The Dread Wyrm

Chapter Seventeen

Albinkirk-The Company

The arrival of the Queen and the young King should have been a wonder in the streets of Albinkirk, but the threat of imminent war-war with the Wild-was distracting, and the distraction was personified by the soul-splitting shrieks that emanated from the citadel. The citizens should have grown used to them, after three weeks, but they couldn’t-the sounds were always discordant and sudden, and there was neither rhyme nor reason to them-just the endless screams of an anguished soul in the fires of hell, or so many said to one another as they looked at their terrified children and their equally terrified cats and dogs, ears back, hissing or barking.

The Queen entered her city of Albinkirk on the second Wednesday after Easter. She rode easily with her babe on her lap, and the Red Knight rode by her side. She was attended by a dozen ladies, and at their backs came more than two hundred knights, led by the Red Knight’s retinue, and then the Royal Guard, both in scarlet, and they were followed by the riot of armorial bearings that marked the lords of the northern Brogat-Lord Wayland with his knights and retainers, and the Squire of Snellgund and his men, and a dozen lesser lords. Behind them came the archers of the company, such as were present, and then companies of archers from throughout the north and east of the realm-twenty small companies that the Red Knight had gathered on the road, or that had already made camp in the fields around the chapel at South Ford.

Last of all-a post of honour-came two dozen knights of the Order of Saint Thomas, led by their Prior. They had already gone as far west as Lissen Carak and returned in the night, but whatever they had said to the Queen and her captain was known only to a few. Men marked that they looked grave.

Blanche Gold was one of the few. She rode close to the Queen, ready to take the babe if required, and carrying water and a cup in case the Queen had need. That morning, Toby had brought her a fine riding horse with a new saddle, and she had not spurned it.

“For the entrance,” he said, and he grinned.

She accepted it. In the midst of war, and peril, her own troubles had sunk away to nothing. The Queen’s insistence that she be treated, not as a servant, but one of her ladies, had met with no resistance. War changed many things. The Queen’s court was a riding court, and by the time she passed under the archway that marked the stained old gates of Albinkirk, Blanche was Lady Blanche in every way that mattered.

She liked it. Come war and Wild, she was happy enough.

To Blanche, the town looked dirty and ill-used. It was hard to hide that it had been taken-brutally-by the Wild the year before. A few house fronts were new-the Etruscan merchants had frescoed the fronts of their houses, and rebuilt the fine porticos that had once lent the street distinction. But for every house repaired, five looked at the street with gaping empty windows and broken doors. The cobbles themselves were ill kept, and raw sewage ran down the middle of the High Street.

It was all rather provincial to a woman from Harndon, with deep cisterns, sewers that functioned most days, and where a stream of effluvium like this was only seen by the poor north of Cheapside.

But Blanche took her cues from the Queen, who beamed with apparent pleasure at everything, smiled at children however furtive, and raised her son to be cheered by even the thinnest, meanest crowds.

They were well up the High Street when the first scream echoed down from the citadel. Men flinched. Women hid their heads.

The Queen looked around as if she’d been struck.

The Red Knight made a face. Blanche found she spent far too much time looking at him, assumed everyone knew she did it, and cursed herself for it, but one result was that she’d learned he had a repertoire of facial expressions he used when he thought no one was looking, or perhaps he didn’t care-at any rate, she knew that one, and it told her he knew what the noise was. Even that he was responsible for it. He didn’t say anything, though, and it was not repeated.

In the main square-scorched and broken and marked by last year’s battle-the Queen stopped before the gates of the citadel and met the city’s sacred lord-the Bishop of Albinkirk. He escorted her to mass in the once great cathedral, which currently had a roof only over part of the nave. The knights of the Order did a great deal to aid the singing, as did a dozen monks and nuns who’d followed the Queen from Lorica.

Blanche enjoyed mass-the first proper mass in a proper church that she’d seen since the Troubles, as she had privately christened them, had begun. She enjoyed the thing, well done, with proper responses and good singing, and she reminded herself to go to confession as soon as ever she could-and then mass was over and she was swept along with the household, the Queen’s household, into the nooks and crannies of a fortress on the edge of war that had never, on its proudest day, expected to receive even a very small court.

The citadel had barracks space for two hundred soldiers and perhaps as many servants and support staff, and maybe-at full stretch, and sharing beds-maybe forty knights and noblemen.

The staff were overwhelmed immediately. The absence of their master-Ser John, the famous Captain of Albinkirk-was a disaster, and he had no master of household, no wife, no kin to oversee. He was his own steward.

As a result the Queen stood, almost forgotten, in the great hall-a great hall almost completely undecorated.

Blanche watched her temper rise. She had come to see that Desiderata was not unmarked by nights in a dungeon and a day waiting to be burned at the stake. Some of her light-heartedness was gone, perhaps forever. And she felt slights where none were intended, where before she had been immune, and sunny.

Blanche gave her wine from the glass flask in her basket. There was none for the other ladies.

Blanche waited as long as she could. It had only been moments-two hundred heartbeats-but the Red Knight was already sitting-he was reading a report and issuing orders at a great rate, and he appeared to have forgotten the Queen, and Blanche knew they were headed for trouble.

She made an attempt to work through the staff-but they had closed against outsiders, and a senior woman-a cook or a laundress-stood at the end of the hall and told Master Nicomedes that there were simply no rooms for the Queen or any of the great knights. Blanche caught a glance from Nicomedes-it made her bold.

She walked up behind the Red Knight as he sat on a camp stool surrounded by his own men. Ser Michael was clerking, writing quickly. Prior Wishart had a fine, five-fold ivory tablet, each tablet holding a sheet of fine beeswax, and on it he took rapid notes. A very handsome young man of her own age stood waiting, surrounded by other men congratulating him-his face beamed with the happiness of heroic accomplishment. He wore a mail shirt and thigh-high boots and no weapon but a dagger. Behind him was another such-almost as handsome, but she didn’t know him.

Ser Michael saw him first and put a hand on his captain’s hand. “Galahad D’Acon,” he said.

The Red Knight stopped dictating orders. In fact, all conversation stopped.

“You made it,” Ser Gabriel said. He rose to his feet even as D’Acon dropped to one knee.

Blanche gathered her courage and hissed, “The Queen.”

The Red Knight’s head snapped around. He saw her-smiled, she treasured that-and then nodded.

“Ser Michael, be so kind as to fetch the Queen to hear her messenger,” he said. Then, suddenly realising where the Queen was standing, he spoke rapidly to Toby. Toby grabbed Blanche’s arm and together with Nell and Lord Robin and a dozen squires, they swiftly stripped the hall of stools and chairs. A great chair was taken from under the very nose of the hall’s senior servants, who protested that it was Ser John’s chair…

Almost seamlessly, the Queen was brought to the work table, seated in a chair almost worthy of her, her cloak taken, and given wine by Toby on bended knee.

“You must have ridden like the very wind itself,” she said.

Young Galahad stayed on one knee and made no answer.

Blanche watched Ser Gabriel. He did not fidget with impatience. His hands, however, were trembling slightly.

Under the table, one foot was grinding, grinding, as if it could cut a hole through the stone flags.

Somewhere high above them, the damned soul screamed its torment again.

“Damn,” the captain said.

The Queen looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

He cleared his throat.

“We are all anxious to hear your messages,” the Queen said.

Galahad D’Acon nodded. “Your grace, I found Ser John-that is, the Count of Albinkirk-in fine spirits, well dug in with almost five hundred lances at Gilson’s Hole.”

