waited in a prison cell before. Do so again.

The last time I had been trapped in a donjon, it was waiting for the Duc d’Orlaans to send a knife in the dark—because for all his bluster, he would not have had me publicly beheaded. It would have meant he feared me, did he put me before the crowd as meat.

Timrothe d’Orlaans flatters himself that he fears no man.

That waiting had ended with Vianne’s voice in the darkness. Captain? Are you there?

Would this one end with her voice in the dark as well? My d’mselle was too soft to kill me—but someone else, perhaps di Cinfiliet, might not be.

The chains clashed. I had reached their limit and stood facing the bars. I heard footsteps, and the soft brush of a woman’s skirts.

Vianne. Please. Come, hear my tale. I have woven tales for you before. Fine ones, simple ones, and ones to ease your pain.

Instead, appearing in the arc of witchlight, I beheld the worst that could befall me yet.

My father, Baron d’Arcenne himself, his blue eyes alight and his face set with particular displeasure. And beside him, her dark eyes grave, holding to my father’s right arm with a hand whose knuckles had turned pale, was my mother.

More shame, hot and acrid, eating the last bit of hunger in my belly. I had not supped, and neither had Vianne before the ride to the temple.

My father stood, staring through the bars. Other footsteps halted—a Guard, of course, probably one of my men. As family to a traitor, and the hosts of the Keep where the Queen did reside, they would not be left here alone.

I could have laughed and told Vianne she need not have worried. The quality of my father’s spine would not let him free a son from a prison cell, even an innocent one.

I learned as much when I was nine years old and accused of stealing apples.

My father, straight and unbending, gray feathering at his temples. I met his gaze with an unflinching stare of my own.

“Perseval,” my mother said in her softest and most inflexible tone. “Greet our son.”

The blue of his eyes was so like mine. I wondered, with the resemblance between us so marked, how I could have become what I did.

“That is no son of mine,” my father replied. But quietly, to keep this a private matter.

My mother’s hand tightened. She dug her fingers into his arm and pulled, leaning, her dark gaze fixed past me to the wall. Of course, she would not like the look of iron bars. “Perseval.” A world of meaning in those three syllables, accented sharply at the beginning to make them not a question or a demand, but a simple reminder.

“M’fils.” My father nodded, shortly, as someone stopped past my arc of vision. A gloved hand—a man’s hand—presented a key to my father.

I retreated. The chains sang their unlovely music. “Père,” I greeted him in turn, without a nod. But it satisfied my mother, whose grasp on my father’s arm eased slightly.

It was my mother who took the key and unlocked the barred door, and my mother who swept through, leaving it ajar. My father stayed outside, stiffly, his gaze turned flat and inward.

“Mère.” I accorded her a nod, an approximation of a bow, accompanied by metal sliding and rubbing. You should not leave the door so. You are careless as Vianne, ma Mère.

“Oh, Tris.” And she took me in her arms, ignoring my father’s disapproval, expressed only in a clearing of his throat. He was right—she could have passed me the key, slipped something into my sherte, committed a treachery of her own. “My dear, my own. What happened?”

Of all the things that could disarm me… “Vianne,” I said into my mother’s hair. Her perfume was light, a mix of floral water and sunshine, a smell remembered from childhood as safety and softness. “Is she hale? Is she well-guarded?”

“Better guarded than ever.” My father pushed the door open farther, took two steps into the cell. Now it was crowded, three bodies instead of one, and the chains a fourth body. And his rage, taking whatever space was left. “My own son. My own son.”

“She says you must be called to account for the papers. That there must be an explanation, and you will be called to give it before the Cabinet.” My mother pressed her soft cheek to my unshaven one, and kept herself between Perseval d’Arcenne and me.

I suddenly felt smaller than I was accustomed to, as if I were much younger. But does she weep? Is she well?

“Sílvie.” My father made a restless movement. “I would speak with my son.”

She let loose of me and half-turned, spreading her arms slightly to bar his passage. “Your son, now? Ah, yes. I carried him inside me, Perseval, and had the birthing of him as well. Until your suffering can match that, he is our son, and I shall thank you not to forget it. And I shall not let you speak until your tone takes on some kindness.”

“The papers are damning,” my father hissed, leaning forward with his hand to his rapier-hilt. “I read them myself. That woman wears the Aryx, it abides by her touch, she is the Queen, and her orders are given. I counted us lucky our family had remained untainted by treachery. What else did they teach him at Court, Sílvie? Beyond how to lie to his family, his Consort, his liege?”

I opened my mouth to reply, but my mother did before I could. I could never remember a time she took him to task without a laughing look or a simple grace that let him keep his pride, but now she turned on him with a ferocity I had scarce suspected in my gentle, ever-decorous dam.

“You said someone had to account for the provinces at Court, best it be us, and that he was seventeen and old enough to whore, hence old enough to catch the King’s eye. Do you not recall it, sending my boy into that den of wolves they call Court?” Between us, the slim shape of my mother was a line too easily breached. She is a small woman, like Vianne, and barely reached my father’s chin.

And yet my father retreated before her. I moved as if to put my mother aside, for it was not meet for a nobleman to hide behind a woman’s skirts, but she merely slapped my hand gently away as if I had reached for one too many scones at the chai-table. Chains rattled, and her voice rose. “Henri di Tirecian-Trimestin used our son as he saw fit. And you colluded, Perseval d’Arcenne. You sent the boy I raised, the boy I labored fifteen hours to birth, the heir you were so set on that almost killed me—you sent him there, and now you would just as easily cast him from the battlements without listening to a single word in his favor?”

“Sílvie—” My father actually retreated again, and I could have sworn he looked ashamed.

“I held my peace for thirteen years, Perseval. Now I shall not. And as I live and breathe, if you do not keep a civil tongue in your head when addressing our son, I shall leave you with your pride to warm your bed at night and retreat myself to Kimyan’s service, after I return your marriage-ring with a curse. Do I make myself clear?”

“Mère—” I had never heard her speak so, and a child’s fear—that my father would strike her, though he never had in my memory—made me move restlessly, the chains rattling.

“As for you.” She rounded on me, dark eyes flashing. “What have you to say for yourself, Tristan? Amazed you are not, and I see you have not been worrying at the cuffs to get them loose.”

She was, as usual, correct. Had I been entirely innocent, I might have been working my wrists bloody under the cuffs, seeking to escape and return to Vianne’s side. In one stroke, my mother disarmed me.

Silence ran through the cell like a dangerous river. What could I tell them? Whatever story I chose would have to be effective—and salted with the right leavening of truth. It would have to account for everything they had seen, and whatever Vianne suspected as well.

“Henri was about to marry her off.” I heard the queer flatness of my tone, as if I spoke of another man’s downfall. “To a Damarsene, if the proper assassin could be found for Corax Fang of Hese-Arburg; to marry him to a bastard royal would be too much. But to a younger Damarsene, a tradesman newly noble hungering for an aristocratic bride, a Damarsene family without a connexion to the Pruzians… for any number of reasons. To secure the alliance, and end the tribute payments. Then bastard scions of the Tirecian-Trimestin royal line began dying. Once was chance, twice was coincidence, thrice and fourth conspiracy—and always, I was a step too late. There are not many who can anticipate me, or could use Court influence to track my comings and goings more closely than was wonted.”

“This explains nothing.” But my father had folded his arms, and his wintry gaze had fastened on me at last. It was like being nine again, and about to receive the lashing.

Enough. Tell them what you can, what they will believe. “Twas necessary for me to enter the conspiracy to flush it out. It took time, and while that time ran, Vianne was kept at Court under close watch. My watch. I followed the conspiracy to its root, and that root was the heart of the royal House itself.”

“D’Orlaans.” My father nodded once, sharply. “You were playing the courser to flush the hare, and this is part of it?”

I can still salvage this. My heart gave a thin singing leap, was throttled back. If I can make them believe, tis halfway to making Vianne believe as well. “Tis. The King was dying when I arrived. I told Vianne twas poison, to ease her mind—what was I to do, describe the blood and bowel-loosening? I thought twas a gentler thing for her to think on, and well she needed it.” It sounded so reasonable.

It had been so reasonable, so natural. You should have let me have her, Henri. Safely wedded, I would have been your Hand until my death.

And the final twist of the knife home, when he had winked broadly over my d’mselle’s head and said, He must favor you, child. Telling her a secret I had not confided, except in my one request, the only boon I begged after years of service. As a noblewoman of the sword on both sides of her family, she would have to seek Henri’s blessing to wed. If he had given me permission, I would have courted her more openly.

My mother sighed, a sound of innocent relief more painful to me than her tears. “Then you can explain before the Council, and this will all be over.”

“Not so quick, my dove.” My father had not taken his gaze from my features, seeking to read the stamp of truth or falsehood. “There must be a deeper reason for him to be chained here. If anything, she trusts our son to a fault. Something else has happened, and it centers on this di Cinfiliet. What of him?”

If I could but catch him with a gallery and a sword, we would see. But it was enough to sow the seed of suspicion in my father’s mind. “Probably already gone, that canny beast. Did Jierre arrive with my letter?”

“He did. Hard on his heels came our liege, and she took the missive from him. I was not allowed so much as a glance.” My father’s face twisted sourly.

How it must gall you, that a woman does not bend when you frown. She has shown herself not so amenable to your ideas.

But damn it. Had my father been able to detain di Cinfiliet, I might have been able to salvage somewhat more of this. As it stood… “He has reasons to make her doubt me.” I let my tone darken, staring at the cuffs about my wrists as if they held the solution to every riddle.

I had not written aught incriminatory. Merely for my father to detain di Cinfiliet until I could question him, as I suspected. What I suspected I left unsaid, and my father would read it very differently than my d’mselle.

“Tristan.” My mother searched my face. “There is summat more. There has to be. Vianne looks grave, and I would swear she has aged since you left for the Temple. She—”

“She is serious, as befits a liege.” My father made a restless movement, reminding my mother of the guard just out of sight. It must be someone Père would at least suspect no mischief of, since he spoke so freely. But whom? “The charge is treason, the evidence is enough that I cannot protest, and your trial will be at the Queen’s leisure. You are under letire di cachet, my son, and you will receive the treatment due your rank and the charges against you.”

I cupped my palms and held them up, indicating the cuffs. “I will not be fleeing the nest anytime soon, Père.” Send Vianne to me, drag her here if you must. I must see her. “Tell my Consort I miss her.”

If I had known how long I was to be left, I might have said more. But my mother pressed her cheek to mine again. “Fear not,” she whispered in my ear. “I have my ways.”

Just as she always had, when as a child I feared some reprisal. My father gave me no comforting words, merely measured me again, shook his head, and left, his heels fair threatening to strike sparks. The door clanged to, and my mother trailed behind him, exchanging some low words with the guard, who paced away as well.

I was left to a torchlit cell, cold stone, and my own comfortless imaginings.

Time ceases to exist for a man imprisoned. Oh, at first one marks every breath, every swallow. One devises games to keep the mind from cutting itself into ever-smaller pieces. One counts every witchlight sputter of the torch, and looks forward to the moment a stone-faced guard will bring a meal.

At least I wasn’t starved. The food was colorless, but there was enough of it. I merely checked it for poison as well as I could—not that I thought my d’mselle would poison me, but she was not the only player in this game—and bolted it to keep myself strong. After two days, or what I thought were two days, I exercised myself as well as I could while chained, too.

The guards were men I did not know even by sight, grim and silent in the uniform of Arcenne. I did not bother to question them. I merely counted myself lucky that the one holding their leash did not think to soften me with violence.

She would not do that. But then I remembered how I had tried to teach her the necessity of distasteful actions, and I wondered if she had another adviser willing to take on the duty.

Like my father. Or Jierre.

I kept track of time as well as I could, counting meals as the swelling in my jaw subsided bit by bit, covered over with stubble. I have seen the results of isolation and imprisonment, men forgetting their own names, reduced to groveling worms. There is only so much one can do.

On what I thought was the fourth day, a familiar face appeared at the bars.

Adersahl halted, touching the new growth of his mustache. Soon it would be its old, magnificently waxed self again. He looked into the cell, and his lip did not curl.

I had settled myself on the lone cot, where I lay when it seemed to me sleep was possible. The chains had rubbed weeping sores on my wrists, and a simple charm would rid me of the risk of infection.

It was not, however, a charm I possessed. What need, when there were hedgewitch healers in every town and army? What need, when my own sweet Vianne was a hedgewitch herself?

My magic was only of the sort that would kill a man, or conceal a death. The rest of Court sorcery is illusion made of light and air, beautiful and useless. Spectacles are wrought at Festivals and fêtes, and during a duel the birthright of nobles is used to dizzy, distract, steal the breath, cut as steel. But to heal requires peasant hedgewitchery or Tiberian physicker’s training.

“Captain?” It was not like Adersahl to sound so uncertain.

Is it treason to name me thus? I decided against waving a languid hand and making the chains clash. Instead, I watched him through slitted eyelids, my jaw aching ever so slightly under the itch.

“I bethought myself that you would wish to know.” The slight hissing of witchlight underscored his words. “The army has arrived. Damarsene troops, and Arquitaine units as well. Some thousands, all flying d’Orlaans’s colors. With siege engines.”

My helplessness caught in my throat.

“The d’mselle is well, though she is working herself to the bone and spending every night in the Temple praying. Your father has prepared a defense for the city.”

I did not move. If he saw my face now, he might well regret carrying the tale.

“Di Narborre is at the gates. He is sending an emissary in the morning under a parlay flag.” Adersahl paused. “The Queen intends something, but just what I cannot tell. She closeted herself with your father this morning, and even now rides to the Temple with Jierre and some few of the Guard. The city is in a ferment.”