Blanche saw the captain pound a fist into his own left palm-he and Ser Michael shared a grin.

“He reports…” Galahad dropped his voice. “The defeat suffered by the Emperor on Monday at the Inn of Dorling. The Emperor is dead, and his army badly beaten up. He’s mustered more than a thousand survivors at Gilson’s Hole and intends to cover their retreat.”

Blanche saw it on all their faces-all the men and women that she’d come to know on the road. She knew they’d served the Emperor. She knew that they had friends in that army.

She saw Ser Christos, who was always courtly and fine to her with his pretty accent and his funny manners, turn grey and age a year. She saw Michael wince. But most of all she saw Ser Gabriel.

His face did not change. He swallowed carefully, but she’d been watching him for more than a week. She saw the blow go home as surely as if he’d been punched in the jaw.

His voice was even. “And Ser Milus?” he asked.

Galahad knew he was delivering bad news. “No word, my lord, except that your company was not with the Emperor.”

The Red Knight nodded. “Of course not. They lost all their horses. Where is the Emperor’s body?”

Ser Christos looked at him. For the Moreans, it was the right question. She saw that, too.

“At Gilson’s Hole, under the guard of the surviving Nordikaans. Ser John wished to send them here, but not until he feels the road is secure.”

Ser Christos shot to his feet. “I would like to volunteer,” he said thickly. All the Moreans in the hall were on their feet.

Ser Gabriel met the Morean’s eye. He glanced at the Queen. She looked puzzled.

“Go and fetch the Emperor,” he said. “Take fifty knights. Chris, it is all I can spare. You know I would send more.”

Ser Christos bowed. He was crying. He paused to bend a knee to the barbarian Queen, and Ser Alcaeus stepped up behind him.

“Your grace, it is almost a thousand years since an Emperor has been lost in battle,” he said.

Desiderata was not slow. “Please, gentlemen…” she said. She rose. “Please give these gentlemen every assistance. I know that the loss of my husband bade fair to cripple me-I cannot imagine what effect the loss of the Emperor has on his people.”

Ser Gabriel walked with Ser Christos and Ser Alcaeus to the door of the great hall, talking softly. The only thing she heard was, “Don’t let the Nordikaans suicide.”

Then the Moreans were gone, and with them, most of the company knights who had gone to the joust-so long before.

The second messenger was from Lissen Carak-an Order volunteer.

“Diccon Twig, your grace,” he said with a bow. “I bring news that the Faery Knight is at the fortress with an army of the Wild.”

Before anyone could speak, the Queen raised her hand-the sharpest gesture Blanche had seen her use.

“And seeks alliance with you,” he went on. “If your grace allows, he will come here with his captains for parley under safe conduct.”

“Give him my sacred word,” the Queen said solemnly. “Let him have this, my regal ring with my seal, that he knows we mean what we say.”

Diccon bowed. “My other message is more private,” he said.

He looked around. “Is the Earl of Towbray’s son, Ser Michael, here?”

Ser Michael shot forward.

“Ah, my lord-your wife is delivered of a daughter, already christened at first light: Mary. And your lady wife and babe do well.” Young Twig bowed.

Ser Michael hugged him and kissed both his cheeks, to the younger man’s acute embarrassment.

“You must send her here to us, that we may play with our children together,” the Queen said.

The thing in the tower screamed again, and the Queen, standing-everyone was standing-shook her head. “What is that?” she asked in her beautifully authoritative voice.

The Red Knight flushed. “If it please your grace,” he said. “It’s probably my griffon. It needs company, and food. Would you care to see it? And perhaps we can find all these ladies and gentlemen food and lodging.”

Blanche gave him a nod.

Luck-and a little shoving-got her a second at the turning of a stair.

“She’s more alone than she’s ever been. She needs you.” She got those words out before Ser Michael realized who was interrupting.

Gabriel nodded. “Got it,” he said tersely, and continued up the stairs. Michael pressed her from behind, and she climbed.

There were rooms in both big towers. Blanche looked into several and they were empty-empty of all but heavy chests which probably held wall hangings. It was a start.

She paused on a landing, let Ser Michael pass, and waited until Nicomedes came.

“Can we get Sukey and put her in charge of the castle?” she asked.

Nicomedes shook his dark, ascetic head. “She is managing a great camp,” he said. His voice was sober, and it struck her that he, too, was Morean.

“If I start issuing rooms?” Blanche said.

Nicomedes nodded sharply. “I’ll back you,” he said.

“I need a tablet,” she said.

Prior Wishart, passing, stopped. “For what, daughter?” he asked.

“Father, I need to assign people rooms. I need to get everyone out of their travel clothes. There needs to be food and drink…”

The great Prior handed her his ivory tablets. “All my knights can share one room,” he said, “or sleep with the soldiers in the barracks.”

She took him at his word. Before the court had climbed to the top-she never got to see the monster that afternoon, although she wanted to something fierce-she was all the way down the other stair. She found the senior servant, a handsome woman in a good blue wool gown with two dozen silver buttons.

“I’m Lady Blanche Gold, and I’ll be handling the Queen’s arrangements,” she said. She gave the woman a brief, professional smile.

The woman shook her head. “We can’t, my lady. We just can’t-all the men are out with the militia, and we’ve no one here but laundry staff and cooks.”

Blanche took a deep breath. “We’re not afraid of work,” she said. “There’s a war. I’m going to put people into rooms. Your staff can just take them bedding. Let them see to it themselves. Are there empty houses in the town? Looked like it to me. What’s your name?”

“I’m Elizabeth Gelling. This is Cook-we call her Cook.” The woman in blue nodded.

Cook sketched a curtsey. “Your ladyship.”

It almost made Blanche shout: “I’m one of you.”

Almost. But that moment of honesty would lose her the battle. Ladies could give orders that laundry maids could not.

“May I have two maids to run for me?” she asked.

Two maids-barely old enough to be away from leading strings-were pushed forward.

Blanche didn’t look back. “Attend me,” she said. She turned and moved swiftly back to the great hall.

As she’d hoped, she found Toby and Robin setting for a campaign dinner in a great hall.

“I need you two,” she said. She carried them with looks and smile-she knew how.

She outlined her plan of campaign and had them fully in four sentences.

“Cook needs to know who she’s feeding. My notion is that anyone below the rank of earl takes a house in the town.” She looked at them.

Toby shook his head. “Close, but won’t work. I’ll write a list.” He took her tablet and wrote-starting with Ser Ranald. “He’s got to be here. My master-Robin’s-the Prior. All the messengers-they can go to the barracks, but then there’s…” He scribbled furiously.

Blanche turned to Robin. “My best guess is that the whole garrison is out in the field. Please go count the beds in the barracks, and find out how many can be fed?”

Robin-Lord Robin-was putty in her hands, like an apprentice boy in Harndon. She looked past him. “Nell? Get me two more pages.”

Nell might have put her foot down, but she was a careful young woman and she knew when good work was being done.

“We got two hundred wet an’ hungry horses, Blanche,” she said. “You can ha’ me for an hour.”

Trailed by two very young maids, Blanche and Nell proceeded to pass through the rooms of the upper citadel like an avenging army. Blanche simply reeled off the rooms to the men on Toby’s list. She did them in the order he’d written them.

Then she paused and, propped on a doorframe, wrote all the Queen’s ladies and servants, as best she knew them.

“Nell, get me Becca Almspend,” she said.

Nell ran.

There were voices-laughter. The beautiful young man-perhaps the handsomest she’d ever seen-was Galahad D’Acon. She knew him from the old court, one of the Queen’s squires. The heartthrob of every laundry maid.

“North tower, blue room, first floor,” she said. “You share with Diccon Twig and any other messengers. Tell the maids what to fetch-they’re overwhelmed. Be nice, Messer D’Acon.”

She realized in the middle of speaking that he could treat her as a laundress and it would all unravel. But he grinned.

“Yes, Lady Blanche,” he said. He bowed. “Diccon!” he roared down the stairs. “We have a room!”

As the rest of the nobles came down, she took them aside and gave them room assignments-explaining to each the difficulties.

By the time she reached Prior Wishart, Cook had numbers for dinner, Lord Gregario Wayland had volunteered a town house that would sleep a dozen other gentlemen in comfort, and had even offered to send linens and feather beds to the citadel. Blanche accepted them all. The Grand Squire-Shawn LeFleur, a man of impeccable courtesy-was instantly understanding when she tried him in private and discreet as a mouse when the Queen asked him what the trouble was. The pages had already found him an empty house and had his own retinue scrubbing and stripping it. People were backing her. It felt heavenly.

The Grand Squire began to be flirtatious. Blanche smiled and moved firmly on to her next task.

“Blanche,” Lady Almspend said. “You called?”

Blanche was aware that she’d just summoned the Queen’s best friend but, on the other hand, Lady Almspend was the very perfection of practicality in all things.

“My lady,” she began.

“Becca,” the lady in question insisted. “We may all be eaten by boglins. We can use each other’s first names.”

“Becca, I’m sorting rooms and I don’t know the new ladies.” Blanche pointed at her list.

Becca put a hand to her mouth. A spurt of laughter escaped.

“Which I had to call them something,” Blanche said weakly.

Becca took the list and gravely pressed the wax flat. “Lady Fashion is Natalia de Wayland-Lord Gregario’s wife. She can sew, Blanche-she’s not a useless pretty face. The ‘talkative’ one is Lady Emma. The ‘Bean Pole’ is Lady Briar, and she would not thank you for that description. ‘White Wimple’ must be her daughter-pretty?”

“Yes,” said Blanche.

“Ella or Hella. One of those. They can all go in one room. Well, Natalia will no doubt go with Lord Gregario. And I expect we’ll put Rowan the wet nurse with the Queen.”

“And you, my lady?” Blanche asked with a straight face. On the road, Lady Becca had been with her Ranald every night, but the road had different rules.

Becca smiled. “Give me a very small closet and I’ll pretend to stay in it,” she said pleasantly. “Where are you staying?” she asked.

Blanche paused. She had entirely forgotten herself.

“Good, we’ll share,” Becca said. “North Tower, highest floor. There’s only Ser Gabriel and the Queen, which is perfect for both of us.”

Blanche searched her tone for a hint of innuendo and found none.

“It will only get worse, Blanche. The Count of the Borders is a three-day march away and with him will be the Jarsay nobles-who were in revolt before and are now loyal-and Gabriel’s brother Gavin, who is, I gather, the new Earl of Westwall.” She pulled her spectacles off her nose. “I’ll help tomorrow. Sufficient unto the day are the evils thereto-and I smell dinner. You have been magnificent.”

Blanche sagged.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Becca said. “Dinner-with the lords and ladies, or the servants will be on you like leeches. Come!” She dragged Blanche down a flight of stairs.

Blanche had expected pot house stew for a hundred. Instead, she found that the soup course was a fine egg yolk soup with rosewater and candied orange peel-fit for her mistress, delicious and beautifully served by twenty squires under Lord Robin.

“Where’s Toby?” she whispered.

“Making sure the pages are fed.” Robin smiled. “Go and eat.”

Pork pies rolled out next, and Blanche recognized that Cook must be serving prepared food-emptying the larder. She ate with gusto.

The turkey with raspberries was superb, and the Queen glowed and toasted her knights. The court ate voraciously, as men and women who have been in the saddle days on end will do, and drank to match.

“Cook wishes a word,” whispered a voice in her ear and was gone, and she smiled at her neighbour-the Grand Squire, now so polite as to be near to flirtatious-rose and slipped away along the table, pausing to offer a good curtsey to the Queen.

The Queen had her hand on the Red Knight’s hand.

A sliver of ice went down her back, and she cursed.

The Red Knight turned and met Blanche’s eye across the table. He had candles behind him, which gave him an incongruous halo. He smiled-and went back to talking to the Queen.

Damn him.

Nicomedes intercepted her at the head of the stairs.

“We’ll go together,” he said.

She smiled, and they walked down the broad serving stairs-so like the stairs at the palace in Harndon, she thought. They went down one flight and turned into the kitchen, which was more than half the size of the great hall, with two great fires roaring. The heat was enormous, but not unwelcome in late spring.

Cook came up, wiping her hands.

“That’s all my food, served,” she said. “Now what do we do?”

“Buy more?” Master Nicomedes said patiently.

Cook eyed him suspiciously. “Who are you, any road?”

Blanche nodded. “He is the Queen’s master of household. And the captain’s.”

“What captain?”

“The Duke of Thrake,” said Master Nicomedes.

“Oh!” said Cook.

“Give me or any of my people a list by first light and we’ll have it on your work tables by matins,” Nicomedes said. “I have household stores of my own.”

“Saffron? Sugar?” Cook asked. “I’m out.”

Blanche decided to stay to her role and pushed away the image of the Queen’s hand on the Red Knight’s. “As you seem settled, I’ll return to my dinner,” she said.

Nicomedes, a gallant man, bowed. “My lady,” he said.

But escape was not so easy, and Goodwife Elizabeth was waiting for her at the stairs.

“I’m out of linens and straw pallets and bed cases and towels-and everything else.” She looked defiant, as if being out of things justified defiance.

It was professional anger that made Blanche bridle, not false gentility. The laundry in the palace of Harndon had never, ever run out of anything. “Get more,” she snapped.

“But where!” asked the woman who must be the laundress or some such.

Blanche snapped her fingers. “There must be lords and ladies hereabouts who would be honoured to spare the Queen a bed sheet or two,” she said. “Or summon your women and get sewing.”

“There’s no spare linen. Lady, we’re poor. We don’t have the resources of a palace.” She bowed her head, humiliated, and Blanche felt terrible.

“I’m sorry, Goodwife. Listen-I’ll ask among the squires. Many of these gentlemen go to war very well appointed.” She put a hand on the woman’s arm and was horrified to hear a sob.

She buttonholed Toby and sent the squires scurrying for more sheets-for any spare linen not made up. She passed the great hall only long enough to find a cup of wine pressed into her hand and a bit of apple tart. She drank the one, ate the other, and found one of Sukey’s girls holding a great bolt of linen-forty yards at least.

“Miss Sukey says her best compliments an’ will this help.” The young woman was not dressed for a palace but for a tavern, and the squires proved suddenly unable to do any work. Blanche smiled, took the roll of linen, and said, “Please go straight back and tell her that, as always, I owe her. This goes on the Queen’s account. Can you sew?”

The young woman-Blanche’s age or maybe younger-shook her head and grinned. “I can make a shift if someone else cuts it,” she said.

Blanche laughed. “Tell Sukey I’ll take every woman who can sew that she can spare.”

The next time Blanche passed the great hall it was to answer a call direct from the Queen.

She found the queen in her chambers. They were fully appointed-bedspread, hangings, two good mattresses and a feather bed, counterpane and two beautiful blankets.