With an army at the walls? I should think so. I almost opened my mouth to ask questions, decided not to, again. You are best served by muteness here, Left Hand. Silence unnerves.

“I came to see if you needed aught.” Adersahl paused. “Or if you wished me to take a message…”

What message could I send to her? She has not even come to my cell to spit upon me. I bit at the inside of my cheek to keep the words from spilling free. No, I thank you, my loyal Guard, but it is best for you to hear no word of mine.

I still had my stiletto. And there was the knife in my boot. Did I wish to kill the man who would bring me my supper?

Was it time yet?

“D’Arcenne.” Adersahl hissed out the sibilant in the middle of my surname. “Tristan.”

Here in the bowels of the Keep, there were none to hear a scream or a struggle. I knew this pile of stone well; I’d spent my boyhood hiding in its passages before I was sent to Court and learned the terrain of the Palais D’Arquitaine and the Citté’s broad tangle.

Yet what would I do after I eased myself free of the cell?

You need a plan.

Had not all plans brought me here, no matter how well constructed?

Why had she not come? Did she think me so faithless? Was she afraid?

Adersahl sighed, the sound of a man with a heavy burden. He turned, the scrape of his heel punctuating the movement.

“Adersahl.” My throat was so dry it turned the word into a harsh croak.

“Captain?” Damn the man; he sounded so hopeful.

“Tell her I long to see her.” I sounded raw, unhappy. No wonder. I closed my eyes fully, the darkness spilling unkind into my brain.

“Is that all?” Softly, cajoling. Had he been sent to receive a confession? There was no confession I would give secondhand. If she wanted much else from me, she could come herself.

I did not reply. Let him make of it what he would. Let her.

“I shall, then.” A slight creak—was he bowing? To me, as I took my ease on a prison cot? Wonders did not cease in the wide world.

He left me, his steps receding down the long hall under the hissing of witchlight torches, and I touched the stiletto’s thin hilt. Escape was possible while I still had the strength.

I settled myself more comfortably. Or at least, I moved my arms so the chains did not weigh so heavily. The bracelets of raw flesh slid under the iron, and I was surprised into a quiet, humorless laugh. Not so long ago I ordered a Pruzian Knife beaten and tossed into an oublietta. She had taken me to task for it, sweet Vianne with the tender heart. And here I was, enchained and trusting that same tender heart for mercy.

If I am to get free of this, I must do so soon.

Chapter Seven

After the morning meal—or what I assumed was the morning meal—was brought, I fell into another uneasy sleep. An imprisoned man begins to slumber more and more, seeking to make the time pass quickly. There is also a manner of sleep where the mind slides the pieces of a conspiracy or plan together, then presents it whole to its owner when he awakens.

The wheels were turning and I slipped deeper, the borderland between waking and dreaming receding. Unfortunately, I was not left to find a solution to my predicament, for I heard the squeal of metal on metal and woke in a lunge, breathing in bergaime and spice as well as the peculiar greenness of hedgewitchery.

Perhaps my mother had found a perfumier. It was one of the little things a man would never think on, and twould perhaps soothe another woman’s nerves.

The rustle of silk filled the cell. Chains clashed as I struggled to rise, and Vianne paused just inside the barred door.

She regarded me. The dress was dark green silk, holding her lovingly, her skirts whispering as she moved. Pearl ear-drops, pearls woven into her long dark hair, the complex braiding in the style of di Rocancheil carried with a particular tilt of her head on its slender neck. One of my mother’s necklaces, an interweaving of thin strands of small freshwater pearls, dropped down to hold a large teardrop emerald just over her cleavage. Under it lay the silver chain holding the Aryx, its three serpents frozen in the act of writhing about one another, their gem-bright eyes winking. A ball of silvery witchlight hovered over her shoulder, casting her features into strange flat shadow.

The door stood open behind her, and I saw the edge of someone’s shoulder—it seemed to be Jierre, but I could not be certain.

I moved slowly, curling up to sit on the bed, dropping my booted feet off the side. I filled my eyes with her, hungrily.

We regarded each other, my d’mselle and I, across stone flags and empty air. The witchlight at her shoulder, tinted with green threads of hedgewitchery, sizzled. I breathed in the same air she was breathing, I watched her face, and I discovered I still wanted her as much as ever.

It was little surprise. I did not think irons would cure me.

Was she waiting for me to speak? Her face changed, but it could have been the witchlight’s treacherous shadows. She had saved my life with a witchlight once, one bright enough to tear the roof off a Shirlstrienne inn.

She folded her arms defensively, cupping her elbows in her palms. The copper marriage-ring glittered.

So she still wore it. She had not repudiated me yet.

“They should not have left you chained so long.” A trifle defensively.

Still the same tender heart. I spread my hands loosely, listened to the metal rattle and clash, dropped my arms.

Did she wince? Perhaps slightly.

She looked away, and I caught a flash of expression. There were shadows under her eyes the witchlight did not disguise. And another shadow lay upon her—sleeplessness, and worry.

Had I been unchained, I could have shared the weight. I ached to share it.

She half-turned, as if leaving me.

“No!” The cry burst free. “Do not go, m’chri.”

As soon as it was out I cursed myself. I should have held my peace to force her on the defensive. But I could not be so cold, so calculating. Not with her.

Not when she was about to leave me alone again in the dark.

She swung back to face me. And now I could see she had not meant to leave. An advantage, thrown away so needlessly. I did not begrudge it.

She regarded me again. Her hands dropped to her sides, curled into fists.

Will she fly at me? Strike me? The thought of it sent an oblique pang through me—her flesh against mine again, in whatever fashion.

“Why?” One short syllable, the word I dreaded. “Why, Tristan?”

When have I not told you why with every glance I gave you? Every time you allowed me to touch you I gave you my reasons. I swallowed, my heart a stone in my throat. And yet I could not let her take the field completely. A defeat at her hands I could stomach, but on my own terms. “Why what, Vianne?”

“I shall tell you a tale, Left Hand. Of a man who killed a king.” Her chin up, no quarter asked or given.

I would grant her the quarter nonetheless. So I answered. “Perhaps I should tell you a tale in return, of a falcon at the wrist.”

Her silence was grave, her face settling against itself. It only made her lovelier. “I am far more interested in your tale than you would be in mine.”

No doubt, my love. “Then I shall sing you a harsh one.” I gained my feet fully, the chains making their cruel music. “Do you know much of falconry? You train the bird with a lure, and you must reward it or it will cease to rise for you.”

She made a restless movement. “I would have truth, Tristan. Not pretty Court-talk.”

Ease yourself, m’chri. There is a moral to this song. “There was once a young boy sent to Court, and he fell in love.” I could not help myself. It was like the lancing of a wound. “He beheld a girl dancing, and she stole his heart. And so he set himself to become more, so she would notice—but there was a barrier. She, a noblewoman of the first order, a noble of the sword, was not free to wed without a king’s leave.”

Did she start at that? No, she only became graver.

There was no retreat now. I pressed on. “The boy possessed ambition, and ambition is noted at Court. The boy was brought to wrist so easily, and with the lure sweet in front of him, he became something…”

I remembered, of a sudden, the first man I had killed at Henri’s bidding, a troublesome minor noble knifed in a dark alley. How easy it had been, and the feeling of accomplishment afterward, as if I had proved something. And how that feeling had faded, because now I was set apart from my fellows. Now I was the keeper of secrets, and not merely that—now I was as far away from my father as it was possible to be.

“You have no idea, Vianne.” Now I only sounded weary. “I became a thief, a murderer, the lowest of the low—and it was for you. You were the lure that kept the falcon hooded at the wrist, stooping only to the King’s prey. Then Henri told me he intended to barter you, wed you to a petty Damarsene to stop the tribute payments. I could not brook that.” The scalding flush went through me again at the thought of her under some filthy Damarsene, far from home and sold like a thoroughbred racer broken to a peasant’s plow. My hands ached, and I could not stop their knotting into fists.

“You could not…” She ran out of breath halfway through, staring at me as if I were a new creature, neither fish nor fowl, found crawling in her chambers.

“I could not, Vianne. The King meant to sell you. Do not mourn his passage; the underworld has enough and to spare for him.”

She wet her lips, and the flush that raced through me was of a different sort. “Lisele,” she whispered.

Of course. Her Princesse, Henri’s daughter. “I did not know they meant to kill her. Why would I have sent you to her chambers otherwise? You were my prize, my lure. Why would I have sent you into danger? I thought Lisele safe; I thought you safe at her side. Then, d’Orlaans—”

“There was no poison on the pettites, Tristan.” Color rose high in her cheeks. “I would have smelled it. I am a passing-fair hedgewitch.”

And so much more. “Oh, aye, passing fair.” And then I cast my dice. “What was I to do, describe every moment of blood and bowel-cut to you? You were near to fainting with shock and grief, and carrying a burden far greater than mine. I misled you about the poison, yes. To ease your mind, and I would do it again.”

“The papers. They involve you swearing yourself to the conspiracy.” She did not look so certain now, my Queen. If I were to fan the flame of her suspicion, I could—and I could also, if luck let me, direct that suspicion’s course away from my threshold.

“Of course I was involved with the conspiracy. I was hunting it. They thought me a prize too, and knew exactly the lure to cast. If you think I killed Henri, Vianne, you are correct. I killed him by being too late.”

I almost expected the cell walls to shake with the enormity of the falsehood. Yet if you aim to cast your dice, to regain the only thing that matters, there is no use doing it by halves. It was salted with truth. Had I not stayed to gloat I would have been one leap ahead of pursuit.

Believe me, I prayed. And I had burned the only copy. Whatever paper she had seen, with a hand upon it similar to mine and its quality not enough to catch a nobleman’s blood, it was not mine. D’Orlaans’s lie would help me give an even greater falsehood the ring of truth.

“A pretty tale.” Her shoulders slumped, came up again to bear that burden, one far too heavy for her. “Which presents a pretty choice indeed.” Brittle, chill, and royal, the tone she had found so recently. A curl of dark hair feathered over her ear, loosening itself from the braids as if eager for my fingers. “Whatever alliance I have made will crumble, for I built it on the strength of my Consort and the loyalty of his father. If I cast aside the son, what will cement that loyalty?”

I could have laughed fit to wake the dead. My father’s loyalty would never be in question.

“Or,” she continued, “I could keep the son at my side, and wonder when the blade will find my own heart.”

Is that what you think? The strength spilled out of me. I sat down hard in a clash of chains.

“I think we understand each other.” Her chin was still tilted up. Still no quarter asked, and would I beg for respite? Her dark eyes were terribly sad, and determined. “What dagger do you have reserved for me, once I no longer fit your plans? Once I am no longer your lure?”

Dear gods. My mouth was dry as high summer in the Tifrimat wastes, where the sand burns itself to glass and sorcerous salamanders roam. Did she think I would strike at her? “Vianne—” A harsh croak, not even fit to be called her name.

“When, Tristan? When am I expendable?”

What? I would never… I could not. Was that what she expected? How could she misjudge me so?

Except it was not a misjudgment. She was right to accuse me thus, though she may not have known how right. My heart turned traitor to match the rest of me and cracked inside my chest. “No.”

“That,” she observed, “is not an answer.” And with a swirl of her skirts, she turned as if truly meaning to leave me to the darkness.

She did not believe me.

“Vianne—” Her name almost choked me. “Vianne, no. No.”

She paused next to the door, and there was a faint fading hope that she was merely playing her hand again, feinting at her exit to force a cry from me. She had never been one for those games at Court, and was even less now.

Her head turned slightly, that was all, and she spoke over her slim shoulder with a noblewoman’s air of dismissal. “I am reserving most of the papers di Narborre lost for another turn in the game. Sooner or later the Council will call for you, and I have no doubt you will be set free. I will not be able to avoid it.” She took in a sharp, sipping breath. “So. Plan my death well, should it come to that pass. For I would wish it to mean something.”

“Vianne—” The quick tongue I had never possessed when it came to her failed me utterly. “I—”

“I bid you farewell,” she said formally, and swept from the cell. The door clanged shut, the lock catching itself. Her footsteps faltered as she reached the end of the hall. Mayhap her vision was blurred with tears, the same tears that would be uselessly spent on a pillow or a kerchief instead of on my shoulder.

Her guard, whoever it was, said something in a low, fierce tone. Twas Jierre, and he had heard it all.

Dear gods. I had never been one for prayer before, fashionably irreligious like most of the Court. Yet I found myself pleading, as if the Blessed were petty bureaucrats and I a supplicant for some sinecure or another.

The coldest part of me settled into its corner, the meat inside my skull nimbly running, running like a courser. This is salvageable, the cold part said. She needs you. You will be free and able to prove yourself to her soon enough.

How long was I to cling to salvageable before I turned loose of such wreckage, opened my veins or took a draught of poison? No, poison was woman’s work, unfit for a nobleman. Falling on your sword was the accepted practice in Tiberian times.

The chains clattered like the cries of the Damarsene damned. There was no sword to fall on here. There was merely the ghost of her perfume, and something shifted inside me.

I was not ready to die just yet. I would cling to the wrack and ruin until until she sank the knife in my chest herself. There was nothing else.

Chapter Eight

The hour of dinner came and went. A long endless witchlit time, and I had lost all sense of hunger by what I judged to be morning. I lay on the cot, planning, the torch’s sorcery-fueled flame a living breath in the silence.

There were other components to that silence, too. I do not know just when it began, but of a sudden I became aware of a vibration in the stone walls. Had I not grown up in this Keep I would not have noticed.

What is that? The instant I framed the question, I knew. A sick weakness filled my stomach.

It was the thunder of battle.

Dear gods.

Why had she not sent for me? Or had I been forgotten? It was not like Vianne to offer hope to a man, then snatch it away. She had said I would be freed.