She and Lady Almspend and Lady Briar undressed the Queen, re-swaddled the baby and got the Queen in and out of a hot bath. Blanche, without thinking, swept all the Queen’s linens into a bundle, wrapped it with the zone that the queen wore under her breasts, and-

Becca Almspend stripped it out of her hands. “That will save the girl a mort of work,” she said, laughing.

Lady Briar-older, but new to court-smiled. “You must teach me to do that. It will save time.” She grinned. She had a large but very pleasant mouth and more teeth than many. “Papa said we’d be worked like servants-but I didn’t realize how good you’d be at it. I feel like a third wheel.”

Becca smiled at Blanche. “We’ve had lots of practice and we’re happy to have you, Briar,” she said.

It was all Blanche could manage not to carry the bundle down the stairs. But before she was all the way to the great hall-her third visit-she passed a pair of laundry maids going up. They curtsied and she felt a fraud.

The commanders were all in the great hall. One fireplace was roaring, and all her seamstresses were there-twenty women and one archer, all sewing like mad.

She was surprised-and pleased-when Lady Briar and her daughter came, got stools fetched by squires, and opened their sewing kits. Lady Natalia was already there, her needle moving as fast as a professional seamstress’s.

“Not enough sheets?” the daughter asked. “Happened at home, too.”

She giggled. She was perhaps a year younger than Blanche.

Blanche opened her own sewing kit-a two-fold wallet with a fortune in tools and needles-set it on her knee, took up a sheet and began to hem.

“Blessed Virgin you are fast!” young Ella proclaimed. “I’ve never seen a lady hem like you. Look at her stitches, Mama!”

Briar was recounting a tale of her youth-a youth that couldn’t have been so very long before-and she paused, shrugged, and went back to her story.

Lady Natalia leaned over to Blanche. “You do stitch uncommon fine,” she said.

“You, too, Lady,” Blanche said. Indeed, she’d never seen a lady-an actual member of the nobility-who could sew as well as Lady Natalia.

The new sheets took shape at the speed of needlecraft.

At the other end of the hall, there was a commotion. It was near midnight-the Bishop of Albinkirk and Prior Wishart were sharing a table, and both writing furiously.

Toby came through the great hall doors. He was very well dressed for the middle of the night, in a fine jupon and a hood.

“He’s coming,” Toby said. “Right now.”

The hall fell silent, as if something sacred had occurred. Like the moment at which the host is raised at mass, Blanche thought.

As if her thoughts had been said aloud, Gabriel turned and saw her. She rose like a servant and went to his side.

He rose for her. “You should fetch the Queen,” he said. “We’re about to receive a prince.”

“Her brother?” Blanche asked-but she knew he was already in the field, covering the northern approach to the town with his knights and a small force of infantry.

She ran. There was urgency in it, and she ran up three long flights of twisting tower stairs and found Becca combing out the Queen’s magnificent hair while Lady Natalia stared into a trunk of clothes.

“My lady,” she said. “The Duke of Thrake sends that we are about to receive a foreign prince, and bids you come, if’n you would.”

“Gown,” snapped the Queen. “Yes-brown. Good. Both of you button it while I put my hair up.”

In two minutes they were in the hall. The Queen was barefoot-unthinkable in Harndon, and merely practical here. Lady Natalia and Lady Almspend went back to the better light to sew.

The hush remained on the hall. At the far end, in the firelight, the company women stitched away on baby clothes. Nearer, the Red Knight stood between the Prior and the bishop. The other magnates were already abed.

Toby came back in and bowed to the Queen as Lord Robin and Lord Wimarc settled her onto the chair that could act as a throne-and put the other great chair in the hall opposite her.

“Who is it?” the Queen asked.

The Red Knight came and stood beside her. “The Faery Knight,” he said. “And Harmodius.”

Tapio entered with Harmodius at his side. A little behind them were two irks, a huge adversarius in a feather cloak, and the black man from Ifriquy’a who had saved Blanche in Harndon, as well as a second black man, this one in paint and feathers like an Outwaller. Behind the Outwaller were two great bears and a-she had trouble swallowing-a giant white stick figure, like an enormous praying mantis in white armour.

She overcame her fear and hurried to Pavalo’s side and pressed his hand-he put his hands together and bowed, but his eyes were on Harmodius. She had missed an exchange, but then the Faery Knight strode forward in a swirl of elfin cloak and a ringing of tiny golden bells, and knelt. He inclined his head, kissed the Queen’s hand, and smiled, showing a few too many teeth.

“Daughter of man, your beauty isss everything report hasss made it.”

She blushed. “I saw you at Yule!” She paused, and leaned forward to kiss him on both cheeks. “You, too, are beautiful, Son of the Wild.”

“There’s the biter, bit,” Harmodius grumbled.

“I would never have known you, old friend,” she said. He came forward and knelt at her feet, and kissed her hand.

“I have taken another body,” he said, without preamble or defence.

The Bishop of Albinkirk winced.

“For the moment, it is enough that you live, and have come back to me.” Desiderata got to her feet, and threw her arms around the magister’s spare frame-and the older man blushed.

“Oh, how I have missed you,” Desiderata said.

“Your grace,” Harmodius said, and found himself stroking her hair. He pulled his hand away.

“Have you returned to be my minister?” she asked. “Or merely to visit?”

Harmodius looked troubled. “I am my own…” He paused. “There is so much to say, and no easy answers. We have come this night to make an alliance. But that alliance must be based on hard truths. And when the truths are said, there will be no unsaying them.”

Desiderata put her hand to her throat-as she had never used to do-and her eyes dropped. “I, too, have learned some hard truths already,” she said.

The Faery Knight and the Red Knight looked each other over like two boys sizing each other up for a match on the town green. Blanche watched them, fascinated by their similarities which easily overwhelmed their differences-despite the Faery Knight’s slanted eyes, bright gold hair, and long teeth, despite the captain’s black hair and more commonplace eyes, there was something about them that shouted “kin.”

Ser Gabriel bowed to the company. “Your grace, my lords, I propose we sit and talk. Let’s have it done. Together, I believe we can win this war-and perhaps put war to bed for a long, long time.”

Harmodius sighed. “No, my boy. That’s not what will happen now.” He met the Red Knight’s eyes. “But it is a fine dream, and you should cling to it.”

Ser Gabriel winced. “Then-I think I speak for all-tell us.” He looked at the great warden, as big as a war horse. “A heavier bench,” he said to Toby.

The Queen motioned to Lady Briar. “Bring my son, if you would,” she said.

“First, my companions,” Harmodius said. “The Faery Knight-lord of N’gara in the west. Mogon, Duchess of the North-one of the great Powers of the Wild, and our firmest ally. Nita Qwan, a sachem of the Sossag peoples. Krevak, Lord of the Many Waters, is my peer in the ars magika.”

“You are too kind,” the last named irk said in flawless Archaic.

“Flint, of the Long Dam Clan. Accounted among the Wild peoples as the elder and wisest of us. Then-” Harmodius frowned. “Exrech, Birthlord of the Fourth Hive of the Great River.”

There were gasps as men recognized the knight in white armour as a great boglin, a wight.

The Queen rose. “This is my captain-the Red Knight, Gabriel Muriens.” At the name Muriens, Mogon snarled and Krevak smiled and showed his teeth.

“Lord Gregario of Wayland and Prior Wishart of the Order of Saint Thomas.”

If the name Muriens had a poor effect, the name of the Order of Saint Thomas made the bears growl and the white thing twitch.

“We can all be enemies very, very easily.” Harmodius looked around. “But then, only our true enemies will celebrate.”

Mogon, the great warden, made a snuffling sound. “So you keep saying,” she intoned. Blanche thought her voice was beautiful.