Eventually.

If the city and the Keep fell before someone thought to come fetch my errant self, would I even be remembered? And my Vianne, alone in the midst of the fire and rapine of a citadel’s fall.

The thought brought me up with a clash of metal. I worked the stiletto free and drew forth the pins from the small hollow in its slim hilt. The cuff-locks were easy enough to coax open, working the pins in and slipping tumbler by tumbler; this requires only a great deal of patience and time undisturbed by a guard.

I had the latter in abundance, but the former wore thin.

I remembered the thief who had shown me this trick. Driath, remanded to the King’s justice for the murder of a drab, taught me much. As long as he had new skills to impart, he was safe from the noose.

But no man’s skill is infinite.

The day he hanged, I was in the crowd, safe in a ragged cloak and a broad-brimmed, battered drover’s hat. I do not think he remarked me. I saw his mouth move before they hooded him, but I am fairly certain it was not to curse my name. He had far greater reasons to curse, and had never expected me to save him.

At least, I hoped he had not.

The memory of his close filthy cell and his nasal whisper as he coached me in the ways of lock-tickling and other useful things rose as I worked. He did not teach me how to knife a man quietly, for by the time I came under his tutelage I had already learned that skill. He did teach me small tricks to make the knifing easier, and a thief’s way of hunting a victim, fat-pursed or not.

Of all my teachers, he was by far the calmest. Even then, I was cautious. I had learned, by then, not to turn my back on a man no matter how securely he was restrained.

Of such small habits and gentle lessons are a Left Hand made.

I was not too filthy. Unshaven, rank-smelling, yes. But at least I had possessed a slop-bucket. Once I freed myself of encumbrances, the next step was—

The cuffs parted and I hissed out through my teeth, rubbed-raw flesh underneath exposed to cruel air. Hedgewitchery may keep a body clean, but Court sorcery will not. It will not even mend the simplest of life’s daily annoyances.

The vibration in the Keep’s white stone walls, once attended to, was impossible to cease hearing. I eased the screeching door open and peered down the hall. The witchlight torches were sputtering; I had barely avoided being locked down here in the dark.

I did not take the route my parents and Vianne had, though the aching in my bones all but demanded I follow my Queen’s steps. Yet I would not serve her best by being an idiot. When next I appeared to her, it would have to be in such a manner that my actions were unquestionably loyal.

So I turned, and plunged deeper into the Keep’s recesses.

Chapter Nine

I do not think another living soul could tread the route I took from donjon-dark to the West Tower. I was somewhat taller and broader at the shoulder than I had been the last time I retreated in this manner—twelve, and fleeing Père’s wrath. As usual.

My son must be above even the appearance of such things!

And my mother, in her gentle way: Perseval, he is a boy. Intercession I craved and was shamed of at once, for a man does not hide behind a woman’s skirts.

That was something my father said often as well.

So it was a collection of dusty half-remembered passages, navigating by memory and touch in some dark places, until I found the spiraling, forgotten stone stairs rising through the disused part of the West Tower. There was precious little chance of attack from this quarter since the Keep’s back was to the cliffs, but my father would have posted guard in the parts of the Tower still accessible from other areas of the Keep.

He believed in being thorough.

Three-quarters of the way up the Tower was a gallery where I could see the Keep and the city below. This would give me valuable information—and also, in that gallery, there would be water. At least, if the pipes had not been blocked in the intervening years.

Vianne.

I pushed up the trapdoor, wincing as it groaned. The gallery was empty, and my legs threatened to shake as I emerged into dusk. Time moves strangely to the imprisoned, and I was faintly shocked to find the sunlight dimming.

The roar of battle was much more pronounced. I hauled myself out and lay on the gallery’s dust-choked floor, breathing heavily and staring at the lavender sky through tall narrow windows shielded by rotting wooden eaves.

When my lungs finally bore more resemblance to flesh than leather bellows, I dragged myself upright and crossed the gallery, shuffling through a thick carpet of dust. None of the windows were broken—this face of the tower was relatively sheltered—but a few were cracked, and all were dirty. It took much careful peering and polishing before I fully grasped what I saw.

Below, the other towers of the Keep jutted like white spears. The city of Arcenne huddled, a thicket of burning inside its confining walls. The Quartier Gieron blazed. The eastron half was all a-smolder, and the strip of di Roncail’s Orchard—so it was called, though there had not been a Roncail alive for a good fifty years—along the wall was aflame with fire instead of blossom. The East Tower, its angle providing enfilade fire with the battlements and its back to a high-shouldered cliff, flew a tattered red flag proudly, the mountain-pard of Arcenne clawing defiantly as the pennant flapped. The West Tower, more vulnerable because of the fields at its foot and the wall connecting it to a similar rock-face rising to cradle the city, flew our colors as well. The siege engines were not so numerous there, because there was merely a postern instead of a great gate piercing the stone wall. Still, rick, cot, and tree between the westron wall and the edge of the Alpeis in the distance were ablaze. Their owners might be inside the walls, but the damage would be immense, and the winter a lean one.

A pall of smoke hung over the market district; I knew the wells were deep and the summer had not been dry, but a long, fiery siege would not help. Food would be the most acute concern, then disease.

All the more reason to find Vianne and take her from this place, no matter what she thought of my trustworthiness.

The attackers had not breached the city yet, but the siege engines—mangonels and the like—lobbed Graecan fire in high crimson-orange arcs. Sorcery sparked, rising from the walls in thin veils—Court sorcery and some leaf-green traceries of hedgewitchery, though most of the hedgewitches would be tending wounded and damping the fires inside the city.

There. On the walls over the main gate, a shifting globe of silvery witchlight, clearly visible even at this distance.

Of course she would be there. In absolutely the most vulnerable place in the entire gods-be-damned city. It was my father’s place to be at the walls, but of course my d’mselle would not listen to reason.

I almost, almost sent my filthy fist through a pane of ancient, rippling, dusty glass. Control reasserted itself, and I took a deep breath.

Weapons. And a means of moving undetected. Though likely none will pay attention to you, not with an army at the gates and fire everywhere. Why not simply steal a horse and force your way to her side?

I considered this, my fevered forehead pressed against the pane. Grit and the coolness of glass, and my pulse a frantic tattoo in my throat and wrists.

Why not indeed.

Night in a besieged city is rather like the Damarsene underworld, especially when the attackers possess sorcery. Flames rose, screams echoed, horses added their own cries, dogs howled. The men had been called to the walls; women, children, and old men either hid or were called to fire duty. Smoke and the reek of fear in every corner, but twas not as bad as I’d feared, seeing it from above.

The walls were holding. There was no chance to gather news; I was occupied enough in avoiding the fires and working my way toward the Gates. No street in Arcenne is straight; they are a jumbled patchwork, an additional defense for the Keep. Where Vianne should have been, watching the battle from afar. It should have been my father on the walls, braving death and rallying the defense.

The silvery shield-globe of witchfire was a thing spoken of in old scrolls and dusty books locked in secret archives—the Aryx, the great Seal of Arquitaine, protecting its chosen holder on a battlefield.

So she had discovered how to unlock that portion of the Seal’s powers. Good.

Yet it was not a guarantee of safety. Chance could still kill her. Not only that, but each time she used the Seal, she surfaced terrified and disoriented. Who else knew what she faced as the Aryx worked through her? Who else had she turned to for comfort afterward?

I urged the gray gelding on. I had little compunction stealing a horse, and this sorry nag had been left a-stable. He had precious little life in him, and I spurred the beast unmercifully. Soot fell out of the sky, and the foulness of Graecan fire lay in a thick coat over Arcenne. It does not cease burning, that terrible flame, until a hedgewitch can deprive it of air and disrupt its grasping fingers. Still, the stink remains, burrowing under skin and clothes—and of all the things Graecan fire will attack, it loves to cling to hedgewitches most.

Looping trails of smeared orange in the sky—di Cinfiliet had reported at least five of the monstrous fire-flingers, one or two wallbreakers. And Damarsene troops flying their own colors, under the Duc’s, on Arquitaine soil.

Oh, I will revenge this. I do not care how, I will revenge this.

Hooves clattering, iron shoes striking sparks from the cobbles, the weight of the foaming horse cutting a path through the crush at the edge of the Smallmarket, where healers’ tents stood in neat rows instead of the smallholders’ stalls. I wondered if my childhood friend Bryony was about, organizing the tending of the wounded, or at the Keep. As the chief hedgewitch physicker of the Baron’s household, his place would be with Vianne, but—

BOOM.

The horse foundered, queer weightlessness as I was flung from his back. A scorch-wash of liquid flame jetted past, and the gelding screamed as he became a torch. A horse made of fire, a cracking jolt all through me, and I picked myself up as avid little tongues of sorcery-fueled destruction spidered in all directions. The horse screamed afresh, a sound mercifully cut short as the flames crunched inward, squeezing.

I staggered. More cries, running feet, a clanging handheld alarum-bell.

Vianne.

Her name forced me into action, ducking into an alley as a fire brigade headed by a stolid peasant woman pelted by. The dame’s skirts were hiked above her knees and her round, apple-cheeked face streaked with soot, the green scent of hedgewitchery hanging on her like a cloak. “Invernus!” she yelled, flinging out one work-roughened hand as the brigade behind her swelled forward, two junior hedgewitches adding their force to the charm and a Court sorcerer—the witchlight hanging above him spitting livid yellow sparks—making a complicated gesture, drawing air away from the borders of the fire. He was a young nobleman, the feather in his hat sadly draggled and soot-stained; the peasants and artisans behind him carried buckets of water and wet sheets, struggling with the weight.

The Graecan fire died with one last vicious burst. The horse was merely a charred lump. Bile filled my mouth. I spat and turned away, deeper into darkness, and fled.

Chapter Ten

I do not like to think on the remainder of that journey. Suffice to say there were death, and fire, and scenes of terror aplenty. Closer to the Gate, none paid me any heed—I was simply another soldier, their gazes passing over me like water. None could tell, or would care, that I was holding a dead man’s sword.

I did not kill him—a falling chunk of masonry had. It would have been foolish to leave him the steel when I needed it so badly. Never mind that the sword was inferior, a chunk of potmetal. It had an edge and a hilt, and I have worked with worse. Before, and since.

The Gate was braced, Court sorcerers in a loose semicircle before the jumble of wood and stone. Here it was the hedgewitches who stood behind, two or three to each sorcerer, their charms tending the bodies of the noblemen and -women whose hands were outstretched, violent, showy streams of energy crackling over the pile of material bracing the Gate as they fought to keep it stable. On the other side would be a corresponding group of Court sorcerers or Damarsene Hekzen, battering at the Gate’s sheer blank outer face, seeking entrance.

Archers atop the wall, more Court sorcerers and hedgewitches, couriers dashing back and forth, and that silvery globe, fine crackling lightning-traceries describing a sphere in the darkness.

More Graecan fire, arcing and screeching overhead. The globe of silver flexed, rippling with force, and the howling meteor of flame was batted away. It was not hurled back at the engines that had flung it into Arcenne. Rather, twas deflected to the side, as if she could not bear to send it back on its makers and inflict yet more death.

She was not made for war, my hedgewitch darling.

Gaining the top of the Wall was no simple matter. Fortunately, half-singed and covered in soot, I looked like any other courier, and took care to move purposefully. My heart hammered, my legs threatening to give underneath me, hunger sour in my middle—once a man sees death, he often wishes to remind himself of the business of living, with food or other satiety. Cold fear at my nape, the idea that I would be discovered at any moment making each step a pitfall. Sweat greased me under the filth of donjon, dust, soot, and the Blessed alone knew what else. I joined a flow of couriers scurrying half-bent behind the archers, the man in front of me with laden quivers he passed along to the archers, taking the empty ones in return. Every fifty paces an embrasure reared, with a slit for crossbowmen; they worked in relays to load and shoot the mankillers, their quarrels loaded with death-sorcery. Screams, the Wall rippling as sorcery eddied and swirled, looking for an entrance. They did not try the ladders yet, but sappers would be working busily below, in trenches that would grow their fingers toward the city.

Sorcery was not the only way to bring a wall down.

She stood above the Gate, a moon in the smoky dark. Shadows around her—there was Jierre, slim and dark, and Adersahl’s stocky figure. Other men, none of them giving a moment’s attention to me. Were I an assassin, I could have—

A crashing impact. He hit me hard, driving me down, shouts and curses. Yelling in an unlovely foreign language, he lifted a hand full of blade-blacked knife, and my own fist flashed out, crunching into his throat.

A lean face, dark hair clubbed at his nape with black ribbon, in night-melding clothing. A proud beak of a nose, spurting blood as I hammered at him again, I brought up a knee, striking true. It was sheer luck; I was weak from imprisonment and disuse.

It was the Pruzian Knife, the only surviving assassin of his trio. He had tried to kill me once before. What was he doing here, so close to Vianne?

More shouts, a sudden seething anthill with me at its center. The silvery radiance dimmed slightly, as if she was distracted, and I am certain I was wasting my breath on cursing. No, protect her, do not pay any mind to me, brace her—

The world turned white.

An immense globe of Graecan fire splashed against her shield of silver-threaded light, veins of green hedgewitchery spreading in complex knots as it sought to deflect. Vianne screamed, a sharp hawk-like cry, and I heaved the Pruzian away, striking him once more—again in the throat, to rob him of breath and fight—for good measure. Jierre was there, blade drawn, but I was on my feet and the knife from my boot was in my left hand as I gained my balance, the potmetal sword in my right flashing in the sudden livid glare, deflecting his strike. My knife sank into my lieutenant’s right shoulder with the unheard sound of an ax biting dry wood, the shock rising all the way up my arm, twisting and wrenching the blade free.