But it was one of the monstrous bears who stepped forward. “Man is not on trial here,” he said. “Our wrongs at the hands of man are not what we come to address. Let it only be said by the Matron that there will be justice when the fighting is done, and we will have good hearts.”

Blanche took the Queen water-while she poured, she realized that by Matron he meant the Queen. The wet nurse had just brought her the baby.

The Queen looked at the bear-old, and his fur grey with age. “Will you sit with me and give justice?” she asked.

“That would be fair,” the bear replied.

Even Mogon nodded.

Harmodius cleared his throat. “This cooperation-a little late in coming-is splendid. But we all know we must stand together.”

“Tell your tale, old man,” Ser Gabriel said. He said it with a smile, but Blanche could see there was something between them.

Harmodius bent his head. “First, we must do what we did at Lissen Carak-all of us who work with power.”

He and Gabriel locked eyes.

“You put a high bar on trust, old man,” Ser Gabriel said. “But you can come to my house anytime.”

The Queen smiled. “I am willing,” she said.

And then, one by one, they all fell perfectly silent. Blanche watched as their faces changed-not slack, but alert, like people in prayer. Harmodius, the Red Knight, the Faery Knight, the Queen, the Prior, the Bishop of Albinkirk, Mogon, the younger bear, Lord Krevak-one by one, they fell into contemplation.

A golden nimbus, almost like a rising fog, seemed to fill the hall. It covered the floor and then rose slowly to the rafters-slow, unobtrusive, like water filling a pan. Blanche played with a little of it.

Ser Pavalo drank water noisily and sat.

Lord Gregario-a famous swordsman-smiled at the tall warrior from Ifriquy’a. “That is a most marvellous sword, ser knight.”

Ser Pavalo nodded. “I show it?”

In the midst of a conference to decide the fate of nations, Lord Gregario, the squire, and Ser Pavalo began to talk about swords.

Men, thought Blanche.

The old bear gave her a look as if he shared her thought exactly.

They gathered in Harmodius’s palace.

“Here, I will say what I have to say. I will not say that our enemy cannot listen to this-only that if he can, after all my precautions, we never had a chance.” Harmodius shrugged.

Gabriel found himself sitting in a comfortable chair immediately by the old man.

He smiled at Harmodius, who, in the aethereal, still looked like a young Harmodius and not a modified Aeskipiles. The others took seats-Mogon occupied a great throne of ivory that contrived not to eclipse Desiderata’s plain chair of gilt wood.

Desiderata tossed her hair. “Now we are met, let mirth abound,” she said.

Tapio sat crosslegged, and the white gwylch didn’t seem able to sit at all.

Desiderata raised her voice. It was an old song-one of the festival songs.

“Now we are met, let mirth abound, now we are met, let mirth abound.

And let the catch! And let the catch! And let the catch and toast, go ’round!”

She sang, and they joined her-even Mogon, even Exrech, so that, despite different languages, their polyphony rolled up into the aethereal. A golden-green radiance suffused Harmodius’s inner mansion, and a great shield snapped into place.

“A potent working,” Mogon said.

Harmodius smiled. “That bodes better than I might have hoped,” he said. “Your grace, you have come far.”

“I have been sore tested,” Desiderata said. She shrugged, and a hint of her former self raised the corner of her mouth in an impish smile. “Come-even here, time dogs us. Tell your tale, old master.”

Harmodius sat back. “Very well. Some you all know, and some you know parts of, or have seen only through a glass darkly, and even now, I am not sure that part of what I say is not pure fabrication, justification, embroidery. Let me say first-because all of us work in this power-that all of us know that belief and being and becoming and power can be one thing, the same thing, and that renders the process of remembering and history almost impossible.”

Gabriel found himself nodding.

“Very well. We all inhabit a sphere-a great bubble of…” Harmodius laughed. “Of reality, let’s say. Existence… yes? Some of the Wise hold it to be one single bubble, and others say there are seven spheres, or eight, or nine, each inside another. Yes?”

“And outside, God’s heaven,” Desiderata said.

“No, your grace. Forgive me, but, outside, a sort of chaos of nothing. Very, very like our own aethereal. That’s for another time. For us, what matters is that beyond this chaos are other spheres. Like ours.”

Mogon nodded-Desiderata put her hand to her throat.

Gabriel rubbed his beard and considered.

“Of these spheres we know almost nothing,” Harmodius said. “And what we know is tantalizing, irrational and contradictory.” He shook his head. “I digress. What makes our sphere unique-I hesitate even to say this much-is that it is some sort of nexus for all the others, or some others, and perhaps merely a large number. And therein lies our story and our fate. We are the crossroads.”

Gabriel found Harmodius looking at him. “You are unsurprised.”

“We shared the same head during all your research in Liviapolis,” Gabriel said.

Mogon shifted her bulk. “This is no news at all to the Qwethnethogs.” She nodded as her crest, inflated when tense, subsided like a fashionable beret. “We came here from somewhere else. Every birthling knows it.”

Harmodius nodded. “There are two major pieces to my story. One-we are a crossroads. The other-we are pieces in a chess game.” He waved his hand. “The two fit together to explain everything we see around us. We have sixty races that compete for resources. We know of peoples exterminated-we have the rubble of their works, and in Liviapolis, even records of some of their science.”

Mogon nodded. “The Odine.”

Harmodius sighed. “The Odine are but one, and I would not count them destroyed. But they are perhaps the most obvious. Let me make this quick. Powers-great Powers-vie to take and hold our crossroads. They bring the races bound to them to do the heavy fighting. To hold the ground, as Gabriel would say.”

“Why?” Gabriel asked. “I mean, what’s the prize? More slaves?”

Mogon sat slowly back. “Yes,” she said. It was not an answer to Gabriel, but a comment. “Yes, this is shockingly simple. Of course.”

Harmodius nodded. “Another of my order, a great man, far, far away in Dar as Salaam, has more access to the oldest of man’s records than I.” He looked around. “And older records still, not made by men. This is his life’s work,” he said, and produced, in the aethereal, a scrap of memory parchment.

“Five names. Five of perhaps seventeen creatures whose powers are like gods. Little, petty, scrapping gods.” He held the list out.

Gabriel read them all at once, as one did in the aethereal.

Tar

Ash

Lot

Oak

Rot

“These are not true names,” Desiderata said. The names shook her-it was written on her face.

Harmodius shook his head. “I think we know them all,” he said.

Gabriel sighed. “Do they divide up into good and evil?” he asked. His tone was sarcastic, and the Faery Knight laughed and slapped his thigh.

“They all use the same tactics of manipulation and gross coercion,” Harmodius said. “Draw your own conclusions.”

Gabriel thought of Master Smythe. “I would merely emphasize that my side has a smaller body count and tends to minimize-negative outcomes.”

“One of them is more honest than the others,” he said.

Harmodius shrugged. “My order has made a choice: to fight them all.”

Gabriel narrowed his eyes. “How’s that going for you?” he asked. “That sounds like a typical un-pragmatic solution-something from a classroom. Noble, and doomed. I grant you their power. If they are divided among themselves-surely the classical solution is to use them against each other?”

The Faery Knight stretched his immortally long legs and shook his head. “This is either brilliant or rampant madness. Ser Gabriel, what makes you think these great powers, who are to us like gods, can be manipulated?”

Gabriel looked not at Harmodius, but at the Queen. “Are they all great dragons, do you think? The four, or the seventeen?”

Harmodius nodded. “We think they are all dragons.”