He’ll live. Vianne—

She staggered back, Adersahl’s face a picture of dismay in the glare as he spun to face me. The Graecan fire looped forward, cracking the shield and hungrily arrowing for her, its sharp, rosy fingers brightening as they scented a hedgewitch.

The spell to snuff that hideous flame left me in a thunder of senseless effort, Court sorcery few know. I doubted it would have any teeth, for I was only one man. But the Aryx, fount of the light illusions and deadliness of Court sorcery, was close, and no doubt my effort tapped some of that wellspring.

That is the only explanation I can give.

No, that is a lie. I can give the truth, it will not harm.

Vianne’s dark head had turned, and she stared at me, her countenance shining with the same radiance I had seen on a statue of Jiserah the Gentle on our wedding day. Under that gaze, I was stripped bare.

I did not care.

I reached her just as broken masonry showered around us, threads of Graecan fire eating into stone. The fireball had winked out of existence, leaving only its fringed edges, and my hand shot out, closed around her arm. I meant to pull her down, for in that one terrible moment I sensed how exhausted she was. Gaunt-thin under the quilted overjacket someone had bundled her into, her face pared down to bone and unutterably weary, her soot-laden skirts moving stiffly and her hair unraveling from its braids, she was still heart-stopping.

Still mine.

The Aryx shifted against her chest, a knot of unburning sorcerous fire writhing madly. I felt it each time she drew on the Seal’s force, pulling on every secret fiber of me. Henri had never used the Aryx thus. Of course, it had slept until she took it. Why?

I did not know. I would have slept too, waiting for her.

The world went white again, and my battered body finally betrayed me. I fell into darkness, my mouth still seeking to shape her name.

Chapter Eleven

“The fires?” She sounded so weary.

“Largely contained.” My father, grim and equally hoarse. The gravel of exhaustion in his throat, a sound I rarely heard. “They are licking their wounds outside the walls, my liege.”

“I am blind. Stupid, and useless, and witless besides.” Sharp frustration, a rustling of velvet. I smelled burning, the reek of Graecan, and spice-bergaime. Green hedgewitchery. Leather, and metal. “I should have known. I should have… gods.”

My eyes flew open. Or rather, I struggled to open them, and succeeded with rather more effort than such an operation should have cost me. The room was dark, a fire in the grate, and I had, for once, absolutely no idea where I was.

A few moments of studying the ceiling gave me the answer. A stone cube—a room in the Keep’s infirmary, one of the smaller corners for patients who required seclusion.

“Lie still.” Bryony was beside me. His usually merry face was solemn, his mouth pulled tight against itself. He was bruised and scorched too, soot ground into his hair, and the dark smudges under his eyes were fatigue itself. “M’dama, sieur Baron, he’s awake.”

Savage aching in every part of me. I blinked, and over Bryony’s shoulder, Vianne appeared. She bit her lip, her hair knocked free of its braids and spilling in a glory of dark curls. My body betrayed me as I sought to rise. I had not the strength, and fury at my own weakness rose sharp and iron-tasting in my throat.

“Be still.” Bryony had my shoulders, pushed me back down. Vianne regarded me, solemn, small white teeth worrying at her lip as if she expected to tear a piece free. Soot grimed her, but she seemed otherwise hale. “M’dama?”

She laid her hand upon his shoulder. “Take what you need.” The Aryx glinted at her chest, rills of light moving along the finely-scaled serpents.

I did not understand until Bryony nodded and Vianne’s eyes closed. The hedgewitch charm burst over me, a tide of cool warmth, my wrists giving one last bruised flare of pain before subsiding.

Hedgewitchery takes its strength from free earth, sky or living things, or from the charmer him- or herself. Somehow, Vianne had found a way to make the Aryx fuel it through her own body.

But it cost her so much to wield the Seal, and even with the Aryx’s help such a charm would take a toll on her physical frame. Vianne staggered as the hedgewitchery ceased, and I sought to rise to her aid. Bryony pushed me back down, and I swore at him with an inventiveness that surprised even myself.

He was unaffected. “Such language. And in a d’mselle’s presence, no less.”

Vianne sighed. Her eyes opened, and she swallowed hard. She was paper-pale, and I did not like the way her gaze did not quite focus. Her pupils were huge in the dimness. “There is much work to be done,” she murmured. “Baron?”

“My liege.” My father, hushed for once. “It will do no good if you collapse during negotiations.”

Negotiations? Did he mean to have her surrender? My hands turned to fists. Caught in the lassitude of a fresh charming, twas the only protest I could offer.

“It might almost be a relief to collapse.” A momentary flash of tired, wry wit lit her face. She turned away, not even glancing at me. Her dress rustled stiffly, and she swept at curls falling in her face, irritated. “They cannot hold the Gate for long without me. And if di Narborre breaks in—”

“He will not. He can siege us, but he cannot overwhelm; they can and will hold the Gate without you for a time. You serve us better by regaining your strength, my liege. The only pressing matter at the moment is what to do with… my son.”

Your son will do with himself, thank you, sieur. “Vianne.” A husk of a word, my throat full of dry burning. “Are you hale?”

Her thin shoulders came up, as if she expected a blow. “Hale enough.” Even such a gentle lie lay uncomfortably on her tongue. “Jierre will mend, too; he has already been charmed. His shoulder aches, but will be well enough.”

Of course she would turn my concern aside and speak of another. “I did not seek to kill him.” I pushed aside Bryony’s hands, sought to rise. “I meant to—”

“I care little for what you meant. But at least we have acquired valuable information from that display of disobedience.” She took a single step, faltered, and her chin came up. She looked to my father, who was straight-backed, imperturbable, and, now I could see, covered in a thick layer of grime and firebreath as well. The lines graven in his angular Arcenne face were a trifle deeper, and his blue gaze was shadowed. That was all. Had he been on the walls too? Perhaps at the westron walls, for they were the weakest. “Baron. Set a guard upon him, in a comfortable room. Send for me at dawn; that is the longest I may tarry.”

“Vianne.” She would not even look at me.

“Dawn, Baron.” And she swept from the room. Bryony pushed me back, and for once, I could not simply shove him aside. I sagged back on the cot.

“My liege.” My father bowed as she passed, the obeisance due to royalty. There was a murmur outside; I thought I heard Adersahl di Parmecy. My father watched the entrance for a short while, a muscle in his cheek flicking. “Bryony. Leave us.”

The hedgewitch rose. His expression changed—a warning, perhaps. It was the same look he had worn when he was sent to find me and deliver the news that the Baron wished my presence for some punishment or another. He rose slowly, and in a few moments I was alone with my father.

I have always disliked such an event.

He stood, arms folded, by the grate, the low glow of the fire casting his face in sharp relief. How many times had I seen an echo of his features in the mirror, and been tempted to curse my own face as a traitor? To match the rest of me, I suppose.

“So.” My father did not move. “And so.”

I gathered myself. The best defense against him is often an attack. “A birch lashing? Or perhaps you’re thinking of leaving me in the donjon again, until she can be induced to forget my existence?”

“You were not left. You were to be under guard. There have been other pressing matters to attend to.” His arms loosened, and he dropped his hands. One tapped his swordhilt.

I lacked weapons, had not even the stolen potmetal blade. I read the consideration passing over his face—swift, a momentary thought, no more.

And yet. I began a consideration of my own, a faint sheen of copper laid against my palate. Twas not fear, simply the metallic taste of approaching action, the body readying itself to shake off lethargy and battle for its bare survival.

“Or even worse.” I settled back on the cot, watchful. At least I was not chained—but a chain could be a weapon, especially against a blade. “Run me through? And be rid of the disappointment I have always been to you.”

“Disappointment?” My father considered this, cocking his head. He held himself so stiffly, as if a momentary bending would shatter his very bones. “No.” A long pause. The words came, very evenly spaced, each carrying a heavy load. “Your mother. She is of the opinion that we are too alike, you and I. That our… difficulties… spring from the fact that both of us are…”

I waited. There was no use in anything else.

“Stubborn.” My father gazed steadily at me. “You left your cell, acquired a sword somehow, and almost killed two of her Guard.”

Only Jierre. “Two?”

“The Pruzian Knife.” His mouth pulled sharply against itself in distaste. “She insists.”

“She allows the Knife to—” I levered myself up shakily. “Blessed save us! You allowed this? He was sent to kill her, or take her to d’Orlaans!”

“I am fully aware. However, she is my liege, and she is of the opinion that she is Fridrich van Harkke’s client now. I cannot dissuade her.” He sighed heavily, and his shoulders slumped. “Di Narborre is observing another parlay. Tomorrow. You will attend her.”

In that you are absolutely correct. I will. “Will she have me?”

“She has no choice.” He turned on his heel, as if he could not stand to be in the room one moment longer. I heartily agreed, but his next sally drove the breath from me as I set my burned boots on the floor and assayed rising once more. “The Aryx, you see. She has informed me she requires your presence to use it effectively.”

The breath left me in a rush. What? I could not even frame the word, and struggled again to push myself upright. There was no hint of that in the archives!

“So, it seems, whatever cloud hangs over you, m’fils, you are necessary.” His shoulders sagged briefly. On him, it was like a shout. “I tell you this as your father, and as I am very conscious of our… difficulties. Take care.”

“I—”

“Take better care, I mean. Of yourself.” And with that, he was gone as well. I was left with an empty stone cube, legs that would not hold me, and a fire in a grate.

She requires your presence to use it effectively. Now there was a mystery. What message did it aim to convey? That she still trusted me? Was this an intrigue, one my d’mselle was playing? What was its endgame? Against me, or around me?

There was a movement at the door. I looked up, and Tinan di Rocham’s dark, boyish face appeared atop a ragamuffin’s collection of torn, ash-stained clothes. His swordhilt glinted, and his dusky eyes were ablaze with something other than his usual good humor. He studied me closely.

“Di Rocham.” I gave up trying to make my legs work. Strength would return as my body realized I was still its master. “You look terrible.”

His grin was a balm, and the shadow of manhood on him fled. “No more than you, Captain. I’m to guard you. But I would wager you’d take a bath and fresh clothes, and your word of honor you won’t stray can be your surety.”

You are too trusting, and if I meant harm you would be foolish to offer me an opening. “Straying is the last thing on my mind, di Rocham.” I considered him, taking stock of my strength—or the lack of it—one final time. “But you will have to help me stand.”

Chapter Twelve

Tis a wonder what a shave and fresh garments will do for a man. Still, it may have been the six hours or so of sleeping like the dead, while the gods spun all our fates on a wheel and decided what to do next with us. I was shaken into wakefulness by di Rocham, who also looked much better for the application of hot water and clean cloth.

The city was quiet, the streets cleared and the fires merely smoke now. Despite last night’s chaos, the damage appeared moderate—as such things went. Di Rocham rode beside me, and any questioning produced the same piece of information: He had been told to take me to the stables, collect Arran and his own Guard gray, and convey me to the Main Gate. He must not have known more, and I saw Vianne’s hand in this particular fillip.

The sun beat down, late afternoon turning the white stone of Arcenne to soft tawny and the red tiles to sienna both burnt and raw; the clopping of hooves almost soporific as Tinan took a wandering route designed to avoid damaged streets. The mince pies the boy had brought me, swallowed quickly just after waking, sat uneasily behind my breastbone.

I teased out the implications of what I knew. Di Narborre and a parlay, perhaps not the first of such. How would they bring him or his envoy inside the walls? Who would his envoy be? And what plan was lodged in my Queen’s nimble brain?

She requires your presence to use it effectively.

There were stories of the Aryx, of course, but even in the secret archives the exact method of its usage was not put to paper. It was simply given from one monarch to the next—but the Seal had been sleeping since the time of Queen Toriane’s death.

The archives had much to say about King Fairlaine’s following madness and eventual suicide, but none of it concerned the Great Seal. Their son and Heir, Tiberius the Great, managed to keep the Seal’s slumber from common knowledge. Tiberius’s Left Hand was integral to that quasi-deception; it was his crafty assassinations of a few key Damarsene nobles that created enough confusion that Tiberius could wriggle out of war at the price of tribute paid to Damar. Which bled Arquitaine, true, but at least it kept her borders safe. Since the Angoulême had arrived with his army and the New Blessed to marry the Old, none had invaded.

At least, not with any success, the Blood Years notwithstanding. Those had been dark times, Damar and Hesse vying with the merchant princes of Tiberia’s fracturing principalities and Navarre’s glory-hungry Queen Ysabeau I and her cursed Consort to take bites from the apple of Arquitaine. Not to mention Arquitaine’s own nobles seeking to displace or marry the widowed Queen Jeliane. Di Halier had shepherded his Queen through those dark times, and sometimes I suspected that her Heir, King Henri I, who my own dead King had been named for, was di Halier’s instead of her Consort’s.

Di Halier had never written as much overtly, but…

History did not matter. What mattered was that Vianne, somehow, had wakened the Seal from its slumber. I did not think even she knew what she had done. The Seal frightened her, and well it should—she remarked once or twice that she did not use it, it simply worked through her. Being so used did not strike me as a comfortable event, especially when I saw her afterward, blank-faced, pale, needing careful chivvying to wake and warm her.

And to remind her of who she was.

My head was down as we rode, peripheral vision serving to keep me aware while I thought as deeply as I dared. Tinan hummed a courtsong, taking at face value my promise not to stray. Of course, I was the Captain. His habit of treating me as such had not yet eroded. What did the Guard know, and how could I turn that knowledge to my favor? Jierre, of course, might be lost; Vianne had no doubt worked her will thoroughly there and meant to use him as a balance to my own influence. And yet—

The square behind the Main Gate opened around us, and I looked up.

“Dear gods,” I breathed. Is she mad?

For the bracing behind the Gate had been cleared, and there was my Vianne, cloaked, on the same docile white palfrey. Adersahl di Parmecy beside her on his gray, and on a dark gelding to her right a familiar bruised face sat atop a stiff body. Fridrich van Harkke sat his horse like a nobleman and glowered at the Gate. Even a hedgewitch charming could not erase the damage I’d done to his face.

Serves you well. You were between me and my Queen, assassin. It was twice I had worsted him. The next time, gods willing, I would kill. He was far too dangerous to be allowed so close to her.

The other figure was a Messenger—Divris di Tatancourt, dark curls, a nobleman’s carriage, and his uniform freshly laundered. The killspell laid on him had not found its target, thanks to my Vianne, and he would no doubt be gratefully loyal. Or at least, so she obviously hoped.

My father was there too, on an ill-tempered black charger. The slim figure on my mother’s horse bent toward him, a last-minute conference.

Garonne di Narborre would not be entering the city.

She intended to sally forth to meet him.

“Do not trouble yourself, Baron.” Vianne’s face was set and remote. She did not seem to have slept, if the bruised circles of flesh under her eyes were any indication. The blue silk she wore bore the marks of my mother’s dressmaker, and her hair was braided simply.

Still, she was every inch the royal. Perhaps being locked underground had given me fresh eyes. Where had she acquired this look of brittle grace, this air of command? The woman I had married was an unwilling Queen at best. This d’mselle, her set, pale face as fine-carved as a classic Tiberian statue, was… something else.

My hands tightened on Arran’s reins. He tensed before I could master myself, and I let out a long slow breath.

“The more I think on it, the more I think it unwise—” My father’s objection was merely brushed aside. She raised one gloved hand, and the novel sight of Perseval d’Arcenne swallowing his words fair threatened to lay me flat with surprise.

“I told you not to trouble yourself, Baron. All will go well, especially if…” She broke off as we approached.

“I brought him!” Tinan di Rocham announced. Adersahl sighed, but twas the Pruzian I watched.

Fridrich van Harkke paid no attention to my presence. He gazed at the Gate with surpassing intensity, and with a jolt I realized he considered it the greater danger.

Though it rankled me to be counted less, it did not matter. A distracted man was easier to overpower. Let him, with a Pruzian’s arrogance, think me soft.

Though I would have thought I had taught him the truth of the matter earlier, before tossing him in the oublietta.

Vianne’s smile was a ghost of its old unworried self, but it held a depth of affection altogether too profound to be wasted on a mere boy. “So you did. My thanks, chivalier. Now, be so kind as to accompany the Baron and Chivalier di Tatancourt to the Keep. Watch over them well, Tinan, for I need their services. Baron, take care.” She turned away, handling the palfrey’s reins with Court grace. “Raise the Gate.” Her tone sliced the honeyed afternoon glare.

“My liege—” My father made one faint attempt at dissuading her, but it came to naught. He retreated with Tinan and the Messenger as the levers and counterweights began to move, the Gate creaking and moaning heavily. Lifting, steam hissing up as layers of charm and countercharm spilled along its pitted, dark-oiled surface.

“Vianne.” My gray nudged Adersahl’s aside, and he allowed it. “This is madness. Why not let di Narborre come to you?”

“Because I do not wish it.” Each word cut short, without the laughing accent of the Princesse’s ladies. The Pruzian clicked at his horse, which ambled forward; Adersahl’s stepped to the side. In short order Vianne rode through the still-opening Gate, Arran and I hastened after.

The wind rose, ruffling the edges of her cloak, swirling dust and soot in odd whorls. The white palfrey lifted her head, stepping very prettily, and the Road unreeled before her hooves. Vianne rode, straight-backed, the Pruzian Knife before her like a herald, into the jaws of Garonne di Narborre’s army.

Chapter Thirteen

There was some faint courtesy, at least, though they sent no herald or honor-guard. The great half-fan siege-shields had been pulled aside from the Road’s shattered surface, and we were not swarmed. Campfires burned, the besiegers at rest, the smell of men packed together too closely for too long, the foreignness of Damarsene cooking.

They bring their own spices, the hounds of Damar, when they come baying in a foreign land.

Infantry-heavy. Well, what else to siege with? And many engineers. Their flags are high, morale is good. All from border provinces; those are devices from the Reikmarken Charl. My belly was curiously cold. I had felt this chill before, riding into an armed camp, hoping my disguise would hold—but I wore no disguise here. And there was Vianne, slender and so vulnerable, the cloak and hood not masking her grace or her fragility. The Aryx on her chest sang, a thrill through the blood of every d’Arquitaine who could hear it—what did they think, those among di Narborre’s dogs who watched her ride past?

Adersahl’s horse moved beside hers, and he made a low remark. Her answering laugh rang clear but false—it was the merry biting sound she used when she was not truly amused, but had to appear so. Others would think it lighthearted, but I had watched her too long to be misled. The breeze showered us with dust, and from the commander’s tent in the distance came a commotion.

They know we have arrived.

My hands loosened on Arran’s reins. He was taut with readiness, sensing my unease in the way my knees tightened, my palm aching for a swordhilt. I had not been given steel.

And why should I have been, if she expected me to slide it twixt her ribs? Who had my sword now? Jierre, most likely. I had stabbed him in the right shoulder, gauging the blow to leave him alive; it was not beyond Bryony’s skill to mend such an injury. My lieutenant would ache in the winter there, did he grow much older.

Di Yspres would seek an accounting for that, one way or another. That was a problem for another day.

Wait. Watch.

The siege camp’s layout was standard. No surprises. Guards and challenge-patterns, the Damarsene leaving their tents to see this tiny group come to treat with them, a murmur running through their ranks.

Vianne’s head lifted. She looked about with interest, hopefully noting the mangonels, the machines capable of flinging the Graecan fire. The vats of bubbling tarry stuff the fire would be made from, each with a hedgewitch or a Damarsene sorcerer—they, as the Pruzians, call them Hekzmeizten—standing watchful, to make certain it did not overheat and explode, doing the enemy’s work. I saw only a flash of her chin, a slice of her cheek.

If they surround us, the only hope is to kill a few and drag her onto Arran’s back. The Pruzian may hold some of them, but di Narborre was his client—or his client’s lundsman—to begin with. Adersahl is a canny Court sorcerer, but against so many… Sickness took me by surprise, a wedge of bile rising to my throat.

The mince pies were sitting most uncomfortably. And the thought of Vianne before me in the saddle, as she had ridden through half of Arquitaine during our escape, did not help.

The commander’s tent was a monstrosity of dark fabric, dust and smoke hazing its sides. It flew the new device of d’Orlaans—the crowned serpent over a rising sun. The swan of the Tirecian-Trimestin family, being his murdered brother’s sign, perhaps gave him an uneasy conscience.

You know better. The man has no conscience. Be ready to exercise a similar lack.

The stamped-down space in front of the commander’s tent was a strategic nightmare. It would take so little to make Vianne a prisoner, and then I would be faced with terrible choices.

Calm, Tristan. Watch. Wait, and plan.

It was Adersahl who lifted her down from the saddle, and though his hands did not linger at her waist a bolt of something hot and nasty speared me. Twas not the mince pies.

Van Harkke took her horse, murmured something to her. Another laugh, this one truly amused, from her throat as I dismounted, not liking to leave Arran behind but unwilling to let Vianne wander farther alone.

There was no party to meet us at the entrance to the tent—an insult, to be sure. Vianne did not seem to mind. She took a deep breath, shoulders squaring, and glanced once more at the Pruzian Knife.

He nodded slightly, and she looked to Adersahl next. He nodded as well, the crimson feather in his cap waving finely.

I waited for her gaze, but it did not turn to me. Instead, she arranged her skirts and stalked for the tent. The song of the Aryx rose, its melody developing a counterpoint, and familiar fire raced along my nerves. I did not wonder at it—the Aryx is the fount of Court sorcery and a mark of the ruler’s legitimacy.

And also, twas her. I would be dead not to feel that pull. It is the Moon’s longing for the Sun, chased across the sky night and day. Or the aching of a lock for a key, a gittern for the hand that makes it sing.

How could she think I meant her harm?

Smoke threaded up. The folds of hanging fabric before my Queen suddenly crawled with silvery witchflame, lapping tongues of it devouring the entrance-flaps. They ate the material in a spreading pattern, and by the time she reached the hole in the tent wall it was large enough for her to simply pass through, her head down and her hood pulled so close none of the falling ash would foul her.

As entrances go, twas a dramatic one.

Adersahl was slightly behind her, and I was at her heels. The Court-sorcery flames died, smelling of cinna and clovis. She pushed her hood back, and the men at the map-table all leapt to their feet.

I knew the d’Arquitaine among them, noblemen and d’Orlaans’s creatures all. Simeon di Noreu, di Narborre’s foppish little puppy, with his blond curls and his curled lip; portly dark Firin di Vantcris with his hand at his swordhilt, a duelist fond of cheating. Tathis d’Anselmethe, the pointed beard he affected dyed coal-black, a nobleman who stooped to collecting his own taxes. A few others who did not merit mention. The Damarsene commanders were unknown to me, but I stored their insignia in memory with a swift glance and began calculating how best to rid one of them of his weaponry.

Vianne stood, straight and slim on the costly carpets over hard-packed earth, her simply-braided hair a glory in the haziness, before Garonne di Narborre, d’Orlaans’s Black Captain.

He was a gaunt man; food held little interest for him. Di Narborre glutted himself instead on violence, on misery, on the sheer joy of causing pain. It was the hands that gave him away—spidery, fingertips twitching as if they longed to roll slippery blood between them, the calluses blackened no matter how much he oiled and perfumed them.

His flat dark gaze dropped to Vianne’s chest, where the Aryx hung. The avidity of his expression brought a rush of boiling to my head.

No man should look at her so.

“Garonne di Narborre.” Clear and crisp, a carrying tone she must have learned at Court.

“As you see.” He swept her a bow, but his gaze did not stray from her chest. I took a single step forward, but Adersahl’s hand appeared around my elbow like a conjure-trick, and he squeezed.

Hard.

“D’mselle di Rocancheil—” di Narborre began, and the oily self-satisfaction in his tone alarmed me. The offal-eating pet of d’Orlaans never sounded so happy—unless the prey was fair caught, with no chance of escape.

“Silence.” She made a slight movement, and the incredible happened.

Garonne di Narborre choked. The charm was a simple one—Court sorcery, to steal the breath from a man. Twas meant to be transient; it required far too much force and concentration to maintain for longer than a few moments.

Yet maintain it she did, the Aryx ringing and the rest of them curiously motionless, perhaps shocked. This was, no doubt, not the way they expected this interview to pass.

Di Narborre’s knees folded. He clawed at his throat, and the Damarsene tensed to a man, sensing something amiss. The one closest to me—a stocky man with the red-raven hair common among them, his mustache waxed and his hand at his rapier’s hilt—had far more presence of mind than most, and I lunged forward a split moment before he had committed himself. The knifehilt at his belt smacked into my palm, the blade serving me far better than him at this moment, and I had his belt slashed with a twist of my wrist. Shoved him, hard, and the rapier rang free—but in my hand, not his. Adersahl had drawn as well, and I was briefly both thankful and disappointed that Jierre was not at my side.

He would have enjoyed the challenge.

“Ah, no, sieurs.” I showed my teeth as Vianne made another slight movement, di Narborre’s knees hitting the carpeting as he began taking in great heaving gasps. “My Queen did not give you leave to move.”

The substance of a threat must be such that the first among equals does not dare to test it. With di Narborre neatly immobilized, the rest were unsure. I marked di Vantcris as the one most likely to give us some trouble, and the Damarsene I had so neatly disarmed as the likeliest among his fellows as well. So I moved to the side, a light swordsman’s shuffle, and Adersahl moved forward as if directed to do so.

It was gratifying to see he still followed my lead.

“Murderer.” Vianne’s right hand was half-lifted. Slender fingers held just so, threads of Court sorcery woven among them, ribbons sparking silvery as the Aryx flamed with light.

“No… more… than him,” di Narborre choked, and he was staring at me instead of at my Queen. I did not seek to hold his gaze. “Orders. Given.”

“Oh, I know your orders.” Bitter as kupri-weed, she laughed. “Make certain none still live. Those were your orders for Arcenne too, I wager. And for Risaine. Is it so easy to kill, then, sieur?”

Risaine? Then I knew—the hedgewitch noblewoman in the Shirlstrienne, slain once di Narborre realized she was not Vianne. My Queen had taken her death hard, as hard as the Princesse’s, though I wondered at why.

Di Narborre sucked in a whooping breath. The plummy shade of suffocation faded; more was the pity. “Ask d’Arcenne. Do you know what he did, d’mselle? He—”

I could have stood to see him choke for the rest of his life.

A single peremptory gesture, Vianne’s fingers fluttering. “I know what you would have me think he did.”

Di Narborre almost cowered. I will not lie—it gave me a great deal of pleasure to witness.

A very great deal indeed.

“Whatever he did, whatever you would have me think, matters little.” The Aryx rang under her words, and that thrill along my nerves returned, stronger than wine or acquavit. “Return to your master. Inform him you have seen me, and that a few Damarsene and some Graecan witchery will not save him from my wrath. I am the holder of the Aryx, I am the Queen, and you are forbidden my presence again, on pain of death.” She tilted her head. A pause stretched every nerve to breaking. “I will give you a gift to take back to Timrothe d’Orlaans, as well.”

The noise was massive, a welter of melody from the Aryx, screams and shouts and the coughing roar of flame from outside. The tent’s walls flapped, lines straining against a sudden wind. Heat roared through the hole behind us, and the rest of the tent burst into flame. The Damarsene shouted, wisely dropping to the ground; every d’Arquitaine, however, stayed bolt-upright, their knees locked.