Gabriel sat back. “This is the fascinating cutting edge of hermetical philosophy, no doubt, but-when we fight-” He looked around. “We’re fighting Ash. Ash, making a bid to manifest directly into our sphere, and control the gates directly, one of which-perhaps the single most important one-is under Lissen Carak.” He frowned. “Ash is a dragon?”

“Lissen Carak was the home and sacred ground of my people,” Mogon said.

“And before that the Odine, and before them the Kraal, and so on and so on.” Harmodius raised a hand. “If we do nothing, the cycle continues forever.”

“Fascinating,” Gabriel allowed. “But not immediately affecting my dispositions.” He made a face. “Except that it’s clear that he wants to fight at Albinkirk-he or Thorn or whoever controls that horde. And because he wants to fight here, I’m tempted to fight somewhere else.” Gabriel leaned forward. “Does your Ifriquy’an know more gates? I would give a great deal to understand the geographia of this aethereal battlefield. If I’m understanding this at all.”

Harmodius nodded. He withdrew a second sheet of the memory parchment. “Lissen Carak, as we all knew or at least guessed. In the Citadel of Arles, in Arelat.” He nodded to the Queen.

Gabriel flinched as if he’d been bitten. “Of course!” he said. “I was there. The King of Galle tried to take Arles by treachery-a long tale. But I was there. I knew something felt-hollow.”

“Hollow?” the Queen said. “I, too, know a place that feels hollow in my soul.”

“I believe there’s a lost gate under the palace in Harndon.” Harmodius exchanged a long look with the Queen.

The Queen leaned back and let go a breath. “There is something there. An emptiness.”

Harmodius nodded. “Let us say Harndon. Assuredly there is one in Dar as Salaam. I have felt it myself. In fact, it set Al Rashidi on his investigations, almost a hundred years ago. And of course, once you understand the game and the pieces, the whole of the Umbroth Wars make sense. The not-dead are just someone else’s tools to take the gate.”

Gabriel began to rock back and forth like a small child.

“Arles. In Arelat. Where the King of Galle has just, according to the Etruscans, been badly beaten by a mighty army of the Wild.” Gabriel steadied himself.

Prior Wishart’s face grew still, though even in the aethereal his fear showed.

The Queen looked from one to another.

“Umbroth Wars, gentles?” she asked.

“Almost a hundred years of attacks by the not-dead and the one we call Necromancer on the people of Dar as Salaam, the Abode of Peace,” Harmodius said. “Before the attacks started, there were green fields. Now there is desert.” He looked at Gabriel. “Rashidi says there are seven gates in this sphere. Or, to be complete, he says there are at least seven gates. And to that I must add that the terrain of today need not be the terrain on which the gates were set. This contest is so old that there might be gates under glaciers, inside volcanoes, or under the sea for all I know.”

Prior Wishart drew a deep breath. “How long ago were the gates built?” he asked.

Harmodius didn’t answer at first. He looked from one to another to another, around the circle. None flinched. The Faery Knight grinned and showed his teeth.

“You might have been a mountebank,” the Faery Knight said. “Jussst tell them!”

“At least thirty thousand years,” Harmodius said.

The bishop sighed. “My scripture tells me that the earth is between six and seven thousand years old,” he said.

Harmodius shrugged. “It might simply be wrong.”

The bishop acknowledged this with a nod.

“It might refer to somewhere else,” Gabriel said. “We are no more from here than the Duchess Mogon.”

“Thirty thousand years is a long time,” the bishop said.

Lord Krevak nodded. “Even to my people, that is too long.” He shrugged. “Too long to take seriously.”

Desiderata glanced at her captain and then leaned towards Harmodius. “I see how this could forever alter everything. But I do not see how it alters the next few days. Is there a weapon? A way to prevent this manifestation?”

Mogon now spoke. “No-I see it. Manifestation is power and weakness.”

Harmodius nodded. “If Ash is here,” he said, “he is not anywhere else, and when he is entirely here-” He paused. “Then I think he can be destroyed. Only when they distribute themselves are they immortal. And less powerful.”

Gabriel nodded. “Now I am not yawning. You want to kill a god.”

“It will be very difficult,” Harmodius said.

Gabriel winced. “We’re going to be pinched hard to win a simple field battle to protect our crops against heavy numbers and better levels of ops.”

“That part I leave to you,” Harmodius said. “Our battle will be fought here, in the aethereal, and it will all be about misdirection.”

“Mine, too,” Gabriel said. “I feel I need to remind you all of something.”

“Speak, man,” the Faery Knight said.

Gabriel looked around. “As a knight it is my duty to protect the weak. My first duty. You may be right, but please, old man, admit that you may have all this backwards. My duty is to protect the peasants in the fields, the merchants, the women bearing babies.” He looked around. “I agree that the game of gods should stop. I hate it. But men play it and wardens play it and dragons play it and wyverns and bears. It is not nearly as simple as killing a god. So let us focus, your grace and my lady and lords-on beating Thorn.”

The Faery Knight nodded agreement. “We may not even be on the right side,” he said. “We may be too puny to even understand the sides.”

Gabriel smiled at him. “I can tell a good company by riding through the streets of their camp-once. Let me meet one whore, one servant, and I know their captain.” His eyes narrowed. “I will not debate theology with you, my lords. But I know Ash by his works. I know two of these others-and whatever they may intend…” He shrugged.

“They run better companies?” the Faery Knight suggested.

“Just so,” the Red Knight agreed, and they shared a brief smile. “I only mean this, Harmodius. You want to destroy a race of gods so that we can be free. I say-a pox on it. I serve the Queen and the Emperor and my own interest-everyone serves someone. Let our lords be just and generous, and we prosper.”

Harmodius growled. “There speaks an aristocrat who has never known the lash.”

Gabriel spat. “You lie.”

“You-you, of all creatures, will forfeit your freedom?” Harmodius shook his head. “I think it is you who lies.”

“I say, fight one battle at a time and do not rule out any ally.” Gabriel put a hand to his head-a familiar headache.

“I say, they are false allies and will enslave us, generation after generation and you mortgage the future to win a battle today.” Harmodius was adamant. “They are all equally our enemies.”

Desiderata sat wrapped in thought. Gabriel could guess what had cut her. The others considered, each in their own way.

Gabriel took a deep aethereal breath. A meaningless symbol of a breath-a conversational habit.

“There must be other Powers,” he said.

Harmodius nodded. “The Necromancer is one. The being Rashidi identifies as Rot is another. Who I suspect is leading the assault in Galle. Or managing it.”

“Dragons?” Krevak asked.

“Not all Powers are dragons,” Exrech said. “At least one Kraal still bloats the earth.”

“Thorn seeks to become a Power.” Gabriel raised an eyebrow.

Harmodius nodded heavily. “And Sister Amicia is on the very verge of becoming one.”

“Like the dragons?” Gabriel asked.

“I don’t actually know,” Harmodius admitted slowly. “Al Rashidi doesn’t know either.”

Desiderata raised her head. “This is too deep for me,” she said. She looked at the Bishop of Albinkirk.

He smiled. “That God’s will and love extends to every level of the cosmos comes as no surprise to me,” he said. “Beyond that, I would not comment, except to say that to plot the death of a creature, however powerful, who has done you no harm is awfully like murder, however you may see the consequences for future generations. But then, I am but a priest, and I fear that even violence in the defence of the weak is-sin. Murder.”

The Faery Knight looked at him in wonder. “Are there other children of men who think as you do?” he asked.

The bishop nodded. “A few. We call ourselves Christians.”