Every one but Garonne di Narborre, who stared up at Vianne. The mocking smile was gone from his sharp hungry face, and he gaped as if he had never seen her before.

Like a man witnessing a miracle.

Flags of charred fabric flapped, lifting away, the heavily resined tent-lines sparking and fizzing as they burned. Vianne stood, straight as a sword in the midst of the chaos, and my heart lodged itself in my throat. It forgot to beat, that senseless organ; it forgot everything but her name.

A final lick of silvery witchflame, and the map-table went up in a burst of orange and yellow. Smoke lifted, a cleaner reek than the Graecan fire. A hush descended outside, and I did not dare to glance away from my Queen, who gazed down on the cringing di Narborre. Her curls lifted, stirred by the hot, playful breeze.

The flagrant power was almost as terrifying as the precision of her control. The sensation of her using the Aryx was a velvet rasp against every inch of me, reaching down to bone and spilling out through my fingertips. How could the rest of them seem so unaffected? Perhaps terror robbed them of the ability to react.

“This is the gift,” she said clearly. “I allow you to live, Garonne di Narborre. Run back to your murdering master. Tell him I am coming.”

Her pale hands lifted; she settled the velvet hood over her hair and turned. Rich material fell forward, hiding her face, and her thin shoulders trembled.

Help her.

I dropped the sword, spun the knife to reverse it along my forearm, and reached her just as she swayed. The movement tipped her into my arms. I did my best to make it appear as if it were intentional, as if she had sought my presence, without making her appear weak. Still, di Narborre’s close-set, red-tinted eyes lit, hungry as ever, as I took her under my wing.

So to speak.

He came up in a stumbling rush, but Adersahl di Parmecy was there before I could even cry warning. His rapier point dipped, resting at the hollow of di Narborre’s throat.

“Do not,” the Queen’s Guard said, coolly. “Or another shall carry your message, and you shall dine with Death tonight.”

Vianne almost staggered. I held her upright, glanced through the ruins of the tent.

The vats of Graecan fire had exploded. The siege engines lay twisted and useless, moans and shrieks rising in a chorus of the mad, horses screaming with fear. The half-fan siege-shields before Arcenne’s Gate burned merrily, sending up plumes of black oily smoke.

Blessed save us. She did this?

“Tristan,” she whispered, and leaned in to me. For a few moments I almost thought she had forgotten.

But no. She stiffened, the Aryx’s melody receding, velvet turning to a scraping along my nerves. “Vianne,” I answered, stupidly, pointlessly.

The Pruzian Knife appeared, wreathed in smoke, his gloved fists holding the reins. His eyes were round, and he was ashen.

I did not blame him.

Whatever she thought, whatever she suspected, for that moment Vianne clung to me. And it was enough.

Chapter Fourteen

“Decamped. In an unseemly haste, as well.” My father sounded far more amused than the situation warranted. The decanter gurgled as he poured a measure of heavy red unwatered wine. He looked fair to bursting with satisfaction, and of a sudden, I longed to smash something.

Freshly bathed, freshly clothed as well, my sword returned by a blushing Tinan di Rocham, I stood at the casement, the window before me begging to have my fist put through it.

Vianne had retreated to the chambers we had shared—my own rooms, now hers. I did not grudge her the use of them, but I most certainly did grudge the way she freed herself of my hands with a decided moue of distaste once we had dismounted in the safety of the Keep, her eyes almost-closed and her mouth tight, as if one of the half-heads she was prone to had struck.

I had held her during one of the half-heads not so long ago, a bit of Court sorcery plunging the room into utter darkness while she wept with pain. I knew of the severe headaches, of course—twas gossip at Court that di Rocancheil suffered them and sometimes retreated to her bed for a day or so, blind with riven-skull agony.

Was she enduring one now? After single-handedly destroying every siege engine in di Narborre’s invading force, and causing the vats of Graecan fire to explode straight up in pillars of flame? Or was it brought on by the battle at the Gate, or by any of a hundred things that could trigger such a condition? A bright light, tension, exhaustion—the list was long.

“The Council will meet as soon as the work of reordering the city is well enough underway.” My father swept up the two goblets. “The signs are… well, they are not bad. Siguerre thinks it Timrothe d’Orlaans’s clumsy attempt to drive a wedge between you and her. Di Falterne and d’Anton reserve their judgment—it is they you will have to sway. Di Dienjuste is rattling his rapier, ready to sally forth and slay them all. Di Rivieri and di Markui think this all a load of nonsense, and the Queen’s attention better turned to other matters.” He glided across the room, offered me wine.

Crusty ancient di Siguerre was my father’s friend of old, and behind his craggy face lay a mind much sharper than a liege would find comfortable in a provincial lord. Di Falterne and d’Anton were normal enough noblemen except for their probity—always a quality in short supply among men. They were younger than di Siguerre by a good deal, though, and gave the Council forward momentum. Di Dienjuste was a young blood, and his attentions to Vianne approached the edge of the permissible. The remaining old men, di Rivieri and di Markui, were stolid weights to balance the young ones, and their provinces were necessary if we were to fight a war for Arquitaine’s heart. I passed their faces through my memory, arriving at the same answer I usually did when weighing a group of men: Some were more likely to be troublesome, some were less, but on the whole they would be easy enough to manage.

At least, with my position as Vianne’s Consort secure, they would have been. As matters now stood, one or two of them, di Dienjuste in particular, might be disposed to be… difficult.

A fire snapped in the grate; though the afternoon was warm, the evening would turn chill. The wind always rose to welcome evening here in Arcenne.

Like a woman rising to meet her lover.

She will not see me alone, and the damnable Pruzian is at her door. “The Pruzian. How did she come to trust him?” I sounded harsher than I liked. The goblet’s metal was cool against my fingers, charmed to the proper temperature for a red.

“She may or may not trust him.” My father gave me a sharp, very blue glance. “She relies on you, m’fils. The Pruzian is a useful tool, no doubt. She has as good as forgiven our family—”

I turned back to the window. The urge to strike my own father had never been so marked. “He is dangerous. And he is at her very door, while I am sent away to cool my heels and be examined by a clutch of old men.”

“You are lucky. The papers could be your death, no matter that Henri sent you into the lion’s jaws. Not only that, but this clutch of old men is the power of—”

I surfaced from my thoughts with an unpleasant jolt. “Take care what you say next, Père.”

The words vibrated in the still air of my father’s study, leather-bound books frowning from their shelves, the tasseled sling over the fireplace with its crust of ancient Torkaic blood still sharp and restless.

Silence enfolded us.

I decided to break it first, for once. “You were quick to cast me aside when Vianne doubted me. Now you are quick to have the Council do… what? While she lies abed, possibly in agony, after sending an army away with its tail between its legs?” I stared down at the stones of the bailey, my back tightening with instinctive gooseflesh. He was behind me, and armed.

He is my father.

And yet. “Let me be absolutely clear. Since we are men, and may speak freely.” I set the goblet on the windowsill. “You are my father; I am your son. But I belong to the Queen of Arquitaine, and even if I am sentenced to the unthinkable at her pleasure, I am loyal.” The words burned my tongue. Never too late, is that it? Or am I lying, as I lied to Henri? “The Council may examine me, because she wishes it. Well and good. But no collection of old men will work against her will. She is the Queen, and as long as there is life granted me I will not hesitate to… remind… those who mistake her soft heart for weakness of the fact.”

More silence. The shaking in me was Vianne’s—the shudders as she stumbled for her horse, whispering my name as if twas a charm or a prayer, and my own soft replies. She had mounted with that same pretty, useless Court grace, and her horse had followed the lead of the Pruzian’s. The silent ride back to Arcenne’s Gate through the seething mass of confused, frightened, and wounded Damarsene had borne a distinct resemblance to a nightmare.

Adersahl had vanished to the barracks, and a great weariness swamped me. What would he tell the rest of the Guard? And how would they react? They were a fine defense for my darling, but I had not intended to be on the outside of that palisade.

“So,” the Baron di Arcenne said quietly. “At last we find your measure, m’fils.”

Oh, you have not seen the half of my steel yet. “Do you remember when I was nine, sieur, and whipped for apples I did not steal?”

He was silent again, but I knew enough to abandon hope that it was from shame.

“I did not cry for mercy.” And I dare you to reply to this sally with any honesty, though I know you will not.

A long pause. “So you did not.”

“Did you ever wonder why?”

“Perhaps because you knew there was none to be had. You are d’Arcenne. There must not even be the appearance of—”

“Be silent!” I rounded on him. Sick fury struggled for an outlet. “The appearance. You provincial old fool. Appearance is nothing! Truth lies below it, behind it, above it—had you even a month at Court you would be taught as much!”

“Oh, Court. That nest of vipers. You rose high in Henri di Tirecian-Trimestin’s service, my son, and what fueled that rise?”

I do not think even he quite believed he had said it. The old rumor, that I had been catamite for a King who preferred boyflesh—and who was I to dispel such a slur when it had proven so initially useful?

“That nest of vipers was where you sent me, father mine.” Each word a knife-cut, shallow but telling. “And I rose in Henri’s service by being willing to kill at his word. You wish the truth? There it is. I killed for the King. I whored for him. I poisoned and stole for him, I bore false witness for him, I did things no honorable man would stoop to. That is what you fathered. And I will do more, and worse; I will be as black as I must, for Vianne.” It was for her all along. But I do not expect you to understand.

He was silent, examining me afresh. Now I felt the fool, showing my weakness so openly. That is the price of being an instrument of royalty; it means even your own flesh becomes suspect. There is no rest to be found, no safety, and even less softness.

And by the time you realize what you have cast aside, it is too late to seek a remedy. Had I not been such a sharpened instrument, my d’mselle, unshielded, might be dead.

Or worse.

Why am I even here? Weariness threatened to swallow me whole. Because Vianne wishes it. I strode for the door. Did I stay longer, there was no telling what idiocy I would give voice to next. Or what weapon I would give him to strike me later with.

“Tristan.” For the first time, my father sounded old. “Tristan, m’fils, wait—”

I did not. I stalked into the hall, and Tinan di Rocham hurriedly scrambled to his feet from the padded bench across the hall. I dismissed him with a gesture, and such was his instinctive obedience that he froze long enough for me to disappear up a staircase and into the Keep’s depths.

The familiar hall was empty, but I did not show myself. Instead, I waited, breathing lightly and silently, tucked into a shallow alcove behind a tapestry. The passage leading here was thick with dust, tickling my nose as I waited, my gaze sliding from near to far, alert to any slight movement.

It still took longer than I liked.

When I was certain I knew, I stepped lightly back and followed the hidden passage for a long fifteen steps, then slid out from behind another tapestry and a wooden stand holding slowly-rusting pikes from the di Roncail’s time. Quietly, softly, I paced to the corner and peered down the hall once more.

There it was again, that same flicker of motion. I strolled around the corner as if I had not a care in the world, my hands aching for my rapier-hilt. But no—for this, twas knifework, and I could not draw yet.

I did not wish to be caught approaching her door blade-in-hand. Appearances lied, yes—and she did not need another reason to mistrust me.

I was almost past his hiding place when the Knife exploded into motion, a flash I almost did not catch. Even though I was prepared, the bastard was quick.

I was down in a heartbeat, shoulder driven into his midriff and both of us flung on the stone floor with bruising force. He made no sound, the same black-bladed knife not lifted but held low and trapped between us, for I had taken the precaution of carrying a filched doublet over my arm. A knife is only as effective as the reach of its wielder. And cloth, any cloth, as a baffle is preferable to stopping a blade with one’s flesh.

He heaved, boots scrabbling, seeking to free his arm, but I had him pinned. Taller and broader, my weight was an advantage, and he had no companions to help—the rest of his trio had been slain the night of their attack on the Keep.

“Cease!” I hissed in my heavily-accented Pruzian. For a moment I regretted not telling Vianne I was familiar with the tongues of Arquitaine’s enemies; it could have been useful to hear what she would have had me translate into his native speech. “I mean her no harm. Do not force me to kill you.”

I wrenched the knife free of his fingers, but I did not relax. No assassin worth the name carries only one weapon. The prick of the blade near his belly, where I only had to turn my wrist to drive it home and gut-cut him, calmed the situation somewhat.

He went limp, breath coming in harsh gasps. Both of us sweated, a rankness of fear and violence filling the hall.

“I understand your tongue,” I told him in Arquitaine. “And you understand mine.”

A nod, his clubbed hair moving against dusty stone. The glaring damage to his face, though charmed and healing, was unpretty in the extreme. Though he would never win prizes even at the best of times. Pruzians are an unlovely race, ill-favored, even though the ruddy-blond Damar—who they claim kinship and share some language with—are sometimes passing fair.

“Now.” I thought it likely I had his attention. “What are we to do with each other, Pruzian? I do not like how close you are to my d’mselle.”

“I am to protect her,” he hissed in grinding Pruzian. “From you.”

Hardly unexpected, but it still scored me. No trace showed; at least, I hoped it did not. “She needs no protection from me, friend.” Heavy sarcasm on the last word. “In fact, she is safer with me than without. I do not trust a Knife whose aufsbar is still alive.”

“He is not my client now, dogfaced minstrel.” The insult sounds truly hideous in Pruzian. “My client is behind that door.”

“You are a whoreson, and a liar, friend.” Insults in Arquitaine have their own rhythm. “Your client is here with a knife to your belly. Three times I could have killed you now, and I’ve refrained. You work for me.”