The Faery Knight laughed.

Even Gabriel had to laugh.

Harmodius nodded like a man waking from sleep. “Your grace-I know this will be painful. But my sense-from stories I have heard, and your very presence-is that you have already faced our foe. Directly. In the aethereal.”

Desiderata appeared as she always had in the aethereal, as a beautiful young woman in a kirtle of gold, barefoot, with a ring of daisies in her hair and a belt of them around her waist. In the aethereal, she seemed both wanton and matronly, the very embodiment of woman’s power.

Now Gabriel, who had healed her and knew her aethereal and outward self, looked at her and saw how clearly her ordeal in Harndon had marked her. In the aethereal, she still wore the form that she had had a year ago in the real. But pregnancy and torment had put crow’s feet at the edges of her eyes and a different colour in her face. She had more gravity-more presence-than she had a year ago. But he would never have noticed the difference until he saw her golden form in the aethereal.

She did not smile. But nor did she wince, or stumble.

“I have faced Ash,” she said quietly.

The aethereal was still.

“It was not a straight contest of powers. In which I would have been bested instantly. And I think-if I may pre-empt Master Harmodius-that he dwells in the aethereal and that our ‘real’ is very difficult for him. But for the battle of will-will, with ops as a weapon, to use your university terms-I built this.”

Memories can be very difficult in the aethereal -the memory palace lives only in the user’s mind, and the weakness of memory can make anything fluctuate. Living memory-actual events-can be subject to an infinite number of seductions and degradations, as every hermeticist knows-delusions of success or defeat, failures of will, troubles of image.

But for most casters, memories of direct manipulations of hermetical power have themselves a glow of solid experience, and the Queen’s memory of the climaxes of Ash’s assault on her wall were vivid, complex, and so fraught with emotion that Mogon groaned and Gabriel found himself weeping.

But when she was done, each of them built, under her instruction, one of the golden bricks-Mogon’s were a magnificent, lurid green.

“I made no attempt to strike him. I wished only to protect my unborn child.” She smiled. “Now, I wonder what was Ash and what was Ghause.”

Harmodius had seen the shadow of another in her memory. “And what was Tar,” he said.

“The Virgin would only protect me,” the Queen said quickly.

Harmodius frowned. “They only see us as slaves and soldiers,” he said. He looked pointedly at Gabriel.

Gabriel shook his head. “Harmodius-I would not be your foe. But I need my ally in order to win this battle-the more especially if your dark dragon manifests.” He looked around. “I have no idea of what it would be like to fight a dragon. Militarily, I’m not even sure it can be done. Based on two observations of my own ally in his draconic form-” He paused. “I’m not sure I can plan for that.”

Harmodius took a deep breath as if to make a passionate rejoinder. But he paused.

“We must win this fight,” he said.

“We know,” Desiderata said.

“Very well,” Harmodius said. “I will limit myself to Ash.”

Gabriel smiled at the Faery Knight. “You are content I should command?” he asked.

“No,” the Faery Knight said. “I am content we can aid each other. Command is too imperious for me, Gabriel. Let us merely be friends, and the rest will follow.”

“That’s me told, as my archer would say,” Gabriel said. He extended his hand. “I intend to fight in the woods, at Gilson’s Hole.”

“In the woods?” Desiderata asked. Her surprise leached into the aethereal.

“The army marches tonight, under cover of darkness,” Gabriel said. “Much of it, anyway. Not your knights. We’ve summoned a mass levy of farmers and peasants to dig, and cut trees. What we have that our opponents lack is organization. I’m trying to win with it.”

The Faery Knight put a hand to his forehead in mock salute-or perhaps genuine. “I am shocked. Perhaps he will be surprised.”

“Let’s find out,” the captain said.

One by one, the others left the old man’s palace.

Like a bad guest, Gabriel chose to stay. When they were all gone, he said, “Odd to be in your head, instead of you in mine.”

Harmodius smiled. “Are we at odds?” he asked.

“Please do nothing against Master Smythe,” Gabriel said.

“You mean Lot? You have my word. For now.” Harmodius looked at something that Gabriel knew he couldn’t see-but he’d been in the old man’s rooms in his own mind, and he knew what was there-the mirror.

“I’ve lost my protection,” he said.

“You think so?” Harmodius said. “Hmm.”

“How will this Ash manifest?” Gabriel asked. “And how will you strike?”

“I think he will use death-each death is a major event in the aethereal,” the old magister began.

“Really? I had no idea,” Gabriel said.

“I missed your sarcasm,” Harmodius said.

“And I, yours,” Gabriel shot back.

They both glared-and both laughed.

“I think he uses death to power his essence.” Harmodius shrugged. “I really know nothing-I guess everything. I will not tell you what I will do.”

“And Amicia? Lissen Carak?” Gabriel asked. His pulse raced even in the aethereal.

“Defended. Amicia wishes to come with the army. I think she should not-but we need every scrap of hermetical talent.” Harmodius set his jaw.

Gabriel nodded. “In as much as I am captain-you are magister. I believe I can defeat Thorn’s material army. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say I can defeat him with minimal losses.”

“You’ve learned a great deal of humility,” Harmodius said dryly. “But I will add this. If you die and I die, and Ash manifests, and Thorn triumphs, and Lissen Carak does not fall-then we have not wholly lost.”

“I probably lost Ticondaga and all my folk by hubris,” Gabriel said. “I have learned in just a few years making war that to dwell on errors is to make more.” He shrugged. “I am afraid of a battle with so many imponderables. But I will do my best.”

Harmodius nodded. “I will spare you the statement that you should not blame yourself.”

Gabriel shrugged.

“What happens if we win on the ground and lose here?” Gabriel asked.

“We all die,” Harmodius said.

“The converse is also true,” Gabriel said. “You would have me die, so that untold numbers of beings I have never met are protected from Ash holding a gate.” Gabriel shook his head. “I’m not that noble. Let’s just beat him here.” He managed a grin. “And live to tell about it.”

Harmodius shook his head. “At best, our losses will be staggering.”

Gabriel sighed. “I’ll try and prevent that.” But there was doubt in his voice.

In the real, Gabriel was the last but Harmodius to return. He looked around, feeling-rested. He tried to empty his wine cup, but that had apparently already happened, and the fire was down and most of the candles out.

Harmodius grunted. “I’m too old for all this,” he said. “Good night.”

“Where are you sleeping?” Gabriel asked.

“In this chair.” Harmodius stretched. “Which even this body isn’t young enough for.”

“You can share my room,” Gabriel volunteered. “Come, old man. Three flights of stairs and there’s a feather bed.”

“Lead on,” Harmodius said.

They made it to the top with minimal grunting. Gabriel got the old man into his camp bed-the castle seemed to have no beds of its own, or perhaps other guests had them.

Toby didn’t awake any of the times they stepped over him, and he looked exhausted. Gabriel let him sleep. He found the leather case where his wine was stored, and found both bottles empty.

“Damn,” he said.

Harmodius, the most puissant magister in all of the Nova Terra, was already snoring.

Gabriel looked at him for a moment. The cased window was open and moonlight fell on the old man’s outthrust arm, and the night was chilly, and Gabriel got his red cloak off the clothes piled on his chair and spread it over the old man. It smelled of wood smoke. That sparked a few memories.

He smiled again. Then he went out past his solar, where Nell was sleeping with a young man spooned against her. Gabriel nodded thoughtfully and took his page’s canteen and pulled the stopper. There was water in it. He drank it.

It wasn’t what he wanted, and he went into the hall, his cup still in his hand.

The Queen’s door opened, and Blanche backed through it with a taper in her hand.

A variety of thoughts crossed Gabriel’s mind all at once, and when she turned, they both flinched.

“I’m sorry,” he said, although he had no idea for what he was apologizing.

She paused. “May I help you?” she asked. “The babe’s asleep and so is her grace.”

Gabriel waved his cup. I’m the captain, damn it. I can be in the hall at midnight. There was something in her air that damned him for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. “I was only looking for a cup of wine.”

A loud snore ripped out of Harmodius’s throat and echoed down the stone steps.

“He sounds as if he’s choking,” she said, and almost giggled.

They were looking into each other’s eyes. It went on too long.

“I’ll…” he began, cursing himself for ten types of a fool.

“I have wine,” she said. Her voice was husky. “In my room.” Her eyes never left his.

He reached out his hand.

She took it. “I want to see your-griffon,” she whispered.

He laughed. She had no idea why. But he took her to the door and produced a key made of wrought steel.

“Will he scream?” she asked. Suddenly she was appalled-that she’d offered him wine, that she’d been so bold about the monster.

He shook his head. “Perhaps when we leave. Let me go first.”

He opened the door and she was shocked-immediately-to find that the room revealed, which had once been a fine solar, was now roofless to the open night, and a canopy of stars rose above her. There were two chairs, and a heavy iron chain, and a-a-

A monster.

Gabriel went forward, crooning, and it-It was huge. It seemed to fill the very large tower room, as big as the whole home she’d grown up in with her mother. It put its head on the ground.

And rolled on its back like an enormous cat.

“Come on,” Ser Gabriel said.

She breathed out and moved forward. And then, almost without thinking, she went straight up to the great thing. She reached out a hand and touched it. “How big will he get?” she asked.

“He’s only half grown, aren’t you, laddy?” Gabriel crooned. “He’ll be big enough to ride in a month or two.”

It had feathers on its head and an enormous, vicious beak, downward and backward curved like a scimitar of horn, and wickedly sharp, and two great black eyes that seemed fathomless. The feathers of its wings marched in endless organic rows, green and black and white and gold-true gold, as if all the gilders in the world had united to work on its feathers. But just behind the mighty muscles of its wings there was a line where downy, almost misshapen feathers marched along with hair, and then, from that line back, it looked to have a coat more like that of a horse or cow-except for the barbaric talons.

It should have seemed ungainly and ugly. Instead, it was-queerly beautiful, like a much-scarred tomcat or a favourite old shoe. She scratched the place on the great belly where the fur and the feathers met, and the great monster made a noise somewhere between a purr and a screech.

“Oh, he likes you,” Ser Gabriel said.

With the purr came some other emanation. Blanche had little experience of matters aethereal-none, really. So for the first time, she felt the tickle of something unseelie in her head.

Ser Gabriel gave the beast a slap on the side of his beak. “None of that,” he said.

Blanche suddenly felt a terrible, wonderful upwelling of love.

Inside her head, Gabriel’s voice said, “Stop that.”

Just for a moment she saw him, in a red doublet and hose, standing on a parquetry floor in some sort of cathedral, with statues and numbers all about him, and a beautiful woman on a pedestal behind him, dressed like the statues in churches.

“I’ll do my own courting,” the voice in her head said. “Down, Ariosto!”

The great creature raised his head and both her eyes met both of its eyes. Its impossibly rough tongue brushed her face. She laughed, although she trembled, and although she suddenly had the most intimate-erotic-picture of Ser Gabriel, and she blushed.

She started to turn away and her shoulder met Gabriel’s.

His lips came down on hers. She didn’t feel as if she was controlling her body, but she fit herself against him from her knee to her head. She had never done this with any boy. She felt wanton, deliciously so.

The griffon watched them, unblinking. Gabriel took his lips away from hers and brushed them against her neck, and then his hand tightened and he pulled her-gently-towards the door.

The great monster made a sound very like a sigh.

Blanche turned back, and Gabriel, lightly but firmly, stiff-armed her out the door.

He shut it firmly. Turned away from her, and locked it.

“If you kiss me,” he said, his voice husky, “I’d rather it was of your own free will.” He turned back. “Ariosto is-A creature of the Wild.” He shrugged.

Blanche realized that she was breathing very hard, that her skin was flushed, and her hands unsteady. She was all too aware that the Queen’s solar was the next door, that they were virtually in public.

She turned to her own door, suddenly quite sure what she wanted.

Utterly unsure how to express it.

“He’s beautiful,” she said.

Gabriel followed her, remaining just a step away.

“Come,” she said simply. She couldn’t imagine a speech that would express her thoughts and feelings. So she went to her door, and opened it.

They walked through the low, iron-bound oak door, and she shut it carefully. She put the small taper in her hand into a travelling stick on a low trunk. Time seemed to pass very slowly. Each of her movements seemed very precious. Graceful. Beautiful. She rose on her toes to fetch something.

I should be asleep, he thought, along with a thousand other thoughts.

She took the dented silver cup from his hand and poured him a cup of wine. She put something in her mouth.

She looked up at him, and took a sip-more than a sip. Boldly. And then put it in his hands and closed her own around his. “If-” Her voice shook. “If you make a baby on me, swear you’ll rear it as one of your own.”

“Blanche-”

“Swear. Or take your wine and go.” She was shaking.

“Blanche-”

“Don’t cozen me!” she said.

He took the wine, drank a fair amount without taking his eyes off her and frowned. He kissed her. It was effortless-they flowed together and were one, for so long that he almost spilled the rest of the wine.

And then she placed her hand firmly on his breastbone. She was not weak.

“Swear,” she said. “I won’t make you pretend you’ll marry me. Just that you won’t do what some noble bastard did to my mother.”

Gabriel sat on the chest. His mind was going around and around, and half of it seemed to be chasing Amicia. And the other half was utterly captivated.

“It is not that I won’t swear,” he said. “It’s that I don’t like what I see in the mirror if I do.”

Blanche’s breath caught. “I know you’ll marry the Queen,” she said suddenly. “I know what I am, and what you are.”

Gabriel didn’t catch himself. He laughed.

“No,” he said. “I can imagine many outcomes, but those pips are not on the dice.” He smiled at her. “And I’m at least as much a bastard as you.”

She leaned back, as if to look at him more closely. “Really?”

He got up. He was overcome with her-the palpable reality of her, her smell, her unwashed hair and the taste of her mouth and the clove she’d just chewed and what that said.

“State secret,” he whispered.

She licked her lips. “I know who your parents are,” she said.

He froze. She felt the tension in his muscles, and he took a step for the door, but it was as if he was in the aethereal. He meant to step to the door, but instead he was holding her. Her warmth went through his hands. Without a conscious thought, he pulled the veil off her hair and put a hand behind her head. Her kirtle opened at the side, and fit like a glove, but he managed to find the skin where her shoulder met her neck.

“Swear, damn you!” she said. She pushed him hard enough that he fell back across the chest. “Or leave,” she said.

“That hurt,” he said, and meant it. “I swear on my sword that any baby we make will be reared as my own.” He caught his breath. “I’m only promising so that you won’t hurt me again.”

She laughed.

The taper gave up-a last flare of light that showed her laughing at his discomfiture, and then darkness. The moon was on the other side of the tower, and her window was closed and shuttered. There was some rustling.

“I feel I should tell you-” he said to the darkness.

“Stop talking,” she said, very close.

Her lips found his.

After a pause, she said, “It’s side opening, I’ve already unlaced it.”

His hand finally found bare skin…