He thought this over. “You cannot pay me eno—”

My wrist tensed. The knifepoint slid through a layer of fabric, and he went very still. Cold sweat lay against his cheeks and brow; I found myself hoping nobody would appear at the far end of the hall. “I do not need to pay you.” I changed to Pruzian. “For the black bird rises…”

“And the dead tree blooms,” he answered automatically, then realized what a weapon he had handed me. “No. No—”

I took that passphrase from a man much harder to trap than you will ever be. “Oh, yes. I am much more than I appear, Knife. I am your brother now, and if you deal fairly with me, I may let you live.” And he was brave even as the blade was in his belly. My skin crawled at the memory. I had not dealt fairly with the last Knife I had held at bladepoint. But it had been necessary.

Just as this was.

“You are none of ours.” He did not sound happy.

“You are bound to brotherhood now that you have answered, Knife. Now, will you be reasonable, or do we learn the look of your guts?”

I have seen defeat in faces of every shape and station, and his was no different than any other’s. “You are my master, mil’Hier. What shall I do?”

I eased aside, gained my feet. Extended my free hand carefully, the knife ready. “Wait, and watch. Keep m’d’mselle safe when I am called away. And be ready.”

“For what?” He lunged upright, using my hand, and did not seek to pull me off-balance. Well enough. We would see if the passphrase I had tortured out of another Pruzian Knife held good.

I had gained the knowledge—the phrase, and how to use it—during Henri’s long-ago royal visit to the border province of Mietsiere, to negotiate an extended trade agreement. The Pruzians had brought not only their diplomats but a few trios of Knives as well, but after the first trio vanished and the third’s lone limping survivor expired broken and bleeding on the steps of the temporary residence of the Damarsene ambassador, negotiations became much less… complex.

“You shall see.” Enigmatic enough, I decided. “When is your duty at her door done?”

“Four hours.” Grudging, the man examined me.

“And who comes to relieve you?” I could still feel the pleasure of ordering him shoved into an oublietta. Vianne had rescued him, and I found myself almost grateful to her soft heart. Had it been one of the Guard at her door, I might have had a harder time of it. He was, after all, only a Pruzian. No match for a nobleman, and his blood would carry precious little guilt.

He shrugged, spreading his hands.

“Very well. Is the door locked?”

Another shrug.

I gave a soft token rap, tried the knob carefully. It was not locked. The Knife stiffened, and I could see the hole in his doublet. I had been very close to eviscerating him.

“Easy, mil’Brödenr,” I told him. “She is in no danger.” Unless it is from you.

I twisted the knob, and stepped through.

Chapter Fifteen

The cup on the night-table held the remains of a thick, sticky-red hedgewitch brew. A bitter tinge to its odor warned me, and when I touched the residue with a cautious fingertip, numbness slid up my finger. I hurriedly wiped my hand clean on my breeches.

Bell’s-ease, bleeding mallow, and ghostberry. A powerful draught, one capable of drugging even a sedative-resistant hedgewitch into insensibility. A dangerous mix, as well—too much ghostberry and the heart pounds itself to pieces, too much bell’s-ease and the languor ceases the circulation instead of merely inducing restorative sleep. Bleeding mallow was for the grievously wounded, or those whose ills could not be cured and whose passage needed easing.

Despite the strength of the draught, she moved uneasily as my shadow fell over the bed. Her arms were up, cradling her head, and the sound she made—a slow, terrible moan of pain—tore something inside my chest.

The half-head. She had kicked free one soft velvet slipper, meant to keep a woman’s feet from the chill of stone floors; her small feet worked uselessly, seeking an escape from the pain. The Aryx shivered, a thick note of distress not heard by the ears, but thudding through the bones.

Dear gods. I dropped the knife onto the night-table, almost touched her hair. Caught myself. The light is painful for her. So is sound. Well, then.

Court sorcery is not very practical unless one wishes a duel or a delicate illusion. But there are things that can be done with light and air—a simple bit of work to plunge the room into utter darkness, a muffling-charm to deaden noise. Blackness lay against my eyes, and I found the edge of the bed by touch. My swordbelt fell to the ground, useless against this foe.

Slowly, carefully, I sank down, wincing each time she moved.

She sighed. Her hair was loose and tangled. Her brow was fever-damp; I pressed my fingers against her lips and felt the passage of her breath.

All is well, I wanted to whisper. I am here.

And now that I was, layers of cloth between us but the shape of her underneath remembered with fierce exactness, the familiar urge to touch what I could all but shook me.

There is a blind part in any man, who thinks it perhaps easier to take than to ask. If he denies it, he is lying. He who does admit it is a liar as well, for a man will never admit to the full depths of what he is tempted to commit when a woman is that close, and that helpless, and so achingly sweet.

Even after she had me clapped in chains and turned from me in disgust, even after she unwittingly caused my downfall, even as she drove me past every shred of honor or decency, she was still…

She is not to blame. You are the criminal here.

And what did it say of me, that even as she writhed with pain, my thoughts turned in such a direction?

My hands tensed, to keep them from roaming. She gasped, stiffening, and struggled. “Be still,” I whispered in her ear, stroking sweat-damp curls back. The sound-deadening charm held us in a bubble of stillness, absolute blackness pressing fiery phantom images against my eyelids. “Shhh, m’chri. Let the draught work.”

“T-T-Tr—” The sedation betrayed her, made the attempt slow and slurred. “Tris. Is… it… time?”

Time for what? I did not care to guess. “Sleep.” She was in too much agony to note the effect she had on me; I am no more than flesh, after all. “I would take the pain for you.” My whisper was a bare mouthing of the words, but it still hurt her. She moved, restless. The half-head makes every murmur a gouging inside the skull; any light is a spear of misery. I sought to say no more, simply pressed my lips against her temple and held her. Clumsy, I had not removed my boots, but she did not move again when I wrapped my leg over hers, the irritating fabric between us a bar against the animal in my flesh, and I did my best to hold her so tightly the pain could not slip between us.

A cold, sharp point touched my throat.

I half-opened my eyes, lunging into wakefulness though my body did not dare move. On my back, arms spread wide, I was seemingly helpless—and Vianne stood at the bedside, one knee braced near my hip, the black-bladed knife to my throat, her hair a tangled mess and bright fever-spots on her gaunt cheeks. She was shaking; her half-unlaced dress had slid aside to expose a slice of her pale, perfect shoulder, and I realized the light through the window was morning.

I felt more clear-headed than I had in a very long while.

“How did you—” She halted, perhaps aware of the uselessness of the question. “What are you doing?”

I barely even dared swallow, the point at my throat was so keen. I took refuge in levity. “Hoping your temper improves?”

“My temp—” she began, but I had her wrist locked and surged up from the bed. She stumbled back, . I kept pressing her, and her shoulders hit the wall near a low bookcase, next to the watercloset door. Her wrists were so thin; she struggled uselessly. Even fresh from the donjon I was more than a match for her slightness. She did not let go of the knife, though I kept it well away, her arm stretched overhead.

“You were saying.” I pressed against her. “About your temper.”

She heaved against me, achieved nothing. The fine down at her temple was edged with gold; gold threaded through the dark honey of her tangled curls as well. The urge to lean a little closer and bury my face in her hair all but made me sweat.

“Sieur.” Brittle and haughty, she lapsed into stillness. “What must I do to free myself of you? Take your hands from me.”

“Oh, I don’t think so, m’chri.” She was so thin, I felt her ribs as I leaned against her. I eased my grip on her wrists slightly. She might well snap in half, did I press too harshly. “Not until you listen.”

“Listen to what? You were to be examined in Council, you—”

“I did not care to have a clutch of old men wasting my time while you were abed with a half-head.” I noted the shadows under her eyes had eased somewhat, and was grateful for that, at least. “My place is with you, Vianne. At your side, so the foolishness you fling yourself into does not kill you. I will not have that.”

It was not what I had intended to say.

“You did kill the King.” She all but choked on the words. “You did. Get away from me!”

A lie trembled on my lips. I had it prepared, the words that would make this salvageable. To soothe her, to lead her away. To repair what I could, to build on the foundation I had laid last time she was this close to me. She had not believed then, but now, perhaps, I had a moment’s worth of her weakness to use.

Instead, I heard myself say dully, “Yes.”

What am I doing?

“Yes,” I repeated, a trifle louder. “Very well, yes. It was a choice. Between Henri, and you. I would do it again, did the gods grant me another chance.” As many times as necessary.

She hung in my grasp. Her eyes were so dark, I had not found their true color until our wedding-night. Indigo, the deepest summersky evening shade before night truly falls. And now I wondered at her expression, for she seemed as amazed as I was by the admission.

Every lie I had thought to hide behind broke inside me.

“Tristan…”

“Tis very simple, Vianne.” My fingers eased, slid up her hand. I did not take the knife from her. I lowered it, the point trembling, and it touched my cheek. Cold metal, and the Pruzian would no doubt be happy to see my blood on it. “I am a traitor; make me bleed for it. I am more useful alive, though. You need me for the Aryx, you need me for protection, you simply need me. But do it, if you like. I am at your service.”

In every way.

The relief was immense, as if I had just spent myself in her. I had not realized the constant draining tension of examining her face, guessing if she knew or did not, if she suspected, what she would think of my actions. Instead, she knew, and I was exposed to her in a way I never had been.

“I did not truly believe…” She stared as if seeing me for the first time, or as if I had suddenly melted into a loathsome monster, a demieri di sorce with claws and fangs ready to rend and eat human flesh. “I thought to shelter you from whatever game the Duc had planned. I thought to protect you.”

By throwing me in a donjon? But, of course. It made a great deal of sense now—she had perhaps thought to draw out whatever traitors lurked in the shadows by allowing them to think me disgraced and thus, of little value as a means to wound her.

And possibly, amenable to treachery. Which, after all, she had not believed me capable of.

Why had I not thought of it? Too clever by half, d’Arcenne. The pain behind my ribs mounted another notch, and despite it, I felt a curious comfort. There was no way to salvage this. I had become my own undoing.

“If this is protection, Vianne, I should hate to see its opposite.”

I did not mean it cruelly. And yet, as soon as the words escaped, they sounded brutally ill-mannered, and much too sharp. I meant only to provoke her into an explosion, for after a woman rages she is usually amenable to reason. Or, at least, to smooth words. I have used such a strategy once or twice.

I should have known it would not work on her.

Utterly still, those fever-spots in her cheeks glaring at me, the pulse beating in her throat. “Lisele,” she whispered, her lips shaping the sibilant most fetchingly.

It took me a moment to decipher the sudden turn of her thoughts. Her Princesse, Henri’s half-Damarsene daughter. “I did not know they were to kill the Princesse.” It was my turn to swallow dryly. “She was to be married. To the Damarsene. In your stead.”

If I thought her pale before, she was ashen now. “In my…”

“Yes.” Was this what the saying truth is its own reward meant? The feeling of exquisite nakedness, the idea that she, at last, was truly seeing me?

Her eyes narrowed, as a mountain-pard’s the moment before it strikes.

A lick of fire tore down my cheek. The knife plunged, its tip glancing along my chest and tearing through shirt and skin both. Blood flew, and Vianne let out a despairing sound. I twisted her wrist, bruising-hard, and my mouth caught her cry as the knife chimed on stone, flung free. Kisses between us were often shy, tentative; this one was not. Copper and spice filled my mouth, she bit my lip hard enough to add to the bleeding, and I held her pinned as she writhed and fought.

For once, I did not ask. I took what I wanted from her. What she had, what she could give, what I would die without. I kissed her even as the blood welled and the wounds burned, the Aryx between us shifting against cloth and skin, metal scorch-hot and her fingers tangled in my hair, wrenching hard enough to add more fury to the explosion between us.

It was not Graecan fire, but it burned nonetheless. Across the room in a tangle of hot blood and her fevered mouth, tipped onto the bed’s sinking depth, and it was Vianne in my arms again, her softness and the marks of her nails in my back. The hot tight core of her, desperation shaking her limbs and her teeth driven into my shoulder—twas deadly-silent as a back-alley assassination, neither of us weakening enough to give so much as a moan. Tears welling from her closed eyelids, the blood smeared between us, and when at last I let myself careen over the edge, helplessly shaking in her arms, the Aryx burning between us like a star, she wept as if her heart would break.

I should have hated myself. But it was worth it. It was.

I would do it again, as well.

Chapter Sixteen

The knife was, of course, bastard-sharp. It had not cut deep enough to endanger me, but I would scar.

I cared little. Drying blood stung as I moved slightly, brushing her hair back. I had torn her dress, my boots still on, clothing and bedding tangled around us, thrashed and beaten into a mess. I kissed her cheek, the corner of her mouth. Tears welled between her eyelids, vanishing past her temples into her hair. Her mouth, smeared with crimson, was still the sum of most desires, so I kissed her again. Greedy, as if she were an exotic fruit, our tongues sliding, and the thirst in me was not slaked.

The woman was dangerous. What would I not do, for her?

I found myself murmuring endearments against her skin, leaving bloody prints as I kissed every part of her I could reach. She lay very still, trembling slightly as she wept. I tried to press the tears away with my lips, over and over again.

You are not meant for this. Let me take the pain away. “Shh, all’s well. All’s well—”

“It is not well!” she finally choked. “It is not well! You… I… you—”

“I am not a gentle man.” I had told her as much before. I felt the need to repeat it, and immediately gave myself the lie by kissing her again. “But now you know. I am sorry for it, I can explain—”

She struggled uselessly. “Stop. Let go.”

The first thread of unease touched me. This should be so simple now. Had I not just proven…

Well, what had I proven? That I was a vilhain? I already knew as much.

“Not until you see.” The man using my voice sounded far harsher than I liked. “I am not your enemy, Vianne. Everything I have done is for you, for your safety, for you to—”

“Left Hand,” she spat, going limp and glaring at me, drying blood streaking her face. “You betrayed the King, Tristan. You swore to him, just as you swore to me—how can you say you are not my enemy?”

“I swore to you before I ever did to the King. The first moment I saw you, everything afterward was part of it. I had to find a way.” I stumbled over the words—after love a man is stupid, and I was doubly foolish to be seeking to explain this now. “One thing led to the next, but it was all in service to a single end.”

“This?” She struggled again, seeking to free herself of my hands. “All this death? You intended this?”

I pushed her deeper into the bed’s embrace. At least she could not run away; she had to listen to me. Dried blood flaked over us both. “I intended to be with you!” The force of the cry made her flinch. I sought to contain myself, failed miserably. My fingers bit her wrists, she flinched again. “I intended us to escape through Marrseize, taking ship to Tiberia. I intended for Timrothe d’Orlaans to have what he wished and much joy of it. I intended for you to be safe; I intended so much. Everything turned to ash, Vianne. They caught me, and of a sudden I was not only without you, I had nothing. Not even my honor. And you… You were depending on me. And the damnable Aryx, making it even more… I could not forsake you.” I ran out of words. Struggled blindly with all I wished to say. How could the truth turn into such a complex mess?

“Lisele married off to a Damarsene, the King dead, d’Orlaans pillaging Arquitaine—all because of me? Because you…” She closed her eyes, as if she could not bear to look at me.

Of course she cannot. You cannot even stand to look at yourself, d’Arcenne. What makes you think she can? “D’Orlaans wanted Henri’s throne for decades, Vianne. If he had not succeeded at this toss of the dice, there would have been another. Twas only a matter of time; I have known as much for years. I saw my chance and took it. The King had made the arrangements, Vianne. You were to be shipped to Damar, forced into—”

“A marriage? With a man I did not care for?” She laughed, a tiny, bitter sound. “Too late to save me from that.”

It cut unexpectedly deep. I loosened my grasp on her wrists and slid from the bed. At least I had not torn my breeches as well, in the madness. She lay as if broken, her throat moving as she swallowed.

“You do not have to love me,” I lied.

“Oh, if I do not, you will kill me as you killed the King? Or marry me off? What will you do to me? What could be worse than this?”

“I am your Consort,” I reminded her. “Until you repudiate me in a Temple. I am your Left Hand, and you shall not be free of that as long as I breathe. As one already dead, I swore myself to your service.”

“You swore to the King.” A glimmer of eyes under her lashes. Was she examining me? She held herself so still, as if faced with a wild, unpredictable animal.

I was an animal, certainly. Look at what I had done to her. Shame bit me, hot and rank.

But I was exceedingly predictable once she knew where to apply the pressure. Once she knew that the sum of my desires lay in the form of one shivering, frightened, beautiful hedgewitch. What would I not do, to bring her where I needed her to stand? “He may have thought so. The world may have thought so. But in the end, Vianne, it was to you.”

She finally moved, curling on her side, away from me. I had not just torn her dress, I had savaged it. I hoped I had not bruised her. Or… hurt her.

You have, I realized. Of all the things you swore you would never do, and now you have. You did not ask her leave, you merely took.

“Go away,” she whispered. “Leave me be.”

“You still do not understand.” I stood, the light of morning drenching the bedroom, and loathed myself even more completely. “I cannot. You would have to kill me.” I swallowed, my throat moving. “Until you do, m’chri, my darling hedgewitch, my Queen, you have a hawk at the wrist. Set me after prey or hood me, Vianne. But you cannot rid yourself of me.”

I backed away from the bed, step by step. My face ached, and the wound on my chest stung. I found a chair by backing into it, and dropped down. I gripped the arms, but not in fear.

No, I held to them splintering-hard. Dear gods.

Loathing turned inside me, married to frustrated tenderness. She was deathly silent, and I cursed myself. Not for the first time.

And most certainly not for the last.

Chapter Seventeen

She did not look at me, and the new dress—rich crimson this time, its lacings loose because she had lost weight—rustled as she moved. Her hair was braided back; I had watched her trembling fingers perform the job. She did not wince as she settled into the hard chair at the head of the table, and the small fresh mark on her shoulder, where I had suckled hard enough to bruise, was covered by the red velvet.

What did it cost her, to look so calm? Her eyes were red with weeping, but none remarked upon it.

The Council, a collection of noblemen, took their seats silently once she had settled. My hands, crossed before me in a traditional posture, ached for my rapier-hilt. Outside the door was a fuming Jierre and a bruised Pruzian Knife; seeing the look that passed between my lieutenant and Vianne when she opened the door and he realized I was behind her had been… uncomfortable.

“You are called to order, chivalieri et sieurs.” Very quiet, very contained, she sounded every inch the Queen. Paper littered the table, and the Aryx gleamed. My gaze riveted itself to Vianne’s expression, seeking to decode every nuance. “Before we examine… my Consort, I will hear reports. Conte di Siguerre? Your preparations?”

“Complete.” The cranky old turtle hunched his shoulders and blinked. He was strangely subdued. Normally he was a whistling cantankerous rattle of a man. “All is in readiness.”

“Thank you. Conte di Dienjuste?”

He was a young blond chivalier, his excitability muted as well. He stole a glance at me, sidelong. “Avicial has declared for you, Your Majesty. Between a third and a half of Arquitaine, now. I’ve sent the proclamations; we should start seeing the results soon.”

Proclamations? She’s raising an army. Hm. I caught Siguerre glancing at me as well. I stood before the fireplace, its warmth a balm and penance all at once. At least she had not ordered me clapped in chains again.

She had been seeking to protect me. I should have known. I had thrown away every advantage, and I had perhaps lost her. Who knows what a woman can forgive, much less a Queen?

Gnarled old Irion di Markui’s fist crashed on the tabletop. “I see not why we must waste our time on this. Is the man a traitor or not? If he is, let us have him beheaded and done with!”

“If you speak out of turn again, sieur, you shall feel my displeasure.” Vianne gazed coldly at him. “Marquis?”

Di Falterne, a stolid dark man with his hair long as a chivalier’s, his face seamed as a mended kettle’s, nodded. “Our supply situation is… adequate. Trade with Navarrin is the deciding factor, of course, but they are continuing to uphold their bargain. A missive arrived not two hours ago…” He glanced at the window, as if wishing himself far away.

Interesting.

“And?”

“It did, my liege. It bore the mark you instructed to be watched for.”

Vianne sighed. Her head dropped forward for a moment, but she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. “Baron d’Arcenne.”

My father, seated next to Markui, had not ceased to stare, his bright blue eyes seeking to drill through me and into the wall. His displeasure was obvious, but muted. “The Damarsene, with di Narborre, continue to retreat. They are still in disarray; the entire province is harrying them forth.” My father paused, steepling his fingers before his face—a movement I recognized. “It will be difficult to keep control of the peasants, do they taste much more uncertainty.”

“Theirs is the blood that is shed,” Vianne murmured. “Advise me, Minister Primus. Can we win a war before winter?”

I could have answered, but I held my peace.

“Most likely… not. D’Orlaans will now know you have the Seal and the will to use it. Perhaps he will seek to treat with you. In any case, he will have many very distressed Damarsene to deal with, and the small matter of paying the army that is tramping back to the Citté to meet him.”

“Tribute. And whatever he has promised them.” Vianne sat bolt-upright, staring unseeing at the table. “I would give much to know…”

But she did not speak further. Instead, she sank into silence, and the entire room held its breath. My heart ached. She had dressed as a chivalier prepares for battle, doing her best to ignore my presence. I had cleaned off the blood as well as possible, and my face itched and burned. What did they think of the fresh slice down my cheek?

Did it matter? All that mattered was what she would do now.

The quiet stretched, an unsound fit to scrape nerves raw. Finally, Vianne sighed again. She looked up, and her dark eyes were clear and steady. “Sieurs et chivalieri,” she said formally, “my Consort stands accused of treason to Henri di Tirecian-Trimestin, the former King of Arquitaine. I wish you to advise me on the matter of his innocence, his trustworthiness, and his fitness to continue as my Consort. You are to examine him. He is to answer every question thoroughly and to your satisfaction. When you are finished, you may set him free or attend to the details of his execution.” A heavy pause, and she rose with a slight soft sound of velvet moving. “I leave the matter to you.”

Every one of them leapt to his feet. She swept down the fireside length of the table, and she did not glance at me. The pulse beat frantically in her throat, and moving air brought me a breath of bergaime and spice, green hedgewitchery and the indefinable note of her skin. I could still feel her under me, the marks of her nails in my back and a slight pleasant lassitude.

I swallowed the stone in my throat.

She paused at the door. “And…” Her head turned, I saw the curve of her cheek, the shape of her chin, and a glitter of swinging ruby ear-drops. “Should you judge him guilty, sieurs, tis not necessary for him to leave this room alive.”

And then she was gone, the door closing with a quiet, definite snick.

They questioned me. Not ruthlessly, and I could sense my father’s hand as if behind a screen.

Of course. She is not as tractable as they thought. I am a way to keep hold on her, and most of them are his friends of old. They attend the provincial Assizes together. I forced myself to concentrate, spinning my story. To Vianne I would admit my guilt. Not to these men.

Of them all, it was di Rivieri and d’Anton who gave me the most trouble. Over and over they asked small questions, manifestly not believing my answers. In their insistence I saw Vianne’s influence—she had laid her ground well, perhaps hoping their calm thoughtfulness would sway the others. But di Markui still fumed over her taking him to task, di Siguerre thought it a load of nonsense and foppery intrigue, di Falterne simply listened, and di Dienjuste took up my cause with almost courtsong fervor. I had often noticed di Dienjuste seemed half in love with Vianne himself, and he seemed to consider me a proxy for his own suit. It was odd that he would defend me so strongly… so odd I wished I had the opportunity to sit and quietly think until I could wily-farrat out why.

But I needed all my wit to face them, and to keep my lies in proper order.

My father, after noting that he could not very well be expected to judge his son dispassionately, leaned back in his chair and folded his arms, his gaze an uncomfortable weight. I had thought I had outgrown such discomfort.

I was wrong.

“And you bear her no ill will for clapping you in chains?” di Rivieri persisted. “For if a woman had done so to me—”

“She is not merely a woman.” Immediate disagreement leapt from me. She is Vianne, she is mine, and you shall watch your words. “She is the Queen. She could not take the chance of leaving such an allegation unexamined. And I did lie—to ease her mind, I told her of poison, not of a bloody murder. She did not know what to trust.” And I am pinning the blame for the King’s murder on di Narborre’s men. Some of who are most likely dead now. Others are no doubt reserved to speak against me, if d’Orlaans ever finds the chance. We shall see what can be done about that later, though. Much later, when all is settled. “I have oft chided her for having a soft heart.” I looked down at my clasped hands. Modesty was called for now, the right note of male chagrin. “I did not expect her to listen so closely to my advice.”

A ripple of unwilling amusement went through them.

“By Danshar!” di Markui snapped. “Why do we waste more time on this? He was Captain of the Guard. Henri trusted him enough to set him to barking at his brother’s heels. D’Orlaans—we know him of old, do we not? We have had his boot on our necks, whether his brother was alive or not, for a very long while. And if d’Arcenne’s son wished to harm the Queen, he would have during their escape. He could have snapped her neck and left her in the Shirlstrienne.”

I tensed. So did Dienjuste, and my father wore a very slight smile.

“Besides, the woman is mad,” he grumbled. “Aryx or not, she is mad.”

I took two steps forward, my face burning afresh. “I will pretend,” I said softly, “that I did not hear that. Examine me all you like, sieur, but if you speak against the Queen I will call you to account.”

“See?” Di Markui beamed, his salt-and-pepper mane glowing in the afternoon sunlight through the rippling windows. I heard hooves in the bailey below, decided it must be a dispatch, and kept myself tense, staring at him. “He will not hear a word against her. Arcenne is always loyal to the Aryx, my friends. This is all a load of nonsense, and the sooner we finish it the sooner we can return to guiding the Aryx—ah, the Queen—through the current unpleasantness.” He settled back in his creaking chair, and the longing to strangle him even though he was useful rose under my skin.

Calm yourself, Tristan. This is going well.

“Very well.” Di Dienjuste stood. “I pronounce the man innocent.”

Markui lumbered to his feet. “Innocent.”

Di Rivieri was silent. So was d’Anton.

“Innocent,” Siguerre rumbled as he rose. “Gods above. Let us be done with it.”

D’Anton glanced at my father. “Perseval?”

“He is my son.” My father’s jaw set, a muscle ticking in his cheek.

The chivalier considered this, then slowly stood. “Innocent.”

Di Falterne and di Rivieri remained seated. Finally, both stood, but they did not speak. They were unwilling to pronounce me guilty, they would countenance the others calling me innocent, but they would not add their voices to the chorus.

My father pushed his chair back. “Are we agreed, then?”

“We may as well be.” Di Rivieri folded his arms, a lean, dark man with a peasant’s breadth of shoulder.

“Very well. Halis?”

Di Siguerre coughed. “Tristan d’Arcenne, you are ajudged innocent by peers. Be on your way.”

Not one of you is my peer, sieurs, but at least this gives me room to maneuver. Which is a boon in any battle. “My thanks, sieurs et chivalieri.”

The feeling of liberation lasted only until I opened the door and found the hall deserted. I set off to find Vianne and begin, in whatever way I could, to repair the damage, but she was not to be found.

For while I had been examined so thoroughly, the Queen of Arquitaine had ridden forth from Arcenne’s still-smoking Gate with her Guard and a Pruzian Knife. Her instructions, handed to my father on a sheaf of parchment bearing the impress of the Great Seal, were explicit. We were to stay at Arcenne until she gave us leave to move, under pain of her displeasure.

We sent out riders to comb the province, but she had evaporated into Arquitaine.

Well-played, my love. Well-played indeed.